“And we didn’t,” Abby countered. “We had eyes on the embassy at all times.”
“So that you could take him!” Macey shouted, and, for that, not even Abby had an answer. She and Townsend shared a look and, I’m not going to lie, it kind of scared me. Macey must have seen it too, because her voice changed. Anger morphed to terror.
“Where is he?” she asked. “Where is he right now?”
Townsend shook his head slowly. He ran a hand through his hair and took a seat. I watched my aunt lean ever so slightly against him.
“We don’t know, Ms. McHenry,” he said.
“You’re lying,” Macey snapped.
“We would lie—if we had to. But we aren’t,” Abby said with a shake of her head. “All Circle operatives are held in a high-security facility, the location of which is need-to-know, and we don’t know. I can promise you that.”
“I don’t believe you,” Macey told her.
“That’s fine.” Abby shook her head. “But I’m telling you the truth. He’ll be okay, Macey. It’s normal. It’s protocol.”
“Protocol for what?” Bex asked.
“He’ll be questioned, along with his father,” Townsend said.
“Questioned…” Macey started. “You mean, interrogated. You mean, tortured.”
“He’s in the authorities’ hands, girls,” Abby said. “He’ll be fine.”
“Like Cammie is fine,” Macey said, then glanced at me. “No offense.”
“None taken,” I said. “I think.”
“We aren’t the Circle, Macey,” Abby told her. “We’re the good guys.”
Macey crossed her arms. “Forgive me if I have my doubts.”
“What about Preston’s mother?” Liz asked.
“She’ll be questioned too, I’m sure,” Townsend said. “But the Circle doesn’t exactly admit spouses, so I doubt she knows anything. She’ll stay at the embassy for now.”
“That man…in the van with Preston’s father—” I said.
“His name is Max Edwards,” Townsend filled in before I could say anything more. “He used to be with Interpol.”
“I remember him. I met him two years ago at the career fair. He told me he knew my father.” I thought about the man who had given me his business card during my sophomore year. He’d looked at me that night like he saw through my chameleonness. He’d looked at me that way again that afternoon. Something about it made me feel uneasy, vulnerable. Naked.
“I don’t doubt it,” Townsend said. “Edwards has been in this business a long time. He knows everyone. That’s why he’s heading up the task force.”
“What task force?” Bex didn’t even try to hide the skepticism in her voice.
“Seems the intelligence community is finally starting to take the list seriously, girls,” my aunt told us. “Edwards is in charge of a brand-new task force that has just been put in place. It’s not big. Just a few key agents from the CIA, MI6, all the usual suspects. They’re supposed to track down the Inner Circle. Not that it’s going to be easy. But they’re going to try. And if today is any indication, they might just succeed. Winters is the first Inner Circle member to be taken alive, after all.”
Knowing what we knew about the Circle’s network of moles within the world’s intelligence community, I started to agree. Maybe it would work. Maybe we wouldn’t have to be alone in the search anymore. But Macey just crossed her arms and huffed.
“You mean the Inner Circle and their families?” she asked.
“Preston needed to be questioned, ladies,” Agent Townsend said as if he expected that to be the end of it.
“But…” Liz spoke then. Her voice cracked. “He’s just a kid.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Abby leaned forward, staring at the four of us as if she were about to give us the most important lesson of our covert lives. “You should stop and listen to yourselves sometime. ‘We’re practically adults, let us run wild.’ ‘We’re only kids, leave us alone.’” I watched my aunt lean closer, emphasize every word. “You can’t have it both ways.”
“When is Preston’s birthday, Macey?” Townsend asked.
“December fifth,” Macey said.
“Then he just turned eighteen, did he not?”
“So what?”
“So he’s an adult now, by our standards. And the Circle’s.” Townsend looked at us all as if part of him truly hated what he had to say. “So no matter what we know about his father’s dealings, at this moment, there is a good possibility that Preston knows more.”
Macey was shaking her head. “No. No. He didn’t know a thing.”
“Didn’t he?” Townsend asked. “Abby is right. You want to be treated like grown-ups? Well, that includes both the good and the bad. And the possibility exists, ladies, that Preston Winters might be very bad indeed.”
My roommates and I fell into silence. I didn’t say a thing because, like it or not, the adults in my life were right far more often than they were wrong.
The Circle had always been a step or two ahead—and right then, I didn’t like where those steps were going.
Chapter Eleven
It was dark when the jet finally landed. I’m sure I must have slept on the long ride over the Atlantic, but I didn’t really remember. I just remember staring out the window: watching, thinking, waiting for something, but what, I didn’t know.
On the Tarmac, Agent Townsend whispered something to Abby, then squeezed her hand and kissed her softly when he didn’t think we were watching. But we’re Gallagher Girls. To tell you the truth, we are always watching.
Abby let him go, her eyes a little misty. And I couldn’t help myself—I thought about Zach. He was out in the world somewhere. And a part of me worried that I might never see him again.
“Go to bed, girls,” Abby told us when we walked through the doors. The lights were out. Our school was sleeping, and in the stillness I could feel how far we’d gone, and how far we still had to go.
“But—”
“I’m not going to tell you again,” Abby snapped, and started down the hall that led to the stairs to the teachers’ quarters. “Now go to bed.”