Out front, at least a dozen limos and town cars were lining up to deliver our classmates, but Bex broke into a full run, darting around the corner of the building.
“Bex,” Liz cried, “slow down. Where are we…”
But then Liz couldn’t finish. She was too transfixed by the sight of the swirling blades of the helicopter that was slowly coming to rest on our school’s back lawn.
“I’ll hand it to Macey,” Bex said. “She still knows how to make an entrance.”
We were used to some pomp and circumstance, but even for Macey McHenry, a helicopter arrival seemed a little over the top. But then I realized that Macey wasn’t alone.
My mother was walking around the corner of the mansion, waving to a man in a trench coat and scarf who was offering a hand to help Macey climb out of the helicopter.
“Senator,” my mom said, shouting over the roar of the engines. “What a nice surprise.”
She sounded like she’d been expecting him, but considering the fact that our school wasn’t going on full automatic lockdown, my mother must have had it on good authority that he wasn’t coming inside.
“Hello, Mrs. Morgan,” Senator McHenry said, taking my mother’s hand. Then he seemed to notice Bex, Liz, and me. “Girls,” he added.
Macey was quiet beside her father. She looked thinner than I remembered. Her usually bright blue eyes were duller. Worried.
“Hello, Senator. It’s so nice to see you again,” Bex said in her best American accent, harkening back to the role she’d played so well the very first time Macey had ever set foot on our campus. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“Oh, just dropping Macey off,” he said. “I’m sorry for the intrusion, but with all that has gone on in the past few weeks… It seems being a public figure has become a bit of a hazardous job. I mean, did you hear about that woman from the European Union? Dubois, I think her name was.”
“I did,” Mom said.
“And then Sir Walter Knight,” the senator went on. “I can’t believe it. If a man isn’t safe at Cambridge…” The senator shook his head then looked into my mother’s eyes. “I got acquainted with him during the campaign, you see. He and Ambassador Winters were close. Knight was a top advisor.”
“Oh. I wasn’t aware of that,” Mom said, even though she was very well aware of it all. In fact, she knew more about what was going on than even the senior senator from Virginia, but that’s part of the job, sometimes. Shaking your head. Saying the right things instead of the truth.
“I wanted to make sure Macey got here safely.” He squeezed his daughter’s shoulders, and Macey didn’t pull away. In fact, she didn’t do anything. I wondered if maybe that was what I’d looked like the semester before, climbing out of a helicopter, numb and too thin. But exactly why Macey looked that way I wasn’t really sure.
“Now, Macey, you have a good semester.” He patted her awkwardly on the arm.
“Yes, Father.”
“Study hard and…enjoy yourself.”
“Yes, Father.”
“And…good-bye.”
I waited for him to give her a hug, kiss her cheek. But Macey’s father just hunched low and walked back to the chopper. Once inside, he gave us a textbook politician’s wave, and then he was rising, disappearing into the sky over Virginia.
Three months before, when I had found my father’s grave, I’d tried to claw through the frozen earth with just my bare hands—I’d been willing to do anything just be closer to him. As the cold air whirled around us, I thought back to the way I’d felt then, and I looked at Macey, who hadn’t even watched as her own dad took flight.
“So, Macey,” Liz started slowly, “how was your—”
“Where is he?” Macey asked, cutting Liz off and spinning, looking at my mother.
“Who?” Mom asked, but I already knew the answer.
“Preston. He’s here, right?” There was a hopefulness about Macey, but a desperation too as she asked, “You did get him, didn’t you?”
“Macey,” my mother said, reaching for her, “you have to understand—”
“No,” Macey snapped. “I don’t have to do anything.” Her father’s helicopter looked like a wasp on the horizon.
“The US Embassy in Rome is one of the most secure buildings in Europe. Preston’s father is a powerful man. He’s safe,” Mom said, then repeated, “Preston is safe.”
“I heard Elias Crane the sixth had a car accident,” Macey said. “And Charlene Dubois and her kids disappeared? Her kids!” Macey had a point, and she knew it. It wasn’t just the leaders of the Circle who were getting hurt. Their kids were getting caught in the cross fire. Which meant Preston wasn’t as safe as any of us wanted to believe.
“I wasn’t living in a cave, you know,” Macey told us. “These things make the news. And every day I waited for the news that the American Embassy in Rome had been attacked.”
“That didn’t happen, Macey,” I told her.
“But it will.” Macey was so certain, and the worst part was that she was right. “So when are you going to get him?”
“When the time is right, Macey. And only when the time is right.” My mom sounded like a headmistress, a senior operative, someone who had lived most of her life on a need-to-know basis. And as far as she was concerned, we absolutely, positively did not need to know.
“But—” Liz started. She hadn’t had spies as parents. Unlike Bex and me, she still didn’t know the signs that a conversation was over.
“That is all, girls. You go settle in,” Mom told Macey. “I’ll see you all at the Welcome Back Dinner.”
And then she turned. A cold wind blew across the grounds. Her dark hair spiraled around her, and she walked so tall, so straight. And I knew Rachel Morgan wasn’t going to cave, not to the likes of us.
Macey must have known it too, because there was fire in her eyes when she said, “Tell me everything.”
Bex and I shared a look, then Bex lowered her voice. “We’d better go inside.”
The halls were starting to clear out as we made our way through the mansion. Loud music boomed out of a few rooms. There were showers running on almost every floor. It sounded like the start of a new semester, but when we reached the suite I shared with my three closest friends in the world, it hit me: this wasn’t a regular semester. It was our last semester.