Love at First Fight - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Ten

Macey McHenry was among the strongest, smartest, and generally most capable people I know. She had learned from the best, fought for the best, and protected the best for years before I had officially met her. Macey was powerful. Macey was strength in a woman.

But right then, in that small square just outside of Roseville Town Hall, she didn't stand a chance against Aunt Liz.

The squeal alone was enough to make me trip over myself and although I was fairly certain that no one had actually been shot, I still had to look over my shoulder, just to be sure. To my relief, no one appeared wounded, but Macey was going to have a nice, dark bruise on her arm by the time Aunt Liz was done with her. Nerd or not, Aunt Liz was a Gallagher, and she didn't know her own strength—perhaps more than most. Once she caught sight of Alice and Finn, her hit was just as hard as anyone else in our sisterhood.

It was the perfect sound at the perfect second, supplying me with the perfect cover as I slipped into the crowd.

Disappearing into a crowd was not something that I considered to be a strong suit of mine. I wasn't awful at it—no good spy truly is—but I wasn't the best. I wasn't as good as Matt who, at age seven, had once vanished at a fireworks show and was found hours later with a stomachache and three empty cotton candy bags. I definitely wasn't as good as mom, who had been giving all other Pavement Artists a run for their money since age four.

And I wasn't as good as Dad, a fact which I was reminded of when I felt an arm fall around my shoulders, looking up to find that signature smirk of his. "An O'Reilly, huh?" he said, not even looking over his shoulder to watch the scene that Aunt Liz was causing. "Your Uncle Jonas is going to hate that."

"I think that just makes her like him even more," I joked, and in that moment I wasn't fraternizing with the enemy. I was talking to my father. "She's nothing if not rebellious."

"I think you may be on to something."

It was easy to laugh with him. Easy to pretend that we were out for a father-daughter night at the carnival, and that my best friend was a troublemaker whose biggest problem was her wound-up dad. I could trick myself into thinking that he was simply guiding me to the snack cars, where he would no doubt buy me one of the funnel cakes that smelled of sweet, sugary heaven. It was easy. It was simple. It was nice to pretend that everything was normal and that the two of us belonged in that little town.

But if there were any two people in the world who didn't belong in Roseville, Virginia, it was Zachary Goode and his daughter.

"I don't suppose you're going to tell me where your flag is," I said, ringing my own team's flag between my two hands.

Dad just smiled. "It's in my back pocket."

I laughed, but he didn't join in. "Wait," I said, stealing a glance over his arm. "Holy shit, it's really there."

"Morgan Ann."

"I thought that flags weren't supposed to be on moving bodies," I went on, blatantly ignoring his obligatory fatherly scolding. "That's been the rule since the start."

"I think I've made it pretty clear that we're not playing by the same rules we used to."

That much, I knew, was the truth. Dad had stormed my base of operations, leaving me with a scattered team and minimal delegation. I had boys in the field trying to hold off agents who have been working longer than they'd been alive. I had girls with something to prove, taking on security guards thirty years their senior. My second in command was spending the night making out with her boyfriend, so rules? Yeah. The rules were out the window.