Love at First Fight - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Fifteen

Collins had been right. My parents were most definitely going to kill him.

If the room hadn't been tense before, it certainly was now. My entrance into room 305 was as dramatic as it was unwelcome. My mother was shocked and my father was furious, but both of them were sure of one thing. Both of them knew that there was only one person in this room who would have provided me with the necessary information to be in this exact spot at this exact time, so they turned to Luke Collins and they glared. They glared like it was the most lethal thing about that famous duo.

Collins didn't bend. He just locked eyes with me, gave me a firm, professional not, and then he turned back to the matter at hand. It was the move of a trained operative. Of an experienced interrogator. And probably a pissed off date.

But this was not the time to dwell on the second not-kiss that he and I had shared. He was in the middle of questioning the sister to one of our biggest leads and, more than that, my father was sitting right in front of me.

Room 305 is big. It was probably a lecture hall before it became storage, and before that, likely a dining room, built with high ceilings to compensate even higher egos. Even though the purpose of the room had changed plenty of times over the years, the people inside had not. We were the good in the battle of Good Versus Evil, and that had been as true in Gilly's time as it was in ours.

I was still trying to figure out which side Miss Alex was on.

She was sitting on one side of the beaten table at the center of the room, every desk in the room turned to face her. Her long brown hair was tied up into a bun, her shoulders rolled back into a soldier, but by far the most noticeable thing about her was the fact that she was not wearing her white coat. It was very strange to see her without her white coat.

Mom and Collins were on the opposite side of the table. All three of them had lunch—salad for Alex and burgers for the other two. At a glance, it was easy to think that this was just a normal lunch break, but I knew better. There was far more to this conversation.

Dad and Grandma sat at dusty desks, Grandma left of the table, Dad to the right, both of them trying to see the big picture. I decided that my best bet was to join them, so I slid into the seat next to my father and hoped that he at least waited until after the interrogation to strangle me.

He didn't look away from the interrogation table. "Maggie," he greeted. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you have classes to attend?"

"Lunch break," I said. "What's your excuse? Don't you have classes to teach?"

"Gave them the afternoon off," he told me. "Figured I'd let them catch up on some homework."

"How generous of you."

"Not really." The corner of his mouth lifted into that trademark smirk of his. "It's Newbie Night. Half of my boys will spend the evening trying to tail a rather impressive sophomore class, and the other half will hit the gym so that they can lock down a spot for next year."

"Mr. Goode, you are one tough cookie."

"I try my best."

Doctor Alexandria Hughes worked with the military for years before she found a home at Blackthorne. Occasionally, she had let a story slip through – a little boy in Kabul or a mother from Paghman. She would work without boarders, heal without hesitation, and these were the facts that had me believing that she was on the good side of things.

I didn't understand how she could be related to someone so bad.

As the thought crossed my mind, I was met with another memory. A cold night outside of the Gallagher Academy, just after a gun had been held to my head. "I'm not the bad guy, Morgan," he had said. Those had been the words that Blake Hughes had wanted me to hear.