Love at First Fight - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Seventeen

"She's got to run. She's compromised."

"If she runs, she's an easy target."

"She's a sitting duck if she stays."

"She's safer at the school than she is anywhere else."

"She wasn't safe twenty minutes ago and she's not going to be safe now."

The voices were reminiscent of a board meeting, executives and trustees arguing about the fate of their empire. At the head of the table, the CEO, listening to the rabble and considering all the options, but never once stepping in. A separate pair of board members had called in to the meeting, both hell-bent on making themselves heard in the mob of anger and accusation that flew across that dark wooded table, some arguments fighting for, some against, and all of them surrounding one issue. Charlotte Woods.

Because this wasn't a board meeting, and the woman at the head of the table was no CEO. It was my grandmother, listening to the sounds made by world's most threatening people after they've come face-to-face with a threat.

There were chairs all around the table, but hardly anyone was sitting anymore. Mom hadn't had a seat the entire time and Ellie kept getting closer and closer to the phone, as if she were going to reach right through it, all the way to Nokesville Virginia, and strangle Dad and Grandpa Joe herself. Even Collins, who's permanent place seemed to be at my mother's side these days, offered up bits of information now and again, before slipping back into a soundless observation of the mighty titans clashing around him.

In fact, it was beginning to seem like the only person who didn't have anything to say about Charlotte Woods, was Charlotte Woods.

"How the hell did they get in?" Dad wanted to know, and Grandma looked up at Macey as if she had the exact same question.

There are many words that can be used to describe Macey McHenry. Glamorous. Intelligent. Kind. Never in a million years would I peg her as incompetent, but that night, forehead still bleeding, she watched the room as if every last person in her sight thought her to be the most inadequate guard to ever walk the Gallagher Academy halls.

No one did, of course, but Macey's always had a skewed perception of herself. "We believe that they were informed about alternative entrances," she told us all, words painted with an off-brand shade of confidence.

At the mention of her beloved passageways, Mom perked up. She knew them better than anyone else, but more importantly, she knew that there were very few people who were aware of their existence at all. "That's impossible," she told us all. "A person would have to spend hours in those tunnels before they found a way in or out."

"Unless they were told about them," Macey said.

But Mom was quick to remind her, "Only a handful of people know the external entrances, and half of them are in this room."

"Well I don't think it's exactly a mystery, Cam," Macey returned. "We all know who's switched sides lately."

There was that name, unspoken and yet undeniably present. "Blake didn't know about the passageways," Dad said. "The only people who use them are the boys from the Exchange and Blake never accompanied them. It couldn't have been him. He had no way of knowing."

And with these words, I saw covert eyes turn towards Woods. The whole room was thinking it. He did have a way of knowing, and her name was Charlotte Woods. She had been his inside source. She had been his accidental informant, and for a moment, all of us wondered exactly how much information she had given to Blake Hughes.