Love at First Fight - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Twenty-Three

C is for cat.

D is for dog.

I could feel the shake in my fingers, feel the race in my chest, and more than that, I could feel that icy water inching up my legs.

E is for elephant.

F is for fox.

My face was flush, my fingers numb. I opened my eyes, just to make sure my hands were still there, but my eyes caught the rush of land as we zoomed past it—an endless, dizzying streak of tree line.

G is for goat.

H is for horse.

"What are you thinking about?"

It was Scout's voice, muffled at first, as if he were calling to me through a phone or even just a pair of cupped hands. It was like we were in two completely different worlds and, hell, I wasn't entirely sure that we weren't. I felt flighty and nervous and gone, so maybe I wasn't here. Maybe nobody was.

We had been attacked. We could have had a tail on us. We had left Matt and Alice behind.

I is for iguana

J is for jaguar.

This is your fault.

"Maggie?"

"Animals," I blurted. "I'm thinking about animals."

Scout has this look he gets—or rather, an anti-look. It's common to see him with a smile or, in my case, the occasional accusatory glance, but there's this one look. It's empty, completely void of any thought, and it reminds me that he had learned his poker face from Charlotte Woods herself.

It was the look he wore when he didn't want anyone to know what he was thinking. It was the look he wore when he was scared. "Animals?"

"I'm not crazy," I told him.

"I know you're not," he said, too quickly.

"It's something Collins taught me," I said. "It's supposed to help."

"You're feeling anxious?"

"Aren't you?" With that, there was a crack in his mask. Of course he was feeling anxious, but he had been so high on adrenaline that he hadn't even noticed. All at once, he seemed to realize that the shaking in his hands came from worry, and not from the rush of getting out of a compromised bank.

"How did they even find us?" he said. "And are you sure they were Gathering?"

There had been a single moment back in the bank when I had decided that there were some things that I wouldn't be able to tell Scout about. There had been a moment, as I ran up into the lobby, the sound of sirens growing louder with each step, when I had decided that I wouldn't tell Scout about Lily, and that I wouldn't tell him about Matt's leg, and that I definitely wouldn't tell him that Lily had been to one to snap Matt's leg.

But I had been there. I had watched my brother fall and I had heard the scream. I had felt the words land when she had commented on how his leg was just starting to heal up and I had known, right then, that she was Gathering. "Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I'm sure, but I don't know how they found us."

"There's got to be a rat," Scout said. "How else would they have known we'd be in Italy this weekend? Are you sure Woods isn't—?"

"I'm not really sure of anything at the moment, Scout," I barked, and I had to pull my voice down. Trains have always been eerily quiet places, and I couldn't afford to be heard. "All I know is that we were attacked, and that my entire family is still in Rome while we're on a train headed in the wrong direction."

"Well we couldn't stay there," he said.

"I know." And with that, the water came rushing in with even more anxiety. "But how are we going to know when it's safe to move back in? We're completely disconnected. I don't have any dead drops with my mom in this part of the world and unless you've got one with Matt, we're screwed."

There was a pause in the air and a part of me hoped that he would put this matter to rest. I wanted Scout Jasons to look me right in the eye and say, "I know how to get ahold of Matt," but he didn't. He couldn't.

K is for kangaroo.

L is for lion.

"We'll call the embassy," Scout said. "We'll call Ambassador Winters and—"

"You know we can't," I reminded him, and it was the truth. Scout may be a soldier nowadays, but he started life as a spy. He knew that if we picked up a phone, we could be tracked. He knew that if we sent out any kind of signal, the Gathering would find us. "And they're probably gone already anyways," I added.

"What about Alice?" Scout asked, desperate now. "Do you have a dead drop with her—with anyone? Macey? Collins?"

"Collins?" I said. "No I don't have a dead drop with Collins—why would I have a dead drop with Collins? Is that the sort of thing we should have? Like, is there a point in a relationship when we should have a dead drop because I don't know if I'm ready to have a dead drop with him Scout. I just don't know!"

Another pause, and this time the air between us felt different. Like maybe I was missing something. "Okay," he said, short and chipped. "So. No dead drop with Collins. It's just that you two were talking strategy in the car the other night, so I wasn't sure if you had a plan in case—"

"We weren't talking strategy," I told him, and I wanted to smack myself for taking that valuable time to discuss dead authors rather than emergency evacuation plans. Stupid. So damn stupid. "We wasted a bunch of time talking about Macbeth and Hamlet and goddamn Romeo and—"

The realization hit so quickly that I had to check and make sure that the train hadn't braked. Had to check and make sure that the world was still spinning. "Juliet," I managed. "The letters to Juliet."

I didn't know if Luke had started the conversation on purpose. I didn't know if he just so happened to be a Shakespeare enthusiast. Either way, he and I had been discussing for more than just sixteenth century playwrights.

"We have to get to Verona," I told my partner. "I've got a dead drop in Verona."