Over and Run With - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Four

I've always imagined that if the safehouse was ever taken, it would be a lot louder. That the world would be able to hear it.

I've always imagined that it would take an army—a long and cacophonous battle that lasted days, during which our enemies would be met with the full force of the Goode family.

I never imagined that it would only take three shots from a sniper. I never thought that I would be driving away, feeling helpless, useless, as my father leaned against my back seat, weakness in his breath.

I never thought that I would watch my family's beloved safe house burn silently in my rear view mirror.

"Mags," said my father. "You've got this. You're okay."

I peeled my eyes away from the flame and caught a glimpse of my father looking back at me. It was the same look he had given me so many times before. A look of reassurance. Of comfort. I tried to find solace in it, just as I always had, but something was different. Something was wrong.

I looked back towards the road, instead. "I don't know where I'm going," I told him. "Do you need a hospital?"

He gave a little laugh, then, but it sounded painful and it didn't do much to put my mind at ease. "Have you ever known a spy to say yes to a hospital?"

"Dad."

"I don't need a hospital," he insisted, clutching at his side. "If I know your brother, he's already called Scout and told him where to meet us. I'll have him patch me up when we get there."

"You're losing a lot of blood."

"Part of the gig."

And something about that felt wrong too, although I couldn't quite place it. I could hear my grandfather's voice telling me to notice things. I could hear Charlotte Woods telling me to trust my gut. But my mind was skipping over itself, scratched, just trying its best to get through a single thought.

"Call Mom," he huffed. "Tell her to divert her course."

I remembered the burner phone in the glove box. Remembered how it was my job to call, to tell my mother that they had found us. Again. That they were just going to keep finding us. If they could hunt down the Scandinavian safe house, they could hunt down anything we did, anywhere we went—I hadn't even known the safe house was in Scandinavia, and I had grown up there.

But the time for fear would come later. For now, my father was bleeding in my back seat and my mother was headed towards a home that was going up in smoke. This moment required a streak of bravery. "Divert to where?"

"She'll know," he drawled.

"Stay with me, Dad." Because I have no idea where I'm going. Because nothing about this makes sense. Because I'm terrified.

"She'll know," he said again, but he wasn't there. Not really. I glanced back to find him with his eyes closed. I told myself that he was sleeping, because it made everything a little easier.

"Shit." I said. "Shit, shit, shit."

Every bit of training in me was screaming that time was going to be crucial—that every minute was going to matter, from this point out. Even so, I caught myself in a moment of absence. Hands locked on the steering wheel, eyes loose on a road that didn't seem to end, l let myself linger in the distinctly dense silence that comes with the world's northernmost forests.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Somehow I knew that this would be my last chance to catch my breath for a very long time.

The smell of smoke wafted in through the vents and any sense of serenity was turned to ash. I waited for a stretch of straight in all the curves of that mountainous road before I went rummaging through the glove box. It wasn't much—burners never are—a little black brick in the palm of my hand, and I dialed the number my mother had made me memorize before she left just days before.