United We Spy (Gallagher Girls) by Ally Carter Page A

Ambassador, are you—”
    I raised my hand and started to bang, but then I heard the sounds of a struggle on the other side. Sharp cracks filled the air—twice, in rapid succession, and I bolted away just as a third crack sounded.
    The thick glass that separated the two rooms must have been bullet resistant—but not bulletproof—because the glass began to splinter, cracks spreading out like a spiderweb.
    “Help!” I yelled into the cameras, but I knew no one would hear me.
    I ran to the door and peered out the tiny window just in time to see the door to the next room open.
    There was a small, basic lock on my door. It seemed out of place there in that high-security fortress; but I turned it anyway and backed away slowly, hoping that whoever had shot the ambassador wouldn’t care about me. I was a visitor—a kid. There was nothing trapped inside of me that anybody wanted anymore. I was nothing, I told myself.
    But then the doorknob moved.
    Someone pushed against the door, but the lock held, and I jerked backward just as something heavy crashed against the door.
    In my head, lists were forming. Plans. Options. But the fact remained that I was locked in a room with no weapons and no…
    Window.
    I picked up the metal chair and took aim at the center of the web that filled the heavy glass.
    Out in the hall, someone banged against the door, so I hit harder.
    “Come on,” I said to no one but myself. “Come—”
    And then the glass shattered, falling to the floor. I jumped over the partition and into the other room, where the ambassador was still bound to his chair as he lay on the floor. Blood stained the concrete. His face looked almost peaceful as he stared up at me and gave me one last smile.
    “Save Preston,” he whispered, eyelids fluttering.
    And then he died.

E ven as I watched the life drain out of Preston’s father, I knew that I should run. And yet I felt like I should wait, hold his hand, tell him that his son was going to be okay. But there are some lies even spies can’t tell a dying man.
    The door to the room where I’d been sitting banged open, and I didn’t wait for the shooter to realize I was gone—to see me on the other side of the shattered glass and follow. I leaped over the ambassador’s lifeless body and hurled myself into the hall, running away from the interrogation rooms as quickly as I could.
    But my breath came harder than it should have. I told myself that I’d eaten too much of Grandma Morgan’s fudge over Christmas—that maybe the drugs they’d used to transport me there weren’t entirely out of my system. Whatever the case, my legs didn’t move as quickly as they should have. My breath was labored and heavy, and after a hundred feet, I wanted to double over and catch my breath, but I didn’t dare slow down.
    If I slowed down, I’d die.
    I was deep underground in a facility so secure there were probably only a handful of people who knew it even existed, but someone from the Circle had found Winters there. Someone was still looking for me.
    The corridor curved and branched, and footsteps echoed in the hallway. I looked for a way out, but then I realized a pair of guards was running toward me.
    A deep voice ordered, “Spread out. Find her. ”
    I thought maybe I should trust them, but then I remembered I couldn’t trust anybody.
    So I pressed myself deeper into the shadows and the pair ran past. As soon as they were gone, alarms began to sound. The overhead fluorescents pulsed. The lights on the surveillance cameras began to blink, and I knew that the system was rebooting. It wasn’t just a camera malfunction, the sirens said. The facility knew there was a breach, a gunman. A body. They would know that I was on the loose, and maybe they would blame me—how did I know? All I was sure of was that I wasn’t safe there.
    My side ached and my head hurt, and when the hallway branched, I stopped and looked and listened.
    Heavy cables ran overhead, electrical lines that carried