Over and Run With - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Five

It was called Operation Rozelle, and it was put into place before Matt and I were born.

Because truthfully, the safe house was never supposed to be important. Just one of the many places that the Goode family met up, played cards, and discussed all things covert and otherwise. The plan was to use it for Thanksgiving. Christmas. The occasional Easter. Birthdays and overdue reunions. In a way, it was always supposed to be home base, but we had gotten a little too comfortable. Maybe we had even gotten a little lazy. Holidays gave way to weeks. Weeks gave way to summers. In all the chaos and heartbreak of the past few years, maybe the Goodes had just needed to feel a little grounded.

We paid for that comfort. That day, the consequences finally caught up to us.

Which was not to say that the attacks came as any great surprise. Certainly, we hadn't been expecting them to come right then, that very morning, snipers armed. But in a family like mine, you learned to anticipate these kinds of things. You lived under the assumption that an attack could come at any time, even if you didn't know the details. Insecurity was the default.

So of course there was a plan. Of course there was a procedure. As soon as they moved in, the very first thing my family did was stand at its empty center and develop Operation Rozelle.

It led us to Italy, at another safe house that I had already visited, not too long ago. Operation Rozelle called for seven stops along the way, each of them attempting to lose any tail that might be following us from Scandinavia, but we had to cut our detour short in exchange for getting Dad the medical attention he needed.

So. Three stops. Two cars, one helicopter, and seven hours. If Grandpa Joe were the type of man to get antsy, then I imagine we might have seen some of it then. But he isn't, so we didn't.

"Zach!"

I've gotten used to hearing fear in the voices of the people I love. The kind that grips your throat, and steals your air. My mother was no exception, as she raced to my father's side and helped Grandpa Joe carry him through the door. "Is Jasons—?"

"Already set up in the back bedroom."

"He's lost a lot of blood."

"Scout has it covered," she said. "Just help me get him back there."

"I can't lose him, Cam."

"I know."

And the room watched in silence as the two people who loved Zachary Goode most in the world carried him into the shadows. My only hope was that my family could get lucky just one more time.

At once, it was all too quiet in Italy.

It didn't take me long to realize that the quiet was not the illness, but rather a symptom. Family, after all, was a loose term for us Goodes. There were a lot of us, even if the majority of us didn't share a single drop of blood, and we were a viciously loyal kind of people. Word of an ambush at the safe house should have had this place packed to the walls.

But the Gathering had already beaten us in plenty of ways, and our scattered family was the strongest sign of our defeat. I should have been greeted by a dozen of the world's foremost minds in intelligence as soon as I walked through the door, all of them crammed into a too-small room (because every room is too small to hold us all) with a plan of action—a strategy to bring the Gathering to an end, once and for all.

Except that they weren't here. There was no plan. Our usual reinforcements had been whittled away. Aunt Bex, Townsend, Aunt Abby; all of them on missions that Grandma had sent them on weeks ago, all of them constantly at risk. Alice and her family were on their way, but trapped Stateside, unable to trust their pilots, their drivers, their captains, constantly dodging a tail. Charlotte Woods, Ellie, scattered to the wind. Macey and Preston, the same fate. The Gathering had us on the run and maybe, just maybe, that had been their plan all along.