Over and Run With - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Eleven

"Are you going to include us in your plans, or should I expect any more surprises?"

"To be fair, I told you about this plan as soon as it came to me." Luke didn't look all the impressed with my argument, and he was probably right not to. "It's just that I also told Hughes, is all."

"Are you under the impression that we're going to join the Gathering?" He was whispering, but we all knew he was yelling. Finn and Alice showed no great interest in stopping him. "What is your plan here?"

"I don't know what my plan is yet," I admitted. "But there's just this... feeling—you know? I'm not saying we have to be his friend, but I think we do want to be his ally. At least for now—"

There were more arguments on the tip of Luke's tongue, but they were interrupted by the sound of the toilet flushing. The sink running. The time for talking was over, and they were just going to have to trust me. I was going to have to trust me. I looked across the three of them, begging them to understand, and their answer went without saying: they had followed my lead this far. They weren't about to stop now.

When Hughes came out of the bathroom, there was almost no sign that we had, just minutes ago, tied him to a desk. He merely wrung at the red spots on his wrist and scanned the room, until finally his deceivingly beautiful eyes landed on me. "Much obliged," he said. "Surely you know how long these trips can be, and unforgiving on the bladder."

I did, in fact, know how incompatible a spy's life was with the typical roadside reststop, but I didn't say so. Didn't give him anything to work with.

To his credit, he at least seemed to recognize that I wasn't in the mood for his games. With a nod, he pointed back to the desk where remnants of duct tape still stuck wildly to the table. I made a mental note to leave an extra nice tip for room keeping. "Shall we resume?

I had to resist the urge to begin every sentence with um. The uncertainty pumped steadily through my veins and it wasn't until I heard Charlotte Woods' voice in my head that I was finally able to shake it off. Focus, Goode.

"You'll sit," I said. "I hardly think the tape is necessary anymore. Can't imagine you'll be going anywhere."

He landed in the desk chair with the kind of groan that reminded me of old men. Then I realized that, actually, Blake Hughes kind of was an old man these days. The shadows of that old hotel room sunk deeper into his wrinkles than I had ever seen before and, if you looked very closely, he was just starting to gray. Until that moment, I had never once thought of him as old, but the two of us had aged a lot in the year since he betrayed me. "No, I imagine not," he said. "Given that I've spent the last two years of my life trying to covertly recruit you, and now you've overtly stated your interest, I figure I might want to stick around and hear what you have to say."

What did I have to say? Well, that was one of those harder questions that I didn't yet know. But I let my gut guide me and hoped for the best. "I'm not dead yet."

Hughes leaned back in his chair. Crossed his arms. "Astute observation."

"You've had plenty of chances to kill me."

"And I've come close plenty of times."

"But I'm still here," I bit. He was going to try to manipulate me. He was going to try to instigate. I knew how Hughes operated, and I wasn't going to let him get to me. "And I don't think that's an accident."

Alice, Finn, and Luke all leaned up against a radiator at Hughes' back. Finn's foot silently tapped at an anxious pace. Alice glared at the back of Hughes' head as though he were imagining all the ways it could be bashed in. Luke was standing completely and absolutely still.