Dropping Like Spies - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Nineteen

Collins shrugged.  “Matt’s a Goode.  He can get pretty much any op he wants.”

“And you?”

He plucked the last grape from his plate and popped it in his mouth, biting down with a grin.  “It’s amazing what a letter of recommendation from Joe Solomon can do to a guy’s career.”

And that’s when I looked straight at the boy who lived by the truth and tried to tell if he was lying.  “Grandpa Joe doesn’t write letters of recommendation,” I told him.

“Well someone might want to inform him of that fact,” Collins said, brushing his hands free of crumbs.  “I don’t know, Goode.  Matt and I are rookies, MI6 needed some fresh faces to run the op, and here we are.”

It made sense.  I’ve heard for years that rookies are an agency’s best assets.  With a family like the Goodes, you learn a thing or two about familiar faces running ops.   There were some ops that not even Mom and Dad could run, simply because they were too easily recognized.  Matt and Collins were new to the game and there wasn’t an ambassador on the planet who knew their faces.

“That’s why Matt chose me, isn’t it?” I said.  It wasn’t really a question because I already knew the answer.  “Because I’m unrecognizable.”

Collins seemed to debate his next words carefully.  Considering the time it took him to pick and choose, I was expecting some sort of speech.  A lengthy explanation about how Matt had been rooting for me the entire time and how Collins eventually came around.  But the speech didn’t come.  In the end, all Collins said was, “No.”

“Then why?” I demanded.  “Why did he choose me?”

Again, careful thought went into his next words as he studied me across the table, searching for something.  He did that a lot, I realized.  Not a thing left his mouth before he plotted out each and every possible reaction and prepared himself for it.  “He didn’t.”

“What are you—?”

“I did.”

There aren’t many things that can shut me up—I’ll be the first to own up to my big mouth—but right then, Collins managed to get the job done.  He must’ve sensed this or, at the very least, figured he needed to take advantage of the silence while he still could, and continued.  “You really think Big Brother Matt was eager to break you out of school and bring you here?”

“He seemed pretty eager,” I said, but even as the words left me, I knew that it wasn’t quite true.  Maybe eager wasn’t the right word.  Maybe anxious.  Ready to get this whole thing over with.  

“Yeah, well,” Collins said, unsurprised.  “He’s a much better liar than I am.”

“But why?” I whined.  “Why me?”

Collins raised his eyebrows and immediately, I felt childish.  Be cool, Morgan.  Be cool.  “Well wouldn’t you like to know?” he said with that crooked smile.

“Yes!” I snapped.  “I would like to know.  In fact, I have a right to—”

And then he shushed me as if I weren’t right in the middle of sentence.  Quick and sharp as if his hiss were a blade made specifically for cutting my sentence short.  “What was that?” he asked, his voice low.

“Jesus Christ, you really are unbearable,” I bit back with all the nastiness I could muster.  My words barely touched him and I could tell that he wasn’t listening.  Not to me anyways.  He was too busy listening to something else.  Something around him. “Would you just tell me why—?”

“Seriously, Goode.  Shut up.”

“Quit trying to change the subject—”

But then I heard it too.  A creak in the floorboards outside of our room.  I dropped my voice, slouching in my chair.  “It’s probably just Matt,” I told him.  “He always has to come back for something he forgot the first time.”