Thanks to everyone who's been reading and making suggestions. You guys are the best!
It was a perfect shot. The logical portion of my brain admired his marksmanship. The emotional portion of my brain shut down, unable to merge the Zach before me, the Zach who'd just killed someone, with the Zach who'd held me on the bus, the Zach who'd kissed me last night.
My eyes jumped from him to the body and back, unable to process what I was seeing. But he didn't hesitate, not for an instant. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the gun, then tossed it back on the floor, completely calm. Then he moved quickly around the room, wiping the prints from everything we'd touched. When his fingers closed around my arm, I jerked away.
"We have to get out of here. They'll be here any minute."
"You just…killed someone," I said, as though I couldn't quite believe it, and I guess I really couldn't.
"We need to get out here, Cam." His fingers wrapped around my upper arm, but this time he didn't let me pull away.
And then I heard the sirens. Zach cursed under his breath and hauled me to the back door, kicked it open and pulled me down the alley.
"Run," he ordered. And I didn't know what else to do, so I listened. We ran for less than ten minutes, then found a main street and slipped into the crowd. Because all spies know that the most obvious criminal is the person fleeing the crime scene. We walked quickly, purposefully, down the streets, until we found ourselves in front of a public transit parking lot.
"Get in," Zach said, his voice commanding. His expression was so terrifying, so completely emotionless, that I listened. I climbed into the dark blue Toyota Camry without a second thought.
I saw his hands move under the dashboard, felt the car sputter to life, and watched as he calmly shifted it into gear and headed for the highway.
"You…killed…him," I stammered, when we were safely on the highway.
"I had to Cam," he said quietly, turning to meet my eyes. "He'd have turned us in. We're spies, that's what we do."
"But we're going to have to hand ourselves in eventually. You know we'll have to get caught to find what we're looking for…"
"On our terms, Cam," he said, turning his eyes back to the road. "It's like a giant game of hide and seek. We can't let them find us until we're ready to be found. That makes all the difference. If we're ready…we just might make it out alive."
He drove in silence for a while, fifty two miles, to be exact, and I replayed the image over and over in my head. It was his face-completely relaxed-and his efficient business-like attitude immediately after. And then I knew.
"That wasn't your first time, was it." I phrased it as a question, but it certainly didn't come out as one. And it didn't really need an answer, because deep down, I already knew. And really it made perfect sense. Zach had worked with Mr. Solomon in the field for almost a year, had been a member of the Circle for longer than that. If I'd been using my head, if I hadn't fallen prey to my emotions, it wouldn't have made me think twice. But it did. I was so naïve.
"It gets easier," he whispered, reaching over and resting his hand on my knee. "It was hard for me too, the first time. But it's easier when you've seen firsthand the damage they've done, when you know what they're likely to do in the future. And it's easier when they're threatening someone you care about."
"And the cops?"
"They won't find us," he assured. "We didn't leave any prints, and even if we had, we don't exist, Cam. Remember? Even if they somehow manage to find DNA or fingerprints, the only people who'd be able to match evidence to us work for the agency. That puts anyone who's searching for us closer to our trail."
"But the Circle will know."
"Yeah," he agreed. "They'll know I killed one of their operatives, one of my mother's most loyal goons. But if we did a good job cleaning up after ourselves they'll still think I'm on my own."
"And the car?"
"By the time those people come home and report it missing, we'll have left it somewhere for the authorities to find. Those are people who take buses from the outlying suburbs to the places where all the jobs are. They won't be back until late tonight."
"You've done this before too."
"If by 'this' you mean running away from a bad situation, then yes, of course. I've done it loads of times."
We rode in silence for another twenty-eight minutes, until he looked at me and spoke.
"What's in the folder, Cam?" I didn't know, and I wasn't entirely sure I really wanted to find out. But I pulled out the folder and opened it anyway. Because if I wanted this to be over, I didn't have much choice.
They were surveillance photos again, large glossy prints, and there were three of them. The first was anticlimactic, a simple photo of Zach's mother and Mr. Solomon talking on a bridge somewhere. I held it up for him to see, and he glanced over and nodded.
The second was just as unhelpful, an image of Mr. Solomon standing near some sort of computer consol. Again, I held it up for Zach to see and he glanced at me and nodded. The third photo was blurrier, as though it had been taken in a very dim light, and the only thing that popped out at me at first was the date printed in the corner: 6/23/2007. In fact the photo was so blurry that it took me a moment to even find the subject.
But when I looked closer I saw it. It was a man sitting cross-legged on a stone floor, his eyes closed, his head on his hands, and his spine curled almost as though he were trying to protect himself. And then I looked at the face and dropped the photo.
"Cam?" Zach asked, alarmed. "What's wrong? Who's in the third picture?"
I took a deep breath, attempting to make my head stop spinning. Then I picked up the photo, weighing it between my fingers, trying to absorb what I was seeing.
"Zach," I breathed, when I was finally able to find my voice. "It's my dad."