Short and no Zammie, but I think the amount of information makes up for that. If something doesn't fit with the books, please tell. Sadly I am writing this without the benefit of having them in front of me for reference. Hope you like this one as much as I do. Enjoy!

Zach jumped at our word, his eyes moving frantically between our faces, searching for an explanation.

"Bad reaction," Mr. Solomon whispered. "You could blow a cover like that, Goode."

If I hadn't been so relieved to see him alive and conscious, I would have laughed.

"Joe." His voice was almost as soft, as though he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing, as though he was talking to a ghost. Which I guess, in a way, he was.

"I suppose I owe you a thank you for saving my life," Mr. Solomon whispered, as Zach crouched down closer to the cot.

"How much do you remember?"

"Enough," he answered, forcing back what appeared to be a grimace. I got the impression he was still in a lot of pain. "Is she here?"

"Yes," I muttered, coming to kneel on his other side. "I'm here, Mr. Solomon."

He attempted what was supposed to be a curt shake of his head, but didn't actually look like one. "Joe Solomon is dead," he reminded. "Live the cover at all times."

Only my former coveops teacher would attempt to give me instructions when he'd just begun to recover from a near-death experience.

"We need answers," Zach said softly, calling Mr. Solomon's attention back to our purpose.

"Ask. I'll try."

"Is Matthew Morgan dead?"

"I don't know."

"When was the last time you saw him?"

"June 23rd, 2007." The date on the photos.

"More than a year after he disappeared."

"Yes." His voice was sad, as though he knew exactly what this meant to us, as if he could see the conclusions we were drawing from this tiny piece of information.

"Did you tell anyone what you knew?"

"No. I didn't know anything for the first year. But the last thing he told me was to keep my cover no matter what. So when they called on me to scrub some files from the database, I played along. They had him in a holding cell right next to where they took me. It was a test, he knew that too, even with whatever they'd done to him. A year is a long time to hold someone for interrogation. But they'd have killed him before he'd have told them anything. Nothing could make Matt talk if he didn't want to."

Except maybe me.

"He begged me to protect him, but I could tell from his eyes that he was really asking me to protect you, you and Rachel. He knew that if I told her, she'd come after him, that would only get everyone involved killed. And I don't think he wanted her to know what he'd been through. So I turned away from him. I kept my cover and scrubbed the files, and then I went back to the agency and kept my mouth shut. It was the only way."

"The summer he disappeared, I heard my mother tell someone that she'd killed him. Why would she have said that if she was actually holding him for information?"

"Did you hear a name?"

"No. But the timeframe is exact. And I couldn't find any other operatives who disappeared that week."

"Your mother killed a lot of people."

"I know," he answered quietly. "Was my father one of them?"

Mr. Solomon attempted a nod. "I didn't want you to know that. Alex was with us at the very beginning. He was the first one she caught."

Zach nodded silently, his face stoic, and I hurt for him. If didn't learn anything else that day, I learned that your body shifts into spy mode when it senses danger. Or pain.

"He started everything. He was a few years older than us, but he picked out Matt's talent and built him into an ally. Convinced him to join the Circle as a double agent. I joined too, blindly following the crowd. I had no idea that he wasn't really one of us. It wasn't until later, right before he started seeing your mom, that he turned me. I was assigned a target I couldn't take out, so I botched the mission. But they were going to send me after her again, and I was having nightmares about it. He was getting suspicious, poking around everywhere, and eventually I went to him for help."

"Who?"

"Abigail Cameron," he answered, and something clenched inside me as the image of my aunt bleeding in the road flashed before my eyes. "Matt told me his secret, and told me that if I really wanted out of the circle, he'd help me. Alex was killed a few years later. He'd gone to Greece to pursue an asset, and he didn't come back. They found the body a few weeks later. I guess before that we'd never really thought about failure, we were young and naïve and we must have thought we were invincible. So we started keeping the journal, just in case."

He was starting to fade, I could see it clearly, and one look at Zach told me that he saw it as well. We knew we didn't have much time. But Mr. Solomon must have known that too, because he didn't let Zach ask another question.

"There's a third journal. One where we wrote everything we knew."

"Where is it?"

He tried to shake his head again, and this attempt was even weaker than the previous one. "I don't know. Matt had it. He must have hidden it somewhere, or they would have gotten it when they captured him. But that's what they want, the third journal. All the secrets that could bring them down."

His eyes slipped closed, but he whispered one last instruction as they did so. "Be careful. Be very careful. I promised."

Just a comment: In the back of my head, I have this conspiracy theory that Zach is really Solomon's son. No, I'm not going to throw that in here, and I don't think Ally Carter would either, but I'd love to see someone do something with it. I hereby yield my rights to the idea, just please message me if you use it, because I definitely want to read!