(A/N: Let's not talk about how long I've been gone; I've written a longer chapter to make up for that. We're going to pretend that this is what Cam did on her mystery summer. Also note that I'm going to keep it as close to the books as possible. SO… this is between book 4 and 5. Enjoy!)

We went to Paris (on fake passports). I hadn't been there in a while and Cammie was being very mysterious about whether she had been there at all (I figured she probably had, but didn't want to get into the details. Our lives, I was learning, had some very strange details), so we toured for a little while and then popped into a cute little grocery store before locating the safe house we knew to be just a short distance from the Eiffel Tower. We didn't have any tails when we got there. That we knew for sure. I made spaghetti. Cam used my laptop to access the Gallagher system (after, I'm sure, adding several just-for-the-occasion features). Fifteen minutes later, I heard her sigh. I glanced over, not really in a position to go look for myself, and she took the cue.

"I shut my phone off so they couldn't GPS trace us. It also gave us an answer. While we were dealing with our… extracurricular… activities, Gallagher switched between the codes several times, all faster than their default times, which means that my phone was doing its job and not giving me false information. That means that Gallagher really is switching codes. Students aren't there, so it really shouldn't be as huge of a problem. The faculty can take care most things, and the school does half of the protecting by itself, but…" She trailed off.

"Cam? What?"

"What if Zach's there? What if the Circle is trying to get to him?" Cammie said, clearly assembling her own thoughts as she was telling me this. "When I… left… he was there. My mom said that he really didn't have anywhere else safe to go… That was a couple weeks ago."

"So he stayed there over break, they found out, and are now trying to get in." I took a breath. "To get him."

Then something clicked.

"Cammie, he couldn't have stayed there all alone. He has to eat. Unless they gave him full access to the kitchen and a summer's worth of food, someone else has to be there."

Cam nodded her head at this. "Okay, so he's not there alone. But chances are pretty good that he's there."

It was at least worth considering. I knew my brother pretty well – or I thought I did, which was just going to have to work for now. Zach could hack with the best of them (actually, he could probably hack the best of them). I suggested the idea that maybe Zach wasn't actually at Gallagher, but nearby, and was the one behind the code changes that Cammie's cell phone was reporting. We went with that for a while, trying to trace the origin of the changes, but it was difficult given the fact that we were pretty far away and had no real way of knowing if we were right.

"Hey Cam?" I said, just as the spaghetti was about done. "When you said you left… what exactly did you mean?"

She sighed and then looked up at me from the table. "I guess I owe you a few answers. It's kind of complicated, Val, but I ran away."

I blinked. I had expected a lot of things, but this wasn't one.

"So… when you said you were here alone, you really meant it. The girls aren't out there on comms or running a side mission or anything. They…" I cut myself off as realization dawned on me. "They have no idea where you are, do they?"

She shook her head. "Not a clue." She paused, reconsidered, and then amended her words slightly. "They might have a clue, but I'm positive that they haven't found me yet. Otherwise, they'd be here."

"Why, Cammie?" It could have been about anything, and even I wasn't too sure what exactly I was asking.

She shook her head. "I'm dangerous. People around me are getting hurt. Mr. Solomon hasn't woken up. Abby got shot. Who knows what they would have done with Macey if we hadn't gotten away in Boston. But the thing is – they don't want to kill me. They don't want to kill Zach, either, and I'm going to guess that if they found out who you are, they wouldn't kill you either.

"The people with us, however… those people, they'll have no problem killing." She shrugged. I left Zach behind, but I needed help. I needed backup. But Val," Cammie's face changed slightly. "If you call anyone to tell them where I am, I won't be here by the time they get here."

I studied Cammie. I had a couple options. I could disregard what Cam just said and call her mom – or Bex, Liz, or Macey, and give them a heads up that she was in Paris but wouldn't be here by morning.

Or I could stay with her and stay quiet. We'd both get answers and have a better chance of staying safe.

In the end, I did that. I'm guessing you already guessed that – what kind of friend would I be if I just let her go off alone again? I'm sure a lot of people will have questions for me when they find out I blatantly didn't tell anyone where we were, but at the time, it seemed like the best choice. I wasn't quite as good as Liz at statistics, but I knew that the odds of her staying alive through the summer were at least thirty percent higher if she was with someone else.

And currently, I was the only choice.

I ate my spaghetti in silence, processing what I'd just learned while Cammie did things on my laptop. Suddenly, a light bulb came one.

"Give me that laptop, please."

Cammie slid it over to me without a word, either knowing that I wouldn't have asked if it wasn't important, or jumping at the chance to have an excuse to stop searching for a minute. I brought up the programs that would allow me to run a type of reverse facial recognition – I'd give the program a picture, and it would scan video feeds for the face. It didn't try to find out who the person was. It was just trying to find the facial match. I linked it to every security camera in Roseville just to get my bases covered, and then went to work hacking into the school's surveillance. It was surprisingly less difficult than I remembered it being, so I took the time to route my signal through as many countries as possible AND set up a program that would tell me if anyone was trying to track it. By this point, Cammie had come around the table to see what I was doing. As if on cue, she grabbed a sticky note out of her backpack and put it over the lens of the webcam – just in case they found me before I had time to get out of the system.

Once I had safely accessed the live security feeds, I linked them into the facial recognition program, which was currently searching for not only my brother, but Cam's mom, Mr. Solomon, Cam's roommates, and per Cammie's request, her aunt Abby and Agent Townsend.

At this point, she also reminded me that Solomon was in the school, sleeping, which meant that our panic earlier about Zach being alone was a complete waste of time – there were definitely other people there. However, it just made it seem more likely that Zach would be there.

It also increased the severity of someone trying to break into the school. There were a lot more people at risk than we thought.

"Where did you go when you left the school?" I asked.

"Mr. Solomon's cabin. I… I needed to think. Plan." She looked at me. "And decide if I was going to come to you."

"Which you did."

She nodded. "Now I know I should have dyed my hair before I left, but I guess I'll just have to do that before we leave here. You probably will, too," she added, almost as an afterthought.

I nodded, and then changed the subject. "Cam, I don't think Zach is in danger. I mean," I said, thinking about it. "I don't think he's in specific danger."

"You don't think he's the reason for the code changes?" she asked, a mixture of surprise and confusion (and a bit of relief) crossing over her face.

I shook my head. "Oh, I'm pretty sure he's the reason for it. But I don't think he's in danger." I let Cammie realize what I meant.

"He's the one causing it," she slapped a hand to her forehead. "Of course he is. He can hack." Cammie handed me the cell phone-like device she'd been carrying with her, and I plugged it into my laptop. Sure enough, a few keystrokes later, we determined that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her phone, which meant that the system that sent out alerts on the Academy's status was probably being tampered. This was pretty much confirmed by the fact that our eyes inside the mansion indicated absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.

"I think…" I took a deep breath and sighed. "I think Zach is trying to scare you into coming back." I paused as a much scarier thought crossed my mind. "I really hope it's Zach, Cam. Because anyone else doing this knows two things." Cammie looked at me, but was silent. I'd gotten better at reading people, but in that moment, I couldn't tell if my friend actually didn't know what I was about to say, or didn't want to be the one to say it. "One, that you have that thing, and two, that you're getting updates from the school." I paused for a couple minutes, and I knew Cammie was running through the possible options – people that fit both categories.

I knew that, because I was doing the same thing.

"Cam?" she looked back at me. "They'd also have to know that you'd care enough about the school during the summer to think about going back."

(A/N: So I hope you enjoyed it. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to fit my original plan for this story into what we know happened but stick with me. Also: in case anyone is keeping track, I'm about to start the second semester of my second year in college… but I'm classified as a junior. :D x)