BANG. BANG. BANG. The noise continues as we run down the hallway, making a beeline for the elevator that will take us to the main floor of the school. My skin is suddenly bathed in red as the lights lining the hallway adopt the sharp color. Never in all my time at Gallagher did this alarm sound. It is reserved for the worst possible case scenario. There is no noise echoing throughout the school but the bang of metal bars slamming down over windows and doors. In the next two minutes, every exit and entrance in our school will be made impassable. Every exit and entrance they know about, anyways.

The red lights are pulsing now, herding every person in the school towards the dining hall. Joe and I run without speaking. We keep pace with each other, slowing as we reach the elevator.

"Crap," Joe murmurs when we see it.

"Yeah, crap," I echo. We stand together for a moment, halted, staring at the metal bars that cover the entrance to the elevator. I take a deep breath, resolving myself to the fact that this is no longer a feasible exit strategy. "Come on," I tell Joe.

I take off in the other direction, no longer bothering to make sure he is beside me. As I run I slide my hand across my hip, making sure that the gun I stuck under the waist band of my pants is still there. I slip it out from under my jeans as I arrive at a seemingly unimportant section of the wall, taking comfort in the cool metal.

"How the hell are you faster than me?" Joe asks as he comes up behind me. "You just had a baby less than a month ago."

"I'm younger than you, Joe," I tell him, borrowing Zach's trademark smirk. I slide my hand over the bottom of the wall. "I also spent the last five months of my pregnancy training, and the past few weeks being chased across Europe," I add with a shrug. I grin when I hear the quiet snick of gears turning in the wall.

"Secret passage?" Joe asks me, his eyebrows raised. "I thought they closed them all u—." He doesn't get the chance to finish because the floor falls out from beneath us.

We land hard, and I get up with a groan. "I forgot how much that passageway hurts," I mutter.

Joe glares at me from the ground and I offer him my hand. "I don't know whether to thank you, or tell you to screw off," Joe tells me, taking my hand. "Didn't we want to go up? Not down?"

I grin and turn around. "Yup," I tell him, "we did."

Joe stares. "Are you serious?"

"Very," I answer.

"And just how exactly do you expect us to get over there?" Joe asks me, staring at what I just showed him.

We are standing on a small circular piece of wood with railings lining the edge. Beyond the circle is a deep chasm that I have never felt a need to explore, and beyond that is a large platform with a ladder. Unfortunately, there is no present way to get to that ladder. Joe and I stare at the ladder together.

I sigh. "Come on, Joe. Where is your sense of adventure? Your spy instincts?"

"With my stomach, up in sublevel one."

I glare at him and move towards the opposite side of the circle we are on. "Senior year, Liz put a bag down here. It was part of one of our only-to-be-used-in-a-life-or-death-situation plans." I ignore the sadness that strikes through me at the thought of Liz. "Anyways," I say, swallowing hard to dislodge the ball of grief caught in my throat, "it should be around here somewhere."

"I thought they closed all the passageways," Joe says.

"They only closed the ones they knew about," I tell him, still trying to find the bag in the dark. "They didn't know about a lot of them. This isn't a very big security threat though. It doesn't leave the school. Well, at least not if you don't want to die. There is a section of it that is rigged with explosives. It's one giant booby trap, unpassable to anyone. That branch goes outside," I shrug. "Ha!" I exclaim. "Found it!" I pry a piece of loose wood up from the floor and reach into the crevice beneath it.

"Found what?" Joe asks me.

"The bag," I tell him, pulling it out.

"And what's in the bag?"

"Rope, water, a stun gun, five MRE's, Advil, duct tape, a walkie talkie, $5000 in cash, and a microphone that would have broadcasted anything said into it across the school. I don't know if it will still work." I pull out one more item from the bag and have to grin. "There is also a Gallagher hand book," I tell Joe.

"Who has the other walkie talkie?" Joe asks me.

My grin falls from my face. "Liz did," I say. "In every plan we made, she was to stay at the school and help us from the ground."

Joe nods, and doesn't push the subject. "Do you think the microphone will still work?" he asks me. "We should probably let your mom know that we're okay."

"No, we shouldn't," I say. "Joe, why do you think that the OC alarm was pulled?"

Joe says nothing in response, just stares at me.

"Zach and I have been here for seven hours. We were at home for less than one. That's eight hours, Joe."

"And?"

"And in those eight hours, whoever it is that has been chasing us—that took Jason—found us. They found us here, Joe. Here, where we shouldn't have come. Here, where there is an entire school full of innocent people." I pause, taking a deep breath. "And we brought our trouble to their door step," I finish heatedly.

"Cammie, none of this is your fault."

"That's debatable," I mutter under my breath. Louder, I say, "We can't announce our presence. If somebody hears what we have to say that shouldn't hear it, it will be bad for everyone."

"Cam, whoever it is that has been chasing you and Zach and Jason, we can take them. This is the most secure building in all of Virginia, and it houses the best trained spies the USA has to offer."

"Maybe," I allow, "but the people who are after us don't care who gets hurt. They won't stop until they have Zach and me, but they will also kill whoever gets in their way before they are able to take us."

"Yeah, well, we aren't going to let them take you two, so that point is kind of moot."

"I know. However, I am not just going to stay down here and hide," I tell Joe.

"So then how are we going to get to that ladder?" he asks me once again.

I toss him the length of rope. "How good are your lassoing skills?" I ask him.

"I spent 18 months undercover at a cattle ranch in Istanbul, so pretty good. Why?"

I point to a metal stake in the ground by the base of the ladder. "Because mine suck, and the rope needs to be attached to something if we're going to walk across it without falling."

Joe stares at me, and his mouth falls open. "You want us to walk across the rope like we're preforming in a circus?"

I remember a passage from a mission report I wrote once. It was about a circus my dad took me to and how when he looked at the high wire performers, he looked at them like he knew what it felt like being that high up in the air without a net to catch you fell. I smile sadly at Joe. "All the best spies do it at some point," I tell him.

After successfully not falling to our deaths, we climb the ladder into one of the empty faculty offices. Joe climbs up first, then helps me up after him. At this point, I just expect his hand and say thank-you. Even though I joked about being in better shape than him before, the amount of physical work I have done today is exhausting me. Add that on top of the whole recently-had-a-baby thing, and the I-just-spent-the-last-few-weeks-running-from-men-with-guns-who-want-to-kill/capture-myself-and-my-husband thing, and the my-best-friend-was-compromised-on-a-mission-in-France-and-is-now-MIA thing, and the my-infant-son-has-been-taken-by-the-aforementioned-men-who-want-to-kill/capture-myself-and-my-husband thing, it is understandable that I am somewhat out of energy. It makes me feel weak though, and I hate feeling weak.

In the hopes of dissipating the feeling, I swing the backpack off my shoulders and hand the stun gun that was inside of it to Joe. Then I take my gun out from underneath the waist band of my pants, where I stowed it once again before we made the walk to the ladder. Joe raises an eyebrow at me, but he takes the stun gun.

"Why do we need these?" he asks. His gaze is on my gun though, which is not a stun gun, but a weapon that will kill—a weapon that is probably only needed if it's too late for you to be safe. I've been carrying a gun since senior year. I guess that says a lot about my state of mind since then.

I shrug. "Just in case," I tell him.

Together, we make our way towards the dining hall. The doors there are also barred, but I just cross to a passageway that I know leads into the dining hall. It also goes to the kitchens, but I don't want waffles right now—I'm honestly not sure if I'm ever going to want waffles again. Or have time to want them.

"Come on," I tell Joe, spinning a book case out of my way.

Joe follows without question, and we move quickly through the passage way. I push into the dining hall, Joe behind me, and stop dead in my tracks. Joe actually bumps into me, but then he stills just as I have.

"I have already lost my son this weeks, I am not going to lose my wife to!" Zach shouts at my mother. Both Bex and Grant are holding him back, but I can see that they are struggling.

"Zach," Mom says in a surprisingly reasonable tone, "Cammie knows this school inside and out. If anyone can find a way here without getting captured, it's her."

"I don't care. I'm not just going to wait here for her to show up—or for her not to. I want to be looking for her!" I glance around the room. Every person in it looks distinctly uncomfortable. The seventh graders look like they might cry.

"There are already people looking for her, Zach," Mom reminds him. "Those people? They will get into the school. And they will look for you too. If you're not in here, then we have two people to worry about."

"Three," Zach growls at her, "or have you forgotten that Joe is still out there too?"

Mom winces, and I swear a tear falls down her cheek. "I haven't forgotten, Zach. But you and Cam are our biggest concern right now. You are what they are after, so we can't let them have you. Joe can take care of himself, just like Cammie can, Zach."

"It's been an hour!" Zach shouts at her, pulling against Grant and Bex. "I can't lose her again!" he yells. "I can't lose her again." This time he sounds broken, and the pain in his voice stirs me.

I unfreeze just as quickly as I had frozen when I first entered the room and move forward, ignoring every person except for Zach as I move towards him. "You didn't lose me then," my voice rings out through the room and he stares at me, shock written over his face. "You didn't lose me, Zach," I tell him again. "You didn't lose me then, and you won't lose me now."

Bex and Grant let Zach go, and his arms are around me within seconds. "Where were you?" he asks me.

"Walking a tightrope," I tell him with a small smile. I accept his kiss, but then flip him over my head and plant my knee on his chest. I hear Bex laugh from behind me, but I'm not smiling right now. "Mom's right," I tell him. "I can take care of myself."

"I know that, Gallagher Girl," he tells me, "but you don't have to."

I stare at him for a moment, letting the weight of his words wash over me. "I love you," I finally tell him.

"I love you too," he answers. "Could you let me up though?"

I grin at him and remove my knee from his chest. Bex is still laughing from behind us, but the rest of the room looks a little bit shocked. While the students in the room anyways. Grant and the faculty just shake their heads and try to hide the smiles forming on their lips.

Zach stands with a groan. "I think we should see a marriage counsel. This is a pretty abusive relationship we're in."

I smirk at him. "Remember that mission in Bangladesh?" I ask him. "The one where you were that guys cook and I was his mistress?"

"No, Cam, I'd forgotten the most recent loser to have his hands on my wife," Zach answers me sarcastically.

"Yeah, well, that was an abusive relationship. This is just you under estimating my ability."

"I didn't under estimate you, Cam. I just hate being useless."

"Join the club," I tell him. I turn to my mom. "So," I ask her, strength radiating from my every pore as I stand at the front of the dining hall, Zach's arm around my waist, "what's the game plan?"

A/N: Thank-you to my faithful readers and reviewers who still bothered to read this story after an abnormally long time lapse between updates. You guys rock! So, what did you think of this chapter? Review or PM me with suggestions, opinions, thoughts, or criticism (hopefully constructive).

P.S.- This will be my last update for about a month I leave for Kenya in two days. I promise I'll update as soon as I can after I get home.

Shout outs

FluffyUnicorn507 - Thank-you for the review! Glad to know you like it.

Lanoon - Thanks for the review. I hoped you liked the chapter :)