The man who was interrogating Cammie swiftly stood up from his chair to defend himself from Zach's attack, but he was too late. Zach had a small black pistol in his hand and shot a bullet clear into the man's chest. Zach looks out the door behind him, and seeing nobody was coming, he goes over to Cammie who was still duct taped to the chair.
"How much did he get out of you?" Zach asks, his tone all business. He kneels on the ground and gently picks the taped-on wires off her wrists.
"Not much. He only asked if I killed Mr. Hemlock, if I knew you, and if we were actually dating," Cammie informs him.
Zach had finished peeling the wires off her skin and was now looking for the end of the roll of duct tape wrapped around her. His fingers finally start picking at the duct tape behind her back. "And… what did you say?" Zach asks.
"Nothing! I swear. I either gave him wrong information or I totally lied," Cammie insists. Zach starts unwinding the duct tape around and around her chair. It made a disturbing slurp-slash-rip sound as it slowly came off. When she was finally free, Cammie stands up and checks to make sure her dress was unharmed. "Where are we?"
"We're a few miles away from Mr. and Mrs. Smith's mansion."
"How'd you find me?" she asks, genuinely curious.
"When I hugged you in the hotel room, I actually put a tracker on you," Zach answers awkwardly. "I had to, so I'd know where you were in case something… happened."
"Well, it's a good thing you did," Cammie says, taking his hand and pulling him towards the door out of the room, even though she had no idea where it led to. "We should get to the party. Bex and I still need to search the top floor of Mr. and Mrs. Smith's mansion and--"
"I don't think we should go to the mansion. It would be too dangerous. I could just call Bex and Grant and they could meet us back at the apartment," Zach suggests. He leads her up a chilly concrete staircase and down a long hallway.
"Zach, it doesn't matter about our safety," Cammie points out, "We have to see what Mr. and Mrs. Smith know, or else we could be endangering thousands of people."
She could tell Zach was holding his breath as he considered this. Down the hallway, dozens of unconscious bodies were scattered about with Napotene patches pasted somewhere on their skin.
"A man is not dead until he is forgotten."
- Everett Warren
They walk up another concrete staircase and exit a solid metal door into a dark alley. Right in front of the door was the parked Lamborghini. The driver's door was still open, like he had gotten out in a hurry. Cammie was amazed the car hadn't been stolen, especially since this was downtown Miami.
"Fine. But if anything happens to you…," Zach warns. He climbs into the driver's seat and Cammie climbs into the passenger seat.
"You mean if anything happens to either of us. We're both in danger, you know. Not just me. I'm not any less vulnerable than you are," she corrects. Zach starts the car but doesn't drive anywhere yet.
"I know, I know," he sighs. "What I meant was that we need to everything together so nothing happens to you. Or me, for that matter."
Cammie shifts uncomfortably in her seat. It was awkward where the subject of their conversation was going, and how the car wasn't going anywhere. They just sat in the alley in silence, except for the quiet rumble of the stalled engine. "What do you mean?" she asks.
"What I mean is that whatever we do, we have to do it together. We have to…"
"Zach, I'm grateful you rescued me just then, but… we? There is no we. The only thing we have in common is this mission! And--," Cammie tries to explain.
"Cammie! Listen to me!" Zach snaps. He takes a deep breath, looks out the window next to him, then lets it out in a big rush of air. He turns back to Cammie, his eyes pleading. "I… I…"
"You what?" she asks exasperatedly. His mood swings were becoming too overwhelming. First he was all heroic and serious, then he became reserved and uncomfortable, then he snapped at her, and now…
"Okay, this has nothing to do with my cover," Zach admits, "But… I love you."
Cammie's eyes widen so much she feels as if her eyeballs were about to pop out of her head. Then she regains her cover and tries to act normal again. She stares out the windshield, and when Zach sees that she isn't going to respond, he starts the car and starts driving.
Cammie sits in the silence, picking at her nails because of how awkward it was. Nobody was saying anything, but Zach kept pushing down the gas pedal until the concrete road below them just became a blur. "Zach, slow down!" Cammie exclaims, gripping the arm rests.
Zach shakes his head as if he'd just woken up from a daydream and he looks at the speedometer in surprise. He eased up on the gas pedal just as they turned into a long driveway that wound around a hill, up to a massive mansion on the hilltop.
Cars were parked in the fields all around, and the mansion's first-floor windows were glowing with light. A big white tent sat behind the mansion in the backyard, where check-in desk and valet parking tables were stationed. Zach pulls up next to the tent and stalls the car. They look at each other.
"So, are you going to say anything?" Zach finally asks after a few unbearable seconds of silence.
"I… I don't know what to say," she admits, hand on the door handle, ready to bail. Zach blinks at her, then turns and stares out the windshield. His hands grip the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white. "I mean, I need time to think--"
"Just get to the party," he interrupts, still not looking at her. "I'll be in soon. But I don't want to see you. Just get Bex and get it done fast. If anything, I'll see you tonight at Grant's apartment."
"Fine," Cammie replies coldly. She shoves the car door open, steps out, and slams it shut as hard as she could behind her. She knew when she obviously wasn't wanted anymore. She storms up to the check-in desk and says, "Cameron Goode," while looking behind her at Zach's retreating taillights towards the parking lot.
"Cameron Goode…," the attendant repeats while flipping through a pile of papers barely attached to a clipboard, "Alright, you're on the list. Have fun."
"Thanks," she mumbles, and exits the tent towards the front doors of the mansion. Almost immediately after she walks in, Bex grabs her wrist and forces a glass of champagne into her hand.
"Where the hell have you been?" Bex hisses with a smile that looks as if they were just having friendly conversation.
"I was kidnapped out of my hotel room, and some guy with a sidekick named Sam interrogated me. Zach came and rescued me, we argued, then he dropped me off here. He should be here soon, and I don't really want to see him…," Cammie explains in a rush, glancing anxiously at the front door where party guests were still streaming in.
"Okay, let's go to the bathroom," Bex says emphatically, meaning they weren't actually going to the bathroom. Bex leads the way through the red-and-gold decorated party room filled with lavishly dressed guests to the marble stairwell leading to the second floor. As they pass the propped-open bathroom door, Bex asks, "So… what was this 'fight' about?"
"It wasn't really a fight… we just argued a bit," Cammie stalls.
"Same thing."
Bex leads them to an office door down the hallway, up two more flights of stairs, and around the corner, way out of view from the other guests. Bex steals a bobby pin from Cammie's head to pick the lock, and she can't help but think of Zach. Bex hands the bobby pin back and they step into the pitch-black office. Cammie fixes her hair, turns on the light, and closes the door.
"How do you know we need to search here?" Cammie asks.
"Liz told me the directions to this room over comms while you and Zach were still MIA," Bex explains, pulling back her thick black hair and revealing a comms unit in her ear. "Since apparently she has the blueprints to this whole mansion. Speaking of which… here." Bex hands Cammie a comms unit, which she sticks in her ear.
"Liz says all the info we need is somewhere in this room," Bex continues, trying to pick the lock on a file cabinet with her French-tipped nails. "So… you still didn't answer my question about you and Zach."
Cammie starts rifling through the papers sitting on the big oak desk in the middle of the room, unsure of what they were even supposed to be looking for. "He told me he loved me, and I didn't say anything back since I don't really love him back. At least… I don't think I do. And he kinda just got all pissed at me," Cammie explains.
"Oh my god, Cam," Bex groans, flicking through the files through the files in the filing cabinet she just cracked open. "If Macey were here, she'd die from your obliviousness."
"Sure, Bex," Cammie replies sarcastically, "What are you, our new boy expert?" Even though they were already three years into their twenties, Macey was amazingly still their 'boy expert'… which was pretty pathetic, if you thought about it. But then again, Gallagher had barely had any contact with boys outside of missions.
"No, I just remember everything about what she says about boys. Seriously, Cammie, do you even want a boyfriend?" Bex scolds.
"Well, I guess… eventually."
"Then you should know that you shouldn't be completely silent when a boy says he loves you, even if you are a chameleon. He's basically ripping out his heart and handing it to you, that's how vulnerable his ego is at that moment, and it's up to you not to take his heart and smash it into billions of pieces," Bex explains.
Cammie starts searching through the drawers of the desk now. "Well, thanks for the guilt trip. But I don't even think I like him."
"Do you?"
"I don't know. I mean, he's nice, smart, funny, definitely cute…"
"Then what's the problem?" Bex chirps.
Suddenly, Cammie's fingers brush against a thick stack of papers with a rubber band wrapped around them. She pulls it out and notices a blue CD case hidden between the papers. Her fingers slip in and snatch it out. "Bex, look at this."
Bex abandons her post at the filing cabinet and comes over. The girls peer over the disk, which was labeled 235U2H. Bex points at the title and declares, "That's the staple chemical formula for all nuclear weapons."
"So this is it, then?" Cammie asks. Bex takes it and rotates it in her hands, looking at it from all angles.
All of a sudden, the office door bursts open and five men in suits file in. "You're in a restricted area," one of them announces. Bex and Cammie glance at each other, and sprint for the door.
With a few roundhouse kicks and uppercut punches aimed for the head, two of the men are knocked down, making way for them to run out the door. "This way!" Bex exclaims, leading Cammie down a hallway and down a flight of stairs so they were now on the third floor.
The distance between Cammie and Bex increases, since Bex clumsily running in a flowy ankle-length dress. "Shit!" Bex shouts as the heel on her high heel snaps off. The guys in tuxedos start closing in on Bex, so Cammie throws her hands in the air.
"Throw it!" Cammie screams. Bex flicks the CD case to her friend, who easily catches the disk.
"Keep running, Cam!" Bex calls after Cammie. Two guys take Bex down with several kicks and a few punches, then they overtake her and hold her down. Cammie turns the corner of the hallway and she can't see anymore.
She keeps running, not knowing where to turn, but all she knew was that the footsteps of the three men chasing after her were becoming farther and father away. Cammie turns a corner and ends up at a dead end, with one door on the right, and it was locked from the inside. There was only a massive window overlooking the white tent in the backyard… and that was three floors below.
"Liz? Liz?" Cammie hisses into her comms unit. But there was only static.
The lock on the door clicks, the door swings open, and Zach steps out. Cammie's eyes widen, but Zach just grabs her wrist. Footsteps were now heard just around the corner. "That's a dead end. Except for the way I came, but there are already guys coming that way too," he explains, nodding towards the room he came from.
Cammie hugs the disk to her pounding chest, and glances nervously down the hallway. "What're we going to do?" she whispers, trying not to be heard by the men coming after her. Plus, she was too winded from her long run to breathe that much.
"Do you trust me?" Zach asks out-of-the-blue. Cammie looks up at him. Despite the fact she was a mix of pissed and guilty about their fight, she nods.
Everything else happened in a blur. The men ran around the corner to start coming after them, a gun went off, Zach tackled her, glass shattered, somebody screamed, and most importantly… Cammie dropped the disk.
"In the same circumstances,
I know that I would do the same thing again."
- Melita Norwood