Finally a chapter with some Zammie, okay only a tiny bit but still!
I hope you all like this chapter because I spent forever researching jets, and where each fuel tank was located so that I could make this believable!
Disclaimer: Ally Carter owns Gallagher Girls and the characters/world that comes with it. Once again, thanks to Elementary for the murder/plane sabotage idea.
"Washington National Airport, eight o'clock on Monday." Liz swung her chair around from the laptop screen and looked at us all. Her blonde hair was in an out-of-character messy bun and she had bags under her eyes.
She'd been up all night trying to find the location of our next target, and I honestly didn't want to ask how she found out. Some hacking secrets were better left unsaid.
"Who's going to be there?" Zach asked, looking down at the list he was holding as he leant in his regular position against the wall. I swear it's like he migrates to a wall every time we enter a room.
Liz smiled grimly, looking even wearier as she pulled down the sleeves of her grey sweater and replied, "Thomas McKnight… and William Smith." She stifled a yawn as we all looked at each other in surprise at our fortunate luck.
"Liz, why don't you sleep while we plan? We'll fill you in later." I suggested gently, looking pointedly at the door leading to the bedroom.
Liz looked like she wanted to protest and stay for the planning, but she knew that we were going to need her later and she had to be ready and not exhausted.
She nodded, and with a promise that she would help fill in the technical plan details later, she headed for the double bed.
"How are we going to get them while on a plane?" Zach asked, we all looked at him, wondering if he truly did know the nature of our school or if he simply didn't realize what 'Terrorist' applied to.
"Hey, I'm just putting the objective out there, I'm not a civilian; I have a few ideas of my own." He raised his hands in the universal sign for 'don't shoot me'. Which, in most cases would have been considered metaphoric, but seeing as we were all carrying handguns it took a more literal approach.
Bex and I shared a glance, both thinking the same the thing. "You two already have a plan don't you?" Macey asked, noting the glance. She was probably now accustomed to Bex and I thinking along the same lines.
"Sunniva," We both replied.
"I'm sorry, what?" Zach asked, as though he had missed some sort of inside joke. More like, an inside legend.
"Sunniva Steiner, senior at Gallagher, code name 'Jet'." I told him with all the emotional capacity of Joe Solomon.
Bex on the other hand, was a bit more dramatic… as usual. "In eighth grade she blew up a cargo plane holding a CIA fugitive and perfectly made it look like some sort of accident."
"Sunniva specializes in planes and how to get them out of the sky." I continued, ignoring Bex's dark grin as she thought about every one of Sunniva's missions.
Zach looked like he was about to make a suicide bomber comment, so I stopped him with a deadpan glare. "We're not like the terrorists you hear about on the news, Zach. We don't hurt innocent people or make big spectacles; we protect the country as much as you do."
Zach frowned, his eyebrows turning down, but he didn't say anything else, just nodded at me to continue. "Sunniva is sort of a Gallagher legend even though she's still a student. We're going to have to employ her help for this mission."
"Looks like we're going home then." Macey, stood and stretched, pretending not to notice the look I sent her way. I had never heard her call any of her mansions 'home' yet she had said it about Gallagher.
After a few more hours of planning and eventually rousing Liz (which involved Bex yelling in her ear, we stopped her from jumping on Liz's twig like body), we all piled back into Liz's experimental van and headed back to Gallagher Academy; aka Home.
Number of hours spent in the van: 4
Number of times of times Bex started singing: 15
Number of times Macey yelled at her to stop: 15
Number of times Zach's leg pressed against mine: 37
Number of minutes I felt uncomfortable: 240
We finally reached Roseville after a rather annoying road trip, which involved Zach leaning across me to have a thumb war with Liz. I spent those three minutes trying not to focus on how Zach's body was pressed rather intimately over mine in a way that could only have been done on purpose, his smirk only proved my theory.
We parked the van in Josh's old street (to my disapproval), my roommates setting up an observation post while Zach and I climbed out of the van and stretched. Liz's blonde head stuck out of the window as she handed us our coms and equipment belts, before she went back to work.
It didn't take us long to walk down the street and towards the high walls of Gallagher Academy.
Soon, we were inside one of the more secretive tunnels. Five metres in and we came to a gap that required a small zip line to get across.
We crossed safely, no alarms set off, no broken bones. It was as we were walking single file down the long and rather dusty stone corridor that something happened.
Zach's hand slipped into mine and I stiffened. What was he doing? We were walking through a secret passageway that led into one of the most secure buildings in the country. Now wasn't the time for hand holding; it was entirely impractical!
I tried to tug my hand away but he only tightened his grip, not painful in any way, just enough force to stop me from pulling away without making a scene. I stopped trying to free my hand and let out a huff. Zach chuckled behind me.
After another four minutes and 17 seconds of hand holding, I finally found the door leading into Sunniva's cupboard. Hers was one of the only rooms with a passageway; it was how she snuck out to go on dates with Roseville's resident 'bad boys'.
I pulled my hand out of Zach's and used it to knock 'Holly-Headed Grindylows' in Morse code. It was an ingenious password that couldn't be guessed unless Sunniva or her roommates had told you.
"What's the sitch?" Sunniva pulled open the door; sounding so much like Kim Possible that I wished Bex was here to fan girl with. Zach on the other hand, wasn't looking too at the sight of Sunniva... although he usually didn't look too pleased to meet anyone, so I didn't take much notice of his whole raised-eyebrow-glare-and-clench-jaw routine.
I stepped out of the shadows of the passageway and into her wardrobe, Zach trailing along behind me in his usual arrogant manner. Sunniva grinned when she saw me, her eyebrows arching upwards as she spoke, "So the Chameleon returns… and you brought the Mute as well." Her eyes ran over Zach as though she was checking to see whether he was real or not, and not in the he's-so-hot-is-he-a-dream way but more of a can't-believe-this-guy-is-still-alive sort of way.
"I'm not mute," Zach growled, "I just don't break easily under interrogation."
"Yet I hear you talked straight away for Morgan here… so actually I think Lover Boy suits you better." Sunniva sauntered back into her room, her long golden hair swinging behind her. "So Morgan, what can I do for you?" she asked over her shoulder.
I walked into the room and made sure that none of her roommates were around before turning to her. "We need your help taking down a plane." I got straight to the point, knowing that Sunniva didn't like to dance around subjects.
Sunniva leant against the wall and crossed her arms, two seconds before Zach took up the position on the opposite wall. "So what's Lover Boy doing here?" Sunniva looked pointedly at Zach, matching his glare. I had finally met a person who could match Zach in both arrogance and personality. Well wouldn't this be fun?
"You two could be siblings," I sighed, exasperated; I already had enough ego in the team, I didn't need a whole Alpha Wolf fight to happen while on the mission. God, even her eyes are green, though not an intense Zach green, I thought as I stared between the two of them. More like green with a ring of rust.
Sunniva sent a malicious smile Zach's way, before turning to face me. "Okay Morgan, what is it you need me to do?"
"Come with us," I replied as Zach groaned in response.
"Awe, does the Mute Prisoner feel threatened about his position in the team?" Sunniva smiled wickedly as she packed her bag, "They did kidnap you after all Goode, I wouldn't feel too comfortable if I was you either." I couldn't help but grin in response to Sunniva's smirk; it was nice to know that Zach was getting a taste of his own arrogance.
We headed back down the passageway after Sunniva left a note for her roommates to find and take to my mother. Soon we were out of school and back at the van.
After quite a lot of planning we were heading to Washington DC airport, where the two Circle members would be the next day.
"I still don't understand why I have to wait in the van." Zach drawled, looking at me in his usual arrogant/angry way.
"Because you got to go on the first mission and I haven't had a turn yet." Bex turned around from where she was sitting shotgun and gave Zach her most innocent looking smile.
"Liz hasn't had a turneither, Rebecca." Zach quipped back at her. He was being at least six different types of A's today, arrogant; angry; annoying; agnostic; argumentative; and an ass. It was grating on my nerves and it took every ounce of willpower not to pummel him unconscious. I played with one of the springs poking out of the seat stuffing in order to calm my irritation.
"I don't, uh, I don't want to hurt anyone; I'm only helping because it's to save Cammie." Liz muttered as she looked back down at her computer screen.
Zach looked like he wanted to say something about how being a terrorist means hurting people, but he was stopped by a rather hard, but subtle punch on the arm from Bex. "Stay here and keep Liz and the information safe." I told him as the van pulled to a stop and all of us bar him and Liz piled out.
Sunniva had stopped mocking Zach about ten minutes before we pulled up at the airport; she was now in full mission mode. "Put these on" she tossed Macey a red top that was revealing but not in a try-hard way, and pair of black high-waist skinny jeans. Macey got changed in the back of the van while Zach kept his eyes pointedly fixed out the front window, even when Mace bumped into him accidently-on-purpose.
Macey stepped out through the back door and flicked her short blunt hair over her shoulder with a grin that oozed confidence. She came up and threw an arm over my shoulder, "You've got a keeper there Cam; he didn't even peek at me while I was changing." She winked at me and then we were all creeping towards the hanger.
Once there, we hid amongst the shadows so that the security guard on night shift wouldn't see us. "You ready Macey?" Sunniva asked as the guard came into view.
"Honey, I might not have been born a Gallagher Girl, but I was raised a socialite. Watch and see what a true honey-pot scheme looks like, girls." She blew us a kiss and then sauntered up to the guard who couldn't have been more twenty years old.
The guard raised his gun but lowered it when Macey got close enough for him to distinguish her features in the darkness. She gave her excuse about her daddy promising her a private jet. She asked him to show her which ones she could choose from, brushed her hand down his arm, and then used the ticket that always got her whatever she wanted. "I'm Macey McHenry, Senator McHenry's daughter." She laughed at something the guard had said and he grinned down at her, before the two of them walked off into show room of the hanger.
"She used her real name?" Sunniva asked, shocked at the fact that Macey had given away personal information while on a mission.
"That name is her alias, no one would ever suspect the Senator's daughter of being a Gallagher Girl." I grinned and thought about how Macey McHenry was really just a cover story, a fake identity, and a selfish brat. The real Macey was Macey Gallagher, the descendent of Gillian, the girl who would do anything for her friends and studied extra hard to prove she could get straight A's.
She may have been raised a socialite, but she was a Gallagher Girl at heart, more so than most.
Not wasting anymore time, we snuck into the now warmly lit hanger and made our way to McKnight's private jet. "Okay Chameleon, you're all clear." Liz's voice came clearly through coms and Sunniva motioned us to the engine of the plane.
Once we got to the fuel tank, she produced a sack of sand from her bag and opened up the tank. She poured the sand into the fuel tank and then sealed the tank back up. "The sand will fall to the bottom of the tank and the plane will take off fine. Halfway through the flight -while above the ocean- the sand will start to get sucked through the filter, clogging it and starving the engine of fuel, causing the plane to crash." Sunniva told us as she started to close up the.
"Yes, sorry Thomas but I won't be able to make the flight, I have some unfinished business to attend to before I can join you in Rome."
We all froze as the unmistakable deep voice of William Smith sounded from our right. We stared at each other as his words sunk in… he wouldn't be making the flight. I ducked behind the wheel of the jet, knowing that if he walked around the side of the jet he would see me.
"No, everyone thinks I'm taking the flight tomorrow, no one knows I'm staying and I'd like to keep it that way. No… Two days…. Tell him I got caught up…. Goodbye Thomas." William Smith finished his call and his footsteps echoed as he advanced towards us.
"Time for a little improv girls." Sunniva smiled grimly and pulled out a wicked looking dagger.
Bex slid towards me from where she was hiding behind an empty crate. "If he isn't going to hop on this plane we need to kill him now." She whispered, nodding at Sunniva as she did so.
Sunniva held a finger to her lips and then crept to the hold of the plane. Bex, was already by her side, opening up the cargo hold just as Smith walked into view.
"What the F**ck?" William Smith exclaimed as he noticed the open plane. He drew out his gun when he saw Sunniva but before he had time to pull the trigger she had darted towards him. She moved like asp, and was behind him before he had time to contemplate how she had moved so fast. A quick strike to his side and he had fallen, dagger in his side.
Sunniva had been trained as an assassin for years before Gallagher found her and took her in. I guess those sort of skills never leave you. She was quick, graceful, and deadly like the snake she used to train with.
"Help me get him into the hold," she told us as she slid her hands under his arms. Bex took his feet while I opened up an empty crate that was in the back corner of the small hold.
We placed his body inside and then proceeded to close up the plane. "His weight will unbalance the plane, meaning it will go down sooner than expected. By my calculations that will place the crash scene to be ten miles over the Atlantic Ocean."
We made our way back out of the hanger and told Macey over coms that she could stop flirting with the guard now. "Oh, but we were just starting to have fun." Came Macey's reply as she rounded the corner and approached us.
It was exactly eight o'clock on Monday morning when Thomas McKnight turned up and informed the pilot – a lower ranking Circle member- that William Smith wouldn't be flying with them.
The two members then boarded the plane and Sunniva, Bex and I watched it take off from our hiding spot twenty metres away. Macey was back in the van with Zach and Liz, they were monitoring the surveillance cameras from around the airport to make sure we hadn't been spotted.
I'm still not exactly sure how it happened, one minute everything was clear, and then, a white van was speeding towards us. Men clad in black leant out the sides of the van, holding knives as a woman with long auburn hair stepped out the airport's fire exit.
"Cameron darling, I was wondering when we would finally meet," she flashed me a chilling smile as my eyes met her green ones. I gasped as I finally stared into the face of Zach's notorious mother.
"Gallagher Girl, run now!" Zach's voice echoed through the coms, he had no doubt noticed his mother's presence.
As though she could hear her son's voice coming from my ear piece, she cocked her head to the side and called to me, "Won't you be a dear and tell Zachary that it's rude not to greet one's mother."
"It's also rather rude not to recognize one's daughter." Sunniva's voice was one of ice as she stood and glared at Ms. Goode.
"Did she just say daughter?" Bex mouthed to me, as shock and then realization flitting across her face. It hit me then too, and things started to click into place; Sunniva's mysterious assassin background, her fierce competiveness with Zach, the arrogance and personality that they both shared.
With a promise to myself that I would grill them both later, I turned back to the situation at hand. "You've started dying your hair, I see, daughter mine." Ms. Goode raised her eyebrows at her long-lost daughter but made no move to step closer.
"I'll give both you and Zachary a chance to come home now, otherwise…" Ms. Goode's threat hung in the air as she waited for her children to chose a side. When neither of them made any move to join her, she frowned. "Well, it seems you have made your choice." She motioned her left hand at the van and it started to drive towards us again, only this time, the men were holding their knives at the ready.
"Cammie!" Zach shouted my name over coms and I could hear Liz telling Macey to head towards us.
"No," I yelled back at the three of them, "Macey go, keep Liz safe, we'll be right behind you." I didn't want Macey or Liz to be put in danger just for me; it was bad enough that Bex and Sunniva were here beside me.
"Cam," Liz started, obviously about to turn back towards us.
"Liz, go!" Bex shouted, before grabbing my hand and running towards the closest thing that could shield us from the unforgiving throwing knives and no doubt, the guns they had hidden on their persons.
Sunniva ran alongside us, and soon we were crouching behind the moveable staircase used to board planes. "There, those are our escape vehicles." Sunniva pointed towards the two motorbikes that had just pulled up in front of us. Two of Ms. Goode's goons got off the bikes and lumbered towards us, knives in hand.
Sunniva ran forward to meet them, her remaining two daggers in hand. Her longer dagger came up to bar one attack while her second dagger flew out from her right hand and impeded itself in the other man's shoulder. The man with the wounded shoulder grabbed hold of her long golden hair and used it to pull her towards him.
Using the pull as extra motion, she pointed her first dagger backwards under her arm and rammed it into his stomach. She pushed her boot into the man as she pulled both daggers out and turned to face the remaining goon. She threw her dagger, and the man moved to the left, not realizing that she had thrown it three inches to the left of his heart until he had ducked right into it's path.
Grabbing that dagger back, she turned to find the men from the van were now advancing towards her. "Chameleon, this would be the time to help out!" She shouted mildly as she spun towards the closest man and pieced him in the heart before he had time to register what was happening.
Pulling out my gun, I fired two shots and watched as the two members fell dead. Bex had tackled a third member and had used his own knife against him just as Sunniva turned to the last member who was looking uncertain as to whether he should flee or fight. Sunniva's dagger flew end over end and imbedded itself in his fleeing back.
"Run!" She yelled, as Ms. Goode pulled out a gun. We sprinted towards the motorbikes and I climbed onto the back of one, holding onto Bex as she took off, Sunniva leading the way.
A shot was fired and Sunniva cursed as the bullet hit her leg, but she didn't stop. Bex drove so fast that I was regretting not choosing to ride with Sunniva but at least we made it to the highway safely.
Though now, we had to find the others.
I don't think I have ever written such a long chapter before! I hope you all liked this one and I hope you liked Sunniva!
So Sunniva what did you think of your character? I'm sorry if she doesn't have your personality but I needed her to be able to take on Zach in the battle of arrogance. I actually didn't know she was Zach's sister until she said that line to Catherine. I sort of just came up with the idea on the spot.
Guest/Sylvie: Well then, you have a really great name! It reminds me of an elf princess with long silver hair. Haha sorry, that sounded weird.
Sweetcrush15: Well thank you deary, I hope you loved this chapter just as much!
greeneyedsmirker: I read/watch a lot of crime fiction… did you know that by loosening the screws of an air conditioning system that is situated on the outside of a building, you can get it to drop on a target and get away with the murder, the cops will think it was an accident. My parents are worried over how interested in murder I am. As always, love you darling, and I like the Elise! Plus Book Thief is a favourite of mine.
ButteryHighlights: Rainbow Rowell is writing a whole novel about Simon Snow!
Sunniva Steiner: I have a feeling your character might be around for a bit. If you hate her please tell me and I will change her!
kccb16: I'VE BEEN CALLING HIM LEVY TOO and not even realizing it until you wrote that! I love that you still love this story, you are one of my favourite reviewers! I really like the name Alaya!
Fangirling007: God bless you, you make me feel like a real author when you comment on my writing style.
Kayla: You're review was adorable! I want to hug you.
zammylover314: And I love writing it, though it has no plot so I just go where my mind takes me. Hopefully I will finish it in the next year or so… maybe it will never end, I'll just keep adding chapters for years and years… kidding that would be sad.
RachelLovegood52: Thank you! I love adding my readers into the story, it's so much fun and I love their reactions! The gala chapter was my favourite to write.
Ah, I just re-read all the reviews I have gotten over the year and a half that this story has been up for! God I love you all so much, I was almost crying at how amazing the reviews are, some of them make me feel so wonderful! Love you all, my new story should be up as soon as I find a title and chapter names! Wish me luck,
Matisse xx