Chapter Eleven
I covered my ears. My head throbbed. The alarms might have even startled me enough to evoke a scream. Not that anyone could have heard it. We couldn’t hear anything over those sirens. Not the monitors in the infirmary. Not Will and Bill’s voices as they shouted something at me. Not even my own thoughts. I couldn’t hear anything.
I couldn’t hear anything.
What the hell was I supposed to do when I couldn’t hear anything?
My first instinct was to run. I was all I could think to do. I bolted down the hallways, trying to pinpoint exactly which part of the massive building I was in. Answers. I needed answers. And there was one place in this building that would always have them. One place where the people without questions would always be.
It all looked the same—glass and chrome mixing together after every turn. It wasn’t until I caught sight of the piano in a nearby doorway that I knew where I was, but even then I kept going. Past the rec room. Past the guest quarters. All the way to the headmaster’s office where Grandpa Joe stood, shoulders back and chin up, scanning the monitor that hung in the corner of the room.
I was frozen, completely entranced by the sight of my grandfather who, somehow, remained cool even in such chaos. The only part of him that moved was his eyes as they darted across the flashing security footage. I could almost see his brilliant mind at work as he tried to connect what was happening outside of his building to the blaring alarms inside.
Will and Bill plowed into my back, nearly knocking me over. Alice skidded in right behind them, making sure to shove her way to the front. I hadn’t even noticed any of them running behind me.
I shut the door, muffling the sirens. “Boys,” Grandpa Joe said without looking away from the screen. I only recognized flashes as they went by. The main entrance. The training room. The mess hall. I couldn’t even begin to understand how Grandpa Joe was processing it all. “I thought we agreed not to do this anymore.”
“It wasn’t us this time!” Will was quick to defend.
“Honest, sir,” Bill joined in. “I was with him the whole time and it ain’t our fault.”
“This time,” Will added, just for clarification.
“This time,” Bill confirmed.
Grandpa Joe didn’t look surprised, exactly, but he did look like he’d been hoping to pin the blame on the boys. At least then he’d know what was going on. “Well,” he said. “You know the drill, then.”
The boys nodded and took off back into the hallway, the sirens echoing in the small room as the door inched to a slow shut behind them.
“What’s happening?” I asked him.
“It’s classified.”
I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. Cold and cruel. “If one more person tells me that something is classified I’m going to—”
“Morgan,” he snapped. “Stop talking.”
His eyes still danced across the screen. Searching. Hunting. Daring something to happen so that it could face the pent up aggression of Joe Solomon. This was his school and death would have to take another swing at him before anything happened to it or the people inside. Grandpa Joe was not one to go looking for trouble. From what I’d heard, trouble usually found him first. But right then, alarms sounding in the distance, I saw a man looking for a fight.
“What does a code red mean?” I wondered.
He didn’t look at me when he answered. “Unknown guest. Possibly unaware of our… specialized curriculum.”
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Barking Up the Wrong Lead - A Gallagher Girls Story
FanfictionBOOK 2 - After the disappearance of her mother, Morgan Goode is forced to investigate what it means to be a family—a feat made slightly more difficult by the fact that her family is made up almost entirely of the world's best and brightest spies.
