Summary: Zach ran away, but comes back after school has started again to check up on Cammie. One-shot. After OGSY. Mild spoiler.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything from the book … =(

The hallway was cold and quiet. Even though I had stayed in Gallagher Academy for several weeks at the end of the last school year, a lingering resentment towards it still resided in me. These girls ... they were cushioned. Protected. One might even say, spoiled.

Sure they might be required to know fourteen languages, how to perform a Malinowski Maneuver, or the standard protocol for a perfect exfiltration. But they couldn't be taught the harshness of living in constant danger or the necessity for perfection at every instant. Not in a soft place like this. They couldn't know what it was like to be surrounded by people you can't trust every day, like at Blackthorne. We were all assassins or spies for hire, and the Circle did serious recruiting there. Blackthorne boys had no ingrained loyalties, not when we might be on opposing sides in a few years.

I had intended to run away, to fall off the maps for however long it took until the Circle of Cavan realized that I would not be joining them. They had been following me, most likely hired by my dear mother. They still thought I could be recruited. But lately, less of them had been finding me, and I figured it was safe enough for me to check up on Cammie.

Cammie. She knew more of my secrets than anyone. Although I would have preferred that she not have to, she knew now what it was like being out in the world. She knew about having to make tough decisions, and how to run away when the time came. Unfortunately, by now the Circle probably knew exactly where she was, and by this time they'd be waiting for her at the gates for the moment she left.

But at the moment she was just on the other side of this wall. Even if it made me scared for her, it also made me want to go out into the hallway right now, just to hold her and kiss her and make sure that she was okay.

Solomon had told me to protect her- some kind of fatherly instinct, or maybe guilt for his best friend's death- but I wasn't pretending that was why I was here anymore.

So I focused on the group of girls who I was eavesdropping on through the wall of the secret passageway.

A familiar Southern accent floated through the air. Liz. "How are we supposed to know the essentials of blending into a crowd? We haven't even started that chapter, and we're supposed to write essays on it!" She blew off steam for a while longer, and I tuned out Bex's empathizing remarks for a few moments.

I let my mind drift off instead to a different day in this hallway. When it had been a fake Code Black exercise, and I had anticipated that Cammie would come here. I remembered how beautiful she had looked in that long red dress, how she had looked when I disappeared.

I heard Macey sigh, outside in the hallway. "I guess we'll have to read the chapter. Tonight. It's so unfair, though. Cammie would have known what to write."

As soon as she said that, I realized that there were only three girls on the other side of the wall, not four as I had assumed. And they spoke about her in the past tense. Where was Cammie, then? I thought. All three fell silent at Macey's comment. She seemed to realize that she had hit a sore spot, and backtracked. "I ... I didn't mean to ..."

Liz sighed then too. "It's alright. I suppose that after four months, we shouldn't be this touchy anymore." After another pause, Liz muttered, "I still feel like we failed her somehow. Like we should have been there with her."

I didn't know what they were talking about. She couldn't be dead, could she? Seriously injured? The pounding in my ears grew louder, and I struggled to listen even closer, hoping with all of me that they would elaborate more.

"We'll find her!" Bex snapped.

"Bex, as much as I hate to admit it ... if Cammie doesn't want to be found, she won't be found." Macey's defeated voice seemed to bring reason to Bex. "You know how good she is. And I guess ... she must have had a good reason."

Bex was quiet.

They began to walk out of my hearing range, but I had heard what I needed to know. She had run, like I suggested. She was somewhere out there, alone but safe, waiting for this storm to blow over. She was somewhere out there, and I would find her.