"I have eyeball," Bex said through my comms unit an hour later. Which was a comforting sound. So far, neither Zach nor I had said much of anything, because A) When we got downstairs there was a huge group of people waiting to walk to town (one of whom was Tina Walters). B) The wind was blowing, so I had to keep my head at a weird angle to keep my hair out of my face. And C) Even though I'd been on dates (and missions) before, I'd never done both at once.
And finally, it's kind of hard to talk when you walk two miles only to find yourself in the middle of the Roseville, Virginia, Founders' Day parade. Yes, I said parade.
Both the spy and the girl in me knew I was supposed to be saying something—I was supposed to be doing something—but as soon as we turned onto Main Street I heard the blare of trumpets from the Pride of Roseville Marching Band; I saw church ladies selling brownies and raffle tickets for a chance to win a homemade quilt. The entire town of Roseville seemed to be either marching down the streets or filling the square.
"He looks good, Cam … I mean Chameleon," Liz hurried to correct her mistake. I glanced up and down the crowded streets and couldn't see my roommates anywhere, but there was some comfort in knowing they were there. "Cough if you think he looks good."
10:41 hours: The Operative couldn't help but notice that The Subject both looked and smelled REALLY good.
Zach did look good. He wasn't in his uniform. He'd put something in his hair so that it was messed up in all the right places. And I kept thinking that there had to be something nefarious going on—that there was no way this boy was on a real date with me.
"Hey, Chameleon, you know you can talk," Macey said through the comms units. "It is allowed."
But talking wasn't exactly easy, because I was with Zach…On a date-slash-honeypotting mission! I had a comms unit in my ear and a package of breath mints in my purse, and there was a 1/187 chance I would see my ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend. … I was dealing with a lot of issues!
"Do you want to do something?" I asked awkwardly, even though, technically, we were doing something.
"We could go to a movie," Zach said. "Or get something to eat."
"Okay."
"Or we could just…walk," he suggested, and for the first time I wondered if he might be nervous, too.
"Okay," I said again.
"Or we could have that clown over there paint our faces and then go rob the bank," he suggested, as if I wasn't really listening. But I didn't fall for it.
"No way. Last October they installed a Stockholm Series 360—it'd take us at least forty-five minutes to crack it."
"Good to know." He laughed.
Suddenly I wanted to stop in the middle of the street and ask Zach why he'd asked me out. I wanted him to confess that I was being honeypotted too. But when Zach reached for my hand and led me through crowded sidewalks, it didn't feel like the gesture of an operative on a mission. And then, more than anything, I wanted to stop hearing Macey's words, It's okay for you to like him, because sometimes not liking someone is easier.
A middle-aged man in a red jacket lingered in the center of the square. Antique cars lined the street while men with big bellies kicked the tires and sipped lemonade. We were only two miles away from school, but the Roseville town square felt like another world. The most dangerous thing I could see was a crowd of little girls in sparkly leotards pushing their way down the sidewalk. Zach pulled me around a corner and onto a quiet side street.
"So, plant any good bugs lately?" Zach asked.
A spark was in his eyes, but I couldn't laugh. I couldn't even speak. The silence pulsed between us like the beat of the retreating band.
"Just so you know, Gallagher Girl," he whispered softly, "I'm going to kiss you now."
For the first time in months I wasn't thinking about my mission or my cover or my friends.
I wasn't thinking.
His hands were warm on the back of my neck; his fingers laced through my hair, and he tilted his head as he moved in. I closed my eyes.
And I heard, "Oh my gosh! Cammie, is that you?"
Zach said a really bad word as he inched away from me. (But I doubt DeeDee noticed, because the bad word was in Farsi.) The noise coming from the square seemed louder than it had just seconds before, and I knew that whatever trance I'd been in was completely broken—the moment was totally over.
Zach had started to kiss me. I had almost let Zach kiss me!
"Hi, Cammie," DeeDee said. She hugged me and smiled at Zach. "I'm so glad you two are here!"
Josh stood five feet away, staring at me, but he didn't say hi. I've thrown enough punches in my life to know when someone is hurting.
I stepped away from Zach as if I could make Josh forget what he'd just seen, but then I noticed the reflection in the window behind me—Josh's reflection—and I knew that Zach must have seen him. Immediately, my mind raced with a thousand questions—was that why Zach had tried to kiss me? Why did Josh look so sad?
There were no fewer than twenty things I simply had to ask Macey McHenry! I started scanning the crowds, looking for my friends, but instead I saw a man across the street.
An ordinary man. I'd seen him buying brownies and looking under the hood of a Model T.
But no one on the street was talking to him, and his shoes were too dressy for a parade. I remembered what my father used to say about counter surveillance: Once is a stranger; twice is a coincidence; three times is a tail.
And this made time number three.
As the four of us started down the sidewalk, I couldn't shake the feeling that I needed backup for an entirely different reason. Josh and DeeDee walked a few steps ahead, so I whispered to Zach, "Hey, you're gonna think I'm crazy."
"A little late for that, Gallagher Girl." At the word Gallagher, two women on the sidewalk turned to give us the Gallagher Glare, but I didn't have time to worry about my school's reputation.
"You haven't seen anyone following us, have you?" I asked. Zach laughed.
"You mean besides your roommates?"
I rolled my eyes. "Yeah. Besides them."
"No. I haven't seen anyone on our tail. Why?"
"The guy. The blue jacket." DeeDee glanced back at me, so I altered my words. "Don't you think he's toasty in that heavy coat?" which is spy-slang for an operative who is about to get caught, but DeeDee didn't know that. Luckily, Zach did. He turned, casually taking in everything from the sight of the convertibles carrying the Founders' Day Princess and her court to the way DeeDee said hi to almost everyone we passed.
"What about him?" Zach asked.
"The jacket's reversible. Ten minutes ago he was wearing it the other way. Do you think a lot of regular guys in Roseville take the time to reverse their jackets?"
We stopped to look in a store window's wavy reflection.
"Look at that guy, Gallagher Girl," Zach whispered as the man bought a corn dog. "He's a mustard disaster looking for a place to happen. I bet you anything he's got a big stain on the other side."
It sounded like a good point—it felt like a good point, but then Zach laughed, and something…was strange. I knew it wasn't paranoia. I knew it was bigger than me and bigger than Roseville and bigger than any parade.
"Now what are you two chatting about?" DeeDee teased.
"Oh, Cammie was trying to convince me that I should recognize that guy in the blue jacket." Zach looked at me, and I knew the words were for me—not Dee Dee—as he said, "But I've never seen him before in my life."
And it would have been good news. I may have relaxed. But then I looked down at the ring I was wearing, felt the subtle vibration, and knew that he was lying.
Chapter Twenty-five
I'm not exactly proud of what came next, but Mr. Solomon himself has told me that spies do bad things for good reasons, so I smiled, I gripped DeeDee's arm, and I used that unsuspecting girl for cover as I announced, "I've got to go to the bathroom!"
"I'll walk with you," Zach started, but I didn't let him finish.
"No," I said, smiling at DeeDee. "It's a girl thing."
As we pulled away from Josh and Zach, DeeDee giggled and wrapped her thin arm in mine. It probably seemed like fun to her—two girls setting off on their own down the crowded sidewalks. But I was entrenched in another kind of adventure as I scanned the crowds, looking for friends and enemies on the bustling square.
"We can go to the pharmacy," DeeDee yelled over the roaring siren of a passing fire truck covered with cheerleaders—the end of the parade.
"What?" I asked.
"The pharmacy has bathrooms," she said again, and I nodded.
"Okay, we'll go to the pharmacy," I repeated loudly, hoping my friends would hear.
Something was wrong—Zach was lying, and a man I'd never seen was stalking Gallagher Girls in Roseville. And that's the kind of thing that never happened before the Blackthorne Boys came to the Gallagher Academy and brought a Code Black with them.
"So, Cammie, I'm really glad I ran into you," DeeDee said, as if I had time for girl talk. "I was wondering if things are…you know…serious? With you and Zach? You guys seem happy."
Despite everything, I stopped and turned to her. Was I happy with Zach? Could I ever be happy with Zach? Two minutes before I might have had a different answer to that question, but in a spy's life, two minutes is all it takes for the whole world to change.
"Cammie!" Bex was rushing toward me, waving. "Oh," she said with a quick glance at DeeDee. "Hi." Then she looked at me and rolled her eyes. "I just got a call on my cell phone," she lied. "We've got to go back to school." She sounded disappointed—annoyed. Nothing in her tone reflected any of the panic I felt.
I looked back at DeeDee. "Sorry," I said, already stepping away. "I've got to—"
"Okay," DeeDee said, but her usually bright smile seemed to fade. "Cammie," she called just as I started to turn, "I really hope you and Zach are happy."
Any other day I might have pondered that sentence for hours, dissected it with Macey, searched for hidden meaning in the words. Was that DeeDee's way of telling me that she and Josh weren't happy? Was I a threat to their seemingly perfect love? Or was DeeDee just the kind of person who wanted everyone to be as happy as she was?
If I'd been a normal girl I might have replayed every second of that day—my almost-kiss, the hurt look on Josh's face. But I wasn't a normal girl. As Zach himself had reminded me time and time again … I was a Gallagher Girl.
"We had two guys on us, too," Bex said as she fell into step beside me. I stopped in the street and turned to check behind us, but she rolled her eyes. "I said had." She shook her head. "I knew we couldn't trust boys who keep their rooms that clean. It's not natural!"
Liz was a half-step behind her, already out of breath. I looked around. "Where's Macey?"
"Telling as many girls as she can find about the tails," Bex answered.
"Wait! Cammie," Liz panted, "you can't just leave in the middle of your date! What if Zach gets worried about you? What if he thinks you've been kidnapped?" Then she gasped. "What if he thinks you don't like him?"
