I walked through the maze of buildings, listening for anything louder than the sound of my own heartbeat. My head swam with questions: Where are they? Who are they? And above all, are we ready for this?
The Gallagher Academy's alumni list was probably inside one of those metal buildings—the identities of the world's top spies were spelled out in black-and-white. Lives were at risk; years of work could be undone. So even though I knew we were on our own, I still prayed that Anna would find help—that it wouldn't come too late.
The wind blew through the complex, howling between the buildings. I glanced down at the monitor on my wrist to make sure I was still moving in the direction of the solitary blinking dot. But this time the red dot was no longer alone.
I started to speak—to call out for my friends—but then I felt fingers clamp over my mouth. An arm was around my waist. And before I could take a step or throw a punch, I heard the hum of rappel-a-cord running through pulleys, and felt my feet leave the ground…
And the next thing I knew, I was flying.
"Cam," the voice near my ear whispered as we touched down on the roof of the building next to where I had been standing moments before. Wires ran between the surrounding rooftops. Harnesses and rappelling gear lay at my feet. And, on my wrist, Liz's old watch was blinking like crazy.
Without stopping to think, I stepped back into my attacker, tried to flip him over my head, but he countered his weight at that precise time, stopping my momentum. "It's me. It's Zach," he whispered, as if that were going to make me feel better.
A searchlight swept over the complex, beaming through the dark night, and automatically Zach and I dropped to the building's roof, laying ourselves flat as the light sliced above us.
"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't throw you off this building right now," I said, but the crazy thing wasn't that I meant it; the crazy thing was that I didn't want to mean it—that I wanted to believe in Zach; I wanted to like him and trust him and know that he knew the real me and liked me anyway.
I lay perfectly still, feeling the rough bite of the gritty tar paper on the palms of my hands.
"Give me one good reason why—" I started again, but Zach rolled toward me. His arm fell around my shoulders as his body pressed against mine.
"I'll give you two," he said, just as two armed guards walked around the corner in the exact same place I'd been standing moments before.
We lay in silence for twenty seconds, listening to the footsteps fade before I pushed myself away from him. "What's going on, Zach?" For the first time, I knew exactly what to say to him, and I wasn't afraid to say it.
"Who was that man in town?" I felt my fury rise. I cinched his arm behind his back and rolled him onto his stomach. "How did you find this place? Who is down there, and what are they going to do with the list?"
"Well, first of all, ouch," he hissed, but I didn't release the pressure. "Second, I came back to school after you ditched me in town with Jimmy—"
"Josh!" I snapped.
"I came back to the school after you ditched me— thanks for that, by the way. Then it's all Code Black again and you and your whole class were gone. We figured you'd tracked us, so we tweaked the signal so we could follow your tracking mechanism. And here we are."
"Who's we?" I asked, gripping his arm tighter.
"Seriously, Gallagher Girl, that hurts like a—Ow!" I twisted harder. "Grant, Jonas, some of the juniors. They're here, too. They're out there with your girls."
I looked over the side of the building and started to call a warning through the comms unit in my ear, but that one second of distraction was too much. Zach rolled. Then I was the one with my hands pinned.
"Cammie," he snapped, "look at me." I struggled and kicked, but he held tighter. "Gallagher Girl," he said gently, looking at me with the eyes of the boy who had almost kissed me—the guy who knew what it felt like to lose a parent. I'd spent a whole semester trying to find the real Zach, and that night, more than ever, I needed to know what was real and what was legend.
"You lied." My voice was soft, almost bruised. "I know you lied in town, Zach. I know you've seen that man who was on our tail."
"That's what this is about?" Zach exhaled a laugh. "You ditched me in town and organized a war party because I lied about knowing that guy?"
"No, I organized a war party because someone knocked Mr. Mosckowitz out and stole the Gallagher Academy alumni list!" I snapped. I could see terror register in Zach's eyes as he processed what was at stake. The pressure on my arms lessened. He wasn't holding me down anymore; he was just holding me.
And then something seemed to snap inside of Zach. He pulled my right hand in front of my face. "Here. Look at it." Until that moment I'd forgotten about the ring on my finger. "Or better yet, look at me. Watch my eyes, Cammie. I'm not lying." His pupils were even; his pulse was steady; and the truth ring stayed perfectly still as Zach explained, "I'd seen that guy with Dr. Steve before and didn't want to blow his cover. I had no idea he was a threat. I thought he was on a training op or … I don't know…checking up on us or something. I didn't think it was a big deal." He shifted his weight and moved beside me. "I didn't think it was worth explaining in front of…" he trailed off, and I finished.
"Josh and DeeDee." I shook my head, trying to make sense of it all.
"We're not the bad guys, Gallagher Girl," he said gently.
More than anything I wanted to believe him. "Then who is?"
Zach let go of my wrists and pointed into the darkness. "Him."
And then one of the doors to the building across from us opened. I saw four armed guards walk out, and in the fleeting moment before the door closed, I heard a faint "Excellent," and saw the face of Dr. Steve.
"Chameleon," Bex said in my ear. "Did you see that? Did you see who is in that big building? It's—"
"Dr. Steve," I finished for her, and before I could say another word, I heard Eva cry, "Chameleon! The boys— they're here!"
"I know, Chica," I said, using Eva's code name. "Zach's with me."
"He is?" It was Liz. She sounded giddy.
"So that means Tina doesn't have to sit on Grant?" Eva asked.
"No. Tina needs to get off Grant." (Tina didn't sound at all happy about it.) "And bring him to the roof of the building on the northwest corner." I studied the boy beside me. "They've got some explaining to do."
For the next sixty seconds I heard my classmates making their way through the dark grounds, whispering to each other through the comms units as they cleared corners and ducked out of the sight of guards. The Gallagher Girls were coming, but for some reason, there, in the moonlight, with my sisterhood riding on everything I said and did, I found myself looking at Zach.
A few weeks ago, he warned me that I wouldn't want to sleep in his school, and now a semester's worth of cryptic messages and subtle hints had come down to this.
"What's going on, Cam?" Bex asked, as my classmates appeared beside me. She glanced at Zach. "Want me to throw him off the roof?"
"Only if he doesn't tell us what the Blackthorne Institute is and why one of their teachers is out to destroy the Gallagher Girls."
"What do you mean? You know what our school is," Grant said, as if the answer should be obvious. But it wasn't.
Their rooms were freaky clean; there was no trace of them in any record anywhere. They weren't like us— I'd known it all along. But Zach was the one to finally say, "You've got your cover. We've got ours."
"What's that supposed to—" I started, but Zach cut me off.
"You're Gallagher Girls," Zach snapped as the mist turned into rain. It streaked down his face, but he didn't blink; didn't back down. He just stepped closer and said, "We're the stepchild no one ever talks about."
I thought about the military precision of their suites; the new uniforms; the way Zach had stood in the library and told me that he was neither all good nor all bad, and I knew there was more to the story.
"Then what—" I started, but the creak of rusty hinges cut me off; light sliced across the dark lot below as two armed guards left the building across from us and started to patrol the grounds. The question that had seemed so important moments before faded from my mind, and instead I said, "He can't get away. That list can't get away."
"It won't." Zach's words brought me back to another night when the Gallagher Girls stood in the same spot, on our way to rescue a hostage and a package.
This time the stakes were higher.
Zach walked to the edge of the roof and attached a rappelling harness to a cable that skirted down between the buildings, then reached for my hand. "We've got to go now, Cam." His gesture was like that of a gentleman asking a lady to dance. Madame Dabney would have been proud. "Do you trust me?" he asked, and I realized I had come full circle.
Months before I'd stood on that same roof with a different boy and leaped into the darkness toward my destiny.
But this time I wasn't jumping alone.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Zach and I touched down on the stretch of grass that ran between the buildings, thankful for the rain, the clouds—for every trace of darkness Mother Nature could spare as I crouched low and ran through the space between the buildings.
"What are you doing?" Zach hissed, but I was already banging on the metal door that stood between me and Dr. Steve. "Hey, can one of you guys come give me a hand with this?" I asked in the most manly voice I could muster.
Zach looked at me like I was crazy, but then the door opened and I pulled one of the guards out by his collar. Shocked and dazed, he didn't even realize what was happening as I knocked him out with one punch and slapped a Napotine patch on his forehead just to be on the safe side.
"Nice one," Zach said. "Did you learn that in P&E?"
"No. Buffy the Vampire Shyer."
I studied the man who lay on the ground in front of us. The last time I'd seen him he'd been leaning against a 1957 Cadillac that stood parked along the Roseville town square. There was no telling how many operatives Dr. Steve had helping him—I didn't want to think about the odds. I dragged the man to the tall weeds twenty feet away from the door and helped Zach go through his pockets.
"Comms," I said, pulling an earpiece and microphone off the sleeping man's body. Zach inserted the earpiece while I peered through the dusty windows.
Dr. Steve was pacing the metal room. Crates lined the walls of the massive building, towering from the concrete floor to the tall ceiling.
"Guys," I whispered into my comms unit. "I've got a visual on the subject." At least four guards stood near Dr. Steve. Every few steps he'd stop and pat his pocket as if making sure it hadn't been picked. "Maintain your position until we give you the all clear."
Zach leaned close to me. "They've got at least fifteen guys."
"What do you hear?" I asked. Zach held up a finger to shush me. A dark shadow crossed his face as he listened to what the enemy was saying. "What is it, Zach?" I demanded. "What's going—"
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