Then I heard crackling static and a familiar voice.
"Bookworm to Chameleon. Chameleon, do you read me?"
"Liz?" I spun around.
"Chameleon, it's Bookworm, remember? We use code names when on comms?"
But I wasn't on comms! I was on a mission to break up with my secret boyfriend. I wasn't exactly prepared for active duty. But then I remembered the silver cross that dangled from my neck.
Before I could even ask, Liz explained. "I got bored one weekend and decided to fix your necklace. And upgrade it. What do you think?"
I think my friends are both brilliant and a little scary, is what I think. But of course I couldn't tell her that.
"So, how'd it go with your project?" Liz asked, and I remembered that half the school was probably listening. "I mean, were there complications or—"
"Liz," I snapped, not wanting to think about Josh or what I'd just done. The time for crying with your girlfriends about a broken heart is over chocolate ice cream and chick flicks—not stun guns and bulletproof vests. "Where's the disk?" I asked.
This time, it was Bex's voice that answered, "We think they're in the big building on the north side of the complex. Tina and Mick went to recon, and we're holding here."
"Where's here?"
"Look up."
Two days after my dad's funeral, my mom went on a mission. I never understood it until then—that sometimes a spy doesn't need a cover so much as she needs a shield. Crouched on the roof between Bex and Liz, I wasn't a girl who had just broken up with her boyfriend; I looked at my watch and checked my gear instead of crying. I had a mission objective and not a broken heart.
"Okay," Liz said, as the majority of the sophomore class circled around her. "My guess is the school actually owns this place, because someone has sunk some serious cash into it." She pointed to a crude diagram, which my superspy instincts were telling me was made out of Evapopaper and eyeliner. "There are motion triggers on the perimeter. The windows are rigged to an alarm." Bex lit up at the sound of this, but Liz stopped her enthusiasm cold. "A Doctor Fibs original. No way we're cracking it in the middle of the night with minimal equipment."
"Oh." Bex deflated as if they weren't going to let her have any fun.
Eva pointed a device that looks like an ordinary radar gun but is really a body-heat detector toward the building across from us and swept it side to side before saying, "Bingo. We have a hot spot."
At least a dozen red images walked back and forth across the screen, but the majority of the red figures were huddled in the center.
"That's our package," Bex said.
"Doors are problematic," Liz said, reeling off options. "Windows are out. You'd better believe they're watching the heating ducts and—"
"You know what that leaves," Bex said, her voice like a dare.
Liz looked at us one by one, realizing what we were all thinking—what our only mission option was—and that we had twenty pounds on her.
"No!" Liz snapped. "I'll get tangled or decapitated or—"
"I'll do it." And that's when I turned to look at Anna Fetterman—Anna, who had clutched her class assignment slip just months before as if CoveOps was going to be the death of her, was stepping forward, saying, "I'm the right size, am I not?"
And that's when I knew that Dillon was going to see Anna again someday, and then he'd be the one who would need saving.
Beep.
What was that? I wondered.
Beep-beep.
"Is it a missile?" Anna snapped, looking to the sky.
Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep.
"We're locked in as targets of a heat-seeking tranquillizer dart!" Eva yelled.
Beeeeeeeeeeeeep
"Okay, everybody, freeze!" a male voice behind us cried out.
Some of my classmates did as they were told. I did too, but for an entirely different reason. I'd never thought I'd hear that voice again, but there it was, saying, "I've…I've…already called nine-one-one. The cops are going to be here any—"
But the Gallagher Girls didn't let him finish. The nine-one-one thing had been the totally wrong thing to say, because in a flash, two of the girls were on him, and I had to cry, "Eva, Courtney, no!"
Everyone was staring at me—Josh, who was surprised I wasn't tied up or dead; and all of the sophomores (besides Bex and Liz), who couldn't imagine why I would have stopped them from neutralizing someone who had such obvious honeypotness.
"Josh!" I snapped in a harsh whisper as I turned off the power to the tracking device and headed toward him. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm here to rescue you." Then he glanced around at my black-clad classmates. "Who are they?' he whispered.
"We're here to rescue her, too," Bex said.
"Oh," he said, and then nodded blankly. "There was a van … I saw you … I…"
"That?" I said with a wave of my hands. "It's a school thing." I tried to sound as casual as possible when I said, "Kind of like… hazing."
Josh might have believed me if the entire sophomore class hadn't been standing on a warehouse roof, dressed in black and wearing equipment belts.
"Cammie," he said, stepping closer, "first I find out you go to that school, and then you tell me you're leaving, and then I see you kicking like a madwoman and getting kidnapped or something." He took another step, accidentally knocking over an old piece of metal that then skidded off the side of the roof and crashed to the ground below.
Sirens started wailing. Flashing lights streaked across the ground below us. Liz looked down, then cried, "He tripped the alarm!"
But that didn't matter, because I couldn't see anything but Josh. I couldn't hear anything but the fear in his voice when he said, "Cammie, tell me the truth."
The truth. I could hardly remember what it was. I'd been eluding it for so long that it took me a moment to remember what it was and what had brought me to that rooftop.
"I do go to the Gallagher Academy. These are my friends." Behind me, my classmates were moving, preparing for the next phase of the mission. "And we have to go now."
"I don't believe you." He didn't sound hurt then—the words were a dare.
"What do I have to say?" I snapped. "Do I have to tell you that my father's dead, and my mom can't cook, and that these girls are the closest thing I have to sisters?" He looked past me to the girls of every size, shape, and race. "Do I have to say that you and I can't ever see each other again? Because it's true. It's all true." He reached out to touch me, but I jerked away, saying, "Don't come looking for me, Josh. I can't ever see you again." And then I looked into his eyes for the first time. "And you'll be better for it."
Bex handed me a piece of gear, but before I took it, I turned to face him one last time. "Oh," I said, "and I don't have a cat."
I turned to hide my tears and stared into the deep expanse of night that lay before me. I didn't stop to think about all that lay behind. Free of my secrets, free of my lies, I told myself I was doing what I was put on this earth to do. I ran. I jumped. I stretched out my arms, and for ten blissful seconds, I could fly.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Okay, so it wasn't flying so much as skirting between two buildings on a zip line, but still, it felt good to be weightless.
Josh was behind me. I zoomed toward what lay ahead, and at that height and that speed, I didn't have a chance to look back. I touched down, and it felt natural to hear Eva tell Tina, "We're heading for the breaker boxes."
It was only right that Courtney should say, "Copy that," and drag Mick toward the fire escape on the west side.
We were Gallagher Girls on a mission—doing what we do best. So I didn't think about what had just happened, not even when Bex asked, "You okay?"
"I'm fine," I told her, and in that adrenaline-filled moment, it was true.