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.