"Hey, Mr. M, don't worry," I said, trying to sound all fake-calm. "It's only a problem if the red splotches appear on the small of your back. You don't have red splotches. Do you?"
That's when I heard the sounds of a certified genius spinning around in circles like a dog chasing its tail.
"I can't…Oh, the light-headedness is getting worse." (I didn't doubt it—he'd been spinning pretty fast.) "Here." He ripped the blindfold off. "You look."
Sadly, it was just that easy, and it would have been a lot easier if I hadn't been afraid to use any of the actual forbidden moves (mainly because I like Mr. Mosckowitz, and I didn't have written permission from the Secretary of Defense and all). Still, Mr. Mosckowitz was a pretty good sport about it.
"Oh, you girls," he said in a very awshucks way, once I had him tied to the chair.
"Just sit tight, Mr. M. It'll be over soon."
"Um, Cammie?" he asked as I headed for the door. "I wasn't too bad, was I?"
"You were awesome."
The first thing I had to do was get out of that room. The disk wasn't there—if it was, no way would Mr. Solomon have left only Mr. Mosckowitz to guard it, so I darted through the empty warehouse to an exit door, checked it for sensors and alarms, then rushed out into the shadows of the complex.
Outside, I felt my eyes adjust to the black. A little light escaped from the building I'd just left, but otherwise I was surrounded by nothing but old rusty steel, and dark, cracked windows. A cold wind blew through the maze, whistling between the buildings, blowing dead leaves and plumes of dust along the gravel lot. I squinted through the night, trying to sense movement of any kind, but if it hadn't been for the glistening new wire of a tall chain fence and some very well-hidden surveillance cameras, I would have sworn the place was a ghost town.
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