"Really?" He touched my face again. "'Cause I'm not."
I know Zachary Goode. I've touched him and spoken to him and felt his lips on mine, but I don't know him - not really.
I could feel the clock ticking and knew that the girl I'd been the year before was officially out of time.
"I'm fine, Zach," I said, pulling away. "But I've got to go. We only have a half hour before they miss us."
He pointed to the darkness. "Who else is out there?"
"The usuals," I said, still not wanted to give away too much.
"Your mom?" he asked, but I didn't have to say anything - he read the answer in my eyes.
"Good," Zach said. "He doesn't want her taking the risk."
"What does he care? If he cared about her, then . . ." I trembled.
"So they told you?" he asked stepping away.
"Yeah. They told me he's part of the Circle , and he . . . My father is dead because of him." My heart was pounding hard inside my chest. My throat was on fire. "Is this the part where you deny it?"
"No." Zach shook his head. "It's the part where I asked a favor."
"You've got a lot of nerve," Bex said, moving closer, but Zach's gaze never left mine.
"There's a book, Gallagher Girl," he said, then swallowed. "It might be the only thing the Circle wants more as much as they want you."
"What kind of book?" I asked.
"A journal. Joe - Mr. Solomon - needs you to read it."
"Why?" I asked.
"It explains everything, Gallagher Girl. And besides, if he doesn't make it out of this . . .
He needs you to read it."
"Where is it?" Bex asked.
"You're not going to like it. It's risky and -"
"Where is it?" Bex, Macey, and I demanded in unison.
"Sublevel Two."
"The subs?" Bex shook her head. "No. Can't. They're closed. Off-limits."
"Oh, and off-limits has always stop you before?" Zach asked her. Look, they're not technically closed - they're just rigged to explode if anyone goes near them," he said as if we encounter highly dangerous explosives every day. And . . . well . . . we sort of do.
"How do you know about the subs?"
"Because a week before I saw you in London, Joe heard the CIA had a source who'd started talking. He had to get off the grid and stay off the grid - fast. They were coming for him, Gallagher Girl, and he couldn't risk getting caught down there, so . . ."
Zach took a deep breath and smiled his most mischievous smile. "I know about the subs because Joe Solomon's the one who rigged them."
Chapter Twenty-Four
Joe Solomon didn't booby-trap the sublevels of the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women to explode or implode or fill up with water from the lake.
Don't get me wrong, all of those things could totally happen! But no matter what you might have heard, Mr. Solomon didn't put those protocols in place - the Gallagher Academy trustees did, a long, long time ago. Before I was born. Before my mother was born. After all, when you have that many covert secrets in one place, it's important to protect them. And if the protection measures fail, it's important to destroy them.
So I really wish people would get it straight: Mr. Solomon did not build the triggers that would destroy the subs!
He's just the one that turned them on.
Or at least that's Zach told us.
And that . . . Yeah, that was the problem.
"What's wrong?" Liz asked, despite the fact that, at the front of the room, Dr. Fibs and Madame Dabney were in the midst of an incredibly interesting joint lecture on secret writing techniques (and why a Gallagher Girl should really learn how to make her own invisibility ink and do calligraphy).
"Is the sensors on the elevator shafts?" she guessed.
I shook my head.
"The two-second delay before the anti-invasion protocols kick in and we get . . .
smushed?"
"Oh my!" Dr. Fibs cried. I looked up to see that he had accidentally spilled his latest invisibility concoction over Madame Dabney, and that her white blouse was becoming more and more invisible by the second.
"I know what you're thinking, Cam," Liz went on. "We've been looking for a way into . . .
you know where . . . for weeks and we aren't any closer. But that's not true!"
At the front of the room, Madame Dabney (who, by the way, wears way sexier bras than anyone would have guessed) started dabbing at the front of her blouse with an antique tablecloth, and Dr. Fibs reached for a lighter.
"Now, remember, girls, the ink becomes visible again when exposed to heat!" Dr. Fibs yelled as he flicked the lighter on and the tablecloth went up in flames in Madame Dabney's hands.
"We have an entry strategy and an exit strategy and . . . we have a lot of strategies!" Liz said, her eyes wide, and right then I knew that a part of Liz didn't care that Zach and Mr.
Solomon had asked us to do something that no one had ever done in a hundred and fifty years. To Liz, it was just a puzzle, a test. And Liz is very, very good at tests.
"Yeah, Cam," she said again as soon as the smoke cleared (literally) and we were gathering our things and leaving class. "We'll figure it out."
"Figure out what?" Bex asked, falling into step beside us.
"Nothing," I whispered.
"Wrong answer," Bex said, leaning closer, her voice barely audible through the cascade of girls that filled the halls. "Now what's wrong?"
"Zach," Macey guessed with a shrug. She eyed me. "It's got to be Zach, right?"