"No," I said. "Mr. Solomon went here. He -"
"Was starting to change things," Zach finished. He stepped closer. "You know what we are, Gallagher Girl."
"No." I shook my head. "You can't be . . ."
There are a lot of terms for what Zach was trying to say. Killers. Wet work artists. But all I could do was look at the boy who stood beside me - the boy I barely knew - and whisper, " Assassins."
"I told you this place was made to prepare for war - World War Two, the Cold War, and all the wars that could have happened but didn't. Or haven't yet." He stared at me, almost pleading as he whispered, "We don't use it anymore."
"Is this why they don't trust you? The Baxters . . . Aunt Abby -"
"Are smart people with good instincts." He looked away, then back again.
"But that doesn't make any sense, Zach. You didn't build this place. What could you have possibly done that is so terrible?"
"No!" Standing there, hundreds of feet into the mountain, there was no way to know how far the shout reverberated through the maze of stone.
"Really. You can tell me."
"No. I really can't."
Upon leaning the original purpose of the Blackthorne Institute for Boys, The operative thought she might more easily understand the Asset.
(But it turns out, potential future assassin-slash-spy boys are the most confusing boys of all.)
It took another hour to reach it. Twice we found the tunnels blocked by a cave-in, a hundred tons of stone standing in our way. Once, Zach admitted we were on the wrong path, and we had to backtrack a hundred yards. We passed three more rooms like the first we'd seen - a dozen locked doorways and concrete bunkers so dark I couldn't see a thing.
"I've never been this deep," he admitted. Somehow, I knew exactly how he felt.
"Not to sound ungrateful or anything, but do you know where we're going?"
He smiled for what felt like the first time in hours. "Not exactly." He reached for my hand, bent to ease beneath a low-hanging arch. "Joe told me where he left it, just in case . . . in case of this."
"And where's that?" I asked, but Zach stopped.
He pointed. "In there."
The room was large - two stories tall with a t least a half dozen tunnels spiraling off of it.
Somehow, just standing there, I knew we'd finally reached the center of the mountain.
As Zach and I stepped onto a small metal landing on the second story, I looked down on the room below us. It was crude and basic. Metal stairs ran down to the lower floor.
Shelves and filings cabinets lined the walls. And on every inch of surface there were files and boxes and relics of the past.
"It's . . ." Zach started slowly. "It's sort of like Blackthorne's version of Sublevel Two."
I followed him down the stairs and watched him go to the far side of the room and squat down beside a rusty shelf. I held my breath as he reached, stretching as far as he could, then pulled out a spiral notebook wrapped tightly in plastic.
"That's it?" I asked. It looked so plain - like a million other notebooks carried by a million other kids. Finally, I truly understood the fact I'd known for months: Joe Solomon had been sixteen.
Zach tucked the journal into his belt and under his jacket, then took my hand. Wordlessly, we climbed the metal stairs and started back down the tunnel from which we'd come.
It seemed so easy. Our mission was over. We'd won.
But that was when we heard the voices.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
My first thought was that the Blackthorne security team had found us - that we'd missed a motion sensor or tripped a silent alarm - and I started preparing my excuses . . . Zach was my boyfriend. I was there on a dare. Breaking into Blackthorne was the best extra credit project ever!
But then Zach and I dropped to our stomachs and crawled back to the metal landing that overlooked the massive storage space below, and . . .
And I saw the woman from the roof.
There was no mistaking her this time, because there, in the tombs, everything was louder, sharper, my senses were more alive than they had ever been before as I lay staring at the woman who had found me on a rooftop in Boston. And she was not alone.
Mr. Solomon's hands were bound. One of his eyes was bruised and swollen so badly it was completely shut, and as he limped forward I saw a massive gash in his leg. Five men stood guard around him.
"Okay," the woman said, turning to Mr. Solomon. "Now where is it?"
"What?"
The woman struck Mr. Solomon's face so hard that blood sprayed across the room.
"I'm only going to ask you one more time." The woman moved closer. In the hollow stone room, her whisper seemed to echo. "where is the log book that belonged to Matthew Morgan?"
My dad's journal. They were looking for Dad's journal.
But Dad's journal wasn't here, and Mr. Solomon knew that - Mr. Solomon knew everything about this place and yet he'd brought them into the depths of the mountain.
Into Blackthorne's version of Sublevel Two.
Beside me, I could feel the tension in Zach's arms. I could sense the gears working in his mind as we both asked a single question: What would Joe Solomon do?
"No," Zach gasped. I followed his gaze.
Cable lined the ceiling and walls, disappearing behind the shelves and filing cabinets, connecting everything in the room to a box labeled WARNING: EXPLOSIVES, and I couldn't help thinking, Just like Sublevel Two . . . .
I didn't know Joe Solomon - after all I'd learned about him, I wondered if I ever really would. But I knew that he would never willingly give in to the Circle again. I knew he would trade his life to bring the Circle to its end.