Ally Carter - [Gallagher Girls 02 ] - Cross My Heart & Hope To Spy

"Late." But this time Dr. Steve didn't speak—he couldn't speak—because, take it from someone who has been the recipient of Rebecca Baxter's choke holds, breathing is hard enough.

Dr. Steve crumpled to the ground, and Bex went with him. The disc fell from his pocket, and I grabbed it. "You're not taking that anywhere." For the first time, I felt my energy fade. "You're not getting on that plane."

And then a voice behind me said, "That's right, Ms. Morgan, he's not." And I knew something was either very right. Or very wrong. But the one thing that was certain was that nothing was what it seemed.

I fully expected Mr. Solomon to tell me to get out of the way because he was there with an elite special forces unit from Langley. I thought he'd handcuff Dr. Steve or at least grab the disc and fly it away to safety. Instead he stepped lightly out of the plane and said, "Are you okay, Dr. Sanders?"

"You," I said, barely recognizing my own voice. "You did this?"

"Well," Joe Solomon said, "I had some help."

And then my mother came to join him.

I looked at the two of them, a thousand emotions brewing inside of me as my mother smiled at us and said, "Good job, everyone."

Even Dr. Steve managed a smile. Well … as much of a smile as a guy in serious agony can muster.

"Rebecca?" Mom said. Bex loosened her grip. (She didn't totally let go, though.)

Mr. Solomon looked at his watch. "Forty-two minutes," he said. "Not bad." He turned and called into the darkness. "What do you think, Harvey?"

Mr. Mosckowitz stepped into the plane's open doorway— Mr. Mosckowitz who had worn a fake mustache; Mr. Mosckowitz who I had single-handedly tricked into untying me during my midterm final last fall; Mr. Mosckowitz, who was maybe the least seasoned field operative of the entire Gallagher Academy staff, smiled and bounced on the balls of his feet.

"Hi, girls," he said brightly. "How'd I do?"

Oh. My. Gosh.

The rain grew lighter around us. The pounding of my heart began to slow, and I felt my fears wash away and then get replaced by an emotion that I couldn't quite name.

"It …" I stumbled. "It was … a test?"

"Our job isn't to get you ready for tests, Ms. Morgan," Mr. Solomon corrected. "Our job is to get you ready for life."

I saw spotlights flash, felt the dim sky growing brighter and brighter, until the mist that hung in the air formed a massive rainbow over the abandoned buildings, the dark, empty lots. I watched the lights come on—in a lot of ways.

"So you wanted to see if we could do it for real?" Tina asked.

"No," my mom said. "We had to see if you could do it"— she looked at the boys and then at us—"together."

Our teachers turned and started through the rain toward the waiting vans while, behind us, the plane began to taxi down the runway, its lights fading in the distance. I should have been happy. After all, the secrets of my sisterhood were safe, and I'd just aced my CoveOps final.

Then Mr. Solomon's voice called to us in the distance, "Oh…and welcome to Sub level Two."

Chapter Twenty-eight

There are tests for which even a Gallagher Girl can't study—no notes, no flash cards—just questions you have to answer every day; problems you must solve. I think it's probably true for any life—much less a spy's life—but that night as I lay in bed, listening to the play-by-play in the common room down the hall, I couldn't shake the feeling that maybe the biggest test of the spring semester wasn't really over. I couldn't help but wonder if I'd really made the grade.

"Come on in, kiddo," Mom called as I reached the Hall of History the next morning—long before she could have seen me coming, because…well…my mother's kind of amazing like that.

Her office looked the same as always. Bright sunlight streamed through the windows. The mahogany bookshelves gleamed. And my mother didn't look at all like a woman who had been up hours into the night. There were no bags under her eyes, no telltale traces of yesterday's makeup as she sat in the window seat, a file in her lap. "Are you mad?"

I don't know why the question stumped me, but it did. Though not nearly as much as the answer. "No."

I don't go to a normal school, and I've chosen not to have a normal life—normal tests aren't going to teach me the things I have to know, and the woman in front of me knew that better than anyone.

Mom scooted to the corner of the window seat, and I eased down beside her. "Was any of it real?" I resisted the temptation to ask what I really wanted to know: Were they real? Was Zach real?

I had begun that semester by sitting in the tower room, thinking about how spies don't tell lies—we live them—so it wasn't any wonder that I came to my mother's office that morning looking for some truth. I shouldn't have been surprised when the question I had carried with me the longest finally found a way to seep free.

"What happened to Dad?"

My mother's hand stopped running through my hair. The folder in her lap seemed to slip an inch or two, and I knew I'd broken one of the unwritten rules of the Gallagher Academy: I had asked to hear the story.

"You know what happened to Dad, sweetie."

But I don't know—and that's the problem. Give me a code and I can crack it; tell me a joke in Swahili and I'll know when to laugh. I know a million different facts in more than a dozen different languages…Just don't ask me when or where my father died.

I started to say all this, to ask the questions I need answered, but Mom straightened in the window seat. I felt her pull away. I found myself whispering Zach's words, "Someone knows."

Around us, the school was waking up. I heard laughter through the Hall of History. So I asked the other question that, so far, didn't have an answer. "Why this year?" I asked. "Why now?"

"I think you know the answer to that, sweetie."

And I guess I probably did because I said, "Josh."

"I don't know if you realize it, Cam, but what happened last semester…what happened between you and Josh … it scared a lot of people. It made us reexamine a lot of things."

"Do you mean security?" I asked. "Because I could really point out a blind spot or two they've missed."

"No, sweetie. Something bigger. We've spent millions training you girls with the best curriculum in the world. And yet you don't know much about half of the world's population." Which was true. "The trustees and I felt it was important that Gallagher Girls learn how to communicate with, and trust the men you'll have to work with some day."

Trust. We stake our lives on it, but it's a subject that not even the Gallagher Academy can teach. When do you let your guard down? Who do you let in? And I knew at that moment, as I sat beside my mother, bathing in the warm spring light, that those were the questions a good spy never stops asking.

Mom looked at me—and I could have sworn she was seeing straight through me. "If you hurry, you can catch him."

"Catch who?"

"Zach," Mom said. "The boys…the Blackthorne trustees want them to take finals with their classmates." My mother must have sensed my confusion, because she said, "They're leaving."

"You're already packed," I said when I reached him, because, really, there wasn't anything else to say—or too much—I'm not sure.

He smiled. "We've all got baggage."

A crisp, clean breeze blew through the open doors. Breakfast was waiting. And classes. And finals. But the entire school seemed to be frozen in space and time. The boys carried suitcases and backpacks, while our world got ready to return to normal—whatever that's supposed to be.

I pointed to the bruise on his face. "That looks bad."

But Zach shook his head. "It isn't. He—"

"Hits like a girl?" I teased.