I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Chapter Twenty-five

With finals and the stress that comes with them, I didn't really see Liz again until supper the following night when she brought her slice of pizza and came to sit beside me. "So, where did you go last night?" she asked. But before I could answer, she said, "To see Josh?"

I nodded.

"You didn't break up with him, did you?" She sounded genuinely concerned.

"No," I said, shocked.

"Good." Then she must have sensed my confusion because she said, "He's good to you, and you deserve that." She looked around the Grand Hall at the hundred other girls who were like us. "We all deserve that."

Yeah, I realized, I think we do.

I stole a glance at Bex who sat beside me, laughing. We all deserve laughter and love and the kinds of friends I had beside me, but as I watched her, I couldn't help but wonder if she'd still find life so funny if she knew all I knew. I wondered if our fathers' fates had been reversed, would our personalities have switched, too? Would I be the one standing in the Grand Hall allowing Anna Fetterman to demonstrate how she'd defended herself against a mob of twenty angry townspeople (because, by that time, the mob had grown considerably)? Would Bex, beautiful Bex, be a chameleon, then?

"Ms. Baxter!" I turned to see Professor Buckingham starting toward us. I felt my heart stop—literally. (It can do that—I know, I asked Liz.) She was walking toward us, bearing down like the force of nature she was.

Macey was across the table from me, and we glanced at each other—an unspoken dread lingering between us like the smell of olive oil and melting cheese, but beside me, Bex was unfazed, and I remembered the power of a secret.

As she drew near, I tried to read something in Buckingham's eyes, but they were as cold and blank as stone.

"Miss Baxter, I just had a phone call…" Buckingham started and then, ever so slightly, turned her gaze toward me. "…from your father." Air returned to my lungs. Blood started moving in my veins, and I'm pretty sure Buckingham gave something that resembled a wink in my direction. "He said to tell you hello."

My elbows fell to the table, and across from me, Macey mirrored my relief. It was over.

"Oh," Bex said, but she hadn't even stopped chewing. "That's nice."

She would never know how nice.

I glanced toward the head table, and Mom raised a glass in my direction. Beside me, Bex didn't breathe a sigh of relief. She didn't say a prayer. She didn't do any of the things I felt like doing, but that's okay, I guess. Her father was still on his high wire. It was just as well she'd never looked up.

Almost everyone had gone upstairs twenty minutes later when Bex and I started to leave.

"So, what do you want to do now?" Bex asked.

"I guess we could do anything," I said, and it was true. We were leaving the hall, and it didn't matter where we were going. We were trained and we were young and we had the rest of our lives to carry the worry of grown-ups. Right then, I just wanted to celebrate with my best friend—even if she didn't know why.

"Let's get all the ice cream we can carry and …"

But then I saw Liz running down the spiral staircase, crying, "Cammie!" as if I hadn't already stopped. And then Liz whispered, or at least she tried to whisper, but I swear everyone in the entire mansion must have heard her when she said, "It's Josh!"

Wars have been won and lost, assassination attempts have been thwarted, and women have avoided showing up at the same event in the same dress—all because of really good intel. That's why we have entire classes devoted to this stuff. But as Liz dragged me into our suite, I didn't really appreciate its importance until I saw the screen. "These were here when I got back from supper." Poor Liz. She'd done this amazing job of getting us patched into Josh's system, and I could tell by looking at her that she would have given just about anything to undo it all right then. Ignorance is bliss, after all. But the problem is, for spies, ignorance is usually pretty short-lived.

From D'Man

To JAbrams

Have you come to your senses yet? I'm telling you—I saw her WITH MY OWN EYES. You've got to believe me now. SHE GOES TO THE GALLAGHER ACADEMY!! She's been lying to you!! How can you take HER word over MINE?

From JAbrams

To D'Man

I trust Cammie. I believe her. You probably just thought you saw her walking with a bunch of those girls on Saturday. She doesn't even know them. Trust me. Give it a break.

Dillon's response was a single line.

From D'Man To JAbrams Tonight. 9:00. WE'LL GET PROOF!

Now, at this point I was starting to panic, which isn't very spylike, but is pretty girl-like, so I figured I was well within my feminine rights. The "proof" to which I'd seen teenage boys refer in movies usually involved video equipment and/or feminine undergarments, so I yelled, "Oh my gosh!" and started looking around for Liz's flash cards. Surely somewhere in all that vat of knowledge there had to be instructions on what to do when your cover is completely and irrevocably blown.

Paced with the knowledge that the operation had been severely compromised, The Operatives formed a list of alternatives, which included (but were not limited to) the following:

A. Misdirection: in a variation of the "you must have seen someone who looks like me" approach, one of The Operatives could impersonate Cammie and climb the wall while Cammie looks on with Josh and Dillon and says, "Is that who you saw?" (Which is especially effective when The Subject is nearsighted.)

B. Sympathy: this technique has not only been used successfully by spies for many centuries, but it is also a staple of teenage girls. The conversation would likely resemble the following:

JOSH: Cammie, is it true you attend the Gallagher Academy, home of filthy rotten heiresses, and are not homeschooled, as you initially told me?

CAMMIE: (instantly bursts into tears—note: tears are very important!) Yes. It's true. I do go to the Gallagher Academy, but no one there understands me. It's not a school; (dramatic pause) it's a prison. I'll understand if you never want to see me again.

JOSH: How could I ever hate you, Cammie? I love you. And, if possible, now I love you even more.

C. Elimination: Dillon, aka D'Man, could be "taken out." (This alternative failed to achieve universal support.)

These were all pretty good options (well, not C, but I felt as if I owed it to Bex to at least include it), but as I weighed them in my mind, and nine o'clock drew closer, I knew there was another option. One we hadn't put on paper.

Josh and Dillon were coming to get proof, and even though the rumor that the security division had recently invested in poisonous darts probably wasn't true, I still didn't want to think about what would happen if Josh came looking for me—now or ever. And when I thought about it that way, I really only had one choice.

"I'll be back soon," I said as I shoved Josh's earrings in my pocket and reached for my silver cross, clinging to my legend till the end.

I walked toward the door as Bex called, "What are you gonna tell him?"

I didn't stop as I said, "The truth."