Free Cross My Heart And Hope To Spy by Ally Carter Page B

later. Sure, we had the stereo blaring and the shower running, but Liz still whispered, “They really…exist?”
    “Liz,” I whispered back. “They’re not unicorns.”
    No,” Bex said flatly, “they’re boys. And they’re…good.”
    Dampness weighed my hair, steam fogged the bathroom mirror, but the four of us kept the door closed, because A) Steam is excellent for your pores. And B) The biggest news in the history of our sisterhood was sweeping through the halls of a place where eavesdropping is both an art and a science. So needless to say, my roommates and I weren’t taking any chances.
    “Maybe it’s not what you think,” Liz said. “Maybe they weren’t from Blackthorne at all. Maybe they just looked young. Maybe—”
    “Oh,” Bex said simply, “it was them.”
    As I dropped to the edge of the bathtub and rested my head in my hands, I knew nothing hurt as much my pride.
    “I can’t believe I actually talked to him,” I finally admitted. “I can’t believe I actually
told
him where I was going!”
    “It couldn’t have been that bad, Cam,” Liz said, dropping to sit beside me.
    “Oh, it was worse! He was…and I was…and then…” But I gave up because, in all of my fourteen languages, there wasn’t a single word that could express the anger-slash-humiliation that was coursing through my veins.
    “So,” Macey said, hopping onto the counter and crossing her long legs, “just how hot was this guy?”
    Oh. My. Gosh.
    “Macey!” I moaned. “Does it matter?”
    Bex nodded. “He was pretty hot.”
    “Guys,” I pleaded, “the hotness is really beside the point.”
    “But exactly what kind of hot was he?” Liz asked as she pulled open her notebook and grabbed a pen. “I mean, would you say he was pretty-boy hot, like Leonardo DiCaprio the early years, or ruggedly-handsome hot, like George Clooney the later years?”
    I was about to remind her that neither kind of hot could justify my revealing the location of a clandestine rendezvous, when Bex answered for me. “Rugged. Definitely rugged.” Macey nodded her approval.
    Down the hall, the rest of the sophomore class was hacking into the Smithsonian surveillance system and running the pictures of every male between the ages of twelve and twenty-two who had been on the Mall that day through the FBI’s facial recognition program. At least a dozen girls were in the library scouring the very books we had abandoned days before.
    Still, no one had said the name Blackthorne. No one had mentioned the East Wing.
    Liz closed her notebook. “Well, now we know what your mom and Mr. Solomon were talking about. And it’s over.” She smiled. “You never have to see him again.”
    Then she seemed to consider the naiveté of what she’d just said. “Do you?”

    By four a.m. I was seriously starting to resent Joe Solomon and all of his “use your memory” training, because at that point I would have given my entire life savings (which were $947.52) to forget what had happened.
    Bex was lying in the light of the window, smiling a devilish smile, probably dreaming of hostile takedowns and elaborate covers. Liz was curled up against the wall, taking up no more room than a doll, and Macey lay on her back sleeping peacefully despite the wheezing sound of air rushing past the great big diamond in her nose. But me? All I could do was stare at the ceiling and pray for sleep, until I finally threw off my covers and brought my bare feet to the cold hardwood floor.
    I swear I didn’t know where I was going. Seriously. I didn’t. I just slipped on a pair of tennis shoes—no socks— and crept toward the door.
    Every spy knows that sometimes you just have to go on adrenaline and instinct, so when I found myself wandering the dark empty hallways, I didn’t ask why. When I started down the second-floor corridor, I didn’t tell myself to turn around.
    Moonlight fell through the stained glass windows at the far end of the corridor. I crept toward the tall