brain.
“If I agree to this,” I started, “you have to guarantee I won’t be reprimanded when I get back for taking this little joyride. And you have to swear on the terms, because if you go back on your word, I will tear every thought out of your head until you’re nothing but a drooling puddle of snot. Got it?”
“Atta girl,” Cole said. “That’s my Gem. I’ll see if I can’t get you on the next Op back east. You’ll have to get creative in how you ditch the Minder they send with you, but I think you’re up for the challenge. Address is 1222 West Bucket Road, Wilmington, North Carolina. Can you remember that? Start there. Lee’s a creature of habit; he’ll try heading home to see if our stepdad left a clue about where they were headed.”
I took a deep breath. My body was completely still, but everything inside me seemed to be galloping—my heart, my thoughts, my nerves.
“You can do this,” Cole said quietly. “I know you can. I’ll have your back the whole way.”
“I don’t need your protection,” I said, “but Jude does.”
“The beanpole? Sure. I’ll keep an eye on him.”
“And Vida and Nico.”
“Your wish is my command.” Cole gave a small little bow as he backed out of the curtain. I closed my eyes, trying to block out the familiar tilt of his smile and the way it made my chest feel like it would explode. “Pleasure doing business with you.”
“Hey,” I said suddenly. If anyone might know, it would be another deep cover agent. “Have you heard of an Op they’re calling Snowfall? An agent called Professor?”
“I think I’ve heard of Snowfall, but only that it was a project they were running in Georgia. Why? Want me to look into it for you?”
I shrugged. “If you have time.”
“I have all the time in the world for you, Gem. Trust me on that.”
I was still standing there when the locker room door slammed shut and the last of the water drained at my feet.
Two long, torturous weeks passed before I found the red folder in my locker. I felt each day tick by, went through the carefully structured routine of training, food, training, food, bed. I kept my head down but my thoughts moving. I was too afraid to look anyone in the face on the off chance that he or she would see the guilt or what I was planning. I almost cried, half in relief, half in panic, when I saw the Op folder balanced on my small stack of books.
The locker room was roaring with speculation around me, one voice bleeding into another. Someone had been brave—or stupid—enough during our lesson for the day to ask Instructor Johnson what they had done with Blake’s body and whether we’d have any kind of service for him. Nico had gone green around the gills, but Johnson had only waved the question off.
Team Two’s Leader, a Blue named Erica, was loudly airing her opinion that he was still down in the infirmary being studied, but another, a Green named Jillian, insisted she had seen them take a body bag out through the Tube a few days before.
“They obviously buried him,” she was saying.
I stood by my locker, reading the folder behind the cover of the door. I could hear Vida a few feet away, laughing loudly at something another Blue had suggested. When I turned, I craned my neck around, trying to look into her locker. Good. Nothing but the messy heap of shirts she had shoved in there. She would be here. I could tell Jude and Nico to stay close to her—no one would try anything with her there, not even Jarvin. There was too much sting in that honeybee.
I opened the folder again, letting my eyes skim down each line. Please be East Coast, I thought, please be back east.… I could get to North Carolina so much easier from Connecticut than I could from Texas or northern California.
OP ID: 349022-A
TOD: 15 Dec 13:00
Location: Boston, MA
Massachusetts. I could work with that. Some of the train lines were still running.
Objective: Pull Dr. P.T. Fishburn, Director of Administration Department of Genetics and Complex Diseases Harvard School of Public Health; disable lab.
I felt my stomach clench—“Pull,” meaning I would interrogate him there in Boston at a League safe house, or, if he proved to be uncooperative, we would bring him back to the nearest base. My job. “Disable,” meaning fry, destroy, demolish. The tactical team’s job.
Tact Team: Beta Group
Psi: Tangerine, Sunshine
Minder: TBD
“Oh,” I whispered, feeling leaving my hands completely. “Hell no.”
I left the folder in my locker and slammed it shut, twisted my wet hair back into a loose bun. I was out before anyone could notice I was gone. It was three in the afternoon—if Cate wasn’t in a meeting, she would be in her room, most likely, or in the atrium.
A drip of water fell from my hair onto my cheek and I swiped angrily at it, plowing through the hanging strips of plastic that were, in theory, supposed to help insulate what little warmth we had in HQ. I glanced up at the low ceilings to avoid making eye contact with yet another cluster of agents, stepping off to the side to allow them to pass.
The hair on the back of my neck rose with each step that echoed behind me, keeping pace with my own.
There was someone behind me. There had been since I stepped out of the locker room.
The heavy steps and the throaty gulps of air made me think it was a man. I glanced up as I passed one of the steel beams overhead, but whoever was following me was doing it at the exact right pace. I couldn’t see his reflection, but I could feel him behind me. Feel every ounce of his disgust for me cutting through the hallway’s damp chill, gripping the column of my spine.
But I could feel him hovering behind me, like his fingers were trying to smooth down the goose bumps on my skin. There was no stopping the sudden upswing of my heartbeat. I knew what I could do and that I had enough training to fight someone off, but all I could think about was Blake Howard’s shoe dangling off his pale, stiff toes in the infirmary.
I found the double doors I’d been looking for and burst into the atrium, half out of breath.
They were in the middle of setting the round tables and folding chairs again, returning the space to its usual use as a rec room. Here and there, I saw agents dressed in their finest League sweats, dolling out playing cards, watching the news on the TV screens, or even playing with a mismatched chess set.
Cate came in through the opposite set of doors, cutting a sharp image in her unusually polished navy skirt suit. Her blond hair was twisted back into a tight bun. She absently bumped into an agent sitting at a nearby table, murmuring a faint apology. I didn’t realize she was looking for someone until her eyes landed on my face.
“There you are,” she said, jogging over the best she could in her heels. I opened my mouth, but she held up a hand to quiet me. “I know. I’m sorry. I did everything I could to change Alban’s mind, but he insisted.”
“He’s not sixteen yet!” I said. “He isn’t ready—you
I might as well have socked her in the face. Cate reared back, a look of horror filtering through her usual mask of calm. “I fought to get him off this, Ruby. I assigned Vida to go with you, but someone convinced Alban that Jude should be activated early. They need a Yellow for the security system, and Alban said it didn’t make sense to bring in two different teams on a simple Op.”
