I had to buy some time—a minute, thirty seconds at least—so Bex, Liz, and Macey could pull themselves from their hiding places and get out of there.
So I said, "Oh, hello, Mr. Solomon," because Madame Dabney has trained me to be socially gracious, and Mr. Solomon himself has trained me to act normal under the most abnormal circumstances.
"Ms. Morgan, I hate to bother you, but…" Mr. Solomon looked past me toward my mother. "Those records you asked for, Rachel." He handed Mom a plain brown envelope.
An envelope bearing the word Blackthorne in Mr. Solomon's careful writing.
And then time got really slow again.
"Cam?" Mom said behind me. "You really aren't feeling well, are you sweetie?"
"No," I muttered. I was staring at the first piece of concrete evidence that Blackthorne wasn't some weird dream I'd had, and yet I just stood there, looking at my Covert Operations instructor but seeing the man in the picture—my father's friend.
"Okay, I'm going to go," I said with a glance at my mother. "And you guys have probably got… stuff… to do. And …"
I could have said a dozen things in a dozen languages, but before I could blurt a single one I heard a voice at the end of the Hall of History call, "There you are!"
And then the thing that I'd been fearing happened: Mr. Solomon turned around.
But there's a difference between getting caught and allowing yourself to be found, and right then, Macey, Bex, and Liz were walking through the Hall of History, hiding in plain sight.
"We can't hold movie night forever, Cam," Bex said.
So I turned my back on my mom and Mr. Solomon, and then, envelope or not, I walked away.
Do you know how many things I was feeling as we got to the room? A lot. A lot. For starters, there was the crab-puff thing. And then there was the envelope thing. But as soon as our door was closed and our stereo was on, I turned to my best friends and cried, "You planted surveillance equipment in the Hall of History while my mother was in her office!" because I guess that was the thing I felt the loudest.
"Oh, Cam," Bex said, shrugging slightly. "It was just a little recon."
Deep down, all I really wanted to do was put on my comfy pajamas and go to sleep and brush the crab-puff taste out of my mouth (but not necessarily in that order.) But instead I snapped, "Yeah, well you almost got caught—you almost got me caught. And getting debriefed by the security department isn't as much fun as it sounds, guys." I forced a laugh. "Trust me."
I said it kind of snotty, but Bex didn't answer. She didn't even get mad. Instead, she looked at me as only a best friend-slash-spy-slash-person-who-has-been-trained-on-reading-body-language can do. She climbed onto her bed and crossed her long legs. "You found something."
I could have denied it. I could have lied. But right then I was in the one room in the mansion where I could never disappear.
"Actually, I did." I told them what I'd found in my mother's desk. I listed the contents of her trash—even the shades of her lipstick. And finally, I told them about the envelope.
"We've got to get it!" Bex exclaimed, sounding as excited as a kid on Christmas morning. "We can wait until everyone goes to bed and then break into the office."
"That's not a good idea, Bex," I said as I slipped on my pajamas, took off my watch, and pulled my hair into an old stretched-out hairband.
"Come on, Cam," Bex pleaded, while Macey and Liz looked on. "If anyone can get into the headmistress's office, it's you!"
"No!" I snapped, maybe because I knew better than to let Bex work up any momentum; maybe because I was still completely on edge. But maybe because sometimes a girl just really needs to snap at someone who she knows will forgive her later.
I started for the bathroom, but Bex was right behind me. "Why not?"
"Because it's not a game," I said, talking louder than I wanted, but somehow unable to lower my voice. "Because sometimes spies get caught. Because sometimes spies get hurt. Because sometimes—"
"We've got pictures!" Liz cried triumphantly. Thin wires ran from my new watch to her computer. Images flashed across the screen. Crab puffs. File folders. And finally…
Dad.
Because sometimes spies don't come home.
The picture I had taken filled the screen. My jeans were like a denim border—a frame behind the snapshot that had landed on my lap. Liz zoomed in. She magnified.
"Ooh," Macey said. "Who's the hottie?"