It shouldn't have been that hard—not the brush passes, not the questions Mr. Solomon fired through our comms units at regular intervals. None of it. But as I climbed out of the van I knew this was going to be one of the toughest assignments I'd ever been on. Because, for starters, at eleven a.m. on a Friday morning, there isn't a lot of pedestrian traffic on the town square in Roseville, Virginia, and everyone knows pedestrian traffic is key when trying to covertly pass something between two agents.
Also, despite the bright sun and cloudless sky, it was still pretty cold outside, so I could either wear gloves and potentially inhibit my quarter-handling ability, or go gloveless and allow my hands to freeze.
And, of course, there is the fact that your partner is your lifeline during covert operations, and at that moment, my partner was Zach.
"Come on, Gallagher Girl," he said as he headed for the square. "This should be fun."
But it didn't sound like fun—at all. Fun is movie marathons; fun is experimenting with fourteen kinds of ice cream and creating your own custom flavor. Fun is not hanging out in the place where I had met, kissed, and broken up with the world's sweetest boy. And participating in a clandestine training exercise with a different boy who wasn't sweet at all.
The gazebo still stood in the center of the square. The movie theater was behind me, and the Abrams and Son Pharmacy—Josh's family's business—was exactly where it had been for seventy years. Things are supposed to look different when you come back, but despite the sight of my classmates walking two by two down sidewalks, everything was exactly as I'd remembered. Not even the purses displayed in the Anderson's Accessories window had changed; for a second it felt like the past two months hadn't happened.
"So," Zach said as he stretched out on the steps of the gazebo, "come here often?"
The loose stone where Josh and I had hidden our notes— my first dead-letter drop—was just a foot away so I shrugged and said, "I used to, but then the deputy director of the CIA made me promise to stop." Zach laughed a quiet, half-laugh as he squinted up at me through the sun.
In my earpiece, I heard Mr. Solomon say, "Okay, Ms. Walters, you're it. Be aware of your casual observers, and let's make those passes quick and clean."
I saw Tina and Eva walking past each other on the south side of the square; their palms brushed for a split second as the quarter passed between them. "Well done," said Mr. Solomon.
Zach tilted his head back, closed his eyes, and soaked in the sun as if he'd been coming to that gazebo his whole life.
"So what about you?" I asked, once the silence became too much. "Exactly where does the Blackthorne Institute call home?"
"Oh." He cocked an eyebrow. "That's classified."
I couldn't help myself: I got annoyed. "So you can sleep inside the walls of my school, but I can't even know where yours is?"
Zach laughed again, but it was different this time, not mocking but deeper, as if I were on the outside of a joke I could never hope to understand. "Trust me, Gallagher Girl, you wouldn't want to sleep in my school."
Okay, I have to admit at that point my spy genetics and teenage curiosity were about to overwhelm me.
Through my comms unit, I heard Mr. Solomon say, "Two men are playing chess in the southwest corner of the square. How many moves from checkmate is the man in the green cap, Ms. Baxter?"
Bex replied "Six" without even breaking stride as she and Grant strolled along the opposite side of the street.
"What do you mean? Why can't you tell me?"
"Just trust me, Gallagher Girl." He straightened on the gazebo steps, placed his elbows on his knees, and something more substantial than a quarter seemed to pass between us as he stared at me. "Can you trust me?"
A torn and faded movie ticket blew across the grass. Mr. Solomon said, "Ms. Morrison, you just passed three parked cars on Main Street; what were their tag numbers?" and Mick rattled off her response.
But Zach's gaze never left mine and I thought his question might have been the hardest of them all.
In the reflection of the pharmacy window I saw Eva drop the quarter in the open bag at Courtney's feet while, through my comms unit, Mr. Solomon warned, "There was an ATM behind you, Ms. Alvarez. ATMs equal cameras. Tighten it up, ladies."
Zach nodded and said, "Solomon's good." As if it didn't go without saying.
"Yeah. He is."
"They say you're good, too." And then, despite some very rigorous P&E training, I think a feather could have knocked me over, because A) I had no idea who "they" were or where they got their information. And B) Even if it was reliable intel, I never dreamed Zachary Goode, of all people, would say so.
"Okay, Zach," Mr. Solomon said. "Without turning around, tell me how many windows overlook the square from the west side."
"Fourteen." Zach didn't miss a beat. His eyes didn't leave me for a second. Then to me he said, "They say you're a real pavement artist."
Zach leaned back on the steps again. "You know, it's probably a good thing we got to tail you in D.C. If you'd been following me, I probably never would have seen you."
It was supposed to be a compliment—I know it was. After all, for a spy, there's probably no higher praise. But right then, as I stood in the place where I'd had my first date—my first kiss—I didn't hear it as a spy; I heard it as a girl. And for a girl, having a boy like Zach Goode tell you that he would never notice you isn't a compliment. At all.