"Yes, sir."
"Your team was tasked with retrieving a disk with pertinent information. You were captured and are being held for interrogation. The retrieval team will be after two packages. Care to guess what they are?"
"The disk and me?"
"Bingo."
"You can't be certain that they can track you to this location." I heard him step away, his feet scraping across the concrete floor.
"Are they Gallagher Girls?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Then they'll be here."
Fifteen minutes later, I was locked in a room. I was blindfolded and tied to a chair and thanking my lucky stars that they'd made it so easy on me.
They'd left me with Mr. Mosckowitz.
"I really do feel bad, Mr. M," I said. "Really."
"Um, Cammie, I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to be talking."
"Oh, right. Sorry." I shut up for about twelve seconds. "It's just that if I'd known it was a test, I never would have used one of the forbidden moves—I swear!"
"Oh." A heavy silence filled the room as I waited for Mr. Mosckowitz's inevitable, "Forbidden?"
"Don't worry. I'm sure you're okay. It's not like you're light-headed or seeing spots or anything."
"Oh, dear."
For the world's foremost authority on data encryption, Harvey Mosckowitz was pretty much an open book.
"Hey, Mr. M, don't worry," I said, trying to sound all fake-calm. "It's only a problem if the red splotches appear on the small of your back. You don't have red splotches. Do you?"
That's when I heard the sounds of a certified genius spinning around in circles like a dog chasing its tail.
"I can't…Oh, the light-headedness is getting worse." (I didn't doubt it—he'd been spinning pretty fast.) "Here." He ripped the blindfold off. "You look."
Sadly, it was just that easy, and it would have been a lot easier if I hadn't been afraid to use any of the actual forbidden moves (mainly because I like Mr. Mosckowitz, and I didn't have written permission from the Secretary of Defense and all). Still, Mr. Mosckowitz was a pretty good sport about it.
"Oh, you girls," he said in a very awshucks way, once I had him tied to the chair.
"Just sit tight, Mr. M. It'll be over soon."
"Um, Cammie?" he asked as I headed for the door. "I wasn't too bad, was I?"
"You were awesome."
The first thing I had to do was get out of that room. The disk wasn't there—if it was, no way would Mr. Solomon have left only Mr. Mosckowitz to guard it, so I darted through the empty warehouse to an exit door, checked it for sensors and alarms, then rushed out into the shadows of the complex.
Outside, I felt my eyes adjust to the black. A little light escaped from the building I'd just left, but otherwise I was surrounded by nothing but old rusty steel, and dark, cracked windows. A cold wind blew through the maze, whistling between the buildings, blowing dead leaves and plumes of dust along the gravel lot. I squinted through the night, trying to sense movement of any kind, but if it hadn't been for the glistening new wire of a tall chain fence and some very well-hidden surveillance cameras, I would have sworn the place was a ghost town.
Then I heard crackling static and a familiar voice.
"Bookworm to Chameleon. Chameleon, do you read me?"
"Liz?" I spun around.