I looked at my roommates, knowing that for the next hour, somehow, someway, the four of us had to be better.
"Who has eyes?" I whispered as I felt the man pass behind me.
"He's going to the buffet," Bex said, but unless you could hear her you would have sworn she was talking about the weather.
"What's he doing?" Liz asked. (Her face and voice, I'm sorry to say , were significantly less covert.)
"Apple," Macey said. Her blue eyes seemed especially big and bright as she looked at me and whispered again, "Apple."
It took four seconds for Liz to take the syringe from her bag. Her hands were shaking as I pulled the apple from my tray and held it beneath the table.
"You do realize this is probably illegal, right?" I asked, but Liz looked up at me and smiled as if I were the mast naïve girl in the world.
"It can't be illegal, Cam. It's research."
So that was it. Our teacher's fate, my safety, and Liz's GPA all hinged on what we were about ot do.
"You're doing great, Lizzie," Bex said, but still Liz's hand trembled.
"Liz . . ." Macey started.
"Got it!" Liz said, and in the next second the apple passed beneath the table from Liz's hand to Bex's.
In a flash, Bex was up and walking toward the door while Townsend did the same. Three seconds later my best friend was stumbling into him. The apple he's been carrying slipped from his grasp and tumbled through the sir, right into Bex's outstretched palm.
"Mind where you're going, Baxter," he said as she handed one apple back to him. But there was a glint in Bex's eyes as she turned her back to us, pulled another apple from behind her back, and took a big bite.
I just sat there wondering what Grandma Morgan would say if she knew what we were doing - no doubt something about forbidden fruit.
The Operatives engaged in a basic four-man rotating surveillance detail, tracking The Target through the Gallagher Mansion.
It would have been nice to have comms units. Every operative in the world can tell you the extreme disadvantages of tailing someone who knows what you look like. And to be perfectly honest, it's always easier when your co-agents are all well-trained and confident field agents and not . . . well . . . Liz.
"Oopsy daisy," Liz whispered as she missed a step on the big stone staircase that led to the old chapel.
I could hear Townsend's steps in the corridor above me. After forty-five minutes of following him through the library and watching from a window while Bex trailed him across the grounds - not to mention one very scary moment involving Liz, a suit of armor, and Professor Buckingham's black cat - my roommates and I paused on the steps, listening as Townsend walked faster, but toward what or who, I didn't know until I heard him call, "Mosckowitz, a word."
"Oh, hello, Agent Townsend! Out for a run I see. I tried running for a while. It was really a good . . . fit for me."
Which was sort of an understatement if you ask any of the girls who remember the semester we had to have encryption lessons on the ground floor because Mr. Mosckowitz sprained both his ankles by falling into a ditch.
I watched Bex ease ahead, then signal to the three of us to follow her up the stairs.
Crouched on the landing, I could see two shadows - Agent Townsend's much longer and leaner that Mr. M's - as they stretched across the floor.
"Look here, Mosckowitz," Townsend said. I didn't hear a footstep but I saw his shadow move. "I was told you were a codes man."
"I . . . I am," Mr. Mosckowitz said, but he sounded like he didn't quite believe it.
"I was under the impression that you were the best."
"I'm . . . pretty good," Mr. Mosckowitz said, which was perhaps the understatement of the century.
"So why haven't you cleared up this mess with the sublevels? They're used for the instruction of Covert Operatives, are they not?" Townsend said.
"Well, yes . . ."
"And I am the Covert Operations instructor, am I not?"