PRO: Waking up in the middle of the night means . . . well . . . waking up.
CON: Eventually, whether you like it or not, your roommates are going to find out about it.
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"Hello, Zachary," Macey said, striding in. "You're looking well."
"Hey, Macey." Zach turned to the shortest and blondest of us and tipped an imaginary hat. "Liz." And then finally, he looked back at Bex. "Rebecca."
If the use of Bex's full name was supposed to make her angry, it was entirely too late. She stood by the door, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed. Someone who didn't know her might have thought she was still tired, but I knew better. She was guarding the exit.
"We were talking about Mr. Solomon, I said.
Macey raised her eyebrows. "Oh, is that what you were doing?"
Bex kept her eyes on Zach. "What have you heard?" She asked.
Zach shook his head. "Not much more than you have. The Circle broke him out. The CIA is saying its because he's with the Circle, but really -"
"It's because he's against them," Bex finished.
Zach nodded. "In almost two hundred years no one has come closer to bringing down the Circle than Mr. Solomon." Zach cut his eyes at me. "And your dad." He waited, as if I might burst into tears or something, but I didn't. "The Circle needs to know what Joe knows, and what he's told others."
"Like me?" I guessed.
Zach nodded slowly. "I'm willing to bet they're going to have a lot of questions about you."
"Good," Bex said. "That means they'll keep him alive."
I turned back to the window, stood staring out at the shadowy grounds. They need him alive.
"We're going to get him back. We have to get him back." I felt my roommates looking at me like was crazy, but I turned to Zach. "Where would they take him?"
"I don't know."
"Don't lie to me, Zach. Don't tell me you don't know things, because you do. Now where would they take him?"
"I don't know! Do you think I'd be here if I knew?"
I've seen Zach in a lot of lights, but in the early morning haze, I saw him as he really was: a scared, parentless boy with absolutely no place to turn.
"What about the man the CIA has in custody - the one who shot Abby?" Macey asked.
"He might know."
But Bex was shaking her head. "He's compromised. No way the Circle is using anything he ever knew about."
"So that's just . . . it?" Liz asked. I could see it weighing on her. There were no databases to crack, no satellites to hack into. I thought about Mr. Solomon and his insistence that technology is a crutch, and a real spy should always be able to walk without it.
"Mr. Solomon would know," I admitted softly. "I wish we could ask him."
The room was quiet in the gray light of early morning. The school still slept. No one was jogging across the grounds. We were alone when Zach whispered, "Maybe we can."
* * *
"What do you mean there is a second journal?" Bex asked ten minutes later. She was looking at Zach, and Zach was looking afraid.
"The one Mr. Solomon hid in Sublevel Two was your dad's Cammie. If anything ever happened . . . it was supposed to go to you. It was your dad's, so now it's yours. But Joe kept one too. It goes all the way back to his time with Circle - all the way back to Blackthorne."