But as I lay with Zach in the dark at the top of the ridge, I heard him breathing. His arm was arm against mine, and I feared I might sweat or fidget, that he might feel the blood that was pumping too fast through my body and guess the thoughts that were raging inside of me - all the things I didn't trust him to see or know.
I tried to pull away, but he put his hands on my shoulders and held me there. I knew that the Blackthorne Institute lay just beyond that ridge with its guards and teachers and little Joe-Solomons-in-training, and yet it felt like Zach and I were the only people on earth as he pressed his body against mine.
His hands moved to cup my face, and in the faint traces of light, I saw his eye perhaps more clearly than I ever had.
Zach saw me.
Zach knew me.
I was anything but invisible as we lay in the shadows, his face inches away from mine.
"Stay here," he whispered. I felt the words brush across my skin. "Pleas, Gallagher Girl, just stay here."
I wanted to pull away ,to remind him that I was a big girl, a highly trained operative, a spy - that I'd been training for this mission my entire life, and I wasn't going to be left on the sidelines. But in that dim space with Zach pressed tightly against me, only one thought came to mind. I kissed him - longer and deeper than I ever had before. The school was not watching us this time. There was nothing playful in his tone. We were just two people kissing as if for the first time, as if it might be the last.
And then I broke away. "So," I asked, as if I got kissed like that all the time (which, believe me, I don't), "where is it you're taking me again?"
"The tombs."
Chapter Thirty-Eight
In the next twenty minutes, I broke maybe a dozen rules of covert operations.
After all, I didn't know where we were going. I had no idea what we were going to find when we got there. I hadn't planned alternate entry strategies, exit strategies, or strategies for keeping my ponytail from blowing in my face. All I knew for certain was that Zach's hand was gripping mine (despite verifiable research that people are way stealthier when holding on to nothing), and that Bex's voice was the only familiar thing I could hear.
"Chameleon, what did he say again?" she asked through the comms unit in my ear as Zach and I covered the open ground beyond the ridge at a full run. "Because we're searching the database for 'tombs,' but -"
"It's not in the database," Zach cut in.
"Is it some kind of cemetery? We can't find an entrance on the -"
"There are no recorded entrances."
"Or references to it anywhere," Bex finished.
Zach looked at me. "It's not the kind of place that gets referenced."
"Cameras passing in three, two, drop!" Liz commanded from her watch post, and Zach and I fell to the ground like stones.
"Roll," Liz said, and I propelled myself down a steep incline and landed in a muddy ditch.
I heard voices coming from above us, footsteps as the Blackthorne Boys ran past in perfect unison, while Zach and I continued crawling through the mud.
"Wait, it's not an actual tomb, is it?" Macey asked. It seemed like an excellent question, but Zach was silent, still crawling away from the buildings and the guards, and toward the mountain that formed the backdrop of the school.
"What are the tombs, Zach?" I asked again when we reached the base of the first hill and climbed out of the ditch and into the shelter of the trees. The ground was rough and steep.
We walked along a path that was overgrown with weeds and brush - as if the wilderness were trying to reclaim it.
"Guys, you're clear now," Liz said from two miles away, but I'd already sensed it.
The marching boys were gone. No cameras could possibly reach us through the dense canopy of trees.
Only a single ray of moonlight sliced through the limbs. I remember that now - how I could so plainly see the features of Zach's face, the look in his eyes as he started pushing aside the moss-covered rocks that sat on the steep mountainside.
"What are you looking for?"
"There should be an entrance around here somewhere." He kicked at the dead leaves and fallen brush that covered the forest floor. "It'll be hidden - made to blend in. but there should be a switch, or maybe . . ."