He pulled his jacket from the back of the chair and turned to walk away. "Of course, I'm not all good, either."
I sat staring at the bug, thinking about what it meant, as Zach turned the corner and called, "Thanks for the date!"
"What's that supposed to mean?" Liz demanded, but I didn't know which part of my horrendous night she was referring to—the part where Zach had said he wasn't all good or all bad, or how he had routinely employed countersurveillance measures (a sign of the truly cautious and/or guilty), or that he'd thought we'd had a date! To tell you the truth, they all made me want to throw up.
Our observation post was dusty and cramped, so we sat on the floor, surrounded by candy wrappers and half-eaten bags of microwave popcorn, notebooks, and charts; and the only thing that was clear was that no matter how much it seemed like normal boys played mind games—going to school with boys who have had actual classes on the subject is infinitely harder.
"So did he think it was a real date?" Liz asked Macey. "Because he didn't buy her anything. Or was it just a study date? Or did he see it as some kind of date with destiny or—"
"Shhh," Bex said, holding an earpiece to her ear. "We've got audio!" she said, bright eyes shining.
21:08 hours: Audio surveillance captured, a conversation in which many of The Subjects agreed that Headmistress Morgan is a "smokin' babe," even though The Operatives know for a fact that Rachel Morgan opposes all forms of nicotine use.
"So he didn't get all the bugs?" Liz asked.
"Or he left some," I said, running through all the possible scenarios. "Maybe he wants us to keep listening so they can feed us false information. Or maybe he really did miss some bugs. Or maybe he left some in the other boys-rooms because he wants us to suspect them. Or maybe those other boys really did breach security, but Zach just can't say so because he's bound by some kind of freaky blood-oath-brotherhood pact that—"
"Cam!" Macey snapped, jerking me back to reality. (I fully admit the blood oath thing was a little out there, but the other options were totally viable.) "He gave you the bug either to show you he's on to you, or to mess with your head, and…it's working."
Spying is a game, and so is dating, I guess. It's all about strategy and playing to your strengths. People think espionage is all fun and games—that everything we do is cat and mouse, but that night I learned a CoveOps lesson as valuable as anything Joe Solomon had taught me. Real life in the clandestine services isn't cat and mouse—it's cat and cat.
Chapter Twenty-two
"Lies," Mr. Solomon said the next morning as he walked into the classroom. "We tell them to our friends," he said. "We tell them to our enemies. And eventually…we tell them to ourselves." He turned to write on the board.
"A lie is typically accompanied by what physical symptoms, Ms. Lee?" Mr. Solomon prompted.
"Dilated pupils, increased pulse, and atypical mannerisms," Kim said as I racked my brain, trying to remember if any of those things had been true with Zach the night before. If anything he'd ever said had been true.
"Spies tell lies, ladies and gentlemen, but that's not what today is about. Today," Mr. Solomon said, "is about how to spot them. Now, a seasoned operative will know how to control their pulse and voice, but for the purpose of today's lesson, I think these will come in handy."
He handed each of us something that looked like the mood rings Bex and Liz and I had bought in Roseville in the eighth grade. "Dr. Fibs has been kind enough to share these prototypes of a new portable voice-stress analyzer he's developing," Solomon continued. "It's equipped with a microchip that will monitor a person's voice, and if they are lying, it will vibrate very softly, alerting the wearer to the he."
The piece of plastic in my hands looked cheap— practically worthless—but like most things at the Gallagher Academy, there was a lot more to it than met the eye
"You have to be close to your subject," Mr. Solomon explained as he walked to Tina Walters's desk. "And the rings can be fooled, with training. For example, ask me a question, Ms. Walters—any question."
Tina hesitated a second or two before exclaiming, "Do you have a girlfriend?"
Half the class giggled and the other sat silently in semi-horror. Joe Solomon bit back a smile and said, "No."
Tina's eyes were glued to the ring on her right hand as she said, "Nothing. It didn't do anything. So it's true?"
"Ask me again," Mr Solomon said.
"Do you have a girlfriend?"
This time Mr. Solomon said, "Yes." A moment later Tina was shaking her hand like it had fallen asleep or something. "It's not broken, Ms. Walters," Mr. Solomon said knowingly. "It's just not as good at detecting lies as I am at telling them."
I couldn't help myself; I glanced at Zach, who caught me looking.
"Partner with the person across from you," Mr. Solomon said, and an uneasy feeling settled in my stomach. "Watch their eyes, pay attention to their voice. And see if you can guess who's lying."
I know I'm not the first girl in history who'd ever had that mission, but I felt like there'd never been so much riding on it. "Oh," Zach said with a quick raise of his eyebrows, "this should be fun." I didn't need the ring on my finger to tell me he totally wasn't lying.