"You lied." My voice was soft, almost bruised. "I know you lied in town, Zach. I know you've seen that man who was on our tail."
"That's what this is about?" Zach exhaled a laugh. "You ditched me in town and organized a war party because I lied about knowing that guy?"
"No, I organized a war party because someone knocked Mr. Mosckowitz out and stole the Gallagher Academy alumni list!" I snapped. I could see terror register in Zach's eyes as he processed what was at stake. The pressure on my arms lessened. He wasn't holding me down anymore; he was just holding me.
And then something seemed to snap inside of Zach. He pulled my right hand in front of my face. "Here. Look at it." Until that moment I'd forgotten about the ring on my finger. "Or better yet, look at me. Watch my eyes, Cammie. I'm not lying." His pupils were even; his pulse was steady; and the truth ring stayed perfectly still as Zach explained, "I'd seen that guy with Dr. Steve before and didn't want to blow his cover. I had no idea he was a threat. I thought he was on a training op or … I don't know…checking up on us or something. I didn't think it was a big deal." He shifted his weight and moved beside me. "I didn't think it was worth explaining in front of…" he trailed off, and I finished.
"Josh and DeeDee." I shook my head, trying to make sense of it all.
"We're not the bad guys, Gallagher Girl," he said gently.
More than anything I wanted to believe him. "Then who is?"
Zach let go of my wrists and pointed into the darkness. "Him."
And then one of the doors to the building across from us opened. I saw four armed guards walk out, and in the fleeting moment before the door closed, I heard a faint "Excellent," and saw the face of Dr. Steve.
"Chameleon," Bex said in my ear. "Did you see that? Did you see who is in that big building? It's—"
"Dr. Steve," I finished for her, and before I could say another word, I heard Eva cry, "Chameleon! The boys— they're here!"
"I know, Chica," I said, using Eva's code name. "Zach's with me."
"He is?" It was Liz. She sounded giddy.
"So that means Tina doesn't have to sit on Grant?" Eva asked.
"No. Tina needs to get off Grant." (Tina didn't sound at all happy about it.) "And bring him to the roof of the building on the northwest corner." I studied the boy beside me. "They've got some explaining to do."
For the next sixty seconds I heard my classmates making their way through the dark grounds, whispering to each other through the comms units as they cleared corners and ducked out of the sight of guards. The Gallagher Girls were coming, but for some reason, there, in the moonlight, with my sisterhood riding on everything I said and did, I found myself looking at Zach.
A few weeks ago, he warned me that I wouldn't want to sleep in his school, and now a semester's worth of cryptic messages and subtle hints had come down to this.
"What's going on, Cam?" Bex asked, as my classmates appeared beside me. She glanced at Zach. "Want me to throw him off the roof?"
"Only if he doesn't tell us what the Blackthorne Institute is and why one of their teachers is out to destroy the Gallagher Girls."
"What do you mean? You know what our school is," Grant said, as if the answer should be obvious. But it wasn't.
Their rooms were freaky clean; there was no trace of them in any record anywhere. They weren't like us— I'd known it all along. But Zach was the one to finally say, "You've got your cover. We've got ours."
"What's that supposed to—" I started, but Zach cut me off.
"You're Gallagher Girls," Zach snapped as the mist turned into rain. It streaked down his face, but he didn't blink; didn't back down. He just stepped closer and said, "We're the stepchild no one ever talks about."
I thought about the military precision of their suites; the new uniforms; the way Zach had stood in the library and told me that he was neither all good nor all bad, and I knew there was more to the story.
"Then what—" I started, but the creak of rusty hinges cut me off; light sliced across the dark lot below as two armed guards left the building across from us and started to patrol the grounds. The question that had seemed so important moments before faded from my mind, and instead I said, "He can't get away. That list can't get away."
"It won't." Zach's words brought me back to another night when the Gallagher Girls stood in the same spot, on our way to rescue a hostage and a package.
This time the stakes were higher.
Zach walked to the edge of the roof and attached a rappelling harness to a cable that skirted down between the buildings, then reached for my hand. "We've got to go now, Cam." His gesture was like that of a gentleman asking a lady to dance. Madame Dabney would have been proud. "Do you trust me?" he asked, and I realized I had come full circle.
Months before I'd stood on that same roof with a different boy and leaped into the darkness toward my destiny.
But this time I wasn't jumping alone.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Zach and I touched down on the stretch of grass that ran between the buildings, thankful for the rain, the clouds—for every trace of darkness Mother Nature could spare as I crouched low and ran through the space between the buildings.