[Gallagher Girls 01] I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have to Kill You

by Ally Carter

  I shut him up with a kiss (a basic technique that, I've been told, even non-spy girls have used with great success). "Let's dance."

  Can I just say that doing the tango with Madame Dabney had totally not prepared me for what actual dances are like? Sure, if I ever have to infiltrate an embassy party, I'll probably be glad I've had C&A, but I could tell as soon as we walked into the barn that I didn't have the training for this. Streamers hung from the rafters above us. Twinkling lights formed a tentlike dome. A flatbed trailer sat along the south wall, and a band was playing an old country song while what looked like the entire population of Roseville danced around in circles. I saw a hayloft above us at the far end of the barn, but where we stood there was nothing above us but rafters and lights. Old women sat on bales of straw, clapping, keeping rhythm as the deputy chief of police (I recognized him from the dunk tank) picked up a fiddle and started to play.

  Little girls danced by, standing on their fathers' feet, and Josh led me to a folding table that was draped with crepe paper. "Well, hi there, honey," said the woman sitting behind it.

  "Hi, Shirley," Josh replied as he reached for his wallet. "Two, please," he said.

  "Oh, honey," she said, "your momma already took care of that."

  Josh looked at me, panic in his eyes, as every ounce of blood in my body turned cold.

  "They're here already?" Josh asked, but before Shirley could answer, I heard someone cry, "Josh! Cammie!"

  The deputy chief of police put down his fiddle, and everyone clapped as the kid who works the ticket booth at the movie theater picked up a saxophone. Everyone on the floor picked up their tempo—especially the thin, immaculate woman who was rushing toward us with her arms outstretched.

  "Josh! Cammie!" Her ivory sweater set and light-colored trousers were just begging for a stain in the dusty barn, but she didn't act like she cared as she pushed her way through the tide of dancing couples—a tall, thin man trailing dutifully behind her.

  "I'm sorry," Josh whispered as he pulled me away from Shirley and toward the stampeding couple. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. We only have to say hi to them. I thought I'd have time to warn—"

  "Cammie, darling!" the woman cried. "Well, if you aren't just the cutest thing?" And then she hugged me. Oh, yeah, a complete stranger actually hugged me—something the Gallagher Academy had totally not prepared me for. She gripped me by the shoulders and stared into my eyes. "I'm Mrs. Abrams. It is so nice to finally meet you!"

  And then she hugged me again!

  Once deep inside enemy territory, The Operative met with high-ranking officials in the organization. She was NOT prepared for this development, but any diversionary tactics would SERIOUSLY compromise the entire operation!

  "Oh," Mrs. Abrams said, "I see you're wearing your corsage." And then she fingered the flowers. "Isn't that lovely?"

  I looked at Josh in his neatly pressed khakis and his button-down shirt, and I suddenly understood why he always dressed less like a high school boy and more like a … pharmacist.

  "Hello, young lady," the man said, once his wife released me. "I'm Joshua's father, Mr. Abrams. And how are you finding our fair town?"

  This isn't good, I thought, realizing I was surrounded. I didn't belong here, and it wasn't going to take Josh's parents long to realize it.

  I thought about my options: A) fake a medical condition and rush outside, B) pick up the pen with which Shirley was writing receipts and do some damage before getting gang tackled by some well-meaning townspeople, or C) think of this as my most deep-cover assignment yet and milk it for all it was worth.

  "It's a very nice town," I said, extending my hand to the man. "Mr. Abrams, so nice to meet you."

  He was tall and had wavy hair like Josh's. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and relished in waving at the people who passed by. "Hi, Carl, Betty," he said to one couple. "Got those new bunion-removing pads you like, Pat."

  "Our family's run this town's pharmacy since 1938," Mrs. Abrams told me proudly.

  Then Mr. Abrams asked, "Has Josh told you about our little business?"

  "Yes," I said. "He has."

  "There's not a person in this room I haven't medicated," Mr. Abrams said, and beside me, I felt Josh choke on the punch his mother had handed him.

  "That's …" I struggled for words. "…impressive."

  He clamped a hand onto his son's shoulder. "And some day, it's all going to belong to this guy."

  "Oh, Jacob," Mrs. Abrams said, "give the poor kid a break." An air of perfection floated all around her even in that dusty barn, and I knew that she'd never been stained, wrinkled, or unaccessorized in her life.

  I tugged at the hem of my skirt and fingered my corsage, feeling naked since I hadn't known to wear my mother's pearls. (Even the ones without the microfilm reader could have come in handy.) There were a lot of things I wanted to ask, like How do you stay so clean? and Does that tooth-whitening gum really work? but I couldn't say any of that, so I just stood there like an idiot, smiling at her, clinging to my cover.

  "Are your parents here, darling?" she asked, and then started scanning the crowd.

  "No," I said, "they're … busy."

  "Oh, what a shame," she said, with a tilt of her head. But she didn't give me time to reply before blurting, "Cammie, I want you to feel as welcome in our house as you do your own."

  Immediately, I started fantasizing about the recon we could set up with that kind of access, but all I could manage to say was, "Oh … Um … Thanks."

  The band changed songs, and Mrs. Abrams leaned close to yell through the noise, "What's your favorite kind of pie?"

  I barely heard her, and was on the verge of shouting, "I'm not a spy!" when I saw Dillon standing on a bale of straw, waving wildly in our direction.

  Josh glanced at his mother but didn't have to say a word before she said, "Okay, darling. You kids go have fun." And then she gave me another hug. THREE HUGS! This was seriously freaking me out.

  "Cammie, darling, you just come over any time, okay? And when you get a chance, give our number to your parents. Maybe they'd be interested in joining our bridge club."

  The last bridge my parents had anything to do with involved the Gansu Province, dynamite, and a really ticked-off yak, but I just smiled and said, "Thanks."

  As Josh pulled me away, I risked a glance back. Mr. Abrams had his arm around his wife's shoulders, and Mrs. Abrams raised her hand in a sad half-wave, as if she were freezing that bit of Josh in space and time. So those are normal parents. I studied the boy beside me who longed for a life in Mongolia and wasn't allowed to leave the house in anything wrinkled or stained, and another piece of his code fell into place—he was a little less encrypted.

  I started walking toward Dillon and the crowd of kids our age (if you're going to do the deep-cover thing you might as well do it all the way), but Josh tugged at my hand, stopping me.

  "Come on, let's dance."

  "But"—I pointed to the teenage mob—"aren't those your friends?"

  Josh looked at them. "Yeah, those are the kids from my school."

  "If you want to go say hi or something …"

  "Let me think," he said, teasing. "I could dance with the prettiest girl at the party or go hang out with a bunch of idiots I see all day every day. What do you think?"

  I thought he was getting some serious bonus points for the prettiest girl at the party line, was what I thought, but that didn't stop me from looking at him in a new way as he steered us to the opposite side of the barn, away from his friends, away from his parents. For the first time, I realized I might not be the only one in deep cover.

  We danced for a long time before Josh said, "Thanks for meeting my parents. They're big on that."

  "Yeah," I said. "They're really nice."

  "They're psycho," he corrected me. "Did you hear what he said? About the store? He seriously thinks everyone in this town would die if it weren't for him." He shook his head. "You're so lucky no one cares what you do. I mean, you can be anything
you want to be. No one's waiting on you to be some kind of chosen one."

  "No," I said. "I guess no one is." Lie—absolute, total, and complete lie.

  He pulled me tighter, which was a good thing for two reasons, because A) it kept him from seeing the tears that were forming at the corners of my eyes, threatening to test the waterproofness of Macey's new mascara, and B) it gave me pretty good cover, which I was about to totally need. In fact, no spy in the history of the known universe has ever needed cover more.

  "Oh my gosh!" I gasped and ducked, hiding my head behind Josh's shoulder.

  "What?" he said.

  "Oh, um, I just stubbed my toe," I lied, because that was hardly the time to say, Hey Josh, speaking of parents, MY MOM JUST WALKED IN WITH MY COVEOPS TEACHER!

  Across the dance floor, Mom was in Mr. Solomon's arms. They were both totally laughing, and he was twirling her, and her hair was flying around like she was in a shampoo commercial. Seriously. She could have sold conditioner to a bald man the way she looked out there.

  I started easing toward the shadows, far away from the main doors, cursing myself for not marking all the exits earlier. I was stupid. STUPID. STUPID. STUPID.

  "I think I want to sit down for a while." I found a stretch of shadowy space at the back of the barn, beneath the hayloft, far away from Mom and Mr. Solomon.

  "Do you want some punch?" he asked.

  "YES! Punch sounds great!"

  I watched Josh disappear into the crowd, and for a second the panic stopped and I felt another feeling in my gut, like the ground had been swept out from under me. But it wasn't just nerves. I was flying, hurtling through the sky. Literally.

  Chapter Twenty

  Oh my gosh! I thought but didn't scream—partly because all the air had been jerked out of my lungs, and partly because Bex had one hand clamped over my mouth. Liz was looking at me through the pale light that floated into the hayloft from the party below, the noise muffled by bales of last year's straw.

  "Cammie," Liz said patiently, as if trying to wake me from a deep sleep. "We had to get you out of there. Your mom and Solomon—they're here!"

  That's when I looked around the hayloft and saw the series of pulleys the girls had constructed—the wires that were tied to Bex and to me—and I suddenly understood why I felt like a fish Grandpa Morgan had just jerked out of the water.

  Even Macey was there, lying on her stomach, peering over the edge of the loft. "We're good." She rolled onto her side to face us. "The shadows are so thick back there; I don't think anyone saw."

  "Oh my gosh," I finally said.

  For someone who was technically involved in her first act of espionage, Macey was acting pretty calm about it— like maybe Tina's theory that she had once blackmailed the editor of Vogue into bringing back gaucho pants was actually true.

  Liz, on the other hand, was freaking out. "Cammie, did you hear me?" she nearly shouted. "Your mom and Solomon are here! They're here! They could have seen you! Do you know what would happen if they saw you?"

  "I know," I said as I sank to the floor of the loft. I breathed in the sweet smell of the hay and waited for my heart to stop pounding. Then I realized something. "They didn't see me," I said.

  "But how can you be sure?"

  This time, Bex answered. "Because she isn't dead yet."

  The hayloft was dark and at least thirty feet above the heart of the party, so Bex and Liz sank to the floor and together we crawled toward Macey and the edge. Dim lights twinkled below us, and the band played a slow song. I watched my mom dance with Mr. Solomon. She rested her head on his shoulder, and suddenly, having them skin me alive seemed like a totally better option than watching that.

  "Wow," Macey muttered. "Killer couple." But I don't know if she meant it literally.

  "Oh, Cammie," Liz said, "I'm sure they're just here as friends. Right, Bex?"

  Bex was speechless.

  Oh my gosh!

  "I mean, I'm sure they're just—" Liz tried to make things better, but it was Macey who said, "Don't worry, they aren't dating or in love or anything."

  She sounded so decisive—so sure. I looked at her, wondering How can she possibly know such a thing! Then I remembered—she was Macey McHenry! Of course she knew! I was totally starting to feel better until she added a fateful, "Yet," and I thought I was going to be sick.

  I couldn't watch any more, so I turned away and asked, "How did this happen?"

  "After you turned your mom down, I saw her talking to double-O-hottie down there," Macey said. "And they decided to go do something."

  "And we knew something like this could happen, so we slipped a tracker into your mom's purse," Bex said smugly, loving the situation a little too much, if you ask me.

  "And we activated the tracker in Josh's shoe." Liz held her wrist toward me, and suddenly I saw two red dots blinking side by side, as beneath us, Josh carried two cups of punch through the party, passing inches away from my mother.

  "And then we decided you might need an emergency operative extraction," Liz said, reveling in the chance to quote one of her flash cards.

  I threw my arms over my head, burying my face in the sweet-smelling hay, willing it all to be a dream, and I had almost succeeded when I heard, "Nice corsage." I looked up and glared at Macey, who shrugged and said, "What? Like you didn't think it?"

  But that was hardly the time to explain. Oh, no, we totally had better things to do, as Bex was no doubt aware, because she was backing farther into the shadows, saying, "Come on. One operative extraction coming up."

  Before I knew what was happening, Bex was pulling me to my feet and hooking me to the cable, and Macey was pushing open the loft door to the chilly autumn night, getting ready to lower me outside like a great big bale of hay.

  "No," I said, but Liz pushed me out the door.

  "I can't," I cried, but I was spinning around and around in midair. Before I knew it, Liz was joining me on the ground, followed by Macey, who bolted for the trees that lined the edges of the pasture.

  "Liz, I can't do this," I said as I gripped my friend's skinny shoulders. "I've got to get back inside, somehow."

  "Have you gone completely bonkers?" Bex said as she joined us on the ground.

  "But Josh is in there," I protested.

  "So are your mother and Mr. Solomon," Bex pointed out. She jerked the stretch of cable I was holding, and it burned through my hands.

  "Bex, I can't just leave him! He'll worry. He'll start looking and asking around and…"

  "She's right," I heard Liz saying. "It's a direct violation of CoveOps rule number—"

  But I was never going to know which CoveOps rule that violated, because just then a big ruby-colored flash came zooming out of the forest.

  "Get in!" Macey cried from the driver's seat. For a moment, I didn't know which was more surprising, the fact that my classmates had come to rescue me in a Gallagher Academy golf cart or that Bex had let Macey drive (although, when you think about it, Macey probably did have way more golf-cart experience than the rest of us).

  When Liz saw the dazed look on my face, she blushed and said, "Let's just say Bubblegum Guard is going to wake up in a few hours, amazed that his sinus medicine made him so drowsy."

  I heard the music stop and wild applause, but it felt like we were a mile from the party. Josh was in there. Of course, so were two people who could punish me in ways that have been illegal since the Geneva Convention. But still, I looked at Bex and said, "I can't go."

  Liz was already climbing into the golf cart, leaving Bex and me alone in the dark.

  "I'll be okay," I told Bex. "I'll get Josh and we'll leave." She didn't say anything. We were on the dark side of the party, but I could read her face in the light of the full moon. I didn't see fear; I saw disappointment. It seemed a whole lot worse.

  "They could catch you, you know?" Bex asked.

  "Hey," I tried, forcing a laugh, trusting my smile to thaw her, "I'm The Chameleon, right?"

  But Bex was already slidi
ng into the backseat. "See you at home."

  The Operative decided to go into a holding pattern in hopes of extracting The Subject and salvaging the mission. At least two hostile agents were inside (and they were going to get a lot more hostile if things didn't go well), so it was a risky move, but one she was willing to make, even as she watched her backup drive away.

  Mom and Mr. Solomon might have had the advantage when it came to training and experience, but I had a superior position and far more information. As I crouched behind the hood of a big, black Buick, watching the doors, I went through my options: A) cause a diversion and hope to pull Josh away in the chaos, B) wait for either Josh or Mom and Mr. Solomon to leave, and pray they didn't decide to leave at the exact same time, or C) think of more options.

  After all, I did have access to gasoline, rocks, and aluminum cans, but that old barn seemed really, really flammable, and I wasn't exactly in the mood to take chances.

  I was just starting to wonder if one of the pickup trucks parked beside me would have a rope, when I heard someone say, "Cammie?" I spun around to see DeeDee heading my way. "Hi. I thought that was you."

  She was wearing a really pretty pink dress that matched her stationery. Her blond hair was pulled away from her face. She looked almost doll-like as she floated toward me through the dark.

  "Hi, DeeDee," I said. "You look really nice."

  "Thanks," she said, but didn't sound like she believed me. "You, too."

  Nervously, I fingered the corsage. The orchid petals felt like silk against my hand.

  "I see he went ahead and got you one."

  I looked down at my wrist. "Yeah." I didn't know how to feel about the fact that Josh had discussed his corsage plans with another girl, but then I looked at her and realized I didn't feel nearly as weirded-out about it as she did.

  DeeDee pointed toward the lights and swaying couples in the distance and said, "I figured if I came late then I wouldn't have to be a wallflower for too long."