Sooooooooo it's been awhile but update! Hopefully these chapters are running smoothly together. Enjoy! or don't! no one's forcing ya. And I don't own anything.
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"So she's a pavement artist?" Grant repeated as we dumped ourselves on a bench. I rotated my shoulders, stretching as I did a 360 of the area.
"A good one," I replied with a slight nod. "And apparently some sort of rebel."
"Ooh, juicy," my partner grinned before rubbing his hands together, trying to warm up from the cold before stretching himself. As he turned around, he probably noticed, like me, that we weren't sitting on a typical bench back at the prison/school, but we were sitting on a bench that happened to be in the park of the nation's capital. And he probably noticed the boy spitting into the fountain, a family taking pictures, and the helicopter that was descending from the sky.
"Do tell," he continued, smirking like a girl who was about to hear the greatest gossip ever.
"I don't know," I teased, keeping the aforementioned helicopter in my line of vision until it disappeared into a canopy of trees, "if I told you, I'd have to kill you."
He responded by punching my shoulder lightly. "You mean, if you don't tell me, I'd have to kill you."
"Nope. I'd get to you first."
"Not likely. Look at me." He held up his biceps. "Look at these guns." A group of girls who had heard our conversation giggled and he winked at them as they passed us by.
Rolling my eyes, I pretended to inspect them (them as in his "guns", not the girls), before pinching them. "Cute."
He dropped his arms. "Don't change the subject."
"What were we talking about?" I feigned stupidity.
"Mr. S asked you to watch over some girl."
Not just some girl. But a Gallagher girl. Best type of girls in the country.
"Yeah."
He rolled his eyes. "I drove us to the library. I helped you hack into the town computers."
"That was Jonas," I corrected him. "You almost killed us."
"Get over it Zachy," he whined. We sat in silence for a few minutes before I decided to give in and tell him.
"Well, I did mention to you that she's a pavement artist, right?"
"Cameron?"
"Who else would I be talking about?
Grant said nothing, waiting for me to continue. "Well, apparently she got into some trouble last year. I don't know how or why but she kept sneaking outside of the school."
"So?"
I looked at him sternly. "For the whole semester."
His face lit up, finally understanding. I continued, "Do you know how hard it is to keep that up? With all of the security? With your mom being the headmistress?"
"Whoa, her mom's the headmistress?"
"Uh," I rolled my eyes. "Let's see. Headmistress Morgan's last name is Morgan. And Cameron Morgan's last name is Morgan. Maybe they're related."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"Why her?" Grant questioned. "Why is she so important that Mr. S put you on babysitting duties?"
"Not a babysitter," I grumbled, avoiding a question that I too wanted to know the answer to.
When I didn't answer, Grant fired off another question, "What happened to the dad?"
"I don't know," I paused and hesitated before saying, "but doesn't the surname Morgan sound familiar to you?"
Before he could answer, I saw a couple of girls in tan jackets and private school skirts being followed by some loser in a red cap.
"Do you see what I see?" Grant mumbled.
I smiled, remembering the descriptions of the uniforms Mr. Solomon had told us before planting us in Washinton D.C.
The Gallagher Academy was here.
Wiping the grin off my face, I tried to stay cool, like an Abercrombie & Fitch sort of cool but with a shirt on.
"Follow or don't follow?" Grant voiced the same thing I was thinking.
Before I could answer, the words "Look at the bright side, Cam", floated into my ears.
Cam.
As in Cameron Ann Morgan.
As in the "Chameleon."
As in a Gallagher girl. As in the Gallagher Girl.
"Follow."
I'm not sure who said that, but it didn't matter because now we had a target, and not just a target, but a Cameron Morgan target.
We watched as her friend swirled around in circles, hiding in plain sight. When they made it about thirty feet from us, she put her arm around Gallagher Girl's shoulders and squealed, "Oooh, I want one."
"They're not puppies." I bit my cheek, trying not to laugh at that one.
Then her friend said, "Come on," and grabbed her hand. "Let's go and talk to them. They're really cute!"
Grant shot me a look and I knew what he was thinking. Was it possible that these spies from a top secret agent school were going to make our jobs easier?
But then the voice of reason came through, "Bex, we're on a mission." Bex and Cam. We now knew two of their names.
"Yeah, but we can multitask." I silently added encouragement to that statement. And not just for business purposes.
"No, Bex. Talking to civilian boys during a CoveOps exercise is a bad idea. Trust me." I frowned slightly before Gallagher Girl continued in a sing-song voice, "It's all fun and games until somebody gets their memory erased."
"Wow," I heard Bex say, but now they were too far away to listen to anymore, even for my hearing.
Gallagher Girl was becoming even more of a mystery. She didn't seem like a threat. She didn't seem like a trouble maker. Why was I supposed to be giving her extra attention? I mean, her rep made her seem like this sneaky, rebel spy. But in person? Gallagher Girl was just your typical, cute girl.
Which makes her the amazing pavement artist that she is today.
And what was she talking about memories getting erased?
There was definitely more to this story. A story that I couldn't possibly even dream of hacking into.
I saw out of the corner of my eyes that the two friends from Gallagher Academy had stopped again, and using my amazing lip reading skills, I saw Bex mumble, "Not over J-" J-something.
What is a J-something?
Grant yawned loudly, cutting through my thoughts. "Let's go Zacheroo. Time to give these girls a run for their money."
I looked back up to wear the girls were a few seconds ago, but they were gone.
"Uh," Grant paused and stretched while spinning in circles a few minutes later, looking for the couple of girls that had disappeared. "Did we lose them?"
"We didn't lose them." No way was I going to admit that we had, in fact, lost two girls we were supposed to be shadowing in only two minutes.
"Then where did they go?"
I smirked as I saw a guy in a red baseball cap change into sweats. "We follow him."
"No, we're supposed to be following girls."
I began walking a few steps behind the man in the sweats. "The girls are just going to send us on a wild goose chase, and that man knows it. In fact, he's going to join the wild goose chase himself, but for now, he's just going to show up where his partner tells him to. Because when his partner loses the girls, that guy in the sweats is going to pick up where his partner left, and vice versus."
"So?"
"So he's going to lead us to them without having to run around extensively."
"So should we break up too? One follow this guy and the other follow his partner?"
"Nope, we're just two normal guys. One guy alone is more suspicious than two."
Grant thought that over before whining, "But stalking girls is so much more fun than stalking this old guy."
"Stalking girls is more exhausting."
"Stalking girls gives us a better view."
"Stalking girls will send us in circles."
"Stalking girls gives us a better view."
"You already said that."
"I know. It's just that much truer."
"Grant."
"Zach."
"Shut up."
"What's got your granny panties in a wad?"
I looked at him exasperatedly. "If we're going to go to a school with girls all semester, we've got to earn their respect. And how do you earn a fellow spy's respect?"
"By showing them up."
"Exactly."
He frowned, "What if they're the type of girls who are sore losers?"
"What do you mean?" I asked when I really meant to say 'why does that matter'?
"Like what if they hate us for beating them instead of respecting us?" Grant answered. "Girls have pride, you know, and some of them don't like to lose."
I rolled my eyes. "What do you know about girls?"
"Don't you mean, 'what do you know about girls'?"
I paused for a second. Grant had a point. We had no idea how they were going to react.
"Look, Grant," I answered slowly, "we don't know what they're going to do, but we're still going to prevent them from accomplishing their mission. Because that's our mission."
"Ok."
"And we don't want to let Solomon down."
"Oh yeah."
I laughed. "You forgot about him."
"Maybe." He looked up to see two girls running out of the museum to our right. One was an exotic teen with cappuccino skin and the other one was your average American girl who I wouldn't have noticed unless I did an extensive amount of cyber hacking and stalking on her. Which I had done.
Most people would think that they were just two average girls. Most people would think that they were just in a hurry. But most people weren't like Grant and I, and we knew better.
I smirked, feeling my competitive side wash over me. "Let's see how Master Pavement Artist herself feels about role reversal."
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"What are you doing?" Grant hissed as I came to an abrupt stop thirty-nine minutes and twelve seconds later.
"I'm hungry," I stated as I stood in front of a vending machine, "and it's perfectly normal for a guy to be hungry. It's even a good cover."
"Not if we lose the shadow."
I shoved my hands into my jeans, searching for some quarters. "Well, I want some chocolate." I finally found the sixty-five cents I needed and slipped it into the machine. "If you want to watch a guy in sweats change into a navy lieutenant, be my guest."
Grant crossed his arms, and looked away, looking exactly like a friend who was annoyed that his friend had stopped to get a bag of M&M's out of a vending machine, even though Grant was, in reality, subtly making sure red-cap-guy turned guy in sweats turned navy-lieutenant-guy would stay in our line of sight.
After ripping open the bag, I stuffed a huge handful down my mouth, savoring the little chucks of chocolate. These were the first sweets I had eaten in a long time.
But now I had to concentrate on the fact that the demeanor of the shadow we had been shadowing hadn't changed until now.
Which meant game time.
I nodded at Grant. It was time to finish the mission.
"Zach, how do we know that the girls haven't already found what they were looking for?"
I didn't want to think about that possibility. "They haven't, or else that guy wouldn't have been called into action. They're close," I looked down at my watch, knowing that the girls were running out of time. "If they want to complete their mission on time, they have to do it now. All we have to do is make them late."
"Easy."
We walked behind the lieutenant until we saw a group of girls, the exact group of girls whom Grant had winked at earlier. Now that we had seen Gallagher Academy in person, I noticed that the Academy's uniform and the girls' outfits were very similar.
Perfect cover for desperate spies.
Grant and I kept about ten feet away from the group, close enough to follow and eavesdrop, but far enough to change direction if need be. (By the way, I learned that the girls thought I had a hot bod and smoldering eyes and that I was supposedly checking out their legs, even though I wasn't). However, sixty five seconds later, the caution wasn't necessary as Gallagher Girl and her friend came flying down the sidewalk. And just like I had predicted, the two girls took off their jackets and meshed into the aforementioned crowd as they began to descend down an escalator that would take them to the underground Metro station.
I almost laughed when Gallagher Girl opened her mouth and exclaimed, "I love your bracelet!" Compliments are even better than candy when it comes to strangers. Speaking of candy, I stuffed another handful in my mouth before I saw one of the girls in the group shoot me a look while Gallagher Girl and the rest of the group became buddy-buddy.
When we descended deeper into the ground, one of the girls whispered to her friend in a not-so-covert-like-way, "Are they back there?"
Her friend peered up at us and grinned, "They are so following us!" Which was true.
But then the other girl leaned in and said, "These two hot guys have totally been checking us out." Which wasn't true.
Knowing that Gallagher Girl would take the chance to look back, I stared off in the distance, not wanting to meet eye contact just yet. The people you remember the most are usually the people you've made direct eye contact with. And it wasn't time for that yet.
When we finally made it to the bottom, a train was already at the station, and Bex screamed, "Let's run and get it!"
My first instinct was to do what Bex had said, which entailed running and getting the train just like everyone was doing. Their new friends were rushing into the train just as the doors were closing. Navy lieutenant guy was barely able to jump into the last car of the train before it started to take off from the station. However, I knew that if Bex had screamed, "Let's run and get it!" so obviously, then obviously, they would do the opposite.
Grant and I stayed put at the bottom of the escalator, and as everyone filtered out of the station on the train, two girls were left standing, attempting to hide under the escalator, and through the chaos, they had succeeded. I almost laughed as Navy lieutenant guy pressed himself onto the window, knowing he failed his mission.
Unike Grant and me.
Now that the train was gone, there were only two places for the girls to go: up the escalator or up the elevator. I looked at my partner, and now I remembered why I always wanted Grant on my side: with just one glance, he knew what I was thinking, and he already was ascending the escalator, making sure he was one step ahead if the girls were to go that way. I would be covering the elevator.
Lucky for me, the girls decided to split up. Bex went up the escalator while Gallagher Girl went to the only other exit out of the Metro Station.
I knew a lot of things as I headed toward the elevator. I knew Gallagher Girl had twenty minutes left to complete her mission. I knew I still had chocolate to finish in the bottom of my pocket. And I knew that this was the time to get to know the person I was asked to babysit for the rest of the semester. What I didn't know was what type of cover I was supposed to use. Sexy and mysterious? Cute and cuddly? I've only had so much experience as a normal guy, ya know?
Once Gallagher Girl made sure that her friend wasn't being followed (even though she was), she slipped toward the elevator. Toward me. And tried to press the button, but I beat her to it.
Before I could decide how I was going to act, the first thing that came rolling out of my mouth was-
-"Hey."
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Review and maybe I'll update before next year ;)
