"I gotta take a piss," Grant announces, standing up from the couch and leaving Zach alone at the laptop. Cammie and Bex were curled up on the couch, watching the computer screen for progress.
"Lovely," Bex grumbles, rolling her eyes. Grant snickers and walks down the hallway into the bathroom.
Cammie groans and leans against her best friend's shoulder. "How long have we been at this?" she murmurs. It was midnight, and she was having trouble keeping her eyes open after all the commotion at the party and not getting any sleep the night before.
Bex cranes her neck backwards to check the time on the digital clock on the microwave in Grant's kitchen. "Uh… about two hours," she answers.
"Really?"
"Well, technically, two hours, twelve minutes, and forty-three seconds if you want to be specific about it," Bex says with a grin. She reaches over and pinches the smooth fabric of Cammie's red dress and rubs it between her fingers. "Hey, you wanna borrow some of my pajamas for tonight? We could get out of these uncomfortable dresses."
"Sure. But… why do you have your pajamas here?" Cammie asks. She glances over at Zach, who had taken off his black tux jacket and was in his crisp white shirt. He had, of course, rolled up the sleeves to his elbows and loosened his tie so it just dangled from his neck. His black dress shoes were kicked off, too, and his black socks were wrinkled. His gaze was still focused on the unending list of various windows opened up on the desktop.
"On our way here from the party, Grant stopped by my hotel room and we picked up my luggage, since we figured we should all stay together while Mr. and Mrs. Hemlock are, you know, out to get us and all," Bex explains. They stand up and head down the hallway, where Bex shows Cammie a green-and-white decorated guest bedroom. "Grant said I could stay in here for now. And I'm guessing you'll sleep in here tonight also."
Cammie opens her mouth to say something, but Bex closes the bedroom door and immediately begins bombarding Cammie with questions. "Where did you meet Zach? How old is he? Do you think Grant is cute? What about Zach?" Bex blurts, "And what if--"
Cammie smacks a hand over her friend's mouth, silencing her. "Seriously, Bex? First you blow my cover at the party, now you blabber like there is no possible way there could be hidden microphones in here," Cammie hints. "Is it just me, or has your work been getting sloppier over the years?"
Bex pushes Cammie's hand off her mouth and raises an eyebrow at her. "Need I demonstrate a round-house kick to your head to demonstrate just how un-sloppy I am?" Bex suggests threateningly, although there was a mischievous twinkle in her eye.
"I'm good," Cammie backs off, holding two hands up in surrender. Then she lowers her hands and smiles at her friend. "Just look for bugs and then I'll answer any ridiculous questions you ask," she commands in a hushed whisper.
Seven minutes and eight sneezes later (turns out Grant hadn't vacuumed or dusted the guest room for approximately five months), they had come up with three bugs and even one small video camera about the size of a dime. "I had a feeling Grant was a major perv the second I met him," Cammie admitted, expertly disassembling the hidden camera with a pair of nail clippers. "But I can't believe he hid a video camera in here, though."
"I know, he's so perverted. But he's kinda cute, dontcha think?" Bex contemplates, lightly juggling the dismantled shells of the bugs they had found. Then she squeezes the bugs in one fist and buries them deep in her suitcase for later use.
"Like a Greek god."
"That's what I thought!" Bex exclaims. "But I call him. You already have Zach."
"What do you mean I have Zach?"
"Well, haven't you kissed him yet?" Bex asks.
"No! Just on the cheek, but that was only to keep up my cover."
"Mmhmm. I bet it was only to keep your cover," Bex hints, opening her suitcase and digging to the bottom for her pajamas.
Cammie's jaw drops. "What do you mean by that?" she asks, "That I actually wanted to kiss Zach?"
Bex lays out several pairs of pajamas on her bed for them to choose from. She just shrugs indicatively and picks up a black silk cami out of her suitcase. "Well… he's cute, smart, and a spy. It would definitely work out better than Josh," Bex explains, unzipping her dress, which falls to the floor.
"Ugh, don't remind me," Cammie groans, unzipping her own dress and taking it off. She carefully lays it across the bed and scans Bex's pajamas that she was going to borrow. "Do you have anything that isn't see-though, silk, or from Victoria's Secret?" she asks.
Bex slips the black silk cami over her head and adjusts it over her torso. She taps a finger on her bottom lip. "Uh… not really. Macey's changed me for the better. No longer will I wear boxer shorts and extra-large sweatshirts to bed!" Bex exclaims dramatically. "Here, choose this." She tosses an emerald-green silk cami at her friend, whose eyes widen.
"I can't wear this! It… it matches Zach's eyes!" Cammie protests.
Bex rolls her eyes and gives Cammie a look. "You know the color of Zach's eyes? And you say you don't like him? I'm bloody crushing big-time on Grant, and heck, I have no idea what color his eyes are!" Bex exclaims, her British accent notable.
"No comment," Cammie grumbles, quickly taking off her dress and slipping the green silk cami over her head. It was slippery and cool against her skin, but no matter what, she couldn't stop noting how identical the green cami was to Zach's eyes.
"Take these, then, too," Bex tells her, tossing over a pair of short black silk shorts. Cammie catches them, takes one look at them, then tosses them right back.
"Um… do you have anything longer?"
Bex sighs and puts the black shorts morosely back into her suitcase. "I have a pair of basketball shorts," she suggests, pulling them out of her suitcase and holding them up. They were black, mesh, and were knee-length.
"That's better," Cammie says smugly. She reaches over, plucks the shorts out of her friend's hands, and puts them on. The shorts were a little big; they sat low on her hips, but if Cammie pulled the strings, they didn't fall down any more.
"We got it!" the girls hear Grant yell from the living room.
Bex and Cammie make eye contact, and Cammie opens the door and sprints out of the room. Bex hops after her friend while pulling on white silk shorts over her legs. "You got it?!" Cammie exclaims, running into the living room and stopping in front of the couch. Bex crashes into Cammie's back and peeks around her shoulder to look at the laptop screen.
"He had nothing to do with it. He was pissing in the bathroom when I finally opened it," Zach growls, punching Grant's shoulder. Grant flinches and smirks at his friend.
"Well I would have opened it if I hadn't drank three martinis and two cocktails at the party," Grant excuses himself.
"We don't care about your overactive bladder!" Bex exclaims, causing Cammie to laugh. Bex shoves the guys aside, leaving room for the two girls in front of the laptop. Zach and Grant catch their balance and huddle around Cammie and Bex, who were mesmerized by the screen.
Neon-blue blueprints were stretched across the screen here and there, and bunches of graphs were lined across the sides. Statistics scrolled slowly across the top of the screen, and a white outlined three-dimensional model of the nuclear weapon rotated in the bottom-right corner. "Anybody know how to work this?" Cammie asks, taking hold of the mouse that Grant had attached to the laptop. She waves the mouse back and forth across the coffee table, pondering on what to click on first.
"Try the first page of blueprints. All we have to find out is the substances used in the nuclear weapon so that Jonas can track down the concentrated amounts of those substances in Miami. Wherever the map shows the substances are, that's probably where they're building the nuclear weapon and we can show up to stop them," Zach explains.
Cammie clicks on the first blueprint that was littered across the screen. Once she clicks on it, the blueprint maximizes to full-screen with a list of complicated materials needed. Then there were steps on collecting those materials, but they were written in such extremely long words that it would take an English major out of college to read them. "There!" Bex points out, holding a fingertip to the screen, "Plutonium and Uranium. They're the first and second on the list, which means they must be needed in pretty large quantities."
"True," Cammie admits. "Somebody write this down." Grant gets a pad of paper and a pen from the junk drawer in the kitchen. He jots down 'Plutonium and Uranium' in his scrawling, sloped boy-writing.
"What else?" Grant asks.
"Go back and try to click the full-scale model of the weapon. I want to see what we're dealing with," Zach suggests. Cammie navigates the mouse and clicks several times until the rotating model of the nuclear weapon is stretched across the screen.
It resembled a rocket, but from their Military Weapons class at Gallagher, it was twice the size of the hydrogen bomb and the atomic bomb. A small paragraph was scrolling upwards to the left of the model, and numbers were flashing across all the other places with empty space. Cammie quickly speed-read the paragraph, murmuring the words to herself.
"The bomb is able to plow seven hundred and fifty feet into the ground upon impact in the earth due to its weight, measuring a 235 on the atomic weight scale. Once unable to dig any deeper, the bomb will detonate. Its chemical reactions are similar to both the H-Bomb and the A-bomb, using both atomic fission and atomic fusion. Atomic fission causes the atomic nucleus to split, and atomic fusion combines the atomic nuclei. With the two separate chambers, an explosion and an implosion are possible at the nearly same time, creating the highest probability for disaster ever possible," Cammie reads in a tone slightly above a whisper.
The four spies sat so still it would seem that they were frozen in time right where they were sitting. Finally, Grant let out a low whistle and Bex hissed, "Shit," under her breath. Zach sat with his fists clenched, and his eyes staring but unseeing. Cammie's eyes just flicked back and forth across the screen, no knowing what to do next. It was like she had just been blind-sided by a subway. Or, more accurately, a nuclear bomb.
"Maybe you shouldn't see any more of this," Zach recommends softly. Cammie flinches when his knuckle gently brushes against her bare arm.
"What do you mean?" she replies.
"Well… it may be dangerous for you and Bex to know too much," Zach answers.
"The more cynical you become,
the better off you'll be."
- Matt LeBlanc
"What do you mean?" Cammie repeats.
"I just think Grant and I should be the only ones looking at this. I mean, we'll just search through everything to try to see if there's any information on who took the disk. If we find anything important, we'll tell you. I swear," Zach promises.
"Uh, no," Bex snaps. "How do we know you'll tell us? We deserve to know just as much as you, Mr. Goode, and you seem to know every single thing already."
"I don't know everything. You'll just have to trust me. The less of us who know things about our enemies, the better. What would happen if one of us was somehow captured? Like I said, the less we know, the better," he says.
Bex and Cammie look at each other with their eyebrows raised like, What do you think? Bex shrugs and Cammie looks at Zach. She almost wanted to turn away from him; it seemed as if his emerald eyes were burning holes through her own. "As long as we can sit on the couch. We won't read what's on the laptop, we just want to watch what you're doing. And you have to tell us once you find anything on anybody who may be working with Mr. or Mrs. Hemlock," Cammie orders. "Deal?"
"Deal," Zach answers without a beat. He holds out his hand and Cammie shakes it, without breaking his unblinking gaze. He gives her a small smirk and she turns away from him, withdrawing her hand.
Cammie stands up and sits on the couch. Bex stands up and walks out of the room, only to return with a few pastel-colored fleece blankets. She sits down by her friend and they wrap themselves in the warm blankets while Zach and Grant huddle around the computer and get to work.
One hour and two cups of mint tea (the only kind of tea Grant had in his cabinets) later, Bex was already asleep. She was twisted in an unnatural position with one foot over the armrest, one foot over the headrest, her butt hanging precariously off the couch, one arm flopped over her forehead, and the other arm hugging Cammie's shin.
A few minutes ago, Zach had murmured a bit to Grant, and they both looked at the 'sleeping' girls. Cammie had really pretended to be sleeping by evening her breath and peeking out from her eyelashes, though no matter how hard she strained her ears, she couldn't hear what the guys were saying. Grant had reached over and turned off all the lights in the apartment so that the only light came from the glowing computer screen.
Now, Cammie's eyelids were becoming ridiculously heavy. She didn't know whether it was the mint tea, the late hour at night, the mesmerizing blue glow of the laptop, or a combination of all those. She didn't want to go to sleep, though, not yet. Not when Grant and Zach were still searching through the graphs, blueprints, and instructions on the flash-drive.
Eventually, Cammie couldn't stay awake any longer. She finally went to sleep with her head resting on the armrest of Grant's couch and her best friend drooling on her foot. She dreamed of Zach and Grant finding the names of the people working with Mr. and Mrs. Hemlock on the computer chip.
"Espionage, for the most part, involves finding a person
who knows something or has something
that you can induce them secretly to give to you.
That almost always involves a betrayal of trust."
- Aldrich Ames
(Author's Note: Sorry it took me a while. Stupid biology report about chemistry and lab reports and crap. I can't wait for later on in the story!!! So I have to hurry up and write the rest of the in-between stuff. Ugh. Might take me a bit, though. I have to wrap everything up before they can start fighting bad guys.)