Mrs. Hemlock woke from her unconsciousness about two hours ago. When she first woke up and found herself tied to a metal bar stool with a layer of rope and a layer of duct tape, she made enough noise to wake the dead. To combat that drawback, Cammie covered her mouth with duct tape while Bex threatened to kill her right then and there if she didn't "shut her bloody mouth."

Now, Mrs. Hemlock had the duct tape peeled off her mouth and a truth ring on both middle fingers. Jonas and Liz were pouring themselves over a clipboard, writing down a list of questions to ask her and leaving space to record her answers.

They were in the guest room, which had been cleared of all Bex's stuff and replaced with spy equipment that had been salvaged from all their suitcases. Zach pulls Cammie out of the room and asks, "Should we go back to the hotel room? The party starts in an hour."

"Yeah, let's go," Cammie agrees and they leave the apartment. While they were going down the elevator, though, she asks, "What about Mrs. Hemlock while we're gone? Like, at the party?"

"I'm guessing Liz and Jonas would be able to keep her from… escaping while we're at the party. Bex and Grant will still come with us, though," Zach answers. They leave the hotel and walk to the Lamborghini, which was once again parked in the alley.

"And are we doing the fight thing between our covers?" Cammie asks.

"Yeah, it'll give us an excuse to split up at the party," Zach explains, navigating the car onto the highway and towards the hotel. "So I was thinking about having either having an argument on the way in, then you could leave all annoyed-like. Or, we can just arrive in separate cars and glare at each other on the way in. Whichever you want to do."

"I think the argument on the way into the mansion would be believable, except we shouldn't make too big of a scene. What should we be arguing about, though?"

"Right. Maybe it might be easier to just pretend to be mad at each other at the party," Zach debates, pulling the Lamborghini into the hotel parking lot.

"Sure," Cammie agrees. They enter the hotel and ride the elevator up to their floor. She pulls out her room card and they step into the dark room, turning on the lights.

She immediately goes to her walk-in closet, where she begins heating up her straightening iron and getting out her makeup. After applying foundation, blush, eye liner, mascara, and some smokey eye shadow, Zach was already walking into the closet with a sleek tuxedo on.

Cammie looks up and sees him in the mirror, so she turns around. He holds out his right arm and pulls her towards him in a hug. She hears his heartbeat in his chest, and something cold touches her shoulder blade. Cammie realizes the coldness is the metal wedding ring on his finger. He pulls away and announces, "I'm going back to Grant's. I'll see you at the party. Here's money for a cab."

He take a ten dollar bill from his pocket and holds it out for Cammie. She waves it away. "I have my own money," she denies.

"I insist," Zach persists, holding the money closer to her. She reluctantly takes the money and puts it on the counter. He nods and says, "See you." Zach turns and leaves the walk-in closet, and the apartment door shuts behind him.

"My only regret is that I have
but one life to lose for my country."
- Nathan Hale

Cammie gets back to her routine, and she finishes straightening her hair until it was pin-straight. She strips out of all her clothes and steps into a strapless black dress. She zips the zipper up her side, and puts on strappy black heels to complete the look. Cammie stands straight and rotates in front of the mirror.

The black dress hugged her barely-there curves, and the heels added a few inches to her average height. Below the chest, the black dress was ruched across her waist. The ruching ended right at her hips, where the hem of the dress created vertical folds from being pulled taut against her thighs, just a few inches below her butt.

Cammie unplugs her straightening iron, and sticks Zach's money into her strapless bra for safekeeping. She decides to leave her hotel key in the hotel room, since she would just meet Zach after the party and he'd have his key. She also takes off her lie-detector ring and puts it on the counter. Cammie turns off all the lights in the suite and reaches her hand for the doorknob.

Then she freezes, a creaking sound coming from behind her.

Cammie spins around and roundhouse-kicks a man in the head. She winces at the grotesque feel of her stiletto heel slicing into skin. Cammie flips on the nearest lightswitch for an advantage, and immediately sees two figures dressed in black.

She runs towards the nearest one and ducks on the ground to dodge a punch. While squatting on the ground, she whips out her leg and knocks the person to the ground. As Cammie stands up and turns around to begin fighting off the person still standing, her feet are knocked out from underneath her. Her head and back hits the ground, and her breath is knocked out of her. The familiar feeling of a Napotene patch being slapped on her arm is the last sensation she feels before everything turns black.

When Cammie wakes up, she's in an all-concrete room with no windows and a single door. A bare lightbulb hangs from the ceiling, the harsh white light showing dust particles free-floating in the air. She looks down to see herself tied to a chair with duct tape. Cammie's head cranes around to see where the tape ends to begin picking at it to escape, but before she can locate it, somebody barges into the room.

"Ah, Cammie Morgan," the man says with an air of arrogance. "You killed Mr. Hemlock, am I correct?"

"No," Cammie replies calmly, her face a blank slate of information. A cocky smirk was on her face, even though she had a killer headache from being knocked out and cocky was the last thing she was feeling. But it would be best to annoy your enemy, and to always seem one step ahead.

"Well, my information says you did," he retorts. He was bald, with a white mustache and overly-tanned skin.

"Your information is wrong," Cammie insists. It wasn't a complete lie; Zach was the one to kill Mr. Hemlock, not her. But of course she wouldn't say that. "Oh is it?"

"It is."

They have a stare-down with each other until the man finally blinks. "Where are we? What's your name?" Cammie asks.

"I'm not able to disclose that information," he answers with a smirk on his face that matched her own.

"Oh are you?" Cammie retorts, imitating his previous question.

"I'm not," he insists. "Now, are going to have to do this the difficult way, or the easy way?"

"Difficult is my middle name."

"Strange, I thought it was Ann," the man replies. Cammie's smirk vanishes. That line was one of the very first things Zach said to her when they first met. Something had happened to Zach, and she didn't know what.

"What did you do to him?" she asks in a whisper. The man's smirk only grows wider, and Cammie shrieks, "What did you do to him?!"

"Nothing. Yet," he finally answers. "And nothing will happen to him, if only you cooperate with us. Now, are we going to have to do this the easy way, or the hard way?"

Cammie purses her lips, signaling she wouldn't tell no matter what. It was the only thing a loyal spy could do, even if it meant sacrificing herself or someone she loved. But no matter what, she couldn't forgo the mission for her safety.

"Fine, then. Sam, come hook her up!" the bald man shouts out the door. A shorter, bulkier guy walks through the door with wires in his hands. At first, Cammie gets a jolt of fear. Electric chair?, she momentarily thinks. But then she recognizes the familiar wires of a polygraph detector, and she lets out a bark of laughter.

"A lie-detector? That's what you mean by 'the hard way'?" Cammie asks. Sam comes over and starts taping wires to her wrists, and she doesn't resist. In Co-Ops, they had two entire units on the polygraph machine, and she knew a sure-fire way to beat it. She also knew that polygraph machines weren't even correct. They only measured the amount of nervousness, not the actual lie, and it was mainly used just to threaten the suspect into telling the truth. Cammie took a few deep breaths and forced herself to stay calm.

"Laugh all you want, Miss Morgan. But with this machine, we'll be able to get every single secret out of that pretty little head of yours," the bald man boasts. He drags a simple wooden chair into the room and sits down with the gray polygraph machine at his feet. Sam leaves the room and shuts the door behind him.

Cammie mentally rolls her eyes and clenches her butt-cheeks together. As silly as it sounded, that was the only way to beat a lie-detector test. Since polygraph machines measure the amount of nervousness, they measure muscle tension, since humans naturally tense their muscles when they're nervous. And the largest muscle in the body is the butt. So if you tense your butt muscles for the duration of the test, the machine won't monitor any clenching or unclenching that would detect "lying."

"First question," the man begins, "Have you known Mr. Goode for a long time?"

"What if I don't even know who Mr. Goode is?" Cammie replies, playing stupid.

"Then you would say no," he snaps, "Now, yes or no answers only, please. Answer the question."

"No."

"Are you and Mr. Goode close, as in currently in a relationship?"

"No! What the hell? I already said I didn't know him," Cammie retorts.

"Yes or no answers, please," he warns, "Now what about your--"

His interrogation is cut short as the door to the room slams open. Sam was unconscious on the floor. In all her shock, Cammie accidentally stops clenching her butt. "Zach!" she exclaims.

"Happiness is a warm gun."
- The Beatles

(Author's Note: Aw, darn. Short chapter, and not much Zammie. Trust me, there's a big Zammie scene coming up. Maybe not the next chapter... but really, really soon. It's going to be awesome. Lol. Especially the ending of this story, but that's in a while. So don't worry about that. And... I'll shut up now. Haha.)