5
Cold, bitter wind smacks my face. I rub my hands together and blow on them. The gloves Harper gave me for Christmas prove that pretty and functional are rarely synonymous. I peek around the corner; only a small streetlight illuminates my view of the building entrance, but the golden letters above the front doors spelling holden preparatory academy shine bright even in the dark.
Instead of having a hot reunion with my boyfriend, I’m spending my last night of winter vacation breaking into my school. But when an international spy asks you to perform a very important mission, you don’t say no. At least Aidan had already headed to the airport and wasn’t around to catch me sneaking out.
My watch gives a gentle beep. One a.m. I conceal myself behind a tree and wait anxiously for the doors to the school to open. Any minute now.
At exactly 1:04 a.m. the two-man maintenance crew exits Holden Prep and heads for the parking lot. Their animated voices burst through the dark silence. I stay concealed behind a tree until headlights shine in my direction and then fade down the road. Soon, the only sound left is the frantic thud of my heart. Nothing about tonight’s activity is outside of my skill level. I mastered breaking and entering before I learned to read. The nerves tonight have more to do with who put me up to this task—and all the “why?” questions left after our thirty-second conversation.
I couldn’t even ask if they made it back into the country, if everything is okay, if Miles is okay. I have to trust that they told me everything I needed to know, trust there’s a good reason why Miles couldn’t call me himself and ask me to do this. Now it’s up to me to not let either of them down.
After we ended the call, an email popped up in my inbox, giving me a map of the surveillance cameras in the school and a brief lesson on how to evade human surveillance, as in people who might be following me. I thought I knew everything about evading people following me, but the techniques they sent were more thorough and much more advanced.
With the late-night maintenance crew gone, I make my way to a side entrance, following an indirect route. After checking the area, I retrieve a tool from my pocket to pick the lock. Seconds later, I’m slipping into the school, hopefully unnoticed, and deactivating the alarm system. The halls are dark and empty, the scent of floor polish thick in the air, burning my nose. But the heat is heavenly. I wiggle my toes inside my boots, waiting for feeling to return. After spending more than an hour in the dark, the emergency lights lining the ceiling of the hall are more than adequate to guide me to the office. Soon I’m opening the ancient cabinet in the office of the guidance counselor, Ms. Geist, and scanning the drawer for Miles’s file. Last semester, he and I broke into this same cabinet during the homecoming dance. That job led to us sneaking away and making out in a classroom, then later in a girls’ bathroom. Unfortunately tonight is all business. And solo. No hot boy to kiss.
My fingers land on the correct folder, and I tug it from the drawer, then stuff it beneath my sweater. After Geist’s office is back in perfect order, I head for the computer Agent Beckett told me to use to access the school records system. Apparently, there is one computer in this entire building that doesn’t leave a trail. Don’t ask me how two people who have likely never stepped foot in this school know all this. Then again, they did allow their son to spend a semester here. Surely, they checked out the place beforehand.
The door to the IT guy’s tiny office isn’t an easy lock to pick, but I manage after several failed attempts. I’m not a complete idiot when it comes to technology, but I wouldn’t exactly call “tech jobs” a specialty of mine. Scrubbing Miles from the school’s computer system is definitely the most challenging part of this job for me. Because writing anything down would have been too risky, I had to memorize the complicated password Miles’s dad dictated over the phone. I type it in quickly, then sigh with relief when I’m granted access on the first try.
I slide into the desk chair and take a deep breath, forcing calm, forcing the plan to repeat itself inside my head. Come on, Ellie, focus. It’s beginner stuff. Get this done and then you can worry about Miles. Miles, who promised me he’d be back in this country meeting me tonight. Miles, who has never broken a promise to me thus far. There’s a lot that I don’t know, but I do know the Becketts wouldn’t have asked me to do something like this—something illegal—if it wasn’t important. Of course, for them, important means life-threatening, which brings me right back to worrying about Miles.
One problem at a time. Tackle A before Z, my father always said, ironically in situations similar to this one, often involving breaking and entering.
The cursor blinks at me from inside the search box, and I finally come to life, typing in miles beckett. His information loads onto the screen instantly. Miles’s schedule from last semester at Holden Prep sits just below his basic personal information.
AP CHINESE MANDARIN
AP CALCULUS
AMERICAN LITERATURE, HONORS
LATIN IV
US HISTORY, HONORS
PHYSICS, HONORS
ECONOMICS
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen his schedule, and still, it’s a shock. No wonder Harvard already accepted him. Not that he’ll go to Harvard. Not with the FBI, CIA, NSA, and whatever other three-letter acronyms for secret government organizations are fighting over him. Probably him and all the other McCone honors program students at Marshall Academy. What happens to those guys after graduation? Do any of them just become regular people, like doctors or lawyers or waiters at Applebee’s? Or are they all destined to become invisible to anyone who knew them?
I shake off thoughts of Miles erasing his fingerprints and disappearing from existence. And then I begin deleting from this school’s history all traces of the boy I fell for last semester. He’s not disappearing for real, I tell myself. Tomorrow morning he’ll be back at Marshall Academy, climbing ropes or army-crawling under things, assuming he’s been cleared by a doctor to use his shoulder again. Doesn’t matter that I haven’t heard a word from him in six days.
Fear knots the pit of my stomach, but I continue the job, forcing my finger to click the delete button over and over again until he’s gone. I know how to compartmentalize, and it’s coming in handy tonight, allowing me to zero in on the computer screen and tune out everything else. Minutes later, I’m preparing to shut down the system.
A soft pat, pat, pat echoes from down the hall. My fingers freeze over the keyboard. Before I can even think the words, someone’s coming, the beam from a flashlight hitting me right in the face, blinding me.