I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You (Gallagher Girls 1)

So, see, if you give a bunch of teenage girls those kinds of messages, then, yeah, eventually things are going to get interesting.

The rest of the week staggered on, our unspoken mission looming in the back of our minds like a silent but ever-present charge that filled the air, so that every time one of us reached for the doorknob, I half expected to see sparks.

We were up at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning, which was definitely not my idea. Thanks to Tina Walters's annual Dirty Dancing extravaganza, where we watched the "nobody puts Baby in a corner" scene a dozen times, I was really needing a good "lie-in," as Bex calls it. But even though Liz might have been at the bottom of our class in P&E, she is the best person I've ever seen at getting me out of bed, which is saying something, considering the woman who raised me.

Macey was asleep in her headphones, so Liz felt free to yell, "We're doing this for you!" as she pulled on my left leg and Bex went in search of breakfast. Liz put her foot against the mattress for leverage as she tugged. "Come on, Cam. GET. UP."

"No!" I said, burrowing deeper into the covers. "Five more minutes."

Then she grabbed my hair, which is totally a low blow, since everyone knows I'm tender-headed. "He's a honeypot."

"He'll still be one in an hour," I pleaded.

Then Liz dropped down beside me. She leaned close. She whispered, "Tell Suzie she's a lucky cat."

I threw the covers aside. "I'm up!"

Ten minutes later Bex was falling into step beside me, handing me a Pop-Tart, as Liz led the way to the basement. The halls were empty; the mansion silent. It was almost like summer, except a chill had settled into the stone walls, and my best friends were beside me. When we reached the vending machines outside Dr. Fibs's office, I took a bite out of my breakfast and felt the sugar kick in.

"Ready, then?" Bex asked, and Liz nodded.

They both looked at me. I took another bite and figured that if we'd come this far (and since I was already out of bed), we might as well go all the way.

I pulled a quarter from my pocket and held it toward the slot, but Liz stopped me.

"Wait." She reached for the coin. "If anyone looks at the logs, my name will send up fewer red flags," she said, even though nothing we were doing was against school rules. (I know—I checked.) In fact, we are encouraged to do as many "special projects" for "independent study" as we'd like, and no one ever said we couldn't make a project out of studying special boys independently. Still, it seemed like a good idea to hand the quarter over to Liz and have her be the one to press her thumbprint onto George Washington's head, drop it into the vending machine, and order item A-19.

Two seconds later, the vending machine popped open, revealing a corridor to the most state-of-the-art forensics laboratory outside the CIA. (If Liz had ordered B-14, a ladder would have dropped down out of the mahogany paneling behind us.)

As we walked into the forensics lab, Liz was already pulling Mr. Smith's pop bottle from her bag and placing it in the center of a table. The broken shards were pieced together, and I could almost forget why I had dropped it—almost.

"We'll just run it through the system and see what we've got," Liz said, sounding very official and far too wide-awake for SEVEN A.M. on a SATURDAY MORNING! Besides, I could have told her what we were going to find— nothing. Nada. That Dr Pepper bottle was going to yield the fingerprints of a Gallagher Academy student (me), a nonexistent-as-far-as-technology-is-concerned-because-every-year-he-gets-new-fingerprints-to-go-with-his-face Gallagher Academy instructor (Smith), and a perfectly innocent bystander whose only crime was being concerned for teenage girls who are forced to pilfer from trash cans (Josh).

I started to share all this with Liz, but she'd already put on her white lab coat, and nothing gives Liz more joy than wearing a white lab coat, so I zipped my lips and tried to rest my head on the desk.

An hour later, Liz was shaking me awake, telling me that Josh's fingerprints were nowhere in the system (shocker, I know). This pretty much meant that he'd never been in prison or the army. He wasn't a practicing attorney or a member of the CIA. He'd never tried to buy a handgun or run for office (which, for some reason, came as kind of a relief).

"See?" I told Liz, thinking she'd abandon the hunt and allow me to go back to a proper bed, but she looked at me as if I were crazy.

"This is only Phase One," she said, sounding hurt.

"Do I want to know what Phase Two is?" I asked.

Liz just looked at me for a long moment and then said, "Go back to sleep."

"I can't believe I let you talk me into this," I said as we crouched in the bushes outside Josh's house. Another car drove by and the music got louder, and all I could say was, "I can't believe I let you talk me into this."

"You can't believe it?" Bex snapped then turned. "Liz, I thought you said that house was going to be empty at eight."

"Well, technically, the Abrams house is empty."

I couldn't blame Liz for being defensive. After all, it had taken her three hours of breaking through firewalls (ours, not theirs) and scrolling through the Roseville public schools' computer system to find out that "my" Josh was Josh Abrams of 601 North Bellis Street. It had taken another hour to access all the Abrams family accounts and intercept the e-mail in which Joan Abrams (aka Josh's mom) promised someone named Dorothy that "We wouldn't miss Keith's surprise party for the world! We'll be there at eight sharp!"

So imagine our surprise as we crouched in the azaleas and watched half the town of Roseville traipse in and out of a white house with blue shutters at the end of Josh's block. I pulled on a pair of glasses that only work if you're really nearsighted (they're actually binoculars) and zoomed in on the house where the party was in full swing.

"Keith who?" I asked, forcing Liz to think back on the e-mail we'd printed on Evapopaper and hidden under my bed.

"Jones," Liz said. "Why?"

I handed the glasses to her so that she too could look at the house at the end of the street and see the Keeping Up with the Joneses sign that hung over the front door.

"Oh," Liz mumbled, and we all knew that the Abrams family hadn't gone far.

I had imagined where Josh would live, but my dreams paled in comparison to what I actually saw. It wasn't a real neighborhood—it was a TV neighborhood, where lawns are manicured and porches are made for swings and lemonade. Before I came to the Gallagher Academy, we lived in a narrow town house in D.C. I spend my summers on a dusty ranch. I had never seen so much suburban perfection in one place as I looked through the dim streetlight toward the long rows of white picket fence.

Somehow, I knew a spy would never belong there.

Still, three were there—crouching in the dark—until Bex pulled out her lock-picking kit and rushed toward the back door. Liz was right behind her until she stubbed her toe on a garden gnome and landed flat on a holly bush with a quiet cry of "I'm okay!"

I helped Liz to her feet, and seconds later we were right behind Bex as she worked her magic on the lock of the back door.

"Almost got it," Bex said firmly, confidently.

I knew that tone. That tone was dangerous.

I heard the music from the party down the street, saw our picturesque surroundings, and a thought dawned on me. "Um, guys, maybe we should try—" I reached for the knob. It turned effortlessly beneath my palm.

"Yeah," Bex said. "That works, too."

Stepping inside Josh's house was like stepping inside a magazine. There were fresh flowers on the table. An apple pie was cooling on a rack by the stove. Josh's sister's report cards were clipped beneath a magnet on the refrigerator— straight A's.

Bex and Liz darted through the living room and up the stairs, and I pulled my thoughts together long enough to say, "Five minutes!" But I couldn't follow. I couldn't move.

I knew at once that I wasn't supposed to be there—for a lot of reasons. I was trespassing not only on a house, but also a way of life. I found a sewing basket in a window seat, where someone was making a costume for Halloween. A book about do-it-yourself upholstery lay on the coffee table, and four fabric swatches hung on the arm of the sofa.

"Cam!" Bex called to me and threw a transmitter my way. "Liz says this has to go outside. Why don't you try that elm tree?"

I was glad to have a job. I was glad to get out of that house. Sure, doing basic reconnaissance was an essential part of honeypot detection. After all, if Josh was getting instructions from a terror cell or rogue government or something, planting a Trojan horse on his computer and digging through his underwear drawer was probably the best way to find out about it. Still, it was a relief to go outside and climb the tree.

I was on the third branch of the tree, tying off the transmitter, when I looked down the street and saw a figure cutting through yards. He was tall. He was young. And he had his hands in his pockets, pushing down in a way I've only seen once before!

"Bookworm, do you read me?" I tried; but even though Liz had done her best to fix my shorted-out comms unit, the crackling static in my ear told me that her hasty repair job hadn't worked. I stayed crouched against the branch as summer's last remaining leaves swayed around me.

"Duchess," I whispered, praying Bex would answer—or better yet—tap me on the shoulder and scold me for not having a little faith. "Bex, I'll let you choose any code name you want, if you'll just answer me," I whispered through the dark.

Josh was crossing the porch.

Josh was opening the front door.

"Guys, if you can hear me, just hide, okay? The Subject is entering the house. I repeat. The Subject is entering the house."

The door closed behind him, so I jumped out of the tree and hurried to take cover in the bushes, constantly keeping an eye on the front door, which sounds great in theory except that meant I totally missed seeing Liz and Bex crawl out of a second-story window and take refuge on the roof.

"Chameleon!" Bex called through the dark, scaring me half to death as I dove headfirst into the bushes and then peeked up to see Bex peering over the eaves of the house.

They must have thought Josh was home for the night because they started attaching rappelling cables to the chimney, and they were about to jump off the roof, but then Josh stepped through the front door!

I watched from the bushes, frozen in terror, as I realized that my two best friends were about to land on top of the cutest boy I've ever seen—and the apple pie he was carrying.

They couldn't see him. He couldn't see them. But I could see everything.

He took a step. They took a step.

We were seconds away from disaster, and honestly, I didn't even know what I was doing until the words, "Oh, hi," were out of my mouth and I was standing in the middle of the Abrams family yard.

From the corner of my eye, I saw terror register on Bex's face above me as she grabbed Liz and tried to pull her away from the edge, but I wasn't really paying attention to them. How could I, when a boy as dreamy as Josh Abrams was walking toward me, looking totally surprised to see me— which was perfectly understandable.

"Hi. I didn't expect to find you here," he said, and immediately I freaked out. Did that mean he'd been thinking about me? Or was he simply trying to figure out how and why a strange girl dressed all in black appears in your front yard? (Thank goodness I'd dropped my hat and utility belt in the bushes.)