Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover by Ally Carter Page A

come to love.
And fear. (Well, mostly fear.) And I knew I couldn't keep my secret any longer.
    "I
saw something!" I blurted. Then I had to correct myself as I said, "Someone."
    The
halls were quiet around us. Dark. The days were getting shorter. Summer was
finally gone. And maybe that was why I shivered as I said, "Zach."
     
     
    Time it
took me to tell the whole story: twenty-two minutes and forty-seven seconds.
    Time
it would have taken me to tell the story had I not been constantly interrupted:
two minutes and forty-six seconds.
    Number of times Liz said,
"No way!": thirty-three.
    Number
of times Bex gave me her "You could have brought me with you" look:
nine.
     
     
    "But
what was he doing there?" Liz was asking again (time number seven, to be exact).
    "I
don't know," I managed to mutter. "I mean, one minute I'm thinking
he's breaching security—well, technically, he did breach
security …" I trailed off. "And the next I'm flipping him to the
ground and—"
    "Staring
deeply into his eyes?" Liz guessed, because while security breaches might
be serious, eye-staring-into is something that should never be
ignored.
    "Maybe
Blackthorne was there for an assignment too?" Bex asked.
    "Maybe,"
I said, but my heart wasn't in it. I thought about his cryptic postcard—his
warning—and the way he'd looked at me that day. "It's just that something
about him seemed…different."
    "What?"
Bex said. I could feel her moving toward me. Like a tiger. She was lethal and
beautiful and very, very catlike in the curiosity department. "What are
you thinking about?"
    I
didn't know what was more concerning—that there had been a gap, however small,
in Macey's security perimeter, or that Zach had slipped through it.
    I
thought about the boy who had kissed me last spring and the one who had looked
at me under the bleachers. "He seemed"—I started slowly, still trying
to put the pieces together—"worried."
    "Ooh!" Liz squealed.
"He wants to protect you!"
    "I
don't need protecting," I told her, but Liz only shrugged.
    "It's the thought that
counts."
    "Well,
there is another option," Bex said, with a very mischievous grin. "Maybe he went under
the bleachers knowing you wouldn't be able to resist following him under the bleachers…"
    She
let her voice trail off as she stared at me, the possibilities lingering until
Liz felt the need to blurt: "So you could be alone!"
    Okay, I don't want to sound braggy.
Or unprofessional. Or naïve. But is it wrong to admit that I'd been kind of hoping
all day that was the reason? (Partly because, as a girl, that's a good reason,
and as a spy, it meant he wasn't conspiring to commit high treason.)
    "No,"
I blurted. "No. That can't be possible. He wouldn't leave school and go
all the way to Cleveland and sneak into a restricted area and everything just
to see…me." I turned to Macey, our resident expert on all things boy. "Would he?"
    "Don't
look at me," Macey said, waving her hands (which were, by that time,
holding a pump, a jacket, and a "walk the walk" campaign button).
"I have a whole other kind of boy problem."
    Wait.
MACEY McHENRY HAD A BOY PROBLEM? I couldn't be sure I'd heard correctly, and
evidently I wasn't alone.
    "Boy"—Liz
stammered—"problem. YOU?"
    Macey
rolled her eyes. "Not that kind of problem. Preston."
    "Oh,"
Liz said, sounding way too matchmakery, if you want to know the truth. "He
is kind of cute. And really socially aware. You know, I read this article
in—"
    "He's a dork," Macey
said, cutting her off.
    "But
you have so much in common," Liz protested. Macey glared. "I mean,
besides the dork thing."
    "'Common'
is overrated," Macey said with another sigh.
    "Well then," Liz said,
"what's the problem?"
    "The
problem is that we were attacked by three highly trained operatives and lived
to tell the tale," I said without even realizing that I'd known the answer
all along.
    "Bingo,"
Macey said. "And Preston was impressed. Very impressed."
    "So boys really do make
passes at girls who