"Bex," I said as calmly as possible.
"I see her," Bex replied.
Here's the thing you need to know about detecting and losing a tail: to do it right—I mean really right—you'd need to cover half a city. You'd climb in and out of cabs and train cars and walk against the grain on at least a dozen busy sidewalks. You'd take all day.
But Mr. Solomon hadn't given us all day, and that was kind of the point. So Bex and I spent the next hour going in one museum entrance and out another. Going up escalators only to come down the elevator two minutes later. We made sudden stops and looked in mirrors and tied our shoelaces when they didn't need it. It was a virtual blur of corner-clearing and litter-dropping—everything I've ever seen, everything I've ever even heard of! (At one point Bex had almost talked me into crawling out the bathroom window in the Air and Space Museum, but a U.S. Marshal walked by and we decided not to press our luck.)
The seconds ticked by and the sun went lower, and soon the shadow of the Washington Monument was stretched almost the full length of the Mall. Time was running out.
"Tina," I said through my comms unit, "how are you and Anna?" But I was met with empty silence. "Mick," I said. "Are you there?"
Bex and I shared a worried glance, because there are reasons operatives go radio-silent, and most of them are not good.
We were cutting across the Mall, walking north, hoping anyone who wasn't intentionally following us would stick to the path.
"Forty-seven minutes," I announced, as if Bex weren't fully aware of that fact.
She turned around to glance at a man walking too fast behind us, and I didn't know whether to take it as an insult or a compliment that a team of CIA pros didn't care if they stood out anymore. They just wanted to stay with us.
When a crowd of girls filled the sidewalk in front of us and started down the long, steep escalator to the Metro station below, I looked at Bex. "Do it!" she said, and we merged into the crowd. The girls were wearing white blouses almost exactly like ours. Their name badges bore a logo from something called Mock Supreme Court, They were almost identical to us from the waist up, so Bex and I slipped off our coats as we descended into the cavernous, echoing station.
"I love your bracelet!" I said to the brunette next to me, because, while most girls are on to the whole strangers-with-candy thing, the strangers-with-compliments strategy is still remarkably effective.
"Thanks!" said the girl, who, according to her badge, was Whitney from Dallas. "Hey, are y'all with the group?"
"Yeah," Bex said. Then she looked down at her chest. "Oh my gosh! I left my name tag in my senator's office—we took them off to have our picture taken," she explained.
"Really?" another girl said. "That's cool. Who's your senator?"
And then Bex and I each said the first name that popped into our heads: "McHenry."
We looked at each other and shared a very subtle laugh as the escalator carried us deeper and deeper beneath the city.
One of the girls, Kaitlin with a K, whispered to another girl, Caitlin with a C, "Are they back there?"
C peered back up the escalator, then grinned. "They are so following us!"
Bex and I might have exuded a panicked vibe about then, because K leaned in to explain, "These two hot guys have totally been checking us out."
"Oh," Bex said, as she and I used this as an excuse to check behind us. Sure enough, red-baseball-cap guy was back there (by now he was dressed like a navy lieutenant). And ten feet in front of him we saw the boys from the bench.
The C(K)aitlins started to laugh. It was hilarious. It was fun. Cute boys were on their tail, and maybe they thought they were being covert or cool, but all that really mattered was that once they got home they'd have a story they could tell. And it wouldn't be classified.
As the escalator entered the cavernous room, a train was already at the station. "Let's run and get it!" Bex screamed.
And everyone was off, racing to the bottom of the escalator, then dashing to the end of the train. The girls piled inside as the doors closed, and red-baseball-cap-slash-navy-officer guy jumped forward, barely making it into the next to last car as the train pulled out of the station, and away from where Bex and I stood underneath the escalator, waiting for our new friends and old shadow to disappear.
Bex and I watched the man in the train press himself against the glass as the train sped into the tunnel.
We were free.
We were clear.
We thought.
Chapter Nine
Overconfidence is a spy's worst enemy, so to be on the safe side, Bex and I decided to split up when we left the Metro station. We had exactly twenty minutes to make it to the Museum of American History and our rendezvous with Mr. Solomon. Twenty more minutes to make sure we really were clear.
I slipped into the shadows of the Metro station and watched Bex ascend the escalator, then waited long enough to be certain no one followed her. Then I headed to the elevator, but as I reached for the button, another hand beat me to it.
"Hey," one of the boys from the park bench said. He did that half head nod thing that all boys seem to do … or at least the boys I know. Which mainly means Josh.
"Hi," I replied, pushing the button again, hoping to make the elevator come faster, because the last time a random boy had said hi to me, things had ended badly—like Mr.-Solomon-practically-being-run-over-by-a-forklift badly. And needless to say, that's not the kind of thing that looks good on a girl's permanent record.
When the elevator doors slid open, I was kind of, sort of hoping he wouldn't step inside, but of course he did; and since the Metro station was forever and a day underground, the elevator ride was forever and a day long. The boy rested against the railing. He was slightly shorter and broader through the shoulders, but in the blurry reflection of the elevator doors, he almost looked like Josh.