I carefully returned the files to my mother’s drawer and left the house with one objective: find Christina Georgia. July 14th was today.

The lie detector didn’t react to anything I said, but I wouldn’t dare smile.

That’s not necessary,” Mr. Bradshaw said, “although you are all perfectly welcome in the guest rooms upstairs, I won’t ask you to lie to your-” “Mr. Bradshaw.” Nathan grinned. “You’ve been asking us to lie to our parents from the moment we each set foot in this house. We’re spies; we’ll all find excuses to stay here. No one wants to leave the only place in the city where the Pentagon won’t dare enter. Not tonight. Not after what happened.

They question me everyday. There’s always bright lights and they give me medicine that’s supposed to make me tell the truth, but it doesn’t work on me. Or maybe it only works when I start talking, but I never do.

Waiting. That’s always what being a spy comes down to, isn’t it?

I can’t tell you the things I know,” I repeated. “Why not?” “They aren’t my secrets to tell.

But one thing was for certain: something would happen next. Something always did. Especially when you live the life of a spy.

I let out a helpless, frustrated noise that sounded like a combination of a cry and a growl. It took everything in me not to shout a stream of curse words. Seriously -- out of all the things that could happen to me, I’d been the victim of a pickpocket? That wasn’t supposed to happen -- not to a spy. Not to me!

I should have been honored to have been part of the best pickpocket incident of the century, but instead I was just mad.