The second thing was a lot harder.
“My feelings for you,” I started, and I could feel the tears rising again. “My feelings for you were not part of the assignment. They were real. One hundred percent, honest-to-God, absolutely real. They have been since that night at the party. I know that’s hard to believe, but I’m standing here in front of you, risking every single thing that I have, and I’m telling you that I love you. I’d love you even if you’d never come back and hated me for the rest of your life.”
“What about all those other girls on your passports? What would they say?”
“They would say the same thing because they’re all just me.” I wiped at my eyes before a tear could escape and attract a teacher’s attention. “All those girls are me. Different names, same feelings. The same girl who loves the same boy.”
Jesse was silent for a long time, alternately looking out the window and down at the table. My hands were shaking so I tucked them into my lap.
“So,” he finally said. “How are we going to hack this computer, anyway?”
I looked at him. “Are you saying you’ll help me?”
He nodded, his jaw tight.
I flung myself out of my chair and straight into his arms, nearly knocking both of us backward onto the floor. “Um, excuse me!” I heard the librarian protest, but I was too busy clinging to Jesse, and he was too busy hugging me right back.
“I’m still mad,” he whispered.
“I know,” I said. “It’s all right, I know.”
I just held him tighter.
“—but not mad enough to let you go.” Jesse pulled away after a minute, gesturing toward the now-furious-looking librarian. “She might explode.”
“Yeah, okay.” It was hard to let go of him, though, and I kept my hand fisted in the back of his jacket, not ready to lose him again.
“So what do we do now?” he asked, as soon as everyone’s attention was diverted back to their work and the librarian looked a little less red.
“First things first,” I said. “We find Roux.”
Jesse sighed. “Why am I not surprised?”
“Love connection!!” Roux yelled when she saw us walking in the hallway hand in hand. “Oh my God, I just knew you two wouldn’t break up! My psychic friend totally called it.”
I held up Armand Oliver’s laptop. “We gotta go.”
Roux’s eyes widened. “Yes. Let’s go.”
Once we were settled at a Starbucks in midtown Manhattan, we opened the laptop and started it up. “Tell me again why we can’t just do this at my house,” Roux said. “We have WiFi and our tables aren’t so small and sticky.”
“Because,” I said, “I don’t want anyone to trace this back to your house. Whereas there’s probably at least a couple thousand people a day who use the WiFi here.”
“Crafty. I like.”
“Don’t you need more gadgets?” Jesse said. “You don’t have anything that looks very impressive.”
(Honestly, I loved Jesse and Roux dearly, but I was starting to understand why most spies worked alone.) “Gadgets?”
“Yeah, for hacking.”
“I’m not the hacker,” I protested. “That’s my mom’s job.”
“Your mom?” Roux said. “Wow, it’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it.”
“And I’m not going to break into his computer,” I told Jesse.
“You’re not?”
“Nope. You’re going to do it for me.”
“I am?”
“Yep,” I said, then passed the laptop across the table to him. “What’s your dad’s e-mail password?”
“How am I supposed to know?” Jesse asked. “It’s his e-mail, not mine.”
“Okay, we’ll have to guess.”
“E-mail is so archaic.” Roux sighed, but Jesse and I ignored her.
“It’s usually kids’ names and birthdays,” I told him. “Or a combination of that. Or maybe an anniversary.”
“Can’t you just plug something into the computer that’ll download it?” Jesse asked.
“That’s not exactly how it works,” I replied, taking over the keyboard. “Our jobs would be a million times easier if it did.”
We tried several combinations of Jesse’s name and birth date that we could think of, but they didn’t work. “Told you,” Jesse said after our fourth attempt.
“What’s your mom’s name?” I asked him, and he looked stricken. “I’m serious. What is it?”
“Meredith,” Jesse said. “Meredith May Oliver.”
I typed “Meredith May” and the in-box opened up.
“People are so predictable,” Roux said, as if she had spent her life trying to crack passwords. “Good job, Mags.”
“Thank you, thank you,” I said. “Okay, let’s start searching.”
Chapter 30
We were a trio obsessed.
At first I couldn’t find any e-mails about any article. I searched “Collective,” “Maggie,” “Angelo,” “spy,” whatever I could think of that might give us a hit. Nothing came up. But when I tried words like “story,” “cost,” or “secret,” it gave me thousands upon thousands of hits. “Your dad really needs to organize his in-box,” I told Jesse at one point. “He’s an electronic hoarder.”