It was cold. Preston Winters’s third mansion (the one Preston was currently staying in, coincidentally) was right before my eyes. I felt the familiar sensation of believing that I had made a terrible, terrible mistake.
Maybe I was too quick to trust Preston and his Spider-Man watch. Maybe I should have given Macey a week or so to calm down before we acted on her rash decisions. There were dozens of Maybes that were floating around my head, but none of them made me turn around and tell everyone to abort this mission.
I took three, maybe four, steps forward before Zach was reaching for me and bringing me closer to his side. “Not now,” he whispered, his tone firm and his eyes sharp and alert.
I looked up and watched Bex slide herself up the rope that was swinging from a Balcony. Her upper body strength never ceased to amaze me as she lifted her arm higher and pulled herself along the swinging-rope.
“Okay,” I murmured in a vague response.
Zach sighed, shaking his head. “Gallagher Girl...” he started. “Remember Mr. Solomon. Doubts prove that we care about our mission. Paragraph four, line nine.”
“Line eight and three quarters,” Liz corrected through comms.
“I got it, Liz,” he muttered into the Gallagher Academy ring on his finger. “Paragraph four, line eight and three quarters: A Clandestine mission is only a doubt in disguise.”
That quote always made me ponder things. How can a clandestine mission be a doubt in disguise, I asked myself and Mr. Solomon time and time again. “It cannot be explained, only lived,” Mr. Solomon would reply.
I think I’m starting to understand now.
“I know, I know,” I tried to reassure him. “We can only try and hope.”
He patted my head, a ghost of the smirk I used to hate appearing on his face. “Good.”
“I’m up!” Bex’s voice rang through my ears. “North-West territorial room is...” She paused and for a second I was beginning to have doubts – again. “Clear,” she said finally. I breathed in relief.
“Can we come through?” Macey asked, taking another step towards the mansion double doors.
“Hold on,” Bex replied. “I’ll let you in.”
“Bex,” Macey started, rolling her eyes despite the fact Bex couldn’t see her. “I’m a highly trained teenage spy. I think I can pick a lock.”
“Yeah,” Bex’s voice answered. “Well, try getting past the guard dog.”
“Guard dog?”
“Guard dog,” Bex confirmed. “Don’t worry, though. I have mildly lethal darts on me that’ll knock it out for an hour.”
“Good.”
Silence overtook us and we all collectively waited for Bex to appear – for nothing to go wrong.
Pros and Cons of sneaking into Preston’s house:
PRO: It was, after all, a clandestine mission and it would look great on my credentials for Langley.
CON: Half of the mission was spent outside, in the cold, freezing slowly to death.
PRO: It gave us something to boast about to Tina.
CON: We weren’t allowed to.
PRO: There were no more cons.
CON: There were no more pros.
And then the two double doors I was so focused on, opened.
YOU ARE READING
Mini Stories and One Shots
Short Story“I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it.”—William Carlos Williams. So I write things sometimes; have a guess where they go.
