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“We can’t do anything right now,” Kota said. He blew out a small, tight breath, the sound almost a whistle. “We’ll have to come up with a plan. We don’t know all the facts, like exactly who took the phones. I’m going to work with Victor to pull our data, and see why they might want to take our phones in the first place. I want to figure out if mine was actually switched, or if the data got deleted remotely. I can’t picture my phone getting taken. Or Luke’s for that matter.”

“I might have messed up,” Luke said.

“I doubt it,” Kota said, lifting his head up with a tight smile. “The Luke I know wouldn’t get his phone stolen out from under him. Sang left her phone in a different spot than usual and someone took advantage of that and replaced it completely.”

We speculated on the hows and whys, but no matter how we looked at it, there weren’t any answers yet.

We continued to wait for a while, but Kota insisted that those who could sleep, should. It would be a while before Victor was set up to do the work required. “We’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way,” Kota said. “We’ll need people sleeping in shifts when not actively on a job.”

Luke, Gabriel and I went ahead and got into Nathan’s bed—me in the middle between them. We’d shared a bed before, but this time, we were all restless. Maybe it was the coffee and sugar still in our veins.

I flipped over the pillow a lot, sinking my head down into it. The smells around me were familiar: leather, Luke’s sugar and Gabriel smelled like coffee.

???

I awoke to the smell of the ocean and of moss and berries.

I turned onto my back, finding an arm under me, Silas’s, by the feel of the hard muscle. There was another arm over my hip: Victor. I didn’t have to open my eyes to know it was them. Sometime in the middle of the night, they’d come in and switched with Luke and Gabriel.

Where were those two now?

The room was quiet. The house seemed to be still. But I had questions and wanted to get up, but was still tired.

I looked over at Victor, still sleeping, his lips parted like he was pursed to whistle but nothing came out. His wavy hair framed his face.

I thought about what had happened last night. Our phones had been taken—swapped for others for no reason that we could figure out. Was there anything on my phone that was sensitive?

Mr. Hendricks and Mr. Morris had followed us, possibly running off when we tried to approach. Jay and Rocky were there, too. Why? Or was it coincidence? Was it them that took our phones?

The sudden bang of the door opening and knocking into the wall startled me to sit upright.

Kota was in the doorway, dressed in jeans and a green polo shirt, although the shirt was a little askew on his side. He looked at me and gave me an apologetic look before he turned toward Victor. “Vic,” he said loudly. “I need you. Let’s go.”

Victor groaned and then sat up before he coughed once. He was still wearing a white shirt and the black slacks, like he’d known to stay dressed.

“What’s going on?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.

“Mr. Morris is at the fake Academy school,” Kota said. “He broke in and is looking through files we planted there. We’re going to go in and check what he’s been looking at.” He smiled, his eyes bright, his chest puffing up. His face was tired, but he was eager. “Something’s happening.”

I started crawling to the edge of the bed, when Silas reached for my leg and held on. “You don’t go, aggele,” he said. “Stay.”

“But I want to know what’s going on,” I said. “What does this mean?”

Victor stood, stretched and then walked around the bed, scratching at his face as he spoke. “They’re looking for dirt of some kind. They’re nervous.”

“Exactly what I’m thinking,” Kota said. “They’re desperate. It’s causing them to take risks, like breaking into the Academy building on a holiday weekend. Mr. Blackbourne is keeping close to Mr. Hendricks, but we might need to give Mr. Morris some false info. Let’s see what they do with it.”

They left, leaving Silas and I alone in the bedroom.

I sighed, feeling useless at the moment. Could I sit here, knowing something like this was going on? I didn’t want to sleep anymore. I wanted to get to work on something. Anything.

Silas breathed in deeply through his nose and then sat up. “Aggele mou,” he said, his voice deep, throaty. “You’re not going to sleep, are you?”

“I’m awake now,” I said. “Is there anything we can do?”

“Stay put,” he said. “Behave. What they’re doing now is dangerous enough.”

“Following Mr. Morris is going to be dangerous?” There were sounds deeper in the house now. People were walking around. The front door opened, closed. Things quieted. Kota and Victor had left in a hurry.

“Not just following,” Silas said as he got up and stretched, letting out a satisfied noise. He had on boxer briefs and a blue T-shirt. He was all muscle, and as he stretched, his shoulders and arms flexed, and even his legs showed defined lines, showing his obvious strength.

His black eyes studied me as I looked at him and I glanced away from his body, feeling embarrassed that I’d gotten caught staring. “So we do nothing?”

“We stay here and act like we don’t know anything,” he said.

“I always do that.”

He pulled on his jeans and then zipped them up. “Do you want coffee?”

???

Saturday was a buzz of activity as the boys flew in and out of Nathan’s home. At first, I suspected I would go with them, but no, they left me behind every time.

I did spend a lot of time preparing food—simple eggs, toast, and coffee for breakfast—and cleaning up and holding messages. I fixed what I could of a lunch, and then thought of what to make for dinner. When someone showed up, there was always food prepared so they could eat while they wrote down notes and conversed with each other with whatever updates they had.

No phones this time. If we didn’t say something in person, it couldn’t be said. I was the one to relay coded messages whenever anyone came in. I told them where to go next when required.

I was also to watch cameras. Kota set up the laptop for me. He had me watching the house, the street. “You’re keeping house,” he said when he showed me how to toggle between the feeds.

I wasn’t so sure this wasn’t more than a way to keep me out of the way, but I didn’t mind. One other person was always with me, whether it was Silas, North, Kota, or any of the others. If they slept, it was at Nathan’s house, which seemed to have been turned into their base camp.

Still, while we were there, everyone was on edge, locked onto a laptop or busy studying material, papers. Kota wrote in files when he got in.

When Sunday rolled around, they were all still back and forth. No rest. The meeting they had planned didn’t happen. Too much activity from Mr. Hendricks and the possible leak in our phones made them overly cautious.

On Sunday afternoon, I sat with Kota on Nathan’s sofa. The sky was overcast, promising chilly weather instead of rain. I’d made breakfast and had cleaned up after the others, but hadn’t readied anything for lunch.

Kota was looking at his laptop. I occasionally glanced at the laptop he’d set up for me, sitting on the coffee table. It showed our own street and our homes, but nothing was moving on the screen—nothing was happening. I sighed, loudly.

“I know you’re frustrated,” Kota said, although he kept his eyes on the screen.

“I don’t know what else to do,” I said. “Why am I just sitting here?”

“Do you feel like you’re just sitting?” he asked. He looked up, turning his head toward me. “You’ve got one of the most important jobs here.”

“Shouldn’t I go out and help?”

“You are helping,” he said. “You told us about the phones. You made us aware they’d switched our phones out. You were the one who thought you spotted Volto. Don’t you see? If you hadn’t thought to go out and check, Mr. Morris and Mr. Hendricks could have followed you three for hours. You might not have noticed your phone being gone at all for a good, long time. And now that we are hyper-aware of Mr. Morris, we found out he was breaking into the Academy school. Now we’re trying to lay the groundwork to see what happens if he does find something interesting. We’ll be able to steer their plans to fail, whatever they are.”

“But I’m just sitting here now,” I said. I was still in pajama pants and the T-shirt I’d worn since yesterday. Since no one was asking me to go anywhere, I hadn’t bothered to change. I was feeling like a frumpy mess, but what did it matter? “I’m the one at home making sandwiches while everyone else is out there getting involved.”

Kota sighed, putting the laptop beside him on the couch. He turned toward me, holding out his arms. “Come here for a second.”

I was pouting, but I couldn’t help it. The boys had come and gone for over twenty-four hours now, and here we were, half way through Sunday, and I was all the more restless to take action. It felt like my fault my phone had been lifted. How could I not have noticed? Perhaps if I’d put it into my bra like I normally did, it wouldn’t have happened. Luke had told me that putting it in there actually prevented people from taking it.

With Kota signaling again for me to come closer, I leaned into him. He gathered me in his arms and kissed my cheek as he rubbed my back and held me. I curled my arms up into his chest, leaning into him in a cuddle. I was still frowning, but Kota was soothing my hurt feelings from getting left behind.

“Sang,” he said quietly. “You’ve taken my job.”

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