
Her red scarf waved in the wind as she smiled. When Bex spun effortlessly and skated backward past the crowd of guys that stood laughing and showing off at the edge of the rink, every single one of them turned to stare at her. But I knew Rebecca Baxter well enough to know that she wasn’t talking about the spies. I totally wished that Bex was talking about the agents in the crowd, whose job it was to protect me-like the woman with the backpack who had been trailing us all afternoon, or the man who was posted at the top of Tower Bridge, as it spanned the Thames and offered a birds’-eye view of all transportation routes for a half mile in any direction. Part of me hoped Bex was talking about her father, who stood by the skating rink’s concession stand, or her mother, who was by the rink’s east exit. Even though our school had trained us well. So something about that moment was…terrifying.Įven though my best friend was beside me. So, scary? Yeah, scary and I go way back.īut at that moment Rebecca Baxter and I were standing on ice skates on a rink that used to be the moat around the Tower of London. After all, in the last year and a half I’d been fake kidnapped once, almost truly kidnapped twice, targeted by one international terrorist organization and two incredibly cute boys. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am prepared for a lot of scary situations. But staring at the crowd in the distance, I couldn’t help but think I am not prepared for this. I could see the night getting darker-the lights grow brighter-and my best friend’s confidence was almost contagious. Her resolve was as solid as the Tower of London’s ancient stone walls that stood twenty feet away. My best friend’s voice was as cool as the wind as it blew off the Thames.
