Spycraft Academy B. Miles (new ebook reader txt) 📖

Her hand ran down his chest to his abdomen, her fingers tracing light patterns into his skin and making him shudder.

"I want to watch you shatter and break apart so I can see what really lies underneath."

She lifted herself on her toes, her lips hovering inches away from his, her breath fanning against his face. Mattie whispered against his mouth and a shock of warmth shot from his neck to the small of his back. "I want to drive you so mad with want that you won't be able to think straight enough to beg us to stop."

A loud click broke them apart and they flinched away from each other. The storeroom doorknob turned. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck. No doubt it was an instructor. He and Mattie were about to be dragged to Mode's office in the middle of the night to be disciplined, demerited, and maybe even expelled thanks to the contraband in Mattie's satchel.

Mattie seemed to have the same thought because she hurriedly tore the bag from her shoulder and tried to stuff it between the shelves as quietly as she could. Sam snuffed their candle and pulled the shadows around them both, though if there was direct light from the other room, his shadows may be useless anyway.

The door squeaked open. Time stood still. A quiet voice spilled into the storeroom.

"I told you, it isn't in there," the voice said, far too distant to be the person at the door. No, it wasn't just any voice. It was Franklin. What was he doing here in the middle of the night, and who was opening the door? There was a quiet growl and the wooden door was suddenly shut again.

Sam didn't realize he'd stopped breathing until he exhaled the entire contents of his lungs. He inched closer to the door, straining to hear the muffled voices on the other side. Mattie rotated her wrists and then suddenly the voices became much clearer.

"Well go get it!" a woman hissed. She had a nondescript voice, familiar and yet unknown.

"Not until I feel confident about it," Franklin said. There was a bit of silence from the other side of the door, and then suddenly Franklin yelled, "No, you can't do that!"

When the woman spoke again, her voice was dangerous, quiet, a sharp hiss of derision. "Don't tell me what I can and cannot do, you fool. If you push back against me, you know what will happen."

Sam held his breath. Somebody was threatening Franklin, and Sam didn't like it.

He didn't realize he was reaching for the doorknob until Mattie clasped his wrist and held him still.

"Don't be an idiot," she whispered.

"I apologize," Franklin said, "but please don't touch that. Just wait until the agreed time and I will get you what you asked for."

Another beat of silence.

"You better," the woman said. "Do not keep me waiting again. I do not give third chances."

There was no more talk after that, only the opening and closing of the classroom door. Sam pressed his ear against the wood, straining to hear footfalls, shuffled papers, anything to give him a sign that they should stay in the storeroom.

He and Maddie stood there, just breathing and listening, for what must have been ten or fifteen minutes. No sound came. Sam turned the doorknob and slowly peeked through the crack in the door. The poisons classroom was completely empty and still, not a thing disturbed or out of place.

"We need to go. Now." Mattie nudged his back, hurrying him into the classroom.

Sam threaded his fingers through Mattie's and together they rushed across the classroom, out the door, and into the corridor, walking briskly in the direction of their dormitory.

"Who was that? Did you recognize that woman's voice?" Mattie muttered when they were far enough from the classroom to be considered strolling inconspicuously.

"I have no idea," Sam said. "But I'm positive that Franklin is in trouble."

19

The next day went by in a haze. Sam could barely focus on his studies; every time somebody tried to talk to him, he would become distracted, their words blurring out of existence. His mind kept wandering to Apelles and what they were planning on doing with the spymaster in just a few short hours.

Drina and Rosin brewed the potion the night before. Everything was in place. The girls knew what they were supposed to do. Sam spent most of the day planning strategies in his head, imagining the layout of Apelles' home by going on assumption alone.

It was a squat, one story building like the rest of the instructor cottages. Only one person lived in it. The fireplace was to the right of the front room because the chimney was on the right of the roof. The kitchen and washroom probably stretched away from the front of the house while the bedroom, needing the heat from the fireplace, would be situated directly across from it, which meant that one of the three windows around the building would be situated in the middle of the bedroom. The bed was most likely flush against the left wall to give Apelles cover should any intruders barge in.

Sam and the girls would wait until Apelles inevitably disappeared to do whatever it was that he did, and they would wait for him to come home. When he did, they would grab him when he came into the bedroom. After that, Drina would stab him with the dart while the rest of them held him down, allowing the poison to work its magic.

Sam wasn't sure how they were going to get information out of Apelles, and that's what worried him the most. Given that he was a Varin spymaster and in his mid-thirties, given that he often talked about foreign missions in class, Sam guessed that he spent a decade in the military's special foreign operations unit and survived it. He was probably trained thoroughly in interrogations.

Sam doubted that anything they could think of would break him. They could go with Mattie's idea of