Chapter 1
As I hurtled toward my destination at 500 miles an hour, I pulled out a notebook, placed it on the shiny mahogany table in front of me, and scribbled a quick to-do list. Pick out an outfit. Get folders and notebooks. Switch into fourth period drama. I chewed on the end of my pen. Oh yeah—just one more thing. Get kidnapped.
According to my pre-mission briefing, kidnappings were up in the States by five percent over the last five years. The significance of which didn’t hit me until I found that the statistics for kidnappings had remained static for a good thirty years. The spike caught the attention of the FBI, and they put their best men on it. The problem? Right when they thought they’d discovered the pattern of the kidnappers, it seemed to change.
We hit some turbulence, and the force of it pulled me out of my reverie. I sucked in a deep breath, my hands resting on the soft leather side arms of my big comfortable seat as the Gulfstream jet jumped. I let the rollercoaster feeling wash over me like a wave, forcing myself to enjoy every last tingle. I only had this flight and a few hours tonight to assume my new thrill-seeking alias—the one that would lure the kidnappers and save the day before the pattern changed again. I might as well make the most of it.
There were four of us on board. I sat in a cluster of seats with Jeremy, my Division 57 handler. The two other agents I’d be working with, Agent Penrod and Agent Wood, sat in two similar chairs on the other side of the plane near the back. The smell of raspberries and cream still hung in the air from lunch.
I twisted the stud in my ear before brushing my hand through my long, inky-black hair. I couldn’t wait to go back to being a blonde. Too bad my black hair was integral to the upcoming mission. I bit my lip and reminded myself that at least I’d been able to get rid of the lip ring and other piercings I’d had to wear for so long.
My eyes fell on Jeremy, the best protector ever, and I thought back to the first day we’d met. As a civilian, I’d just accidentally witnessed a horrific murder committed by terrorists, and he swooped in to protect me. He was serious about his job, too. He even took a bullet for me and then didn’t hesitate to kill the terrorists who wanted me dead. I trusted him completely.
He set a file folder stamped Division 57 on the table sitting between us. He would be the one to protect me as I became the person the kidnappers would choose. I would be safe in the end. He smiled, and I tried to ignore the strong line of his jaw, his perfect nose, and his rumpled, light brown hair.
I grabbed for the file folder, reminding myself that he was my handler. The movement made me notice the faint tan line around my right ring finger. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping it would help keep the stab of pain from my recent breakup with Rick from overcoming me. The hurt was still too raw to contemplate, but I couldn’t help it. Sure, I hadn’t met his stipulation of video chatting without fail every thirty days, but I was a spy in training, and while I’d missed one chat by a week, the last one had only been two days late. I had tried to comply, but if video chatting wasn’t available wherever I was in the world, it wasn’t available. End of story.
His words still cut me, though. I can’t handle it, Christy. If you can’t keep a little promise like contacting me every thirty days, then this will never work. If, after I’m done with my training and you’re still available, we’ll talk then. The look of hopelessness on his face on the screen was forever etched in my mind.
I rubbed the area on my finger where the promise ring he’d given me used to sit, and then quickly glanced at the papers in the file to distract myself. My photographic memory immediately filed their words, statistics, diagrams, maps, and the mission details away into a file in my brain named Adrenaline Rush.
I started to set the closed folder down, but I could feel eyes on me, so I opened it back up and then set it, open, on the table. My photographic memory was a major asset, but it wasn’t something I liked to broadcast about myself. I made a point of appearing to study the material. I pointed to a paragraph on the first page and said, “So, the kidnapper takes eight kids—a girl and a boy that have red, blonde, black, and brown hair? From every school?”
“From the last three schools where they’ve abducted kids,” Jeremy said. “The only commonalities between the kids seem to be their propensity for doing daredevil stunts and taking two of each, a girl and boy, with those basic hair colors.”
I crinkled my nose. “It’s like some sick twisted Noah’s Ark tale.” The group of eighteen-year-olds they wanted me to infiltrate was missing a key element: a black-haired girl.
“If there’s only been three incidents, how did Division find a pattern?”
“All I know is that the kidnapper’s MO apparently changes every six months to a year. Somehow, our computer guys were able to program some algorithms that pointed us to Roseburg High. The kidnapper is finally using a pattern we were able to find early enough to fight him. I think a lot of it was luck. I mean, at the last school he targeted, we identified two of the kids that were eventually kidnapped. Unfortunately, we didn’t act fast enough that time.”
“So, right now he’s only taking complete sets of kids with particular hair colors?”
“Yes.”
I would be the girl with black hair. The group I was supposed to infiltrate already had two people with the requisite hair colors except black. That, of course, meant that I would need to become a daredevil, too. I’d never been a thrill seeker, but would be now.
“It’s crazy thinking Division was able to discover what school they were going to hit next. One day I need to learn more about computers and algorithms and all that stuff.”
“I don’t understand it all either but, it’s not just the hardware that narrowed it down, it was the genius agents analyzing what the computers told them. Talia and Marcus are amazing. The FBI still hasn’t figured it out. Which is probably good, because if they knew, they’d have to tell the public, and then the public would be paranoid and get in our way. This kidnapper is smart—and very hard to track.”
“But now we’ll get them.” I smiled. The other two agents’ eyes locked on me, and I could feel their skepticism. Anger grew inside me, red and hot. How dare they question my abilities? I swiveled in my leather seat, just slightly, and lifted my eyes to meet my soon-to-be fake parents’ gazes, but they had already looked away.
Both shouted conservative by the way they looked. Agent Wood wore short, cropped, unstyled hair. His pants, pulled high, were cinched tight with a belt. His wire-rimmed glasses were pushed hard against his nose. Agent Penrod had big, frizzy hair, no makeup, and plain-styled clothes with pants all the way to her waist. There was no spark in their eyes. Instead, suspicion was etched there. Had years of spy work slowly scratched it in? I tried to convince myself it had nothing to do with me, but I knew it did.
I stayed twisted in my seat, facing the two agents, to dissuade them from staring or scrutinizing me. To them I was a freak, apparently. I perused the pages in the file again, pretending to study them, when in reality I was thinking about other things entirely. I wondered what it would be like to go back to high school now that I was a spy. I’d attended two high schools already, but never got the chance to graduate because terrorists had been hot on my trail, intent on murdering me. I guess it didn’t matter if I graduated or not. But it would have been fun to be the valedictorian and speak at graduation.
Witness Protection hadn’t been able to keep me safe back then. Only becoming a spy had. I smiled despite myself and chuckled a little. It blew my mind to think I was a spy. Would I be as good as Jeremy hoped I’d be? I wanted to be, that was for sure. I had to keep pushing the doubt away.
I turned the page in the file, pretending to examine it while, really, I was working on becoming Misha, my alias on this mission. I had to abandon safe and secure Christy and embrace wild, stunt-loving Misha. “Can’t we just jump once we’re close? This landing safely in an airplane on an ordinary tarmac is so completely boring. I’ve been sitting for six hours. Can’t we do somethin
g fun?”
Jeremy picked up on my change in personality immediately and chuckled. “I don’t think the parachute would hold all the weight of our gear. Nor could we hold it all.”
“Have someone deliver it to us, then. I’m itching to fly.” I shot at him, pleased with how naturally this personality was coming to me.
“Alright,” he said, sending a shock wave of disbelief through me. “Good idea. I’m itching to fly, too.”
I laughed. He didn’t. He smirked at me, stood, and headed for the cockpit. My smile turned to a horror-filled frown. I tried to send it away and be carefree Misha, who would love the chance to jump, but I couldn’t muster any excitement. After only a few minutes, he sauntered back to me.
“We can jump in about three hours,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. “The pilot will fly low, letting us out in an area that is safe and flat.”
“Are you serious?” It felt like my eyes might pop out of my head.
“Totally.”
“I’ve never jumped before.” I knew I’d broken cover already, letting scaredy-cat Christy in, but I couldn’t stop myself. I was really scared. I twisted my palms together.
“There’s a first time for everything, and I’m sure you’ll be doing a lot of firsts on this mission. Where’d fearless Misha go, anyway?” He sat and started tapping a pencil on the pages in the file.
“Thanks, Jeremy,” I beamed with exaggerated enthusiasm. “I’m so excited to jump!” A million worms seemed to be exploring my insides.
He laughed out loud. “Don’t worry, I’ll train you first. You’ll love it.”
My mind went to module 17.7 from the Bresen Academy: Parachuting Basics. I mentally flipped through the pages in my brain easily, and it calmed my fears a little bit, enough to let me overhear my new parents’ whispers.
“If they failed with trained agents, what are they expecting to happen using a child?” Agent Wood was saying.
“She’s supposed to be a prodigy in some way,” Agent Penrod said.
“She must have connections somewhere, but I don’t know why they’d send her on a suicide mission.”
“It’s not right to put us in the middle of it, either. I heard Henry set us up on this one as some kind of joke.”
“He can be such a jerk. He’s always wanted to see us fail. Not this time. We won’t let her pull us down with her. That’s for sure.”
“We’ll have to hold her hand the whole time.”
I leaned across the table to Jeremy and whispered, “How can I work with a team that doesn’t believe in me?”
My eyes darted from them to Jeremy and back.
“You didn’t think it’d be easy to come out here as the youngest agent of Division 57, did you?”
“Maybe,” I said, sulking a bit. “You know how stubbornly optimistic I am.”
“To a fault, actually,” he said, the grin returning to his face. “Despite that, you’re going to have to prove yourself. Like it or not. However, I won’t allow you to become reckless in the pursuit of acceptance.”
“I’m never reckless.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, never. Only when it comes to proving yourself. Seriously, this is your first real mission, and I intend on having you not only live through it, but be victorious.”
I began to protest—I had been on missions at the Bresen Spy Academy, but he cut me off.
“I know you’ve been on ‘exercises.’ But in truth, your hand was being held while you did them. You’re on your own, now. It’s all up to you. You have to act as if there’s no one to save you. You have to rely on you and you alone.”
“What about my ‘team’?” I asked, making quotation marks in the air as I said it. “And is there a blinking neon sign announcing to the world that I’m only eighteen?”
“They may not know exactly how old you are, it’s not like they’ve seen your file, but everyone at Division knows you’re the youngest agent, and they’re all curious about you. They know Division wouldn’t pick you up without knowing you’re accomplished, but they’re worried it won’t translate into real-world spying.
“They’re also skeptical that someone so young could be as accomplished as you are. I’m betting you can understand that. They don’t want to fail because of your inexperience. Also, I’m thinking a bit of jealousy is raging within them. I’m sure it took them years to get their first high-level case, and here you are, going on your first real mission—and it’s a high-level one. While it’s important to use your team when you need them, I wouldn’t completely rely on them. Count on yourself. You can, however, rely on me.” He grinned a mischievous smile.
I snorted. I already knew that. He’d saved my hide several times already. I also knew the thing that separated me from them was my photographic memory. It gave me an edge in everything, including the spy world. I subconsciously rubbed my upper arm between my armpit and the crook in my arm, where two days ago, Division 57 had inserted a tracking device. I was glad it wasn’t sore anymore.
Jeremy didn’t miss it. “Just remember to activate that tracker in your arm for no longer than ten seconds, then deactivate it. It only takes a light tap. Either use your other hand to do it or press your entire upper arm against your ribs. When you’ve gotten the information we need, just tap it twice quickly, and we’ll be on our way to extract you.”
“No worries,” I said. “I got it.” I thought about this whole new level of incognito I’d attained. If I thought I didn’t exist two years ago when the FBI erased me, I was way off the map now. It was my job not to exist. At least, not as a normal person.
“Why don’t we practice your walk, talk, attitude, and— jump?” Jeremy said with a light hearted laugh.
“Okay,” I said, trying to pretend I wasn’t the least bit nervous about the jump anymore.
We practiced for a good hour before Jeremy said, “I’m going to call your agent parents over so we can discuss a few things before we jump.”
A jolt went through me. I was really going to jump from an airplane.
Agent Wood and Agent Penrod came over and sat in the other two seats next to us.
“I’m assuming you’ve had time to go over your assign-nments,” Jeremy said.
We all nodded. Agent Penrod crossed her leg and then pumped the one on top up and down, up and down, her lips pressed together. Agent Wood sat ramrod straight, his wire spectacles sitting loosely on his nose.
“Great,” Jeremy said. “The basics, then. You are a cozy little family—the Robertses. Your mission, Agents Wood and Penrod, is to support Agent Hadden…”
My heart flipped hearing him call me Agent Hadden. It was thrilling.
Jeremy continued, “as her parents and help her as agents as she seeks to join a group of risk-takers at Roseburg High. Once included, she will make herself stand out in the group in hopes of being chosen as one of eight students to be kidnapped by the kidnapping ring. There are already nine in the target group, Madness, we discovered at the high school. They lack a black-haired girl. Christy will be that black-haired girl.
“We believe that once Christy is included in the group, the kidnappers will act quickly. Christy has a tracker inside her left arm that she can turn off and on to let us know her position without transmitting continuously and possibly giving herself up if she were ever wanded by some electronic device searching for trackers or wires.”
“So,” I said, “will all four of us meet regularly?”
“You,” Jeremy said, “will fill Agent Wood and Agent Penrod in on a daily basis. They will then pass on any intel they got during the day from myself and Division. They will also be there to help you in whatever capacity you need. You will meet with me a minimum of once a week. Just remember that any communication must be sent over secure pathways or be coded. Make sure to use proper protocol when setting up meetings or communicating. Understand?”
“Yes,” the three of us said in unison.
“Once kidnapped, Christy will let us know her position using the device
in her arm. She will then uncover the reason these teens are being taken and press her locator again twice, indicating she is ready to be extracted. We will send a team to extract her and shut down the kidnapping ring.
“Any questions?”
The agents stared hard at me. I stared back. Inside, I was a mess, but I couldn’t let them know that.
“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Agent Penrod asked, skepticism in the crease of her brow.
“Of course,” I said, pressing my lips tightly together to prevent them from quivering. While this scared the pants off me, I was ready.
“Nothing is ever as easy as it seems,” she continued.
“I’m ready,” I said with as firm a tone as possible and never taking my eyes off hers.
“You’re out of line, Agent Penrod. Agent Hadden is a full agent and deserves respect. If you are having trouble recog-nizing this, I can get you reassigned.”
Her face turned to stone. “No need.”
I’m sure she was thinking that getting reassigned never looked good in your file.
“So, Mr. and Mrs. Roberts, we will meet you at the house. Misha is about to do her first daredevil act: skydiving.”
The two of them smirked at me like they were sure I’d chicken out. Jeremy suited up and helped me do the same, but he seemed to be having trouble meeting my eyes.
“What is it?” I demanded in a whisper.
He whispered back, “You know, you don’t have to do this. There are young-looking agents who could probably pull it off.”
“Are you kidding me, Jeremy? You’re not doubting me, too, are you?” I made sure the other agents were far enough away that they couldn’t hear us. I couldn’t believe he was suddenly telling me this. It made me nervous. He’d always believed in me before.
“No, no, no. That’s not what I’m saying. I just don’t want you to get hurt. What if something goes wrong when you’re kidnapped, and I can’t find you? Things happen all the time and even to very seasoned agents. In fact, it already did. The last mission to infiltrate this group was a major failure. It has nothing to do with my belief in you. Things just go wrong. You can back out now. No one would blame you.”
“No way, Jeremy,” I said. “I’m ready, and we’re going to stop this kidnapping ring. We’re unstoppable as a team, right?”
He shook his head but said, “Yes, but I want you to be ready for anything. I don’t want you to think this will be easy. Anything could happen. Anything. Are you prepared for that?”