Was anyone? Was there even such a thing as “just a cheerleader”?
“Damn,” I said under my breath. “I seriously need to chill.” It must have been the mint smell that was still assaulting my senses. The conditioner was obviously playing funky beauty-product mind games with me and making me all weepy and philosophical.
I was officially never letting the twins give me an unmarked bottle again.
I looked down at my watch and decided that I really didn’t care how long Laguna Beach was supposed to be. I was done.
I closed the book, slid it back under my bed, and stood up. I must have stood up too fast, because the blood rushed from my head, and everything went dark around the edges for a moment. Then again, maybe it had nothing to do with how fast I’d stood up and everything to do with the concussion the doctor had seemed confident I didn’t have. Or it could have been that the conditioning treatment was actually mildly hallucinogenic.
Not liking any of the choices, I stumbled into the bathroom, closed the door behind me, stripped off my clothes, and hopped into the shower. I turned the water on and let it beat against my hair. Possible concussions aside, I wanted the trippy conditioner out.
Standing there in the shower, the smell of mint slowly subsiding, it occurred to me for the first time to wonder which one of the perky girls I’d seen in the book was Brooke’s mother.
Probably whichever one was captain, I thought wryly. Like mother, like daughter.
CHAPTER 13
Code Word: Practice
When I woke up the next morning, I still hadn’t come to any brilliant conclusions about the Jacob Kann situation. Instead, I’d spent most of the night having naked dreams, half of which featured homecoming, and half of which involved exploding cars—which, FYI, were at least three times more traumatizing if your clothes disappeared mid-BOOM.
By the time five in the morning rolled around, I was thankful to be getting out of bed, which just goes to show that there really is a first time for everything. Little-known fact about cheerleaders: They keep schedules that would make grown marines cry. Between before-school practices and after-school meetings/practices, some days I felt like I spent my entire life cheering. At least this morning, I had more to look forward to than a rousing rendition of “Clap Your Hands.”
I might not have accomplished anything the night before, but when Brooke had ordered me home, she’d already been forming a course of action that involved analyzing the TCI audio and tracking data and scanning Kann’s hard drive for clues about what had brought these particular members of the watch list to Bayport to begin with. Based on previous experience, I was willing to bet that the other girls had already managed to zero in on some key piece of information. In fact, I would have wagered my combat boots on it.
There were few things besides coffee that could actually get me going before noon, but mystery and intrigue numbered among them. It took me all of two minutes to get dressed. The twins had idiot-proofed (or as they liked to call it, “Toby-proofed”) my wardrobe, so all I had to do was grab a preselected outfit off the hanger, stuff it in my duffel bag, and throw on a pair of cotton shorts and a sports bra, and then I was ready to go.
After getting dressed at warp speed, I actually managed to drive all the way to high school before I realized that I’d forgotten my morning coffee. Mystery, intrigue, and naked dreams aside, that didn’t bode well for my chances at making it through the morning without killing myself. Or someone else.
The first person I saw when I walked into the gym was Brooke, who looked distinctly miffed in her own super polished way.
“You’re late.”
I ignored Brooke’s greeting and proceeded to the locker room. She followed, and as I threw my bag into a locker, she repeated herself, and I repeated my nonresponse. I was two minutes late. For me, that pretty much meant I was early, and the only thing that kept me from snipping right back at Brooke was the conversation I’d had with Zee the day before. Of everyone in this room, our captain was probably the only one who’d actually had a more stressful night than me.
Plus, she was the one who got to decide whether or not I was going to be a part of the next stage of our mission—whatever that might be—which meant that aggravating her more than necessary probably wasn’t wise.
“Holos are on, Brooke!” Lucy was the only person I knew who spoke with an exclamation mark in her voice at the crack of dawn.
Brooke arched one eyebrow at me. “Holograms are on,” she said dryly. And then, without another word, she stalked past me to the showers, which held one of the many secret entrances to the Quad.
Five minutes later, the ten of us were seated at our conference table, and I was taking in just how much I’d missed the night before.
“In the twelve hours since we placed bugs and trackers on the TCIs, none of them have shown obviously erratic patterns of movement. Amelia Juarez spent the night at her hotel, and our bugs didn’t register any incoming or outgoing calls from either her cell or the hotel phone.”
Chloe smirked in my general direction when Brooke said the word cell, and it only took me a few seconds to figure out why. Tara and I hadn’t gotten a bug on Kann’s cell, just his hotel phone, which—had he actually lived—probably wouldn’t have proved that useful. Somehow, April and Chloe had one-upped us.
“Anthony Connors-Wright appears to have eaten dinner in Walford Park, but beyond the fact that he voluntarily chose to pick up food from the KFC drive-through on the way there, his pattern of movement wasn’t sketchy in the least. Ditto for his phones.
“Because he’s our prime suspect in the surveillance we found on the other TCIs, the Big Guys instructed us to pay special attention to Hector Hassan, and we kept a live trace on him last night.” She smiled. “Good thing, too, because Hector Hassan drove to three different pay phones between two and four in the morning.” The second the words were out of her mouth, I knew we’d hit pay dirt. Young, suave businessmen didn’t use pay phones unless they were up to something.
“We contacted the Big Guys, and they tracked down outgoing and incoming calls from each of the pay phones and compared the phone log with the times Hassan was there.” Brooke paused, letting the tension build in the air.
“Two of the three calls were received from untraceable phones, but the third…”
Okay, enough with the dramatic pauses.
“The third was an outgoing call to an individual who’s much, much higher than Hassan on the Watch List.”
In other words, Hassan wasn’t just a Terrorist-Connected Individual. He was an individual who’d spoken with his terrorist connection the night before.
“Have you passed this information on to the Big Guys?” I asked.
Brooke flipped her hair over her shoulders and rolled her eyes, a gesture I took to mean “why, yes, Toby, yes I did.”
“Any word back yet?” This time, the question came from Chloe, and Brooke offered a real answer.
“I’m expecting the call any minute.”
“What about the data I got from Kann’s laptop?” I asked, risking Brooke’s wrath for messing with her dramatic timing again.
To my surprise, Brooke smiled, and I realized that even though two of the other teams had managed to bug their marks’ cell phones, the information Tara and I had retrieved might just prove itself to be even more useful.
Take that, Chloe!
“Chloe, you want to debrief everyone?” Brooke spoiled my moment of victory by turning the floor over to Chloe, thus reminding me that while I’d been “resting,” Chloe had been enjoying the spoils of my hacking prowess.
“Most of the data on Kann’s hard drive was useless,” Chloe said, sitting up straighter in her chair, her eyes lingering on me as she delivered the last word. “But I did manage to analyze his inbox and sent mail for patterns consistent with the timing of the TCI influx, and it looks like our boy was definitely here to purchase something. We’ve got the alias of the seller, but haven’t managed to ID him yet.”
“What kind of purchase are we talking about here?” Tiffany asked. Of all of us, the twins probably spent the most time making purchases themselves, so the question seemed oddly natural coming from Tiff.
Chloe had an answer ready, and it was clear that she was thrilled to have been asked. “That’s the other thing we managed to pull off the disk. We don’t have specifics, but we do have reason to believe that Kann was here to purchase…”
Chloe mimicked one of Brooke’s dramatic pauses, and I couldn’t help but add theme music to the situation. “Dum dum DUM!”
Everyone at the table glared at me in one synchronized motion. Like I was the only one thinking it.
When Chloe spoke again, her voice was soft. And deadly. “Kann was here to purchase some kind of biological weapon,” she said. “And then he was going to turn right around and sell it.”
Based on the meaning of the TCI acronym, I was going to go out on a limb and guess that Kann probably wasn’t planning on selling it to the good guys. For the millionth time since the day before, the explosion replayed itself in my mind’s eye, but this time, part of me couldn’t help but see it differently. Murder was bad, but so was equipping terrorists to commit more of the same, and that was what Kann was planning to do before he died in that blast. I couldn’t decide what to think about that, or if I even wanted to think about it at all, and a moment later, the air of solemnity around us was suddenly and completely shattered by the sound of pop music blaring from Brooke’s cell phone.
“Please tell me that wasn’t who I think it was singing,” I said as Brooke excused herself from the table and went to answer the phone. “Celebutantes should not be allowed to pretend they’re pop stars.”
“What?” Lucy said. “It’s catchy.”
Oh, dear God.
“I’ll pass on any information that you…you’d like to what? Oh. Okay. Sure. No problem.” Brooke’s voice started out sharp, crisp, and professional, and morphed into forced and perky. She shut her phone and then turned back to the rest of us.
“There have been some developments,” she said.
“And they are…,” Chloe prompted, a twinge of attitude in her voice.
“They want to talk to all of us,” Brooke said. “You can hear about the developments for yourself.”
At those words, I actually stopped breathing. During my first mission, we’d gotten our instructions straight from our superiors. Since then, everything they’d communicated to us had been communicated through Brooke. Normally, I might have played at being Zee and attempted to analyze Brooke’s reaction to the fact that the Big Guys wanted to talk to all of us, but even once I started breathing again, analyzing was out of the picture.
I didn’t know much about the Big Guys. I knew there were several of them. I knew they were somehow part of the CIA. And I knew that one of them was Jack’s uncle.
“Good morning, girls.” The screen flipped on, and a neutral, male voice greeted us.
John. It’s Alan. I need to talk to you. It’s about Jack.
I never had figured out what Uncle Alan had wanted with Jack. For all I knew, he’d been calling about wanting to take his nephew to a baseball game or something. Still, the sound of the Voice, which I hadn’t heard in weeks, but hadn’t been able to forget, either, had me wondering all over again. How was it that Jack’s father was the head of what basically amounted to a terrorist cell, but Jack’s uncle was part of the CIA?
And, perhaps more importantly, what did this say about Jack?
The Voice continued laying down the facts in a cool, calm manner, oblivious to my line of thought, and I forced myself to pay attention to the case at hand, tucking all questions and objections concerning good old Uncle Alan neatly away for the time being.
“The data you sent us yesterday has proved invaluable, Brooke. Hector Hassan has been taken into custody, officially as a suspect in Jacob Kann’s death.”
And unofficially, I filled in, because of the calls he’d exchanged with terrorists the night before.
“What about the email address we sent you?” Brooke asked, slightly appeased by the fact that despite demanding to talk to all of us, the Voice had still made a deliberate effort at recognizing her as our leader.
“We’re still tracking down the alias,” the voice answered. “Whoever this guy is, he knows how to cover his tracks.”
Somehow, it escaped everyone’s attention but mine that uncovering tracks like those was more or less my forte.
“In the meantime, you girls don’t need to worry about uncovering the identity of the seller, or the details of the biological weaponry for sale. We’ve got people on that here.”
I could actually see the effort Brooke was putting in to not frowning at that little announcement.
“What we need you girls to do is stay on the remaining TCIs. With Kann dead and Hassan in custody, Amelia and Anthony are our only remaining links to this case. We’ve got agents in the area, but starting at 1500 hours today, I want two of your teams on each of them. You girls can get closer than we can, and we can’t take any risks. These people could be dangerous, and until we can identify the threat and neutralize it, tracking the buyers is our only option.
“I want a fifth team staking out the firm and keeping a complete log of who’s coming and who’s going. If someone’s selling a biological weapon in Bayport and Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray doesn’t have a hand in it yet, I think it’s safe to assume that they will soon.”
And here I’d been hoping that my homecoming date’s father wasn’t involved in the national security risk du jour.
“Understood, sir.” Brooke’s tone bordered on sounding military. “We’ll handle it. Have the results come back yet on yesterday’s explosion?”
“We’re expecting the labs back this afternoon, and that leads me to the point of this conference call.” The voice paused. I was starting to see where Brooke and Co. got it from. “This case is sensitive, girls. It’s dangerous. And we’ve officially designated it a Do Not Engage. Under no circumstances are any of you to engage your marks. If you see something suspicious, call it in, and one of our teams will take care of it. Your mission is strictly observational. Have I made myself clear?”
For a moment, there was silence, and then at Brooke’s nod, the rest of the Squad, minus me, chimed in. “Yes, sir.”
I said nothing. For one thing, I wasn’t exactly keen on speaking in unison, and for another, I wasn’t about to make any promises I couldn’t keep.
“Toby.”
I jumped in my seat. The Voice actually knew my name. And somehow, he had the freaky ability to ascertain that of all of us, I was the one who hadn’t responded.
“Do you understand?”
I contemplated telling him that what I didn’t understand was his familial relationships, but stayed momentarily silent, causing everyone within a three-foot radius to kick me under the table at once.
“Ow!” I cleared my throat. “I mean, yes.” I didn’t throw the sir on the end, but apparently, that was good enough for the Voice.
“Excellent. Report in tonight, and we’ll have more information for you all tomorrow. And girls?”
“Yes?”
“Congratulations on the homecoming nominations. We’re all very proud.”
And with that, the line went dead, and I was left trying to figure out what part of this exchange (aside from the obvious Jack’s uncle factor) had been the most surreal: the official commendation from the government on being nominated for homecoming court, or the fact that Brooke had chosen the poppiest of pop ringtones to signify a call from the CIA.
“Okay, guys. You heard the man. We’ll meet back here for seventh period and head out from there.” Brooke looked down at her watch. “We still have an hour before class starts. Who’s up for tumbling?”
At that point, I realized something. The most surreal part of this entire morning had nothing to do with ringtones or homecoming and everything to do with the fact that I had enough energy and potential f
rustration built up inside of me that the physical release of tumbling actually sounded good.
CHAPTER 14
Code Word: Luscious
Word to the wise. Never let a high school junior try to teach you how to do something called a layout, because either you won’t be able to do it, in which case you’ll feel like the cheertard everyone else thinks you are, or you will be able to do it, in which case, the aforementioned junior might take it upon herself to teach you something harder.
On a related note, I really, really do not recommend trying to do anything with your body that includes the phrase “full twist.”
After forty-five minutes of tumbling, every muscle in my body was rebelling, and I’d added several bruises to the arsenal I’d started the day before. Unfortunately, the twins didn’t see any of this as a reason to go easy on me on the personal appearance front. The second we got back to the locker room, they insisted on signing off on my outfit and did so only after supplying me with yet another pair of boots to supplement my growing collection.
I got all of ten minutes of peace while everyone was getting dressed and primped for the day before the twins returned to gaily consider my newly conditioned hair, anxious to see the results up close and personal.
And I mean personal. Tiffany actually stuck her nose into my hair and took a big whiff. After some whispering behind their hands, the twins informed me that my Bounce Index had improved considerably, and I was clear to go for a day at Bayport High.
Call me crazy, but I found it difficult to care about whether or not I qualified as “sufficiently luscious” when we were mere hours away from a mission so large that all five Squad teams would be deployed: two to each of the TCIs, and one to Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray.
I mean, yes, this was just an observational mission, and yes, we had been explicitly forbidden from making contact of any kind, but the thought of getting out there again and doing what the ten of us were born to do was enough to make me submit to the twins’ high-speed primping and fluffing without issuing so much as a single death threat.