If I hadn’t been totally and completely, one-hundred percent brilliant, I might not have finished in time.
NO WIRELESS NETWORK AVAILABLE.
This was it—no more back doors, no Plan C. They’d turned off the wireless network. All of the hacking in the world wouldn’t get me back into those files.
Luckily, that didn’t matter.
“Done,” I said, as out of breath as a marathon runner after the last leg of a race. “We’ve got everything they’ve got, including a copy of what I’m about ninety-nine percent sure is the application they were using to assist with their hacks, and in about another hour or so, their system will be technological dog meat.”
Chloe’s facial expression never changed, but her body shed just enough tension that I considered the possibility that the stick typically wedged in her butt might have been dislodged.
“Well,” Chloe said, putting the car into drive and tearing back onto the road, causing my head to come dangerously close to rethunking itself on the window to my left. “Maybe you’re not a complete imbecile after all.” She shifted lanes, and I held on for dear life. “Now that we’ve shut down the leak, we should be in the clear to send these files on to the Big Guys. They’ll put a team on it and find what we’re looking for ASAP.”
As much as I hated handing over the files, I was drained, and decided that a little manpower never hurt anyone.
Of course, the entire question of whether or not my pride should have been insulted by the idea of getting help from the Big Guys was going to be moot if Chloe’s driving managed to kill us all before we got back to school.
As Chloe “merged” onto the highway, there was a moment of silence in the car. I, for one, was praying for my survival, as some people who shall remain nameless seemed to think merge meant “cause other cars to start swerving.” The twins were probably thinking synchronized thoughts about lip gloss. Lucy was in all likelihood in perky perfectionist overdrive—either doing mental herkies or thinking up new flavors of explosive chewing gum. Chloe was concentrating on her need for speed, and Bubbles…
Bubbles was doing the freaky pretzel thing again.
After having seen Brittany, Tiffany, and even Lucy in action, I didn’t view Bubbles’ freakish stretching the same way. Was it twisted that all I could think was that if we ever needed someone to hide in a kitchen cabinet or ride in the overhead baggage compartment on an airplane, she’d be our girl?
“Toby.”
Brittany’s voice was murderous, and I turned a wary glance her way.
“I know you have to do the hacking stuff and everything, but do you have to hit the keys so hard?” she asked, her eyes narrowed into slits. “You totally chipped your nails.”
Tiffany, ever the kinder of the two, reached over to pat me consolingly on the shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll fix them for you when we get back.”
Like hell, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud. Evil or not, cheerleaders or not, I thought that just this once, I’d give the fashionista two a break.
CHAPTER 25
Code Word: Stud
By the time Chloe pulled a sharp right into a parking spot in front of the school, I had only two thoughts on my mind.
The first was that miraculously, we’d all survived.
The second was that if I could get twenty minutes alone with the laptop, I might be able to figure something out before we handed the data off.
Unfortunately, Chloe had other plans. Without my realizing it, she had managed to lift the laptop from the backseat. All that lovely encryption was now in her possession, not mine.
Double unfortunately, however, what with the sizeable drive to and from Infotech, the amount of time it had taken the twins to pull off the Doublemint, the time I’d spent hacking, and the half hour that I had been informed it would take to redo my nails, it didn’t look like I was going to be getting much rest in before lunch.
I half expected the others to go their separate ways when we got back, but instead, Bubbles and Lucy followed me to the twins’ salon, chattering happily away about some topic of conversation that I couldn’t quite follow. Chloe didn’t join us—she was too busy orchestrating a drop-off of the information on the laptop and coordinating our afternoon mission, which Lucy randomly decided to name “Operation Playboy.”
“Why is it that evil guys are always so hot?” Tiffany wondered out loud as she focused on the index finger on my right hand.
“Tell me about it,” Brittany said, buffing one of the nails on my left hand. “Heath Shannon? Hot. That guy we had to take out who’d stolen that nuclear laser thing? So hot.”
“And Jack Peyton?” Tiffany continued.
“Hot.” I surprised myself by finishing Tiffany’s train of thought. Had I really just said that out loud? More importantly, since when had I become the type of girl who gossiped about the hotness of boys?
And was Jack Peyton, he of the ironically detached smirk, really evil?
“Jack isn’t evil per se,” Tara said, coming into the room just in time to answer my unasked question, and save me from the mortification of the others commenting on my slip of tongue. “He can hardly help who his father is.”
“Okay,” Brittany agreed affably. “So maybe he isn’t evil, but he could be evil someday. And he is hot. Even Toby thinks so.”
And that was my cue to leave. Except, unfortunately, each twin had me by one hand, and neither of them was done with the buff, polish, repair routine they had their hearts set on.
I had no choice but to change the subject—and fast. “How goes the party planning?” I asked April and Tara. It wasn’t exactly a deep question, but it worked.
“We managed to get Rocksha to DJ, and April found a great caterer,” Tara said.
“Caterer? DJ?”
April shrugged. “Major party.”
“So no cheap beer in sketchy kegs?” I asked.
Tara leaned over and tweaked my ponytail. “Toby, it’s a high school party. There’s always beer in sketchy kegs. It will probably just be very expensive beer.”
Lucy wrinkled her nose.
“Not a fan of beer?” I asked her.
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t ignite as well as vodka.”
It didn’t surprise me that when Lucy thought about alcohol, her main concern was flammability. For some reason, I couldn’t see her as much of a drinker of anything stronger than orange soda.
“Done!”
“Done!”
The twins finished one after another, and finally, my hands were my own again.
“Lunch?” Tara asked, looking at her watch.
I nodded. “Lunch.”
“Lunch!” the others chorused in unison. I rolled my eyes, but somehow, a smile found its way onto my face. It was amazing what a high-stakes hacking adventure with other people could do for team bonding. On principle, I refused to give any of the credit to our girl talk in the salon.
The moment we walked into the cafeteria, I was treated to three sights. The first was almost an exact replica of what had happened when we’d walked into the caf that morning. All eyes swung our way, and the sea of people parted for the seven of us. The second thing I noticed was that Jack Peyton was already sitting at the central table, his eyes locked on mine.
The third thing I noticed was that my younger brother had just sat down with a bunch of senior girls, all of whom were staring at him like he was some kind of alien species.
Maybe they were right.
Even from this distance, I could tell that Noah’s mouth was moving, and my sisterly instinct (and my unfortunate familiarity with his favorite pickup lines) cued me in to the fact that he was, in all likelihood, saying something along the lines of “Hey, baby, you’re looking a little lonely, but don’t worry, there’s enough Noah to go around.”
And then, right on cue, an enormous football player walked up to the table, slammed his tray down, and reached for Noah’s shoulder.
Here we go again, I thought. I t
ook a step forward, but before I could so much as take a flying leap at the buffoon who was about to decapitate my brother with a fist roughly the size and shape of a cinder block, the rest of the girls beat me to it. Granted, there wasn’t actually any pummeling involved.
“Hi, Marcy! Hi, Jeff!” Lucy bounded over to the table, the rest of the girls on her heels. “Hi, Noah.” Lucy smiled at him. Noah, ever the one to take the least bit of encouragement in any shape or form as a come-on, turned his “charm” on Lucy.
“Well, hello there,” he said, his voice pitched lower than usual in an attempt to seem more manly.
While Lucy distracted Noah and pulled his attention away from the girl he’d been trying to hit on, the others worked on defusing the threat that was Cinder-Blocks-for-Fists Jeff. And somehow, they did it without a single menacing look, punch to the gut, or kick to the groin. In fact, as far as I could tell, they didn’t do anything but flutter their eyelashes.
The girls lured Noah away from the senior table and deposited him back among the other freshman boys, who then stared at my brother with reverent awe. Noah looked at the cheerleaders, looked at the boys, and then arched one eyebrow freakishly high, a devilish look on his face, and took a bow.
“I’ll see you later,” he told Lucy.
Lucy actually giggled, and then, in one coordinated motion, all of the girls headed for our table, leaving my brother to milk the experience for all it was worth among his freshman cohorts.
Note to self, I thought. Tell Lucy not to encourage him.
I joined the other girls with every intention of telling them just that—and asking them why in the world they’d felt compelled to move my little brother out of harm’s way—but when I got there, the twins had matching wicked smiles on their faces.
“You know, Toby,” Brittany said, “your brother is awfully cute.”
I think it’s safe to say that hearing the words leave her mouth had a catastrophic physical effect on my being. I shuddered and almost lost my lunch—even though I hadn’t eaten it yet.
Tiffany poked me in the side. “Yeah,” she said. “He’s adorable.”
I frowned at them.
“They’re just teasing you,” Tara whispered.
“What? You don’t like it when we talk about your brother?” Tiffany asked innocently. “But what if we wanted to ask him out? He’s such a stud.”
Okay, that was taking it way, way too far. If Noah heard any part of this conversation, he would become unbearable. He already thought he was a ladies’ man. He didn’t need the twins giving him ideas.
“Stay away from my brother,” I growled.
The twins just laughed, and as we sat down at our table—a safe distance away from Noah’s—everyone else joined in.
“What’s so funny?” Jack asked, never taking his eyes off my face.
“Nothing,” I said, giving the twins a look that promised serious repercussions if they said anything else about my brother, the “stud.”
“We still on for tonight, Ev?” Jack asked me, an amused smile playing around the corners of his lips at the look I was shooting the twins.
Before I had a chance to formulate a properly sarcastic response, the others answered on my behalf.
“Yes,” Tara said.
“You are,” Lucy finished.
I opened my mouth to object, but one of the twins grinned at me, and I got the distinct feeling that if I said so much as another word, they’d launch into a long, traumatizing, and detailed account of how much they’d just love fooling around with my younger brother.
Needless to say, I kept my mouth closed.
CHAPTER 26
Code Word: Taser
By seventh period, my high from Operation Doublemint had started to fade—in part because adrenaline had finally stopped doing the tango in my bloodstream, and in part because I’d had to spend most of the day focused on keeping the other cheerleaders away from my brother. Once they’d figured out that it was the easiest way to get under my skin, the girls were relentless, and even though I knew that Tara was right—they were teasing me, in a twisted and shockingly friendly way—I was determined to find a way to put a stop to it.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t exactly succeeded. Fortunately, however, the twins—who were far and away the worst offenders—weren’t going to have much opportunity to “tease” me for the next few hours. Operation Playboy was about to commence, and Tara, Lucy, Chloe, and I were the only operatives involved. The rest of the girls were under strict orders to finalize the details for April’s party, check up on Brooke and Zee, and paint some kind of banner for the football players to run through at the beginning of the Saturday game.
Needless to say, getting away from the twins and their “Noah Is Hot” propaganda wasn’t the only reason I was glad that I was going on this mission instead of staying behind.
“We’re going to try to keep this as simple as possible,” Chloe said, looking at me, Lucy, and Tara in turn. “We’re all going in armed, but weapons are a last resort. Ideally, we’d be able to pull this off without engaging the enemy at all. The goal is to get whatever information Peyton has given him. It might be a CD, a portable hard drive, possibly even something similar to the digi-disks we use. Whatever it is, we need it. That’s where you come in, Tara.”
I arched one eyebrow at my partner in an open-ended question, and she gave me an impish look.
“I may or may not have some skill at picking pockets,” she said delicately.
“Don’t let her fool you,” Lucy told me. “She’s the best!”
“If Tara can’t get the data unnoticed, no one can,” Chloe concurred. “In which case, we move on to Plan B.”
I couldn’t help but hope that Plan B involved kicking some international playboy booty. Was that really so much to ask?
“If Tara isn’t successful, we’re going to move on to a Flirt and Flick,” Chloe said.
“A Flirt and Flick?” I was nothing if not skeptical.
“We can’t afford to actually physically engage a Peyton client within a two-block radius of the firm,” Chloe said.
“Peyton has surveillance of its own, and the last thing we need is for them to ID one of us. So if Tara can’t steal the data, we’re going to have to find a way to get Heath Shannon a suitable distance away from Peyton before we try anything else. Since we can’t risk him handing off or transferring the data before we intercept it, one of us is going to have to stay with him at all times. Hence the Flirt and Flick.”
As much as I hated to admit it, the flirting logistics of this equation made perfect sense to me. That said…
“What’s a flick?” I asked.
“Female Liason Indemnifying Against the Possibility of Contact,” Chloe said.
That sounded like a FLIAPC to me, but I wasn’t about to argue the point, because Chloe’s answer still hadn’t cleared things up in my mind. “Translation?” I asked. “Preferably in English.”
I sensed the eye roll coming before I saw it.
“Basically, one of us goes in and interacts with Heath Shannon in a way that makes it impossible for him to immediately contact someone else,” Chloe said. “In this case, it means following him back to his car and convincing him that he wants to take me for a ride more than he wants to transfer the data.”
“You’re going to get into a car with this guy?” I asked. What was next, taking candy from strangers? Running with scissors?
“Worried about me?” Chloe asked.
Was I?
“I’m touched. Really.”
Okay, I most definitely was not worried about her—especially now.
“So what’s Plan C?” Tara interjected, coming in between the two of us.
I latched onto her question. “Plan A is Tara doing the pickpocket thing, Plan B involves you doing a Flirt and FLIAPC….” I changed the acronym just to get under her skin. “If he won’t take you with him, what’s Plan C?”
“Plan C involves the fact that Heath Shannon’s smart enough to
know that working with Peyton is dangerous, which means that he won’t be using their parking garage, which means that we stand a slight chance of being able to take advantage of the one weak spot in Peyton’s security coverage of the area.”
Lucy smiled broadly. “Yay! That’s next to the tanning place, right?”
Chloe nodded. “If you can disable him and get him into SunTanz without moving outside the four-foot radius of Peyton’s blind spot, we can drop him off in one of the tanning booths, and the Big Guys will send someone to pick him up later.”
“And we’re supposed to carry an unconscious and internationally infamous playboy into a tanning salon without anyone noticing how?” I asked.
“What? No questions about how to disarm him and knock him out?”
I gave her a look.
“Trust me, Toby,” Chloe said, “if you can take him out, Lucy can handle the rest.”
Lucy smiled serenely, which, given the circumstances, was just a wee bit creepy.
“And there’s a slight chance that we may have some contacts inside the tanning salon. Hopefully, though, it won’t come to that. Like I said before, physically engaging the enemy is a last resort, as are weapons.”
Lucy sighed then, as if it would pain her greatly to holster her weapon of choice. That made me wonder what exactly the weapon of choice was, so I voiced the question.
“We just want to disable him,” Lucy said. “We don’t want to hurt him, so we should probably each take a Taser and some knockout patches. If things get sticky, one of us should have a gun.”
Lucy and Chloe looked at Tara, who inclined her head slightly. I, for one, was grateful that if any varsity cheerleader was going to be packing, it was Tara. Despite Lucy’s expertise, she was just bouncy enough that the idea of her holding a firearm was a little bit scary, and needless to say, I wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of giving Chloe any literal ammunition. As for me, I didn’t want a gun. I’d never been a fan of weapons—I preferred to fight hand to hand.