Heart of an Assassin (Circle of Spies) (20 page)

Never doubt the power of pumpkin pie.

Evening shadows darkened my mood as I eyed the kitchen doorway. Dishes rattled in the sink. My parents were talking about the latest advancements of elephant poop, or worse, they were whispering top-secret information about my grandfather, Zeb.

I tiptoed to Dad’s study and slipped inside enemy territory. Ever since Thanksgiving and my last piece of pumpkin pie smothered under whipped cream, just like Zeb loves it, I’d gotten the feeling he was in trouble. Dad blamed the growth hormones in the turkey. Mom blamed holiday nostalgia. But the feeling never left. Pumpkin pie is not that dependable, but in this case, it was right on.

I ran my fingers along the edge of my dad’s desk but didn’t feel any secret compartments. There were no locked boxes and no suspicious envelopes. I thought back on the spy movies I’d watched with my cousin, Melvin, after family dinners. Sometimes the answer was simple and more obvious. Maybe. Just maybe. I slipped open the bottom desk drawer.

Bills, legal documents, and old scientific journals were crammed into a drawer, some dating back to 1970. I dug around and then lifted the massive pile so I could peek underneath. My arm muscles burned and I was about to drop the entire stack when I saw a worn manila envelope at the bottom. My heart thrilled at the name scrawled across the front in black marker.

Zebulon Stone.

I pulled the bulky envelope out, which was surprisingly heavy, and the journals flopped back into place. The doorknob rattled.

“Verla, I’ll be in my study. Why don’t you get Bianca?”

Heat warmed my neck. Forget about rubbing the ache from my arm, I had to hide the evidence. Fast. Dad would kill me if he caught me nosing around in his stuff. In a flash, I stuck the envelope down the back of my pants and tugged my shirt down. I sprinted to the bookshelves and ran my fingers along the spines, pretending to search for a book.

The light flickered on.

“Never mind! She’s already here,” he called.

I turned to hide my back and the suspicious bulge. “Hi, Dad. Just looking for a book.”

“In the dark?”

He leaned his arm against the door with a why-am-I-not-surprised look on his face.

“Oh, well, you know, it’s almost a full moon and you always talk about saving electricity.” I pulled out a book about dinosaur fossils and flipped to the middle.

Dad crumpled newspaper into balls and put them in the fireplace. He added kindling and a couple small pieces of wood.

“What kind of book were you looking for?” he asked.

I shifted my back so the corner of the envelope wasn’t jabbing into my skin and crossed my fingers. “Something really boring to put me to sleep, so I don’t spend the night worrying endlessly about Zeb.”

“I have some excellent reading material on the economy in China and how it is affecting farmers.”

“Oh, thanks. I might have to try that.” I stuck my shaky fingers into my pocket.

He lit the newspapers, and bright flames shot up. “You might as well take a seat.”

I sat in a straight-backed leather chair, coughing, so he wouldn’t hear the crinkle of the envelope. Mom entered with a tray of hot cocoa, placed it on the coffee table, and sat next to Dad on the matching love seat. Gripping the armrests, I braced myself for the worst. Maybe they knew about my long-distance phone calls to Greece where Zeb had last been or my letters to the CIA.

Dad poked at the fire, staring into the flames. “I know you miss the gifts your grandfather usually sends, but that doesn’t mean he’s in trouble.”

I did miss the gifts. Zeb had sent me Spanish doubloons and pieces of silk from China, but it was more than that. Zeb listened to me, really listened. When I had a problem he always made me feel better, even if it meant hearing about his safari in Africa for the umpteenth time. I tried to keep my voice from cracking.

“He hasn’t called. He hasn’t dropped by. There’s been nada! Nothing! Zippo!”

Dad’s face softened. He ran his finger around the rim of his mug. “Your grandfather has been disappearing then reappearing in my life since I could walk. Trust me. He’s playing in the dirt somewhere and lost track of the years.”

“Do you know where he is?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

He took a sip of cocoa. “Off in Central America somewhere. Guatemala, I think.”

I dug my fingers into the arm of the chair. Guatemala? Zeb had to be in major trouble to not send me some sort of coded message hinting to his latest location. I doubt my dad would consider that evidence. “You can tell me the truth.”

Dad leaned back and took a sip, stretching the moment out forever. “We really don’t know much. But,” he glanced at Mom, “we’ve had our concerns.”

Mom reached across the coffee table to squeeze my hand. “We didn’t want to chase him halfway across the earth to find out he was in the middle of a dig.”

I picked up my mug and took a sip. Cocoa scalded my throat and tears burned. I didn’t like where this was heading—another let’s-talk-Bianca-down-from-her-irrational-fears talk. They had no faith in the facts.

“We’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this.” Mom nodded at Dad.

I opened my mouth to argue, but paused. Something in Mom’s voice told me things were about to change. She was on my side.

Dad rolled the ends of his moustache between his fingers. “After much consideration, we both feel it’s time—”

I slammed my mug down, spilling cocoa over the tray. “I knew it! When do we leave?”

Dad looked at me, his jaw firm. “Tomorrow.”

A tingle ran down my spine and my mouth went dry.

Mom gave me her best strict-mom look. “Melvin, Aunt June, and you and I will hang out and sightsee. We’ll be doing completely boring stuff like guided tours and bird watching.”

I should have recruited Mom months ago.

“It was your mom’s idea for all of you to tag along.” Dad sighed. “But, it will be a great educational opportunity for both you and Melvin to visit the ancient cities.”

I perked up. “Ancient cities?”

Dad smiled. “Of the Maya.”

“Cool.” Maybe my History-channel-watching days would come in handy. I could already taste the tortillas.

“Time to get packing.” Dad cracked his knuckles. “We leave for the city of Tikal, land of the Maya, tomorrow morning before the toucans will have started singing in the jungle.”

I stood and the top of the envelope jabbed into my back. “I’ll get on that right away.” I hurried out of the study and ran up the stairs. I couldn’t believe it. After months of hard work wearing my parents down, I’d convinced them of the truth. Good thing I didn’t quit after I’d alphabetized Dad’s books.

My bedroom door slammed behind me. “Sorry!” I yelled. Hey, I was excited and I’d found a connection to Zeb. With one swipe, my collections of plastic bottles and pinecones fell to the floor. I blew at the layer of dust covering my desk and then dumped out the contents of the envelope. A worn note and bunch of green rocks fell out. Only five words were scrawled on the note.

Keep stones a secret. Zeb.

They weren’t just green rocks. They were stones of jade, connected in a large necklace that stretched across both my hands. Chunky, different-sized beads sat on either side of a larger jade pendant inscribed with a weird-looking face. It was a necklace, but it sure didn’t look like one you could find at your local department store.

I traced the stones, my fingers tingling as they ran over the worn surface. Hopefully Dad had forgotten about them. Zeb must’ve had a good reason for wanting to keep the stones a secret. I pulled a black velvet bag from my drawer and dumped out my rock collection. The large necklace fit perfectly inside the bag. What secrets did the stones hold? Should I bring them?

Definitely. I stuffed the empty envelope between my mattress and the box spring.

No one would ever know.

End of Chapter One

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by

Cindy M. Hogan

They found her.

Now she must run

and leave behind

everything she knows,

including herself.

Also by Cindy M. Hogan

Watched

Created

Chapter One

Over the last three weeks, I’d moved like a ninja through the halls of Helena High—invisible, stealthy—going from class to class, taking the least traveled paths. At least that’s what I’d convinced myself. It took the horrible, sing-song voice of Katie Lee for me to realize I was no ninja master. More like a giant target with a bull’s-eye painted on my forehead.

“Christy Hadden. Oh, Christy Hadden.”

My heart froze. Katie Lee had bullied me since the first day of my sophomore year, nine long months ago.

“Hey, look,” she had said that first day. “It’s that homeless girl we saw eating out of the garbage at the mall last week.” The three girls with her had laughed liked hyenas.

There was a hint of truth in what she’d said. They had seen me, but I hadn’t been scrounging for food. I’d accidentally dropped my retainer in the trash can with the garbage from my meal only a few seconds before they’d walked up. My parents would have killed me if I didn’t get it out. “Money doesn’t grow on trees,” they would have said. Since then, I’d only worn it at night.

I heard steps getting closer, and wished I could make my feet run. But, I couldn’t. Like a statue, I stood; I couldn’t even breathe. Why did I let her have this effect on me? I thought my experience with terrorists in DC had made me stronger than this.

The bell rang and the off-the-beaten-path-hallway in front of me was nearly deserted. I was late. One more thing to add to the suckiness of the moment. Katie Lee bumped me hard into the wall, her face only inches from mine.

“You’ve been hard to find lately,” she said, sneering. “Where’ve you been?”

I just stared. My mouth refused to move.

“Speak!” she growled, her round face knotted with mean delight.

“Arf! Arf!” came from behind me. I didn’t have to look to know it was Katie Lee’s sidekicks. They always barked at me whenever they saw me.

“Let’s go for a walk.” Katie Lee grabbed my arm, turning me around and leading me back to the bathroom I had just passed. A bathroom no one ever went into because it always smelled like a sewer. Her cronies stood as sentinels in the doorway and I bumped into one of them.

“Down boy, down,” she said, her tiny, pug nose lifted toward the ceiling.

“You silly,” the other said. “Can’t you see it’s a girl?”

They laughed maniacally while stepping further into the bathroom. Katie Lee dragged me inside, pushing me up against a wall near the back corner of the room. All three stood between me and the exit.

“You know, Christy, English final papers are due Monday.” She paced in front of me. “We would’ve given you more notice, but, it’s like, we haven’t been able to find you. We figured you would be thinking of us and know we needed to get the papers in. So, where are they?”

All three held out their hands.

My jaw dropped. What? They’d never asked me to do their work before. Only kids in my old junior high had tried that. These girls had always just teased and taunted me until now. Taunting that often led to bruising me in some way or humiliating me beyond hope, but what could I do?

“Oh. Did you eat them?” Katie Lee asked, looking at my gaping mouth, her sharp, cruel face sneering.

I closed my mouth. She moved in.

I will not scream. I will not give her the satisfaction.

“Open wide!” She wrenched my mouth open and looked inside. I felt my lips crack. Immediately, my mind raced to the time she kicked me so hard in the shin I could hardly walk for two days. All I’d done was smile at her the second week of school, hoping to win her over.

“Nope,” she said, letting go and taking a step back. “Well, we need ‘em Sunday night. Have ‘em ready for us. Oh, and we don’t want any of that AP crap you do. We only want “B” papers. Can’t have ‘em thinking we didn’t do the work. Got it?”

I just continued to stare, wishing my hand would jump up and clock her square in the jaw. Did they really think I would write their papers? I couldn’t write a “B” paper even if I wanted to. Nothing came out of me except “A” work.

“Got it, Hadden?” She came at me again.

“Got it,” I croaked, not wanting her to get any closer but knowing I’d never write those papers. Why hadn’t I told the principal the first time they’d harassed me? There were only five days left of school anyway. What could they do to me? Uh, maybe make my life more than miserable for two more long years. I had to overcome this, but how?

I stayed rigid against the wall until they disappeared around the corner. I sighed, let my shoulders slump, and slid down the wall to the floor, my thighs coming up tight against my chest as I sat. I wrapped my arms around my legs and pulled my chin to my chest, resting my forehead on my knees.

Determined not to feel sorry for myself, I thought of the letters I’d received from Jeremy, my real-life FBI Special Agent. Paralyzed from a bullet that was meant for me, he’d never once felt sorry for himself that I knew of and neither should I.

I pushed the screaming “poor me” thoughts to the back of my mind and searched for good memories. It didn’t take much effort to find some: Alex’s touch, Rick’s kiss, and Marybeth’s friendship. Those two weeks in DC had been the scariest, hardest, and most painful of my life and yet they had also been the most wonderful. Too bad I couldn’t forget the bad that had happened there and only hold onto the good. Instead, I remembered it all with nightmare clarity—with the bad always finding its way into my thoughts, no matter how hard I tried to block it.

I’d been back home almost a month, and Iceman still haunted my dreams at night, turning me into a paranoid schizophrenic during the day. I would be minding my own business, when I would see several robed, Middle Eastern men walking my direction, who, at second glance were really only normal, everyday Montanans. Knives turned into large, curved swords, but only for a second. When things fell on the ground, they became heads seeping blood.

On my last day in DC, Jeremy told me everything was all over. I just wished I could have seen Marybeth. I wanted to know what had happened to her. I would have called her if my parents would have let me. They said it cost too much and I should just email. I didn’t have her email. I wished I could talk to her about everything that had happened. Jeremy’s last letter had even told me the terrorist leader would soon be put to death for his crimes. Amazing how quickly people can be brought to justice behind the secret, closed doors of government. So why was my mind so unwilling to forget? I couldn’t rid it of the worry that some of the bad guys must have gotten away.

Unfortunately, the amazing memories of Rick and Alex had a painful edge to them, too. After three weeks, neither Alex nor Rick had called. Alex hadn’t promised to, I guess, but he had said I was his. Why hadn’t he called if I was his? Rick, on the other hand, had told me he would call, and yet, he hadn’t. I couldn’t believe Rick, the most dependable, caring guy in the world, hadn’t at least tried to keep in touch.

The crazy thing was, I would rather think of those two weeks in DC, with all their horror and gore, than focus on reality. Sure, I didn’t have Marybeth, the best roommate anyone could have, anymore to make me somehow look way better than ever before, but I did my best to let everyone see how I’d changed. None of it seemed to matter. I remained Christy Hadden—the smart social outcast.

The bell rang.

Crap. I had sat there the whole period. Mrs. Adams would kill me. I heard masses of people walk by the bathroom. My tailbone screamed as I stood. Sitting on a tiled floor, with all your weight on your tailbone for almost an hour and a half, was not a good thing. I limped to the sink, rubbing my behind. I looked at my face and washed my hands. I had to find a way to stand up to those girls.

The loud sounds of crowds moving through the halls disappeared. I took a deep breath and made my way to the front doors of the high school. Unfortunately, a large group of the most popular and mean kids sat on the steps outside, working on a large banner for the last school stomp of the year. Their laughter carried through the open doors, and pangs of jealousy whipped through me.

DC had shown me what it was like to have friends. Coming home and being alone again tore at my heart.

I stopped and watched them until Janae, a pretty cheerleader, looked up the long set of stairs to the street and said, “Who’s that? He’s hot! No, he’s mega-hot!” Even I had to follow her gaze, up the almost-thousand steps to the street, where a black, shiny convertible BMW served as a leaning post for a smoking hot guy wearing trendy jeans, a t-shirt, and sunglasses.

My heart pounded.

It couldn’t be.

He lifted those glasses and seemed to stare right at me, shifting and then standing up straight.

“Is he looking at me?”Janae asked.

“Maybe he’s looking at me,” a beautiful redhead said.

“Or me,” said another callous classmate.

They all stood up. I froze.

Not a word for almost a month and there he stood at my high school in all his perfection? Almost immediately, my mind started playing tricks on me. The mean mind, with the mean voice.

“It’s not him,” it said.

I resisted the urge to run to him.

“Don’t make a fool of yourself. It’s someone else. No one would come for you,” the voice continued.

He leaned forward, squinting, and then a grin spread across his face.

There was no doubting it now. My crazy head couldn’t make it less true. It was the most beautiful boy in the world. Alex McGinnis. Our eyes locked as he sprinted down the stairs. My lips curved into a smile. I still couldn’t move. My body simply refused to accept that he was here. My insides buzzed so fast I thought I might burst.

Janae, now only feet from him on the sidewalk, said something to Alex I couldn’t hear. He walked right past her, without a glance, and pulled me into his arms.

The silence was thick around us. I could feel the stares of all the girls as I focused on him. “Mmm” was all I heard from Alex as he lifted me into the air and spun me around, every fabulous feeling from DC flooding back, the horrors of earlier receding. I giggled, then drew in his spicy scent, while saying, “I can’t believe you’re here. What are you doing here?” When my feet hit the ground, our eyes locked once again and our hands found each other’s.

“Isn’t it obvious? I came here for you,” he whispered in my ear.

I thought I might burst. He was what I needed. Then the unthinkable happened. He kissed me. It wasn’t just a little kiss, either. It was one that makes you feel like you could die today and it wouldn’t matter. When he finally released me, he said, “At last.”

He took a step back, looked me over, holding our hands out to our sides and said, “You look amazing!”

My smile couldn’t have been any bigger. Goosebumps spotted my arms. He looked around at everyone gawking at us, opened his mouth like he was going to say something to them, then turned to me instead. “Should we go?”

“Yeah.” Nothing else came to my mind. It was like it had stopped working. The girls next to us gasped.

I could hear, but couldn’t understand the whispers of the girls below us as we walked up the almost never ending stairs back to the car.

“They rent this kind of car here?” I asked as we stepped onto the sidewalk next to the convertible.

“Of course. You can get anything for the right price.”

He opened the door for me. After sitting, I looked down at the mean girls on the steps of the school, forcing myself not to watch Alex walk around to the driver’s side of the car. Not only were all eyes still on us, but now, the jaws of those snotty girls had dropped. I tried to suppress the chuckle of satisfaction that escaped my mouth as Alex’s door shut and he started the car. He took a deep breath, leaned in and kissed me, soft and gentle. “I’ve been waiting too long for this,” he whispered and kissed me again.

My mind raced as my heart thudded. He pulled away from the curb. He had no idea how those seemingly innocent kisses could, and probably would, change my life forever. Two things were sure to happen.

Number one. I would finally be accepted. No one could be kissed by a guy as perfect as Alex and not fit in with the popular kids. I had hoped just because of the changes I felt after what happened in DC, I could slip into a different social status, but that was a crazy dream. I was just beginning to accept I would always be seen as the plain-honest-straight-”A”-teacher’s-pet-who never broke a single rule, for the rest of my high school career, until the Kiss.

Kiss that, Katie Lee.

However, I couldn’t forget the second thing that was sure to happen because I was seen kissing a boy one week before my sixteenth birthday. I would be killed. Pure and simple. When word reached my parents that I had kissed a boy, and it would, (the dangers of living in a small town)—I would no longer be allowed to live. Of that, I was certain. My parents had a strict no-dating-before-you’re-sixteen policy and no doubt kissing someone on the steps of the school was a million times worse.

“Where to?” Alex asked as we came to a light.

Where to? Right. Where to? We couldn’t go to my house. My parents would flip that I had ridden in a car with a boy unsupervised. It wouldn’t be smart to go anywhere I could run into anyone I knew or that my family knew. Where could we go? Holter Lake popped into my head. We had gone there last week for a family outing and it had been quiet and almost deserted—the perfect place to hide out and catch up with Alex. This could be my only opportunity to be alone with him. “Uhh, the lake, I guess.”

“The lake, huh?” he said. “We should stop and pick some things up then.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Uh, food and other stuff.” A big grin stretched across his face. “Where’s the nearest store?”

I directed him to a shopping center not far from where we were, and he bought a couple blankets and a flashlight. I borrowed his phone to call my house to say I wouldn’t be coming home until late. My mom didn’t even ask what I was doing. I’m sure she was certain I wouldn’t be doing anything wrong. She even told me to have fun. The perks of being the “good girl.” I pushed the guilt I’d started to feel away. She should have asked me what I was going to do, right?