Spy Ski School (13 page)

“How?” I asked.

“By giving him someone even more interesting to fall for,” Erica replied.

It took another few moments for us all to realize who she was talking about. “You mean
you
?” I asked.

“Of course.” Erica took a sip of tea. “I tag along for hot cocoa with you guys today. Mike falls for me instead of Jessica. Then we take off, leaving the two of you alone. . . .”

“Just like that?” Jawa asked skeptically.

“Just like that,” Erica said.

“And then,” Zoe joined in, “Jessica feels rejected by Mike, so she's more vulnerable, which makes it easier for Ben to connect with her and win her affection.”

Erica seemed slightly confused by this line of thought, as it concerned human emotions, but she nodded agreement anyhow. “Exactly.”

“It might not work out so easily for you,” Chip warned.
“Jessica Shang has a lot going for her. She's pretty, she's nice, she's fun—and she's rich.”

“Yes,” Erica agreed. “But I'm
me
.”

Chip laughed dismissively. “I'm just saying, given the choice between two girls, if one of them's a billionaire, that's gonna mean something. This Mike character's gonna show up to the hotel, find out Daddy Shang rented the whole darn thing, and be gobsmacked. And once Jessica starts batting her eyes at him, he's gonna think he hit the mother lode.”

“Mike's not that shallow,” I argued.

“We're
all
that shallow,” Chip retorted. “Whether we want to believe it or not. Mike's on a weeklong vacation. He's not looking to fall in love. He's looking to have fun! And who's he gonna have more fun with? The girl he can only afford to take to McDonald's—or the girl who has an entire hotel and a private jet and all the free food they can eat?”

“Good point,” I conceded.

“I can compete with that,” Erica said confidently.

“How?” Jawa asked. “No offense, but you're not exactly the warmest person in the world. Your own family doesn't even think you can make friends with Jessica. So what do you know about winning over a boy's affection?”

“I know it's easy,” Erica replied. “Much easier than making friends with someone. To make friends with another girl is
work
. You have to be nice and pretend to like the same
things and have all these excruciatingly dull conversations about your feelings. To get a guy to fall for you, you barely even need to use your brain.”

“That is not true,” Jawa argued, offended.

“Really?” Erica came around the table to Jawa, kneeled close to him, batted her eyelashes, and purred, “Would you like to go somewhere quiet and explain why you're right to me?”

Jawa looked as though his brain had shorted out. Face-to-face with Erica, his fourteen-year-old mind was completely overwhelmed by her beauty. “Sure!” he said eagerly. “Let's go right now!”

Erica pulled away from him, dropping any hint of interest she'd just shown. “And that's how you win over a boy,” she said.

Jawa sagged as he realized he'd allowed Erica to toy with him so easily.

Zoe shook her head, looking disgusted.

I couldn't judge Jawa too harshly, though. I'd been close to Erica like that several times and been just as smitten. In fact, only a few seconds before, even though I'd been fully aware that Erica was simply leading Jawa on, I'd still felt jealous of him—and a glance at Chip and Warren confirmed they'd felt the same way.

Erica returned to her seat, sat down, and dug into her
salad. “So it's settled, then?” she asked me. “I'll come with you today, distract Mike, and get this mission back on track.”

I hesitated before agreeing, because I wasn't very happy with this plan.

First, I wasn't pleased that, after I had been doing so well with Jessica on my own, Mike had come along and messed things up, forcing Erica to intervene and bail me out on yet another mission.

Even more importantly, I didn't like the idea of Erica flirting with Mike. Because I was afraid that once she got to know Mike, the flirting would stop being pretend. Erica had never seemed like the type of girl who'd fall for a guy easily, but I knew that she
had
developed a crush on someone once before. (Someone who'd turned out to be evil, no less.) Which meant it could happen again. And it seemed to me that if anyone could charm the Ice Queen, it was Mike. I'd already had him steal one girl's attention from me that day, which was rough enough. To have him win over Erica would be devastating.

There was, however, one legitimate argument against the plan. So I put it on the table. “There's a chance Mike might recognize you,” I told Erica. “He's seen you before.”

“When?” Zoe asked.

“Back when I first got to spy school,” I explained. “While we were investigating the mole. Mike spotted Erica and me sneaking back onto campus at night.”

Erica waved this off. “It won't be an issue. That was nearly a year ago, it was dark, and he was really far away.”

“Mike never forgets a girl,” I pointed out.

“He won't make the connection,” Erica said. “He saw Erica Hale. But today he's going to meet Sasha Rotko. They're two entirely different people.”

She was so confident, I knew I wasn't going to convince her otherwise. And to be honest, I believed her. There were a few times that morning when
I
had forgotten that Sasha Rotko was actually Erica Hale. I considered making another argument against the plan, but I couldn't really come up with one. Plus, I was forced to admit there were bigger things at stake here than my schoolboy crushes. My life, for one thing. I didn't have a better plan—and I didn't want to say what my problems were with Erica's proposal—so I gave in. “Sounds great.”

“Good. Now, there's also
this
to deal with.” Erica slid her phone across the table to me.

The selfie she'd taken of herself with Jessica and me was on the screen.

“Nice picture,” Warren remarked. “Are you gonna post that?”

“I don't post,” Erica said coldly. “That's a surveillance photo, you moron.”

Warren shrank back in his seat while I took a closer look
at the photo. I now realized what Erica was talking about. She hadn't really been taking a selfie at all. Her real target was behind us: Dane the bodyguard.

I picked up the phone and zoomed in on him.

“I sent that to Hank while we were on the gondola,” Erica went on.

“Not your grandfather?” Chip asked.

“He was busy tailing Leo Shang,” Erica replied. “Anyhow, Hank got some intel for us. This guy's no mere bodyguard. His name's Dane Brammage. He's Danish, and he's a real piece of work. The CIA didn't even know he was working for the Shangs until Hank sent this over. Last they knew, he was working for an international arms dealer named Paul Lee.”

“Polly who?” asked Zoe.

“No,” Erica corrected. “Paul Lee. Two words. ‘Paul' as in ‘McCartney.' ‘Lee' as in ‘General Robert E.' ”

“What kind of arms does he deal in?” Jawa asked.

“You name it, they move it,” Erica replied. “The badder, the better. Bombs, tanks, torpedoes, rocket launchers. Everything. If you're wondering where SPYDER got all those Russian missiles they had, there's a good chance Paul Lee was the middleman. Real scum of the earth, that guy.”

I looked back toward the bathroom, making sure Dane Brammage wasn't on his way back. “What did Dane do for him?”

“Bad stuff,” Erica said. “Sometimes he moved weapons, but he mostly worked as muscle. If Paul Lee had a problem with someone, Dane made that someone disappear.”

I swallowed hard. “And now he's working as a bodyguard for a thirteen-year-old girl? Why?”

“Because she's not your normal thirteen-year-old,” Erica replied. “No one in that family is to be trusted, including her. Your sweetheart probably knows a lot more about Operation Golden Fist than she's letting on.”

From the direction of the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of Jessica on her way back to the table. She hadn't been delayed as long as we'd thought. Dane was lumbering along behind her.

“She's not my sweetheart,” I said.

“Point is, she's dangerous,” Erica told me. “The whole Shang family is dangerous. And Dane Brammage is
really
dangerous. The moment he suspects you're not just a normal kid in ski school, you're in serious trouble. So we'd all better keep our guards up.”

Jessica and Dane were almost back to the table now.

“This isn't a game,” Erica warned all of us. “Our lives are at stake here. And maybe a lot of other people's as well.” She slipped back into her fake persona just as Jessica came within earshot, acting like she was in the middle of the story. “. . . and then Maya laughed so hard, the soda came right out of her nose. It was dis-gust-ing!”

Everyone made an appropriate “ewwwww” in response. Except Jessica, who looked around at all of us, seeming upset she'd missed something good. “What are you guys talking about?”

“Sasha's trying to make us all lose our lunch,” Zoe said.

“Yuck,” Jessica declared, now seeming happy she'd missed the whole story. She looked a bit pale after her trip to the bathroom, like maybe she'd lost her lunch herself. Erica's cover story had worked, though; Jessica didn't seem suspicious of us at all.

Unfortunately, I couldn't say the same for Dane Brammage. He sat down heavily, staring hard at all of us. This was pretty much the same stare he'd been giving us all day, but now that I knew how dangerous he was, it was even scarier than before.

I really hoped he didn't suspect us of anything, because I didn't really need a deadly thug on my bad side.

I had enough problems as it was.

Schnitzengrüben Tavern

The Arabelle Hotel

Vail, Colorado

December 27

1630 hours

The rest of our ski
lesson was actually fun and productive. As Woodchuck had told us, skiing had a great deal to do with our attitude, and since we were all determined to get better, most of us progressed well. (For Chip and Jawa, this wasn't an issue; since they already knew how to ski, they only had to
pretend
to get better.) Zoe, Jessica, and I mastered skiing down a beginner run slowly without falling, as well as getting on and off the ski lift without gravely
injuring ourselves. Erica, to her chagrin, didn't improve quite as much, but she managed to stay upright most of the time. Meanwhile, Warren had somehow managed to actually get
worse
during the day. He'd started with at least an idea of how to ski, but by the end of the class, he was spending most of his time splayed out on the snow.

As enjoyable as the lesson was, though, I was exhausted and chilled after our day on the slopes. By the time we took the gondola down to the mountain base (we weren't quite good enough to ski all the way back down yet), the idea of grabbing a hot chocolate with two beautiful girls in a nice warm restaurant seemed like it should be a dream come true.

Instead, it was closer to a nightmare.

For starters, Jessica was extremely unhappy when Erica tagged along. Erica had suspected this would be the case, so she didn't even ask if she could join us. Instead, she blatantly invited herself. She did it when we were back in the ski rental, where we were allowed to store our equipment for the night. I was reveling in the feel of having normal shoes on my feet again, rather than ski boots, while Jessica was giddily pressing me to text Mike and see how long it would be until he could join us. Then Erica walked up in full Sasha mode and asked, “What are you two doing now?”

Jessica gave me a subtle signal not to tell Erica, but I
pretended not to notice. “Getting a hot chocolate,” I said, nice and friendly.

“Oooh! That sounds dee-lish-ous!” Erica crooned. “Count me in!” Then she followed us to the Arabelle, blindly ignoring Jessica's many hints that she didn't want Erica around.

The three of us headed to the Schnitzengrüben Tavern to have a hot chocolate and await Mike's arrival. The Schnitzengrüben was supposed to be the less fancy but more cozy of the two restaurants at the Arabelle. Unfortunately, it didn't feel cozy there at all.

This was partly because the restaurant was empty, reserved entirely for the Shangs, and being there felt eerie—like there'd been a zombie apocalypse or something. It was oppressively quiet, there were way too many vacant chairs around us, and the single waitress who'd been kept on staff solely to serve the Shangs seemed ill at ease. She hovered around us like a vulture, unsure what was expected of her.

The presence of Jessica's bodyguards made things worse. Now that we were back off the mountain, we had reunited with the three enormous Chinese men who'd been protecting Jessica that morning. They were all posted at the doors of the tavern, making sure no random people wandered in or out. Meanwhile, Dane Brammage sat at the next table over, glaring at us. It seemed to me that he was doing his best to
make sure Erica and I felt uncomfortable, hoping we would leave—and it was working. On me, at least. His steady gaze was so unsettling, I was having trouble stomaching my hot chocolate.