Two Lies and a Spy (14 page)

Evan hears me and comes running. He shouts for Kale and Lacey while I question my mom. She looks terrible . . . pale and exhausted, her normally chic dark hair disheveled. She’s barefoot.

“Why are you here?” I demand, as she asks simultaneously, “How did you find me?” She takes in my
appearance. “Nice disguise.”

“Are you okay? What is going on?” I blurt, while she asks, “Where’s Charlie? Is he all right?”

“Charlie’s fine,” I say.

“Your father and I are accused of being double agents.”

“
What
?
Why
? And where’s Dad?”

“I don’t know where your father is.” There are fine lines of strain around her eyes, and she’s got dark circles underneath them. She’s clearly not had a shower and has slept in her clothes. Her makeup is smeared, but she still looks beautiful. And my heart aches for her.

“Kari,” Mom says. “I don’t know how you got in here, but I guarantee that you wouldn’t be inside unless the Agency wanted you to be. This is a trap—you need to get out of here while you still can.”

I ignore this. “Why would the Agency think you guys have been turned? That is
ridiculous
!”

“I don’t know why they’d suspect it.”

Kale and Lacey have come running.

“Lacey, the badge?” I prompt. “We’ve got to get my mom out of here. This is crazy.”

Lacey snicks the badge through the slot on the door, and I yank on the handle. Nothing happens. “Try again?”

She does.

I still can’t get the door open. I pound on it with my fist in frustration. “Do you still have the other badge?”

Lacey nods.

“Try that.”

She does. No dice.

Unbelievable.

“Kari,” Mom says urgently. “This is a trap. You have to get yourself out of here. Don’t worry about me.”

“I’m not leaving without you!” I can’t believe she’s even suggesting this.

“You’ll have to. Go. Get out of here!”

“There has to be a way through this door,” I insist. I turn to Kale. “What if we both kicked at the same time? Do you think we could dislodge the door from the hinges?”

Kale looks it up and down, then slowly shakes his head.

I pound on it again, in frustration.
Think, Kari.

But I don’t have the chance. My mom is right: We’ve walked into a trap.

I hear quick, heavy footsteps coming from both directions. Before I can even react, we’re surrounded by agents.

Not just any old agents. My good buddy Mitch heads them up. I’m happy to see that in addition to his broken nose and swollen eyes, he now has a nasty red weal around his neck.

He gives me a death stare. “Thanks for visiting, Karina.”

“Have you missed me?” I ask.

“Yeah. Quite a bit. Tell me, Miss Smarty-Pants, didn’t it seem just a little too easy for you to ‘break in’ to Langley? Or are you so impressed with yourself that you never questioned that?”

I glare right back at him. “Oh, so five Agency employees
are just
faking
unconsciousness? What about you, the other day? Did you have to call for help to untangle yourself from my little brother’s backpack?”

Mitch turns almost purple with rage. “Shut up and come quietly. As you can see, you kids are outnumbered.”

I put my hands on my hips. “I’ll come with you once you release my mother.”

Mitch gives a short bark of laughter. “I’ll release your mother when hell freezes over, young lady. The bitch is a traitor and a moneygrubbing wh—”

I lunge at Mitch.
Nobody
calls my mom a traitor and gets away with it. But this time he’s more prepared for me. He simply steps aside, and my heel smashes into the gut of the agent behind him. The guy goes down clutching his stomach. I jump over him and slam my head and elbow into the next man, sending him reeling against the wall. But he recovers and comes for me.

My mom screams at me from her cell. “Kari! What are you doing?”

I pull Lacey’s cumbersome pillow out of my waistband and toss it aside as Evan and Kale jump into the fray. Kale takes down a blond agent with a blow to the side of his neck, while Evan tackles the one who’s trying to corral me, jumping on his back and getting him in a choke hold.

Kale goes for a female agent next, but she puts up a good fight.

The guy under Evan spins and drives back deliberately into the wall, slamming Evan against it. But somehow
Evan recovers, slips off him, and smashes the man’s skull into it in return.

I have a split second to wonder if Evan has had some training after all? But then why was he so unprepared for me?

I don’t have time to wonder long.

Lacey, who’s been standing on the sidelines until now, suddenly vaults into the fray, jumping on the back of yet another agent and taking him by surprise. Typical Lacey, though: Her little plaid skirt flies up and exposes her underwear as she rides the man like a bronco. Her panties are pink. And tiny.

I launch myself again at Mitch. I am bent on pulverizing the rest of his face. I’m going to break his jaw. I’m going to rip off his lips. I’m going to—

Someone in the background yells, “Hey! What in the hell is going on here?”

I see Luke out of the corner of my eye.

Luke?
What is he . . . ?

Someone grabs me out of the air, by the waist. I am yanked backward. I kick and flail but don’t manage to make contact with my latest attacker. “Let me go!” I yell.

“Easy, Shrew,” Evan’s voice says, as he carries me several feet away from Mitch. “It’s over.”

I spend an undignified moment dangling from his arm. It’s true—everyone has stopped fighting. Why?

Because Mr. Carson, Director of the Agency, is standing in front of us looking like blue thunder. And lined up with him are Luke, Rita, and Charlie.

“Charlie! Are you okay?”

“Yup.” He pushes up his horn-rims as he looks pointedly at Evan.

Evan sets me on my feet, and Charlie gives him a thumbs-up.

“Rita?” I query. “Luke? You two okay?”

They nod. The expressions on their faces reflect what I already know: that we are in deep, deep trouble. Titanic-level trouble.

“Young lady,” grates out Mr. Carson. “I need your word and the word of your friends that you will come quietly now, without any further nonsense.”

“Karina, do what he says,” Mom calls from her cell.

I gulp in some air and look sideways at Kale. My mom is still a prisoner, and I’m not at all sure that I want to give up and leave her here.

Kale raises an eyebrow, asking me what I want to do.

I wipe some sweat away from my temples and turn to Mr. Carson again. “And I’d like your word that you’ll release my mother. The charges against her are crazy, and you must know that.”

“We are investigating the charges,” he says neutrally. “That’s all I can tell you at this time.”

“But they’ll be dropped,” I say. “That’s what I can tell
you
at this time. My parents are not traitors.” I’m furious.

Mr. Carson’s mouth tightens. “Let’s go, people.”

I’m hustled towards the door. “Mom!” I yell. “I will get you out of here.” She makes no reply.

We are escorted out of the “non-existent” detention facility and hustled back into the corridor to nowhere. We take the elevator to a different floor and walk down several more utilitarian hallways.

Finally we arrive at a door that only Mr. Carson has access to. He swipes his badge through the slot, and we’re taken into yet another high-security area with central reception and eight rooms radiating off it.

Mr. Carson directs the agents to separate each of us into our own room.

“I don’t think so,” I say.

He raises his eyebrows at me.

“My brother Charlie is only seven years old. I won’t have him traumatized and interrogated like a criminal. He stays with me.”

Mr. Carson opens his mouth, probably to inform me that I’m not the one giving orders, but Luke intercedes.

“Dad,” he says. “Please. The kid is terrified.”

Adaptable as always, Charlie gazes up at Mr. C. with huge owl eyes behind his horn-rims, and his mouth trembles just the right amount. Good boy.

“Fine,” Mr. Carson says. “Luke, I’ll deal with you later.” Then he turns on his heel and walks off.

Luke looks dejected, and I feel terrible.

I don’t know how to salvage things with the boy of my dreams. Note to self: The way to a guy’s heart is
not
to manipulate him into betraying his father.

“Luke, I’m so sorry for getting you into this,” I say.

“It’s okay.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Given
your circumstances, I’d have done the same thing.”

“Really?” My silly heart beats with hope.

He meets my gaze for a long moment, then swallows and sets his jaw. A tiny muscle jumps at the side of it. “Yeah. Really.”

I want to throw my arms around his neck and shout,
I love you!

But I don’t.

I am led away with Charlie and shoved into a room to await whatever fate has in store for us. The door is locked with finality.

Five minutes later, though, it opens again and Evan Kincaid is shoved inside with us.

Ugh.

The room that we find ourselves in is a study in gray and blue. The floor is gray industrial tile with tiny flecks of black and cream in it. I have lots of time to examine it while my feet are planted, one each, in a twelve-inch square—as if I’m about to sink into cement blocks.

The walls are gray too, like the overcast sky outside. Gloomy, cold gray like my mood, and like Evan’s eyes at the moment. I have to admit that I’m glad of his company, because I know that I’m in over my head.

The furniture looks like it was all turned off the same assembly line at the same factory in the same hour: cheap, blond wood frames and navy upholstery that people’s butts and backs have worn nubby. The armrests are dark and stained with use.

Charlie curls up on a sofa, his feet tucked underneath him.

Evan sits casually on the arm of a matching chair and folds his arms across his chest.

I sit somberly next to Charlie and stare into space, a million thoughts chasing each other through my head. What will happen to Mom? Where is Dad? What kind of trouble are we in? Will my friends’ parents kill them, and then me for getting them into this?

Will we be thrown into a jail for kids? Will we be prosecuted? Hacking. False IDs. Breaking and entering. Assaulting agents. We’re in deep.

“So,” Evan says.

It occurs to me that I should be grateful to him. How weird. “Thanks for your help back there,” I say. “For once, you weren’t completely useless.”

His mouth turns up at one corner. “You’re welcome.”

I rerun my splintered mental images of him during the fight with the agents and frown. “You actually seemed to know what you were doing.”

“Beginner’s luck,” he tells me, but it sounds like a rote answer.

I narrow my eyes on him. “Must be. Right? Because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to disable you so quickly,
twice
.”

He sighs, steeples his fingers under his chin, and peers at me over them. “Kari,” he says. “I’m not even sure how to tell you this. . . .”

What could Evan Kincaid, International Jerk of Mystery, have to tell me?

Eww. I seriously cannot believe that he kissed me. Worse, that it was my very first real kiss by any boy on the planet.
I was saving that for Luke Carson, if I ever got the chance.

“Let me guess,” I say to Evan. “I got you pregnant when you kissed me?”

Charlie falls into a fit of the giggles.

“Yes,” says Evan. “That’s exactly it. I’m pregnant and alone. What will I do?”

Charlie stops laughing. “Wait,” he says. “Boys can’t get pregnant, can they?”

Now it’s Evan’s turn to laugh, and mine.

“No,” he says.

“Nobody can get pregnant from a kiss,” I tell Charlie. It’s too funny that he has memorized half of
Roget’s Thesaurus
and knows how electricity works and can write computer code, but he is truly lost when it comes to the basics of life.

“Just humiliated, disgusted, and slimed,” I add, turning to glare at Evan.

“
Slimed
?” He looks offended.

“Yes. Like the trail a snail leaves, when it crawls up a window?”

“I know what it means,” Evan growls.

“Oh, good.” I aim a sunny smile in his direction. “I didn’t know what you Brits called it, what with the term ‘snogging’ and all that. So I figured I should translate.”

“Shrew,” he mutters.

“Wait,” says Charlie. “So are you saying that you don’t like Evan that way?”

“What way?”

“
That
way,” my brother says. “
You
know.”

“No, of course I don’t like Evan that way!”

If possible, Evan looks even more offended. “Well,” he says to nobody in particular. “Who needed an ego, anyhow? Useless buggers, really. I’ll just discard mine now, since it will never recover.”

“Are you done talking to yourself?” I ask him.

“Not quite. I was just getting to the reassurance and the positive self-affirmations, actually.”

“Well, when you’re done with those, you can tell me whatever it is that you don’t know how to tell me.”

He expels a breath and gazes at me sardonically. “Thank you.”

“No problem.” I wait, the picture of polite expectation.

“Kari, I’m . . . not who you think I am.”

I raise my eyebrows. “No?”

He shakes his head.

“You mean you’re really a nice guy without a shred of pretension who’s never been a serial flirt?”

“Wow,” he says, clearly stung. “You don’t pull your punches, do you?”

“Never.”

“All right. Then I won’t bother to be sensitive or delicate about this. I’m not just a high school kid, Kari. I’m an Interpol agent. Well, agent-in-training.”

I gape at him.

Then I snort.

And finally, since his expression doesn’t change, I burst out laughing. “Of course you are, Evan.”

“Kincaid,” Charlie says in a fake British accent. He lowers his glasses and peers over them. “Evan Kincaid.
Double-oh seven.”