Two Lies and a Spy (4 page)

I have to stop obsessing or I’ll go nuts. But the walls are closing in on me. Everything is symmetrical in the room, from the placement of the beds to the bad pictures of ducks hung over them, from the identical reading lamps to the nightstands.

It all contributes to this feeling I have that we’ve accidently fallen into a bad B movie. It’s one thing to have a family plan in place in case of a Code Black scenario—it’s quite another thing to be following that plan blindly, without a script of what’s happening behind the scenes.

To distract myself from worrying about my parents, I obsess about Luke instead. I cannot believe that I grinned at him with mashed up M&M’s in my mouth, like some kind of brain-dead jack-o’-lantern. What is wrong with me?

I try to imagine what my teeth must have looked like and cringe. Really, how gross was it? I decide that I need to do an experiment, and it gives me a great excuse to get out of this claustrophobic room, even if only for a couple of minutes.

“Charlie, do you want a candy bar out of the vending machine?”

He looks up absently from the computer screen. “Huh?”

I repeat the question and his eyes brighten. “Yeah. A Snickers.”

“What’s the magic word?”

“Abracadabra?” Charlie asks, the little imp.

“Dude.”

“
Please
,” he says, rolling his eyes behind those miniature horn-rims.

I nod. “Okay, I’ll go get us some sugar. But do not open this door to anyone but me. Got it?”

I pick up my key card and exit the room, stretching
my legs as I go down the hallway toward the little alcove where the hotel has the ice and vending machines. As promised, I get a Snickers for Charlie . . . and Peanut M&M’s for me.

Yes, I know that I’m ridiculous. Back in the room I give Charlie his candy bar and go into the bathroom. I close the door behind me, then open the bag of M&M’s. I put four into my mouth at once and chew a few times. Then I smile at myself in the mirror.

Oh. My. God. The results are disgusting.

Seen a dentist lately, love?
Evan’s voice echoes, once again, in my pea brain.

I cannot believe I did that in front of Luke.

Can lightning strike me now? Can the floor open up and swallow me?

I choke down the chocolate in my mouth and toss the rest of the bag in the trash.

I stare at my Goth self in the mirror. Underneath all that white powder, I am beet red.

How can I recover from this? Luke must think I’m so gross. So unattractive.

And Evan . . . I cannot stand the jerk. I mean, what kind of person wears custom-tailored shirts to
school
? A pretentious person, that’s who. And that accent of his? It does
not
make him smarter than everyone else. Which I will be
happy
to tell him the next time I have the bad luck to bump into him.

I run some water into a Comfort Inn plastic cup and swish it around in my mouth. Then I take one of their
pristine white washcloths and scrub like a maniac at my teeth. I rinse again. I grin like a mule into the mirror to see if there are any renegade M&M particles still stuck anywhere. Nope.

I resolve to use some of my emergency dollars (only a few) on Crest Whitestrips so that the next time I see Luke, I will blind him with my smile.

Next I lather up my face with soap and get every speck of the gruesome Goth makeup off my skin. It’s a relief to look normal again, even if our circumstances are anything but.

More awful film stills spin in a kaleidoscope of horror through my mind: my dad lying in a street with his skull bashed in; my mom bound hand and foot and hanging from a hook while some assassin beats her; both of them riddled with bullets in the middle of an icy field, splashes of their bright red blood marking the snow.

My hands tremble uncontrollably as I hold a towel to my face.

Stop it, Kari!

When I leave the bathroom, Charlie has finished both his Snickers bar and his German. He’s moved on to something lighter: the history of electricity and the theory of AC circuits.

•  •  •

I make my brother close the laptop at eight p.m. and brush his teeth with a toothbrush I got from the front desk. He gets into bed in his T-shirt and boxers, removes his horn-rims, and folds them before putting them on
the bedside table. He really is like a tiny banker—I can picture him doing the same thing thirty years and a hundred pounds from now. I kiss his forehead and turn out the bedside lights before going to the sitting room side of the suite.

“Kari?” he asks. “Do you think Mom and Dad will be here by morning?”

“Yeah. I’m positive, kiddo. Remember, they could be in Uzbekistan for all we know, traveling on back country roads in a 1963 Fiat. That could take a while.”

“Or maybe they’re on a camel in Saudi Arabia, and they have to cross a desert.”

We fall easily into one of our favorite games: Where in the World Are Mom and Dad? “Or maybe they’re in Spain, running with the bulls.”

“Or maybe,” says Charlie, “they’re in Venice, making their getaway in a gondola.”

“I like that one,” I tell him. I sit beside him on the bed and squeeze his hand. “And they’ll bring us those little chocolate Baci from Italy when they come home.”

“Baci?” Charlie’s eyelids are drooping.

I remember that it’s been three or four years since our parents went to Italy, so Charlie would have been pretty young. “Those chocolates with the messages inside. Kind of like Dove Promises.
Baci
means ‘kisses’ in Italian.” Ha. That’s, like, the only foreign word I know. That and
bonjour
.

My brother looks forlorn for a moment. “I want real kisses. One from Mom, and one from Dad.”

“Oh, sweetie.” I gather him up in a hug. “I know. But they’re doing really important jobs for our country.” It sounds a little corny when I say that out loud, but I mean it.

“Our parents,” I continue, “are the true heroes. They’re the ones who do the dirty work behind the scenes that nobody else wants to do. They take incredible risks. They combat, well, evil. Yeah, that sounds dramatic—but it’s the honest truth.” Sometimes I am so proud of our parents that my heart feels like it’s too big for my chest.

“I guess it makes it worth it that they’re gone all the time . . . kind of. But I miss them,” Charlie says, drowsiness creeping into his voice.

“Yeah, I know. Same here.”

And obviously I get scared for them too, but I don’t tell Charlie that. What they do is dangerous. Those guns in their emergency packs? They actually need those.

I try not to think about the fact that Mom and Dad could be in some kind of shoot-out right this minute, sitting back-to-back while bullets fly around them.

It’s not likely. Most spy work is pretty low key, believe it or not. There’s a lot of surveillance and computer tracking and peering at activity beamed to the U.S. by satellite. Depending on what cover they’re using—say, foreign diplomat—they might just be writing reports and schmoozing at cocktail parties while they slowly gather information. I know this because they’ve told me, probably just to allay my fears.

Charlie emits the tiniest, cutest snore, and I know he’s out for the count.

I wonder what my friend Kale is up to. I want to text him, but it may not be safe—given the situation my friends’ phones could be monitored, and it’s best not to put my new number on anyone’s radar screen unless it’s truly necessary.

I sprawl full-length on the couch, stare at the textured white ceiling, and try to count the bumps. If I stay in this room much longer, I’ll go nuts. At last, after counting 259 tiny plaster bumps, my exhaustion kicks in and I fall asleep in all my clothes.

As if my brain knows that I can’t take any more worry, it floods my dreams with images of Luke. Luke runs—and wins—a track meet in nothing but his tan and a tiny pair of blue shorts . . . while I cheer and scream from the stands. He waves and blows me a kiss from the finish line, and I give him a huge gold cup that we drink champagne out of later. I guess in my dreams I’m not underage.

I must also be extremely rich, because before I know it, Luke and I are driving through Monaco in a Ferrari—we’re racing in the Grand Prix. I am wearing cat’s-eye sunglasses and a white silk scarf tied around my neck. We are impossibly glamorous.

He’s soon kissing me on the deck of a yacht in the Mediterranean, while the warm breeze caresses us. We’re lying on the bow, rocking rhythmically as we cut through the water. He rolls me on top of him, and I’m touching
every hard inch of him, my body molding to his.

“I want you, Kari,” he whispers into my hair. “Right now.”

I press into him shamelessly . . . only instead of pressing back, he flattens and fades away. I wake, mortified to realize that I’m making out with the sagging, nubby couch—pressing my lips into the dent that hundreds of butts have made. Nice.

But I’m so tired, worn out with stress, that sleep reclaims me before I do more than turn my head.

In the morning I wake with the mother of all cricks in my neck and a sore back, not to mention furry teeth. My watch says it’s 7:33 a.m. Charlie is still sleeping peacefully, and there’s no sign of our parents.

I slide off the couch, use the bathroom, and admire the woven tweedy texture embedded in my cheek. Couch pillows? They’re not so soft. Then I stagger over to the double bed that’s mine and crawl under the covers for another few hours.

When I wake up the second time, Charlie’s tapping away at the keyboard of the laptop, glasses slipping down his nose. His hair is flattened on one side.

“Morning,” I mumble.

“Almost afternoon.”

Sure enough, the clock now says 11:43. It’s been a full twenty-four hours since we got the texts from Dad. Fear forms a dull ache in my head.

I shower quickly, Goth myself up again, and tell Charlie that I’m going to go find us some food. He’s
totally absorbed in—I glance quickly at the screen—how a camera works and how photography has evolved over the past one hundred years or so.

I stuff some money and one of the prepaid phones into my jacket pocket and head for the door. “Don’t open this for anyone but me,” I remind my brother again.

He rolls his eyes.

“And it’d be good if you cleaned up and got dressed, kiddo, just in case we have to leave quickly.”

He nods, and then I lose him once again to the laptop and the infinite jungle of theories and ideas out there—where he’s like a curious monkey, swinging from vine to vine and concept to concept.

I take the elevator down, breeze past Serena at the desk, and head out to the street. Even though I know my Goth disguise has eradicated any sign of Kari Andrews, prep-school girl, I am nervous to the point of paranoia. Mitch and Gary may be anywhere, and they may also not be the only Agency people trying to track down me and Charlie.

Twenty feet to the left of the hotel doors, there’s a man roughly Mitch’s height and weight pawing through a garbage receptacle for cans. I freeze for a moment, trying to decide whether or not he’s a plant.

Across the street is an old lady dragging one of those grocery carts on wheels, two paper sacks full of goods inside. Does she have a Beretta in there along with her baguette?

And a dark-suited businessman strides toward me from the right, a Burberry raincoat draped over one arm
and a briefcase in the other. For all I know he’s got a stun gun in his pocket and a government-issued SUV around the corner.

I stand right outside the doors of the Comfort Inn and pretend to text on my phone until he’s well down the street. The lady with the shopping cart disappears around a corner. And the guy at the garbage can moves down a block to the next set of trash bins.

I let out a long, slow breath that I hadn’t been aware I was holding. Then I head west and walk a couple of blocks, keeping my head down and scanning every car I pass for signs that it’s unlocked and easy to, um, borrow.

It’s not stealing if you return the vehicle when you’re done with it,
Mom’s voice says in my head.

My dad taught me at an early age how to tie my shoes, how to ride a bike, and how to “borrow” a car. So I look for a low-end, older model that won’t attract attention.

There’s an old movie theater a couple of blocks away, and I know the first matinee show of the day starts soon. I walk to the pay lot near it and observe as an older, probably retired couple gets out of an unremarkable 2001 Hyundai Sonata. They lock it and walk toward the theater. I trail behind them and fiddle with my phone as they ask for tickets to a foreign film that ends two hours and twenty-odd minutes from now. Perfect.

Once the theater swallows them up, I make my way
back to their car. I stand next to it and scan the street both ways, still half expecting to see Mitch pop up, while looking for a set of imaginary keys in my messenger bag. What I pull out instead is a set of lock picks.

Thanks, Mom and Dad. They were a great thirteenth birthday gift.

Nobody pays any attention to me. It takes me only a few nervous seconds to jimmy the door and slip into the driver’s seat. Within a couple of minutes, I’ve cracked the steering column and hot-wired the vehicle.

The Sonata smells like dirty vinyl, wet dog, and stale cigarettes. I ease into traffic and go around the block a couple of times, checking in the rearview mirror at every turn to make sure I’m not being followed. There’s no sign of a tail by Mitch, Gary, or anyone else, so I head back to the other side of town and pull into the parking lot of a Laundromat that’s close to Kennedy Prep. I walk inside, pretend to check on a dryer full of clothes, and then make my way to the east wall, where there’s a long bulletin board plastered with community notices: fliers for a lost dog, an ad that a 2003 Buick Regal is for sale, phone numbers for a pet-sitting service, et cetera.

I search through all the business cards and scraps of paper on the board until I see what I’m looking for:

Guitar Lessons from Larry. Basic guitar for students K–12 taught by a qualified graduate student at GWU’s Carson School of Music.

Oh, that’s very cute, Rita! Luke’s last name is Carson. I shake my head but can’t help a grin. My steps are lighter as I go back to my borrowed Hyundai and drive it to a nearby Kinko’s. There I buy a session on one of their computers and create a flier in response to hers.