Two Lies and a Spy (8 page)

This moment is incredible. I don’t know how to describe it. It feels like a virtual kiss.

Then Rita bangs on Mr. Carson’s desk with her fists.
She’s clearly frustrated that her program is taking so long and she hasn’t cracked the password yet.

The moment is gone. And Luke can see that I’m on the verge of getting wound up again. He shakes his finger at me. “Stay calm and focused.”

Calm. Focus. Zen.

Now, if I only knew what to do.

Despite growing up the daughter of two spies, despite a lot of both deliberate and accidental training in the clandestine arena, I have never wanted to be a spy myself. There’s no glamour in it if you live it. There’s nothing exciting about missing your parents all the time, watching your little brother miss them, and wondering where they are. It’s not thrilling to see that Charlie is growing up without them . . . and that they don’t even realize it.

Sure, I take it like a marine—what else is there to do? But this is not the life I want for myself. And I try to discourage Rita from viewing it through her rose-colored designer glasses. I guess it’s different for her—my parents saved her—but they do their jobs at an enormous cost to their own family.

“Kari, I’m not having any luck,” Rita says. “Backtrack will eventually work, but it will take too long.” She looks at me as if I have an answer.

Luke looks at me too.

Even know-it-all Evan, who has left his post—big surprise—raises his left eyebrow in a facial question-mark.

It’s not like Rita to give up her natural role as leader. But I guess since this involves my parents, it’s my battle
plan. I wish I knew what to do.

I rack my brain until it cooperates and supplies an idea.

“Where’s Lacey’s room?” I ask Luke. “I need to borrow something from her.”

I follow him up the grand staircase and down a blue-painted hallway hung with gilt-framed antique prints. He points to a white door with a polished brass knob, and I mouth
thanks
at him. I knock.

“What?” Lacey’s voice calls rudely, over a Beyoncé song.

“Lacey, it’s, uh, Kari. Kari Andrews, from Kennedy Prep?”

“O-kaaay.” Her tone is not exactly welcoming. I hear footsteps, and then the door opens. “Dear
God
.” She looks me up and down. “Kari, are you really under there? What happened to you? And did you know that, like,
everyone
is looking for you? I’m going to call the cops and claim the reward money, if there is any.”

“No! Lacey, look—I know we’re not exactly the best of friends, but—”

“OMG, we’re not?” She blinks her eyes innocently. “I’m crushed!”

She is
such
a bitch. “Lacey, I need your help. Truly. Honestly. And you can’t tell anyone you’ve seen me.”

“Oooooh. What’s it worth to you?”

I sigh. “I’ll give you a hundred bucks.”

“That doesn’t even buy a pair of decent sunglasses,” she says derisively.

What a chiseler! “Okay, two hundred.”

“Deal. So what do you need?”

“Some dark eye shadow.”

Lacey casts a glance at my face. “Like you don’t have enough on already?”

“Uh . . .”

“Not that you applied it right. What did you do, use a spoon? A house-paint brush? Jeez, Kari, you’re hopeless.”

“Thanks. Really. You’re so sweet.” I don’t need any more of this kind of feedback. Sophie teases me about my cosmetic inabilities all the time. Sophie . . . why hasn’t she called me back yet?

Lacey points to the vanity stool that’s pulled up to a gorgeous, antique dressing table in her room. The walls are papered with eighteenth-century French ladies in gowns, and the whole interior is done in white and gold with pink accents. Why am I not surprised?

“Sit,” she says imperiously, like she’s the queen and I’m a peasant.

“Why?”

“I’m going to fix your eye makeup,” she explains with exaggerated patience.

“Look, Lacey, I don’t want your eye shadow for my face,” I tell her. “I need it for something else.”

She narrows her eyes. “Like what?”

Like none of your bimbo business.
“An . . . art project?”

“Puh-lease.”

Okay, she’s not quite as stupid as she looks. Who
knew?

“Kari, I’m wondering just why you’re at my house. Probably to make cow eyes at my brother—don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’re hot for him. But that doesn’t explain why you’d actually come up the stairs and talk to me, or why you’d try to borrow my makeup when you don’t want to learn how to use it like an actual woman might. So why don’t you tell me what’s going on, before I hit speed dial on my iPhone and call the adorable traffic cop who asked my boobs out on a date after he tore up my speeding ticket.” She smiles at me. “He’d probably love a promotion for bringing you in to the station.”

Have I mentioned that I really hate Lacey Carson?

“Then you wouldn’t get your two hundred bucks,” I retort.

She loses her smile and drums her pink fingernails on the dresser. “Info for eye shadow,” she says.

Her dad may pull into the driveway at any second. I have no choice, do I?

Hearing voices below, Lacey steamrollers her way down the stairs and into her father’s study, with me trailing behind her. I’ve told her the bare minimum, but I had to tell her that. She opens her mouth to say something hateful to Rita—I can tell from the expression on her face—so I try to preempt her.

“Evan, you know Lacey, right?” I say, as if we’re at a party or something.

“Socially,” he says. “Not yet carnally.” His face is the picture of polite as this comes out of his mouth.

I can’t help it; a pig snort escapes me before I can stop it.

Lacey’s head swivels toward him as if it’s a machine gun mounted on a tank. “
What
did you say?”

He grins. “Wax in your ears, love? You heard me.”

I have to choke back another pig snort. I may loathe
Evan, but right now I’m silently cheering him. Anyone who takes on Lacey is okay by me.

“In. Your. Dreams.” Her tone would freeze the sperm of a killer whale in the arctic, but that doesn’t stop her from running her gaze up and down his body. She’s clearly intrigued by him but won’t admit it. As the Hot Girl, she has to play hard to get.

“Come now,” he croons to her. “You never think of me naked?”

She doesn’t even bother to look at him. “I never think of you at all.”

“Stop harassing my sister, man,” Luke tells him, but he’s repressing a smile.

“Why? It’s fun,” Evan points out.

“Why is this ho on my dad’s laptop?” Lacey demands, gesturing at Rita.

“Easy, Lace!” Luke says.

“Who are you calling ‘ho,’ slut?” Rita tosses back.

“Hey,” Luke intercedes again. “Dial it down.”

“Touching,” Evan muses, “that you two girls have such affection for one another.”

“Luke!” Lacey snaps. “Why have you let all of these people into Dad’s office? He’d be really pissed.”

“It’s complicated.” Luke looks at me, eyebrows raised.

As I’m forced to explain to Lacey just why Rita is on Mr. Carson’s computer, Rita narrows her eyes on the belt Lacey is wearing.

“Unbelievable,” Rita says. “You?
You’re
the one who stole my belt during gym?”

Lacey tosses her hair. “What are you talking about? Do I look like I need to steal anything? I bought this belt myself at Louis Vuitton.”

“Really,” Rita says. “What year?”

“Huh?”

“What year?”

“2010,” Lacey says, her voice ringing with scorn.

“Yeah? Well that’s interesting, since Vuitton didn’t make that model until spring 2012, when my mother bought it. You’re a liar as well as a thief.”

Two spots of red appear high on Lacey’s cheeks. “I’d be careful, Larita, real careful what you say, since you’re sitting there trying to hack my dad’s computer.”

“You know what? We don’t have time for this,” I tell the two of them. I hold out my hand palm up for the eye shadow, and Lacey sullenly gives it to me. Then she adjusts “her” belt.

I take one of her fancy makeup brushes and dust a fine layer of the shadow over Mr. Carson’s keyboard. Then I take a deep breath and blow it out, as if trying to extinguish birthday candles. Most of the powder dissipates, but some of it remains stuck to the keys.

“Those,” I say, pointing them out, “are the ones that Mr. Carson uses the most.”

“Brilliant,” Evan says.

“Now we need to come up with combinations of letters and numbers that derive from just these ten or so keys. We’re running out of time.”

“May I make a suggestion?” Evan asks.

“Like anyone could stop you?” I say.

“We’ve got to think like Mr. Carson . . . but like Mr. C trying
not
to think like Mr. C, if you know what I mean.”

“Huh?” Lacey rolls her eyes.

“He’s the head of the Agency. He’s not going to use his dog’s name as the password to his computer.”

“We don’t have a dog,” says Lacey.

Evan shoots Luke an expressive look. It asks,
Is she really this stupid?

“What he means,” Rita says acidly, “is that his password is going to be complicated, and probably made up of more symbols and numbers than letters.”

Evan nods.

“So let’s look at the symbols and numbers that are heaviest in eye shadow,” I order them.

“Hel-
lo
?” says Lacey. “Why don’t you just try asking me if I know the password?”

We all turn and stare at her as one unit.

“Do you?” Luke demands.

“Well, duh.”

“How?” Her brother queries.

She shrugs. “Shoulder surfing.”

I’m ready to strangle her. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“Because you didn’t ask.” She smirks. “And besides, you’ve got little Larita with her gadget . . . so who needs
moi
, the ‘dumb blonde’?”

“Little Larita” is poised to spring up and deck the bitch, so I have to hold her back by the seat of her six-hundred-dollar pants.

“Lacey.” I take a deep breath. “Please. Nobody thinks you’re a dumb blonde. Tell us the password. I’m afraid that someone is going to kill my parents. I’m not kidding.”

She evaluates me. “Fine. But you let me in on
everything
. No holding back.”

I nod.

So, before our disbelieving eyes, Lacey leans forward and types in the password, cool as you please.

Disgusted, Rita removes her thumb drive and shoves it into her pocket.

I move quickly to soothe her. “You would have gotten it too, with your program.”

Rita shrugs like it’s no big deal, but I can tell she appreciates the credit. She logs on. “I’ll run a GREP now and I’ll pipe it to the most recently opened documents,” she says.

“A who-what?”

“It’s a geek thing,” Rita says. “You wouldn’t understand.” And just like that, she re-establishes her superiority over Lacey. Under any other circumstances, I’d have laughed.

We begin to search through recently accessed files. The one we need will have been worked on in the past forty-eight hours, for sure.

I crack my neck nervously as Rita opens and closes several files that have nothing to do with my parents. A car door slams nearby, and we all jump. Luke dashes to the window, but it’s a neighbor coming home from work—thank God.

“Got it,” Rita announces. Her mouth forms an O as she scans the file, and I crane my neck to see it over her shoulder. We read in utter silence, my eyes flying over phrases such as “unlikely to be coincidental,” “dubious timing,” and “links to an offshore account held by a shell company.”

This doesn’t sound good. There’s no outright accusation of anything, but there is a recommendation to interrogate, and there are several surveillance reports on subject IA-062192. They’re written in dry, boring language and detail a travel schedule that matches my mom’s, a dead-drop point, and an acknowledgment that subject IA-062192 “made” her street team and then tried to run.

“IA” can only be Irene Andrews. And “062192” is the date she joined the Agency: June 21, 1992.

Finally, there’s a note at the bottom of the document:

SUBJECT IA-062192 IS BEING HELD FOR DEBRIEFING AT LANGLEY.

Rita whistles.

The
Agency
has my mom . . . and they clearly suspect her of something underhanded—which is ridiculous. Making a tail and then losing it, trying to disappear; it’s completely normal for my mother. She’s on guard all the time. It’s part of her job.

And anything to do with an offshore account? That just means that the op she’s working on is a black one. One where national security might be compromised if all the details are transparent and trotted out for the media
to examine. Think about it: Did the navy write a check and log the specifics when they sent the SEALS into Pakistan to get Osama bin Laden? I don’t think so.

“What have you found?” Luke asks.

“The Agency is questioning my mother,” I say. “Where would they detain someone at Langley?”

“Most detaining is probably done in, oh, say . . . a detention center.” Evan winks. “However unlikely that may sound.”

I ignore him and his idiot sarcasm and look at Luke for guidance.

“He’s actually right,” he says. “Langley has no
official
detention center. But I’ve heard rumors of one.”

“You don’t know where it is?” My tone is urgent.

He shakes his head. “Somewhere in the bowels of the complex.”

Once again Lacey shocks us to the core. With a classic hair toss she says, “I know exactly where the detention center is at Langley.”

“You do?” Luke stares at her. We all do. Lacey’s full of surprises today.

“Of course.” She turns and heads for the staircase. “Let’s regroup in Luke’s room, in case Mom or Dad comes home.”

Rita quickly logs out of Mr. Carson’s laptop, dusts off the eye shadow from the keyboard, then closes it. We all follow Lacey’s perfect, perky buns up the stairs.

“How?” Luke demands. “How do you, of all people, know where the detention center at Langley is?”

She smiles secretively. “Maybe because I’ve been . . . detained . . . there.” She tosses her hair again. “By a totally
hot
security guard.”