Two Lies and a Spy (9 page)

Luke frowns. “When?”

And Evan is compelled to ask, “Don’t these traffic cops and security guards care at all that you’re
sixteen
, and therefore what you Yanks like to call jailbait?”

“Not after they get a good look at the girls,” Lacey says, gesturing at her biggest assets.

“Slut,” Rita mutters under her breath.

Luke looks nauseated.

Evan looks unimpressed.

“So where is this detention center?” I demand.

“Yeah, where?” Rita says. “Let’s go!”

Lacey scoffs. “This is the
Agency
we’re talking about. We don’t just storm the doors and take no prisoners. We need a plan and an official reason to go there.”

“What was yours?” Luke presses his sister. “When your security guard buddy showed you the detention center?”

“It’s so not important.” Lacey waves her hand dismissively.

“Oh, I know what it was. That was the day you got picked up for shoplifting,” Luke says. “And you had to spend a little time waiting for Dad to rip you a new one.”

“I told you, I did
not
shoplift. I left the store
accidentally
with that handbag, and security jumped to the worst possible conclusion!”

“Uh-huh.” Luke skewers her with a glance. “What won’t you do to get Dad’s attention, Lace?”

“I’m so sure it was accidental,” says Rita. “Just like my
Vuitton belt
accidentally
fell out of my locker and onto your hips.”

Lacey puts her face close to Rita’s. “You have no proof of that, and you’d better stop slandering me, or—”

“Or what?” Rita doesn’t back up an inch. She doesn’t even blink behind the pink Chanel glasses. “Or you’ll find your nonexistent receipt from 2010 and staple it to my forehead?”

“That’s enough, you two,” I say, and shove them apart. “Let’s make a plan and go find my mom.”

I’ve been thinking. Just how
do
you break into Langley and make an extraction?

Answer: You don’t, especially if you’re a group of prep-school kids who will blend into the surroundings about as well as hookers in church. So I figure that we should take advantage of who we are, make it a strength instead of a weakness. What better way to get into Langley than as a tour group from Kennedy Prep, there with our friend Luke, whose dad is the director of the Agency? We’ll look so clean-cut and harmless in our navy, white, and plaid uniforms that nobody will ever suspect what we’re up to.

But we’re going to need the help of another good friend of mine . . . and Rita won’t like who it is.

“So,” Rita says. “What’s your plan?”

“Hang on a sec,” I say. “I need to make a call.”

I go into the bathroom off the hallway with my cell phone and call Kale. Kale Inoue is my other best friend, a senior at Washington High, which is a public school. I met Kale, who is half-Japanese, in my karate class about nine years ago, when my family moved to DC. We were both pretty fast learners, but he was kind of getting a big head because he was beating everyone—until the instructor put him up against me.

While the phone is ringing, I look around the bathroom, which has a claw-foot tub I can picture Thomas Jefferson soaking in and towels with gold fringe and embroidery on them. I go over to the toilet to sit down while I talk, and have to laugh. Even the toilet seat looks like it’s made out of mahogany, and instead of a normal flusher thingy there’s a gold chain that dangles from a standing rectangular tank. I think maybe Luke’s
mom has taken this whole antique thing a bit too far.

“Hello?”

“Kale, it’s me.”

“Mighty Mouse!” he says. “Where you been?”

“It’s complicated.”

“The entire city’s looking for you and Charlie.”

“I never called you, by the way.”

He gives a low chuckle. “Never.”

“Thanks. So, Kale, I really need your help, but I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. I need you to meet me right away . . . I’ll be in disguise, but you’ll know the person with me.” I’m probably paranoid, but I wonder if the Agency has bugged my friends’ phones? So I tell him to meet me within walking distance of Luke’s house but don’t give the exact address.

I hang up with Kale and exit the bathroom, only to find Evan standing suspiciously close to the door. Of course he’s pretending to look at family photos of the Carsons that are grouped on the hallway wall, but I’m onto him.

“Did you get a good earful?” I ask.

He produces that innocent-as-the-Gerber-baby expression again.

“Don’t try to snow me, Evan.”

He shrugs. “Okay. So who’s Kale?”

“Just because you admit to eavesdropping doesn’t mean I’m going to fill you in on anything you might have missed. You have a nerve!”

“Brass bollocks,” he says, with a grin. “Want to see them?”

“No, pervert, I do not.”

“Is Kale your boyfriend?” Evan asks this just as Luke steps out of his room.

I am mortified, and I almost say no for Luke’s benefit, but I refuse to let someone like Evan snoop into my personal life. “That’s so none of your business!”

“You might be surprised what
is
my business,” he replies with a wink.

Aaargh.
Like I asked him? I brush past both of them and go into Luke’s room to join the others.

I have to pause for a minute and take in the fact that I am in his inner sanctum. I have dreamed of this moment, though in my fantasy the room looks different and there are filmy white curtains blowing in a beach breeze and Luke and I are, um, wearing a lot less.

But back to reality. The decor is basically nautical, with a lot of navy and yellow, but I’m guessing that Luke stopped his mother before she went off the rails and ordered him a custom-made sailboat bed or anything. Between the windows, mounted on the wall over his bed, there is a very cool model of a tall ship with all the rigging and sails. I wonder if he put it together.

Over his antique rolltop desk there’s a trophy case that holds all of his track awards. I try really hard not to look at the bed, because it embarrasses me. And why am I even thinking about it when my mom is locked up at the Agency, and my dad is who knows where? That’s awful. What kind of person am I?

I pull myself together, clear my throat, and tell them
all about my tentative plan to go into the Agency tomorrow, in our uniforms, as a tour group from Kennedy Prep.

“I think that might work,” Luke says, nodding.

“Have you lost your minds?” Evan asks, looking scandalized.

“I’ll change my regulation skirt for a shorter one,” Lacey says. At her brother’s disgusted look, she throws up her hands. “What? We might need me to distract somebody.”

Rita practically gags herself on Luke’s bedpost.

“I’m going to go meet my friend Kale a couple of blocks away and bring him back here,” I confess, wincing as Rita’s head comes up and she glares at me.

“
Kale?
You have got to be kidding me. Why?”

“Rita, give me a break. We need him.” I turn and walk downstairs again and out the front door. She follows me like an angry dog after a mailman.

“We do not need him! He’s a pain in the ass,” she says.

I drag a hand down my face and look for the best angle to take with her. For some reason Rita can’t stand Kale, and the feeling is mutual. Maybe it’s because Kale doesn’t have any patience with her bent for up-market fashion and thinks she’s a snob, on top of being a know-it-all. Or maybe it’s because Rita thinks he’s got a chip on his shoulder about anyone who’s not working class. Personally, I think if they’d stop bickering long enough to get to know each other, they might get along. But there doesn’t seem to be any chance of that.

“Rita, we all know you’re the brains behind this
operation,” I tell her, deciding that flattery is a good way to go. “But we need some more muscle, just in case we get into trouble.”

“We have Luke and Evan for that. Besides, Kale is a short dude.”

I turn to look at her, my eyebrows raised. “Do you have any idea what that ‘short dude’ can do? I guarantee you that he could take down Luke and Evan, both, before they even knew what was happening.”

I break off because we’ve reached the address I gave Kale, and like clockwork he turns the corner onto the street we’re on. He’s always punctual.

Rita curls her lip and turns away.

Kale, who was wearing his simple, uncomplicated smile a second ago, spots her and scowls as he approaches. “What’s the brat doing here?”

“What’s the grease monkey doing here?” Rita retorts.

Kale has completely rebuilt a 1972 Mustang over the past four years, using salvage parts as he can find them. “Hey, at least I can fix my own car, unlike you, princess.”

“You only call me that because you’re jealous.”

“That would be ‘
envious
,’ Miss Prep School Education. ‘Jealous’ would require that I had feelings for you. And, no, I don’t think so. I’m happy to stand on my own two feet, learning from my dad instead of living off him.”

“Yeah?” Rita says. “Well maybe your dad’s around more than mine.” There are blotches of pink across her cheeks as she unzips her Prada messenger bag and digs for something inside. Something that I’m sure she doesn’t need.

“Poor little rich girl.” Kale shoves his hands into his pockets and then has the grace to look sheepish as Rita hisses in a breath.

“Screw you,” she says.

“Okay, that’s enough!” I am going to lose my mind if I have to play referee between Rita and Kale
and
between Rita and Lacey. “Do not make me tape your mouths closed.”

“You try that and see how it works out for you,” Kale challenges me.

“Hey, I smoked you in our last karate class,” I remind him. I drop my voice, even though there’s nobody around and it’s not as if the trees are bugged. “But forget about that. Kale, you’re here because we need you to help us find my mom, who’s locked up in some detention center at Langley. We have to break her out.”

Kale stares at me. “Say again?”

“My mom and dad work for the Agency, Kale. They’re spies.”

I give him a moment to absorb this.

“Okay . . . ,” he says slowly.

“Some brain stem there thinks my mom is taking bribes or something—I don’t know, it’s hard to tell—and we have to find her so that she can get out and uncover whatever plot there may be to bring her down. I’m guessing here. But my dad is missing too, and she’s probably the only one who knows where
he
is.”

“You’re crazy,” Kale informs me. “Why don’t you just sit tight and let the Agency ask their questions, so she can
prove how dumb they are? And then she can walk out on her own.”

“Look, normally I’d say you’re right. But some really strange things have been going on.” I fill him in on the Code Black messages from my parents and then the attempted kidnapping by Mitch and Gary Gray Suit in the park.

“And those guys work for the Agency,” I emphasize. “Why would they try to grab me? And then why would they put out the word with the cops and the media that Charlie and I are missing children? None of this is adding up.”

Kale nods. He’s actually very good-looking, with that golden-olive skin of his and beautiful, upturned dark eyes. His hair is cut with a razor and I think it looks cool, even if Rita doesn’t.

Speaking of Rita, I notice that she’s been covertly looking at Kale’s body, as if she’s never noticed it before. I bite down on my lip so I don’t smirk at her.

“So let me get this straight,” he says. “People from the Agency are trying to kidnap you . . . and you’ve decided to just walk right into the hornet’s nest and make it easy for them?”

Kale does have a point. “I’ll go in disguise,” I tell him.

“As Goth girl? Like you are now, but in a Kennedy Prep uniform?”

I realize that won’t fly, since Kennedy has a strict grooming policy. Lacey will have to help me change my look yet again. I shudder at the thought of putting myself into her long pink claws, but there’s really no alternative,
is there?

We walk back to Luke’s house and ring the bell. I introduce Kale to everyone and we head back upstairs, while he looks around at the house with something close to awe. Kale’s dad is a cop, and his mom took off on them a few years back, so they live in a utilitarian apartment pretty close to his high school.

“Don’t get any grease on the banister,” Rita says to him.

“Don’t get any snot on it either, brat.” He gives it right back to her.

Evan’s eyebrows shoot up, and he looks from one to the other, amused.

“Just saying. You probably don’t come into many houses like this, do you, Kale?”

Wow. Rita’s out of control today.

But I don’t need to worry about Kale and self-defense. “No, Rita. But you and your spoiled attitude have probably been thrown out of a lot of them.”

She flushes hot pink. She knows when she’s been beaten.

Poor Luke is speechless.

Unlike Evan. “Maybe we should put these two in a guest bedroom for a while, just to work out all their sexual tension.”

Kale spins on his heel and punches him in the bicep.

Evan rubs at his arm. “Shite, man. You don’t hold anything back, do you?” Then he gasps as Rita slams him in his shoulder. “Why the violence, when all I did was point out the obvious?”

“Okay, people!” I raise my voice. “I need everyone to stop messing around and focus. Do you understand?”

“Aye, aye, Cap’n Kari,” says Luke, with a small salute and a quirk of his lips. “May I offer you a seat?” He gestures toward his bed.

I swallow hard as I ease myself down onto his mattress. “Thanks.”

As he looks at me on his bed, the quirk at the corner of his mouth grows into a full-fledged smile, with something just a little wicked hidden under it.

Oh. My. God. I’m going to melt into a puddle if he does that again. I take a deep breath and avoid his gaze.

Then the moment is ruined as Evan bounces onto the bed right beside me, hard, so that I bounce too, and almost end up in his lap. Is it my imagination, or does Luke look a little annoyed?

I untangle myself from Evan, who peers down at me provocatively. One of these days I’m going to tell him that he is
not
God’s gift to women, as he seems to think. He’s more like a curse.