Spy Girl (Spy Girl #1)

“Tell me about how your mother was killed.”


“It was just after dusk on a Wednesday night. I had been outside sitting up in a tree I liked to climb when she called me inside—weird, I just remembered that. Anyway, we were getting ready for bed when she heard a noise coming from the living room. She told me to hide in the closet, took the locket from around her neck, told me it was top secret, and that no matter what I heard I was not to come out. But then she screamed and I somehow knew she was in danger, so I got a gun out of my father’s bedside table. I knew how to shoot, but I didn’t plan to. I guess I thought I could give her the gun. Or maybe use it to threaten whoever was there.” I close my eyes, reliving it. “When I got to the living room, she was on her knees and there was a man holding a gun to her head. He was yelling at her. Telling her to give him something. She had her head down, but was completely calm when she said she didn’t have it. He slapped her. Told her she was going to die. She looked up and into the man’s eyes, and that’s when she noticed me standing behind him. She held my eyes and imperceptibly shook her head. I knew she wanted me to hide. I knew she didn’t want him to see me. Her eyes were pleading. The man threatened her again and his finger twitched. I screamed. Pulled the trigger. Shot him in the left shoulder. But it was too late. He had fired and I watched as a little round hole formed in her forehead.”

“Then what?” he asks, startling me and causing me to open my eyes.

“He turned around and pointed his gun at me. I’ll never forget the shape of his gun. It was a suppressed Beretta Twenty-One Bobcat pistol—I learned that later at school. They had them at the shooting range along with the Walther PPK that was like my dad’s.”

“Keep going.”

“Oh, yeah. Um, then the rest is sort of a blur. I shot at him again, hit his right arm and caused him to drop the gun. He lunged at me and knocked the gun out of my hand. I grabbed a long bamboo pole out of a decorative pot, used it as a weapon. I was already well-trained in martial arts. I hit his shoulder, which was bleeding all over the place. Then hit him in the head. He fell down. I dropped the stick and ran. He grabbed my foot as I ran by and knocked me down. I managed to kick him in the face and got out of the house. He followed me, yelled at me to stop, that he just wanted to talk to me. But I didn’t stop. I ran as fast as I could down the street. He fired at me. Missed. I think I ducked behind a car, because I remember glass from the window raining down on me. Then I ran into the neighbor’s yard, jumped the fence, ran down an alley and out to the main thoroughfare, where I stole a coat from a chair outside a cafe and calmly walked the two miles to my father’s office.”

“Then what?”

“I was bleeding. Someone patched me up. When my dad got there, I told him everything that had happened, minus the necklace part. He hugged me. We stayed at his office. I slept a lot and he worked a lot. We didn’t really talk about my mom. Didn’t have a funeral. Or a memorial. Forty-eight hours later, we got in his car. He told me we were leaving the country for a while. When he turned the ignition, the car made a weird sputtering sound. He looked scared, told me to get out. Go to Uncle Sam’s. I jumped out, the car exploded. I was knocked to the ground and dinged up, but I ran to Uncle Sam’s. The same person bandaged me up. I stayed there. A week later, I was at Blackwood.”

“And you’ve never told anyone about the necklace?”

“No.”

“Did anyone ask you if your mom gave you anything?”

“Both my dad and Uncle Sam did, but I told them no. I thought she wanted me to keep it a secret. Like it was meant just for me because it had our picture in it—never once did I think she literally meant top secret, as in classified.”

“Let’s take a look.”

“I’m not sure I should let you, Terrance. She may have died for this.”

“You have to trust someone. I have more to show you.”

“You show me yours, I'll show you mine?” I tease.





He grins at me and leads me into an empty relaxation room, grabbing a bottle of water out of the mini fridge along the way and tossing it to me.

“I have a hacker friend who is here in Montrovia working on something top secret.”

“Something related to the Prince?”

“He couldn’t tell me. Anyway, he can get into anything—anytime, anywhere. He had never heard of Blackwood Academy either, but he was able to find it and then through a series of sophisticated techniques—”

“Terrance, I need facts, not how you did it.”

“Well, it was brilliant. Double back door, password, encryption. Anyway, we hacked into Blackwood and found your file. You’re a badass, by the way. And they definitely knew you were sneaking out. In fact, they kept making it harder for you. They were testing you.”

“Obviously, I passed. And no offense, but I hacked into my own file. Actually, one of the guys I dated—”