#Prettyboy Must Die
Kimberly Reid
To book lovers—this wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without you.
Acknowledgments
Books are not made without help from people who love and understand them, and I’m lucky to know a few. I am so fortunate that my editor, Bess Cozby, believed I was the right person to tell Jake’s story (and Peter’s!). Thank you for all of your work helping me to turn an idea into an adventure. I am also grateful to everyone at Tor Teen who helped Bess bring this story to young readers.
Being an author is an unpredictable roller-coaster ride of a career, so I’m glad my agent, Kristin Nelson, has been my one constant over the years.
Even in fiction, a bit of the writer goes into a book. I so appreciate all the people, places, and experiences that shaped me into a storyteller, but I’m especially glad for the people, my family and friends. You are the most important part.
The Middle of Nowhere, Eastern Ukraine | Spring Break
When I arrive at the compound, it’s still early enough that the sun hasn’t burned off last night’s frost. There is no heat in this ancient beater of a delivery car, so I’m glad for the extra shirt under my hoodie, though I wish I’d remembered gloves. I stop under the bare branches of a huge maple tree just outside the gate and rub my hands together for warmth.
There is more activity than usual for this time of morning. Women are piling large suitcases into the trunks of several cars. A repurposed, probably stolen, military cargo truck is being loaded with wooden crates so heavy they require a very large man on each corner. On my way here, two cars blew by me heading for town, probably the first wave of criminals trying to make their escape. We hadn’t anticipated they’d begin moving so soon, but I’m not worried about them. They won’t get very far. I just hope those escapees don’t include the person I’m after.
I scan the compound for any sign of him, though I have no idea what he even looks like. The men nearly drop one of the crates they’re loading, and my heart almost stops. After the time I’ve spent getting to know this place and the people who own it, I know what’s inside those crates, even if I never learned where the cargo is headed. Since they’re using precious time to load it onto trucks and move it out of the compound, it must be some pretty valuable, and destructive, loot.
I grab the box from the back seat and head for the compound’s entrance, the scent of garlicky sausages and oniony potato cakes making my empty stomach growl. My job here was intelligence-gathering—getting the layout of the compound, the number of people inside, number and position of civilians, maybe eavesdrop on a plan or two—while pretending to be a food runner from the lone restaurant in the nearest village, twenty minutes away.
With the information I gathered by watching the compound, we could have raided the place days ago, but we were waiting for one major player in the operation to return. He’d decided to up and leave a few days after I arrived, which had us worried he was onto me. Taking the compound without him would mean he might pop up again in a few months, running his own business somewhere more difficult to find, like a cave in deepest Afghanistan or a yurt in remotest Mongolia. So we waited.
But Pavlo Marchuk finally obliged us four hours ago, lured back to the compound by a job promotion, under the cover of darkness. Dude ought to know better than anyone that darkness hasn’t been an effective cover since World War II and the invention of night-vision technology. Being here makes him an easy target for my people. For a lot of people, really—every nation-state he ever sold illegal weapons to. He knows they’re coming for him.
I’m hoping that this knowledge and Pavlo’s arrival are the reasons for this sudden decision to move out, and not because they know who I really am. I still have important work to do.
I’ve been delivering food every day for two weeks now, but instead of the usual drill—patting me down and checking my packages before I enter—the guard just waves me on through, too busy reading papers attached to a clipboard to bother with me. He doesn’t question my earlier-than-usual arrival, doesn’t even ask to hold my phone until my business in the compound is done, a requirement since day one. I take all of these things as a good sign. Distracted workers—and a camera—will make my work easier.
Officially, my job ended a few hours ago with Marchuk’s return to the compound. When my boss finds out I’m here today, which she will because my people are watching—we’re always watching—I’ll tell her it would have tipped them off if I hadn’t shown up with breakfast, and that I did this for the team. That’s why I’m keeping my phone off, so she can’t make contact and demand I haul ass out of here. In truth, I’m here to handle some personal business.
Yesterday, just as I was leaving the compound for what should have been my final breakfast run, I saw a delivery truck from the local computer store—if you can call eighty kilometers away local. Back in the village my team has been calling home, I followed up on a hunch and found an increase in activity coming from one of the compound’s IP addresses. The user tried to mask it, hiding behind web proxies, but I’m better at his game than he is.
Pavlo isn’t the only overnight arrival. He brought his hacker-for-hire with him.
If I were Marchuk, the hacker would have been fired two weeks ago, the day he left open a back door I could exploit. I was able to access Marchuk’s database of arms suppliers, traders, and buyers—who they were, where they were located, what they bought—everything but who they were buying it for.
We needed to flush out the buyers, so I planted rumors about the security breach on a couple of secret forums. We also needed feet-on-the-ground intelligence about his base of operations, so we could prepare for the arrival of agents from every militant separatist group Marchuk ever armed, who were coming to take him down. But news of my breach spread so quickly, we were forced to move faster than planned. The only play we had with such little notice was to send in the least suspicious operative on our team—a high-school junior who spoke the right languages and already understood the full scope of the mission. That’s how I became the compound’s food runner and earned my chance to show everyone I was more than a kid with a laptop.
We came here for both Pavlo and his father, the head of the operation. The Marchuks are seriously dangerous people, but my boss considers the target I’m after—Pavlo’s hired-gun hacker—a small-time mercenary. She shut me down when I took the information to her. Most people would have stopped there, because most people hate their jobs and their bosses. Not me. I love my job and like my boss. Underestimating this hacker will be her one regret in this whole mission, the loose thread that comes back to haunt us all one day.
I’m not going to let that happen.
I check the cheap watch I bought in the market yesterday, having anticipated not being able to use my phone. I have an hour before the raid begins, forty-five minutes more than I need. But as I approach the house, my stomach sinks a little. This is my first field mission, and right now I would trade in all my classroom training for a little real-world field experience. All of this activity around the compound—the distracted guard, the change in my schedule—maybe I’m reading it all wrong. Maybe all of this is bad. Maybe they know today’s the day. My people will know that they know, which means I may not have as much time as I think. The smell of potatoes and sausage that made my mouth water a minute ago now makes my stomach turn, and I have to fight the urge to dry heave. Or run.
But it’s too late for second thoughts. Marchuk Sr. is standing in the front door like he’s been waiting for me, even though I changed my schedule.