“Just as I suspected. Assuming you really do work for the Americans, I’m here for the same reason. And rather than sit here in this stairwell playing Trust Me, Trust Me Not, we should be getting on with it. You brought me here because you know where the package is, right?”
I almost join her on the steps, but lean against the wall instead. Katie might still be lying. Not about being an operative—I’ve seen her in action, so she’s clearly that—but she may not be one of the good guys. She has already fooled me once. Who’s to say this isn’t another cover, another lie? That’s what my brain tells me.
It’s mostly my heart that’s having the crisis of confidence.
“If I agree to team up,” Katie continues, apparently believing she’s now running the show, “you’ll need to step back once we get through this mess. We had him first, even if you did try playing nicey-nicey with him.”
“He’s a she,” I correct her, letting her know psych games also won’t work on me. Either that or I just gave away information she didn’t have. “And what do you mean, you had her first?”
“Nothing. I didn’t mean anything by it,” she says, not that I believe her.
“Well, that’s where we’re going, to check on your—our—package. It’s on the roof,” I say, expecting this to clarify everything.
Katie looks confused.
“How did it get up there?”
“After chasing it all over the school, I finally caught the package and left it on the roof under Bunker’s guard.”
Katie eyes me suspiciously. “But I secured it myself. Why would it run all over the school? And why do you keep calling it the package? We’ve agreed we’re after the same thing. Do you not trust me enough to tell me who exactly you’re after?”
“I notice you haven’t named it, either.”
Katie stares at me for a second, no doubt trying to figure out her next move.
“All righty then. If the package is on the roof, let’s go up to the roof. Lead the way, CIA.”
“No, after you. Ladies first.”
Now it’s my turn to get a serious eye-roll from Katie, but she goes up ahead of me where I can keep an eye on her. Even when a spy looks like Katie, it’s tough for an operative to trust another one.
Especially when a spy looks like Katie.
We haven’t finished the first flight of stairs when my walkie-talkie phone buzzes.
“What’s that? You’ve had a working phone all this time?” Katie says, her expression a mix of frustration and hope, at least until she sees the phone I pull from my bag.
“Truly, what is that? It must weigh five pounds. Wait … don’t tell me your people have stolen the time-portal scientist away from us, too?”
“The who? You guys have a time—”
“Oh, never mind,” she says, looking like she’s just been busted. I can’t tell if she’s messing with me or being serious. She casually waves in the direction of the phone. “So what’s that about?”
“It isn’t a real working cell phone. It’s a two-way radio.”
Then we hear a series of beeps: three quick beeps, a pause, two more beeps, a pause, and then one final beep.
“What is that—Morse code?”
“No, that’s Bunker. It’s a bad sign that he sent me an alert rather than calling me. He’s saying, I need cover. Well, that’s probably not exactly what he’s saying, it’s a thing we worked out for—it doesn’t matter. I think it means Bunker’s in trouble.”
Katie follows me as I take the stairs two at a time. When we reach the roof, there is no sign of him. The only place to hide up here is behind the HVAC units, and neither Bunker nor the hacker is there.
“Oh no,” I say again, and then two more times because it’s all I can think to say. The wave of panic that just hit me has taken away my ability to think.
“So where are they?” Katie asks.
“I don’t know. I left them right here. Bunker was here, and she was sitting right there next to that HVAC thing.”
“Who is this she you keeping talking about?”
“The hacker, obviously.”
“You thought the package was this hacker? Oh no. I have to find Koval,” Katie says, sounding as afraid as I was when I found Bunker missing. She runs for the door we came through and returns a second later. “Peter, it’s locked.”
“Aw, damn! I was so worried about Bunker, I forgot to prop it open behind us.”
“We should have gone after Koval when he ran into the stairwell. There’s no telling where he is. He could be off campus by now.”
“And risk taking a bullet the minute we opened that door? Besides, if he somehow left the campus in that short amount of time, that’s a good thing. One less man to fight. And—dude was like two men.”
She must not see the good fortune in Koval’s possible departure because she’s just sounding more panicked. “This girl you’re looking for, she might know something. Was she tied up? Sedated? What state did you leave her in?”
Katie’s questions are starting to get on my nerves, but I’d be asking the same questions if the tables were turned.
“I didn’t leave her in any state, none of those things. But I left Bunker to guard her.”
“Oh, is he CIA, too?”
“No, but the girl’s just a hacker, and I thought…”
“I assume ‘hacker’ is what you would put on your resume too, if you were sent to Carlisle to bring her in. From what I’ve seen of you so far, you’re pretty handy away from the keyboard. You didn’t think she might be as well?”
Okay. That’s one question too many. Katie may be the first girl I could fall for, and her questions may be legit, but right now they aren’t making me any less afraid for Bunker, and I can’t help taking out my fear for my friend on her.
“Of course I’d have rather secured the hacker better and not have left her with a guy whose understanding of covert ops comes from watching James Bond movies. But I had to come rescue you,” I say, not caring one iota whether I sound like a Neanderthal, or like I’m trying to pull the plug on her girl power, or whatever. “That’s right. I said it. Rescue. It may not have happened that way and you may have ended up rescu—helping me, but when I left my best friend up here alone with a cyberterrorist, that’s what I thought I was doing. I was leaving him to save Katie Carmichael, regular girl. I chose you over Bunker, and now who knows what the hell has happened to him.”
At the end of my rant, Katie just stares at me for a second, probably thinking I’ve lost it, but then she takes my hand. She holds it for only a second, but the gesture calms us both down.
“Let’s think this through,” she says, sounding a lot more composed. “If this hacker has been controlling the school’s security system, and she was able to overtake Bunker, she’d have locked the door to the roof. It’s an escape route for you. She probably knows any operative worth his salt carries emergency rappelling equipment. So she wanted you to be up here for some reason.”
“Or maybe she knows I’m the kind of spy who doesn’t have any emergency rappelling equipment. But thanks for that.”
“Nothing has happened to him, Peter. And we aren’t going to let it.”
They’re nice words, and I really do appreciate the pep talk, but except for the zeroes and ones of cyberspace, I don’t believe in anything I can’t see.
And right now, what I see is Bunker’s Phantom Menace backpack near the edge of the building, on the side facing the school’s driveway. It looks innocent and lost up here on the empty roof, the way a little kid looks wandering around a department store alone, and causes the same reaction in me—I can feel Bunker’s fear, his panic.
“That’s his?” Katie asks, but she already knows the answer. She’s just trying to distract me from noticing that she’s trying to look over the edge of the roof.
“Go ahead. Check it out.”
“The hacker may have wanted to make her getaway before any police arrived, and taken Bunker with her as a hostage,” Katie offers. “They could have rappelled over.”
“Just look, will you?”
It’s the longest five seconds of my life.
“There’s nothing, no one down there. She has to be somewhere in the building. We can—”