Nah, that’s crazy. One—she’d have to care that much about me. Two—I’d have to believe I was something special to think she’d run back into a potentially burning building just so I’d be able to see. Not that you could blame me for thinking I’m all that, considering how these girls are scoping me right now. As long as Bunker isn’t around, I’ll admit I have always had a strong game with the girls. All that gym time required of my CIA training hasn’t hurt it either, but damn, these girls are jockin’ me. Is this what they feel like all the time? Because it’s making me a little uncomfortable.
And apparently my glasses really are a powerful cover. I wasn’t wearing them in the photo that girl tweeted, either, and a few hundred girls thought I looked good enough to retweet. I wish Bunk was here so I could tell him Clark Kent knew what he was doing, but I need to eighty-six the suspect-hunting, and retrieve the backup pair from my locker.
The theory about Katie having them is a bust. I pass her table as I leave the cafeteria, but she doesn’t even look up from her copy of Pride and Prejudice. You’d think a British girl would have already read it, but maybe I’m just stereotyping. Anyway, Katie might be the only girl in the place who isn’t staring me down right now.
“Uh, excuse me, Pee-tah.”
Or maybe I spoke too soon.
“Katie, I didn’t even see you there.”
Smooth. I’m sure she bought that one. You’d have to be blindfolded or have your head covered with a dark burlap sack to miss Katie Carmichael. I’ve had both of those things happen at the same time, and even under those conditions I’d probably still notice her. Yes, she’s that gorgeous.
“Are you enjoying your fifteen minutes?” she asks.
“Um, what?” Also smooth.
She smiles as though we’re sharing an inside joke, but I don’t have a clue, and apparently she isn’t going to let me in on it.
“I have something for you,” she says, reaching into her bag.
Wow. She really did go back for my glasses. “I was wondering where they were. That was really cool of you to risk—”
“Your half of the bill,” she says, handing me a piece of paper. “If you recall, we agreed to split the costs of homecoming. I’d buy the tickets and dinner and you’d pay me back. It’s been two weeks and I thought perhaps you’d forgotten.”
Her tone indicates she thought no such thing. Her tone indicates she thinks I’m not only a loser who’d dump her the day before homecoming, but that I’d actually stick her with the tab for it. And she’s right, except I didn’t intentionally scam on the bill. In my obsession with finding the hacker, and oh yeah, trying to get over her, I just spaced it.
“Oh, snap, I really did forget. I swear. Here, let me just give you the full amount.”
“I don’t need the full amount,” she says, crushing my grand gesture. “I went to the dance and had a very nice evening. My date turned out to be as adept on the dance floor as he is in the engineering lab,” she adds, crushing my heart.
There’s pretty much nothing left to say after that, so I take the rejected half of my money and walk away, certain I can feel the death rays her eyes must be shooting into my back. But when I turn around to get one last look at her, Katie is engrossed in her book, as though I’d never been there.
CHAPTER 5
Once I leave the cafeteria in search of my spare pair of glasses, I hear a whistling sound coming from the short hall leading to the main front entrance. Since Carlisle Academy won some big award for energy efficiency, there should be no drafts anywhere in the building. It must be coming from an open door.
Pretty much only visitors use this door, so it’s no big deal that it’s been recently opened. But the hydraulic door closer should have fastened shut when the last person went out. And if it was ajar for more than thirty seconds, an alarm should have gone off. Carlisle takes this stuff more seriously than airport TSA during an orange-level terrorist threat, so something isn’t right. Someone must have tinkered with it.
I find a small piece of paper at the bottom of the door, folded a couple of times to make it thick enough to keep the door from closing, but making the fact that it isn’t closed almost imperceptible. When I unfold the paper, I see it’s a bit thicker, more like the weight of a postcard; matte white on one side, shiny red on the other, and embossed with a white abstract design that seems vaguely familiar. I backtrack to the main office around the corner to get more information.
The second thing I did upon my arrival at Carlisle was to befriend the office staff. Dodson might think she runs the show, but it’s her assistant that makes her look so good, and the assistant’s assistant who keeps the whole thing running. I stay on his good side with items from what I call my asset acquisitions cache, or bribe box. Things like a Cuban cigar my “mother,” a diplomatic attaché, brought back from the inaugural diplomatic trip after the US embargo was lifted. Or just last week, I gave him a pair of Denver Broncos tickets—just about the hardest NFL seats to get outside of Green Bay or Washington, DC—when my “father” suddenly couldn’t use them.
My official CIA dossier indicates I have no mother and father, that they are both deceased, which is the truth. They went to Kenya for their tenth wedding anniversary and died during a big storm when their van tried to cross a washed-out road. My parents left for the airport one day, and that was the last time I ever saw them. At first I imagined they were still out there somewhere, and I made up stories of why they couldn’t get back to me. It made it easier to deal.
But then I grew up. Now my parents are like my assets, and the stories I make up about them help me do my job. I won’t lie—it sucks to have no family. Actually, it hurts like hell. But having no one in the world who gives a damn about me makes for a perfect CIA operative. It’s probably the reason Rogers pulled me out of the foster system—that and my hacking skills—and made me her first Early Bird operative. If I’m ever caught, the bad guys will have no one to use as leverage against me.
Getting fired permanently would suck because the agency is the closest thing I’ve had to a family since I lost my real one.
When I get to the office, I find only one person behind the bulletproof window. Carlisle is a few miles outside the nearest town, yet administration treats security as though the campus is in the middle of the toughest big-city neighborhood. Some might call it overkill. I call it smart planning. There are no metal detectors at the entrance, like there were at all of my old schools—can’t make exclusive Carlisle feel like it’s a dangerous place to be—but everything else about the security is top-notch.
Well, maybe not right at this moment, because Dodson’s assistant’s assistant has his back to the closed guest window, engaged in what must be a pretty serious phone call from the look of his body language. His stance is like a soldier’s at ease: feet shoulder-width apart, his free hand resting on the small of his back, palm facing me, except when he briefly holds it on top of his head. I’m guessing he hasn’t been watching the hallway, the window, or the monitor for the security camera trained on the front door. When I push the service buzzer, he turns, startled, and quickly ends his phone call.
“What’s up, Jonesy?” I ask when he unlocks the window and slides it open. “Broncos handle their business yesterday or what?”
“You missed a good one, brother,” he says, his tone giving away nothing about the conversation I’d just interrupted. “I damn near went broke on stadium beer, but that’s what I get for celebrating a little too hard. Tell your dad how much I appreciate those tickets. I took mine and made him the happiest man in Denver.”
Maybe it’s because I was just thinking about my orphan status, but Jonesy’s game report makes me both bummed and happy at the same time. I lost my parents nearly half my lifetime ago. Too many memories of my dad have already faded, but I’m glad I gave Jonesy a chance to make some memories with his.
“What can I do you for?”
“I have chemistry next and just realized I’ve lost my lab notebook. I know I’m not supposed to get supplies from the office, but—”
“Not a problem, my man,” Jonesy says, getting up and heading for the supply closet in back. In the minute he’s gone, I’m able to sneak a look at the visitor sign-in screen.