Killer Spirit (7 page)

I was somewhat disturbed by the fact that this doctor knew cheerleading terms that I didn’t.

Seeing my confusion, the doctor grinned. “You must be new,” he said. “Let me ask it this way—how high up were you?”

I tried to gauge the right way to answer that question. “Kinda high up?” I answered. “I think I hit pretty hard. I blacked out for a few minutes.”

The doctor shook his head and then took a closer look at the cut on the side of my head. “It’s not deep,” he said. His gentle tone lulled me into a false sense of security, and then his fingers prodded my bruise. “Does this hurt?”

I yelped and let loose an impressive string of expletives.

“Okay,” the doctor inferred, seemingly bemused, “that hurts.”

He pulled a light out from the front pocket of his lab coat and shined it in my eyes. He continued examining me as he ran through a list of questions, some of which Tara had asked me earlier, and some of which she hadn’t. In the end, he said that he didn’t think I had a concussion and that an MRI wouldn’t be necessary this time.

“You got off easy,” he told me. “If you’ll take my advice—and they never do—you’ll get out of this game while you still can.”

I had to remind myself that he was talking about the cheerleading aspect of it. He had no idea what we were really up to. Either way, there was exactly zero chance of me quitting. If anything, recent events had caused some perverse part of me to want to throw myself into this mission more.

Seeing the refusal to quit in my eyes, the doctor sighed. “I have three daughters,” he said. “The oldest one is five. If she wants to play football when she’s in high school, I’ll buy her the jersey, but the second the word
cheer
leaves her mouth, I’m locking her in her room until she’s thirty. It’s just too dangerous.”

And with that, he was gone.

I turned to Tara. “And you said
I
was a drama queen.”

Tara grinned. “Let’s go,” she said. “I think you have something Brooke will be very, very happy to see.”

Tara’s words registered, and after a few seconds, my hand flew to my throat. My necklace was still there, and the charm appeared to be in one piece. Until that moment, I’d completely forgotten that I was wearing the contents of the late Jacob Kann’s laptop around my neck.

I smiled, thinking how satisfying it would be to hand the data stick to Brooke all gloatylike, and echoed Tara’s words. “Let’s go.”

And then, because a full fourth of my brain had become dedicated to cheers, I rephrased my words with but a hint of irony in my voice. “L-e-t-s-g-o, let’s go, let’s go, l-e-t-s-g-o…”

Tara grinned. “Let’s go!”

CHAPTER 10

Code Word: Prezzies

By the time Tara and I got back to the Quad, my mood had improved significantly. You know your life is bordering on the absurd when a day you almost get blown up, but
don’t
have a concussion, is a good day. I think it’s safe to conclude that I was pretty much in happy denial land. All I could think about was that, despite our mission’s disastrous ending, I’d managed to do something that none of the other girls had.

I’d gotten computer intel. If any of Jacob Kann’s lovely, unencrypted files contained information about what he was doing in Bayport, that would be huge. Now more than ever, we needed to find out why the TCIs were here, because with Kann’s death, one thing had become crystal clear.

Whatever it was that had brought the TCIs to Bayport was worth killing for.

“Toby, OMG, are you okay?” Lucy greeted me with a huge hug and a mouthful of high-speed babble. “We were like so worried about you! I mean, I know you were standing far enough away from the blast that the resulting heat wave shouldn’t have affected you, but flying debris can be so totally deadly and stuff!”

“I’m fine,” I assured her. “Really, Luce.”

Tara rolled her eyes, probably at the fact that I’d gone from Drama Queen mode to downplaying the whole thing. All it took was a little sympathy.

“Do you think the cut will heal before homecoming?” Lucy was wide-eyed at the prospect. I brightened slightly at her question. Would this negatively affect my chances for homecoming princess?

Please, I thought, let this negatively affect my chances for homecoming princess!

“Don’t worry, Toby. We’ve got you covered.” Brittany handed me a small gift bag, and then Tiffany handed me a slightly larger one.

“Oooohhhhh,” Bubbles said appreciatively. “Prezzies!”

I was somewhat skeptical of anything that involved the twins handing me packages. Somehow, I doubted there was chocolate inside.

“The blue one has a new liquid base in it,” Tiffany said.

“It’s totally safe to use on wounds, and it’s got this polymicrofiber thingy in it that completely camouflages even the worst bruises.”

Oh, goody! Makeup.

“What’s the pink one have in it?” I was almost afraid to ask.

Brittany reached a hand out to touch my hair. “Prototype conditioner,” she said. “Explosions wreak havoc on your hair’s moisture levels.”

I almost got blown up, and the twins were worried about the effect it would have on my hair. Why was I not surprised?

“Good. You’re back.” Brooke pushed through the others to stand directly in front of Tara and me. “You two ready to give us the full rundown on your recon?” Her gaze lingered on my bruised temple for just a moment, and I thought I saw something that might have been worry behind her eyes. Then again, it also might have been unadulterated disdain. I’m always mixing those two up.

“We’re ready,” Tara said. Then she looked at me, and the edges of her lips turned up slightly. “Let’s go.”

The look in her eyes, in combination with the tone in her voice on those last two words, had me fighting an insane urge to giggle, even though our “let’s go” joke wasn’t objectively funny at all. I blame the fact that, between the body glitter, the pep rally, and nearly being decapitated by flying debris, it had been a pretty stressful day.

Not saying a word, and somehow managing to keep my stress-induced giggle impulse to myself, I followed the others to our conference table and sat docilely while Tara began calmly and methodically walking the others through our mission.

“Your potentially hostile target almost caught you guys casing his room?” Brooke asked.

Tara inclined her head slightly, acceding the point, but the look in her eyes was pure steel. “He didn’t catch us.”

“Get in and get out,” Brooke said. “You were supposed to get in and get out.”

Personally, I thought she was blowing this a little bit out of proportion. She hadn’t been the least bit concerned about the fact that I’d almost been blown to Toby bits, but she was upset that we’d overstayed our welcome in Kann’s room?

“He didn’t catch us.” I backed Tara up, even though there was a distinct chance that she would have preferred that I keep my mouth closed.

“He could have,” Brooke countered tersely.

“He’s dead,” I told her.

Even Brooke couldn’t argue with that.

“And besides,” I added, reaching back to unclasp my necklace. “If we’d gotten in and out more quickly, I wouldn’t have been able to get this.” I slipped the charm off the chain and threw it to her. Moving on reflex, Brooke caught it.

“The contents of his hard drive.” I smiled brightly, looking every inch the cheerleader. “And his email.”

Brooke became very still, her eyes locked on mine. “Seriously?”

I nodded.

She smiled. “Sweet.” And then, without a word, she tossed the data stick to Chloe, who caught it just as easily as Brooke had a moment before.

“Think you can have the data sorted by morning?” Brooke asked her.

Chloe grinned. “Natch.”

A few seconds later, I came to the realization that Brooke had put Chloe in charge of looking for meaningful data on
my
disk, and I actually managed to stop gloating long enough to protest.

“I can do it.”

Brooke didn’t pause a beat. “You can go home,” she corrected. “And rest. Right after you talk to Zee and convince her that you’re not traumatized for life.” Even though Brooke clearly considered this an order, there was something almost gentle in her voice. In fact, of all the words she’d ever spoken to me, these were the only ones that didn’t sound like some variation of
You are a retarded cheerleader. You are a cheertard.

While I was still processing her tone, she turned to the others. “We’ve got intel coming in on the other three TCIs. We’ll split up and sort through the audio feed and GPS data on their movements since we planted the chips. If Chloe can pull something meaningful off of Kann’s hard drive, we can backtrack and download any info the Big Guys have on phone records to cross-reference any common contacts here in Bayport. With any luck, we may be able to identify the threat before the Big Guys do, in which case, we may actually be able to keep this case a Squad operation.”

I didn’t need Zee’s PhD to read the look in Brooke’s eyes. She didn’t want to hand this case over. For that matter, neither did I. Somebody had made me bleed, and that same somebody had killed my mark. That made this personal, and Brooke seemed to regard it as the same. This was officially one of those times when Her Royal Highness, the cheerleading captain, was a person I almost liked and borderline understood.

“Go home,” Brooke repeated her earlier order to me. I didn’t like it any more this time than I had before. I’d earned the right to be here. There was data to be processed, feeds to listen to, and she expected me to go home? Forget what I said about understanding her. She was clearly wacky.

“There is no way I’m—”

“Home,” Brooke said, and the bossy, I-Rule-the-World tone was back in her voice. “We’ll debrief you tomorrow.”

I looked at Tara, hoping she’d back me up, but she rolled her eyes. “You were nearly concussed,” she said. “One night off won’t kill you, and rest would probably be a good idea.”

Traitor.

“What do you expect me to do at home? Sit around and wonder what you guys are doing here?”

“What did you do before you joined the Squad?” Tara asked in what I hated to admit was a completely reasonable manner.

“Yeah,” Tiffany piped up. “We always sort of wondered that. Because, I mean, you like didn’t really have any friends, and you didn’t really seem like you did anything, and…”

Her twin elbowed her, and Tiffany, amazingly enough, shut her mouth. I was temporarily grateful to Brittany, until she came up with a suggestion for how I should spend my newfound downtime. “Do that deep moisturizing conditioner treatment we gave you.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Besides the fact that explosions dry out your hair, we’ve totally been meaning to talk to you about volume and bounce.”

Needless to say, that was a conversation that I would willingly have right after I volunteered to dance in the
Nutcracker
and legally change my name to Buttercup Posy-Pants.

“If you want,” Tiffany offered brightly. “We could come over and help you.”

Translation: We can come over and torture you. And then they’d follow the hair treatment by faux flirting with Noah, and I’d end up actually concussing myself by banging my head repeatedly against the closest wall.

“You stay,” I told the twins, shooting Brooke an aggrieved look. She smiled smugly back, and I realized I was being manipulated by the master. And her minions.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll go, but if anything needs decoding—
anything
—you call me. Deal?”

Brooke inclined her head slightly, and I got the feeling that that was as much of an answer as I was going to get.

“I’ll walk you out,” Zee volunteered. Tara opened her mouth and then closed it again. She’d probably been on the verge of making the same offer, but Brooke shook her head slightly, and Tara remained silent. With one last nod at all of the others, Zee and I made our exit, and for a little while, we walked in silence.

“Chip asked Brooke to homecoming,” Zee volunteered finally. She was always the first one to know school gossip.

“And Marty Bregman asked Chloe, but she turned him down, of course.”

I didn’t even know who Marty Bregman was.

“That’s the point,” Zee said, lifting the thought from my head. “You don’t know who Marty is. If he mattered, you would, hence Chloe politely declining.”

Somehow, I seriously doubted that Chloe’s decline was anywhere near polite. She had a chip on her shoulder, and the fact that Brooke had an A-list date couldn’t have been sitting well with her.

“Who are you going with?” I wasn’t exactly an expert at girl talk, but I was pretty sure that according to Girl Law, this was the question I was supposed to ask the Gossip Queen next.

“Aaron Lykeman,” Zee said.

That name I knew—vaguely. He was a football player and one of the Chiplings.

“Any other gossip?” I asked. To me, rumor was still a four-letter word, but as long as Zee was talking about other people, I didn’t have to worry about her going all Freud on me.

“Not really,” Zee said. Apparently, there was a first time for everything. “I actually wanted to talk to you about Brooke.”

Say what?

“I know she can seem kind of intense,” Zee said, “and I know you think she’s bossy, but Brooke’s under a lot of pressure right now.”

The last time Zee had pulled me over for a heart-to-heart, it was about Chloe. This time, it was Brooke. I was starting to wonder if our resident profiler’s mission in life was to make me understand the psychological complexities of bitchiness.

“Pressure?” I tried to sort it out in my own mind before Zee could throw herself into full-on wisdom-imparting mode. “Well, there was an explosion,” I mused. “And it sounds like the Big Guys Upstairs are kind of breathing down her neck about it.”

“And,” Zee added, “homecoming’s this weekend.”

As if I needed reminding.

“As far as Brooke’s concerned, she can’t afford to lose this case, and she can’t afford to lose that crown.” Zee gave me a look, willing me to understand her.

I tried to oblige. Apparently, Brooke was stressing about whether or not she’d win a title everyone already knew was hers. And this was supposed to make me feel sorry for her how?

“As far as Brooke’s mother is concerned, losing out on queen and losing a case to the Big Guys are equally unacceptable outcomes.” Zee paused. “She’s really leaning on Brooke right now.”

Ahhhh…the infamous Mrs. Camden. All I knew about her was that she’d trained Brooke for the Squad program from the cradle. From the tone in Zee’s voice, it sounded like she was pretty hard-core about it, even now.

“Brooke’s mom can be…intense.”

At this point, I was used to Brooke being Brooke. A few weeks ago, I probably would have told her to stick her pompoms where the sun don’t shine if she’d even thought about pulling me off a case, however briefly. All things considered, my response to Brooke’s “request” was looking downright reasonable, and Zee’s info-dumping seemed less than necessary.

“Anything else to share, O Wise One?” I asked.

“Actually,” Zee said. “Now it’s your turn to share.”

I stared at her dumbly.

“You’re tough, Toby, but you also saw somebody die today.” Zee carefully measured my response. “That’s a hard pill for anyone to swallow.”

“Technically, I didn’t see him die.” I shrugged the words off, even as I said them. “I was sort of unconscious at the time.”

“Uh-huh.” Zee was less than persuaded by my response.

“It doesn’t seem real.” I tried for honesty over technicalities this time. “This whole thing—what we do, who we are—it’s all just so surreal that I can’t quite wrap my mind around the fact that today actually happened.”

“Believe it or not,” Zee said, “that might be a good thing.”

And here I’d thought denial was a psychological no-no.

“What we do
is
surreal,” Zee said. “It’s unbelievable, and there would probably be something wrong with you if you didn’t have a hard time processing this. I just need to know—are you having second thoughts?”

“Second thoughts? About the Squad?”

She nodded.

“I’m starting to think the CIA is seriously deranged for letting us do this,” I told her, “but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to do it.” I paused. “Actually, the fact that we probably
shouldn’t
be doing this kind of makes me want to do it more.”

Zee snorted. “Adrenaline junkie,” she accused.

“Maybe,” I said.

“Or maybe,” Zee filled in, “the fact that the danger is real is making you realize that the good we do is real, too.”

I didn’t reply. Zee was the PhD, not me, and I wasn’t all that curious as to why nearly having my head taken off by flying debris was more of a turn-on to the spy gig than a turn-off.

“You’ll call if you need to talk?” Zee asked.

I nodded. “Sure.”