License to Thrill (4 page)

As the porter continued the tour through the two huge bathrooms, dominated by pink marble fixtures and huge, Jacuzzi-style bathtubs, Jo exclaimed, “Dibs!”

“Can I just live here forever?” Theresa asked as the
porter led them all toward the minibar, which was specially stocked with nothing but diet Coke, cranberry juice, and Evian.

“Our faves!” Caylin said, reaching for a bottled water. “I feel like Taylor Swift or something. You know how rock stars always request weird stuff to eat backstage, like M&M's with no brown ones? We have our demands too.”

“Just don't ask me to sing—that could be brutal,” Theresa said with a chuckle.

“For real,” Jo said. “I've heard her sing along to her iPod, and Adele she's not.”

Jo and Theresa's ribbing was cut short when the porter showed them the safe, where they knew Uncle Sam's top secret info was awaiting them. Caylin could barely contain her anticipation as he explained the importance of placing valuables in there.

We've already
got
something valuable in there, she thought impatiently as she silently willed the guy to speed up his spiel. As soon as he paused to take a breath Caylin immediately tipped him five pounds—“the amount I'd like to lose before Christmas,” Theresa quipped—before she
shooed him out the door. She could hardly wait to see what juicy details were hidden behind that silver, combination-locked door.

•  •  •

“ ‘You are to report to the American Embassy at nine a.m. sharp tomorrow morning, Wednesday, separately,' ” Theresa, parked on the velvet couch in front of the baby grand, read aloud from the confidential Tower memo Caylin had rescued from the safe. Her hands trembled slightly over the importance of what she was reading. This was going to change their lives forever!

“ ‘Jo will be a personal translator known as
Natascia Sanchez
,' ” Theresa continued. “ ‘Brazil born, America raised, currently on a work visa for six months. This position will allow her to be privy to sensitive information.' ”

“Natascia Sanchez?” Jo said, laughing. “What am I, a salsa singer or something? That name is so cheesy, I could make nachos with it.”

Theresa cracked up. “Okay, what's next. . . . ‘Caylin will be'—
no way!
—‘a housekeeper from Camden Town, London, since most of the housekeepers are locals,' ”
Theresa recited, noticing Caylin's falling features. “ ‘Her alias is
Louise Browning.
In this capacity she can snoop through the trash and bug offices without suspicion.' And use that fabulous accent, too, I might add.”

Caylin's jaw dropped. “That
must
be a misprint!” she cried, snatching the memo out of Theresa's hands. “I've had a few housekeepers, but that doesn't qualify me to
be
one. Hello, where's the action? Where's the adventure?”

“It won't be
that
horrible,” Theresa lied, reclaiming the memo. “And you might not even have to do windows—who knows.”

“And maybe you'll get to wear one of those cute black-and-white outfits!” Jo exclaimed.

“Oh, puh-
leeze
,” Caylin complained.

Theresa cleared her throat impatiently, dying to find out her own assignment. “ ‘Theresa,' ” she continued, “ ‘will be an American call-forwarding technician known as
Emma Webster.
This will allow her to track who's getting calls from whom.' All right!”

“Wanna trade?” Caylin asked hopefully.

“No way, José,” Theresa replied as she silently thanked
her lucky stars. “I'm not trading a phone for a feather duster. Sorry.”

“What else does the letter say?” Jo asked. “Anything about a set of wheels in there?”

“Unfortunately for you, no,” Theresa said. “But there is stuff about where we need to go, who we need to report to.” Theresa skimmed the page with her index finger. “Hey, get this: ‘Appropriate wardrobe is already in your closets. Good luck!' ”

The moment Theresa uttered the word
wardrobe
, Jo yelped and jumped to her feet. “Let's go!”

Jo and Caylin hightailed it to their respective closets while Theresa lagged behind.

“We are so stylin'!” Jo yelled. She ran out of her room, her arms laden with ultrahip office wear.

“Stylin'
and
profilin',” Caylin exclaimed. She stood at her closet, pushing aside her drab gray housekeeper's dresses to reveal totally awesome Jean Paul Gaultier clubbing clothes. “Wow, I guess British housekeepers lead pretty wild nightlives.”

Theresa walked into her room, opened her closet, and
picked over her new duds with disdain. “I could pretty much take or leave this stuff.”

Caylin wandered into Theresa's room, followed by Jo, who was showing off an ultraglam lime green suit. “Check out the new me!” she cheered, spinning around with the suit held tightly to her bod.

“I don't see how you get so worked up over what's essentially just a piece of material and some thread,” Theresa said, rolling her eyes.

Caylin laughed. “For the daughter of a fashion designer, you sure don't like clothes very much.”

“That's precisely why she
doesn't
like fashion,” Jo declared. “Can we say,
rebellion
against the 'rents?”

Theresa shook her head even though Jo's statement was pretty much on the money. “At least I'm not a fashion junkie like some people I know,” she said with a smile.

“Guilty as charged,” Jo announced, whirling around once more.

“This is all so hard to believe,” Caylin said as she shrugged off a funky fake fur pea coat. “Here we are, real international spies about to embark on our first mission.
And only four months ago we arrived at The Tower, totally clueless.”

“I thought it was a scam when I found out the truth about The Tower,” Jo recalled.

“Remember how they told us there would be seventeen people on our ‘outreach mission'?” Theresa asked, laughing.

“Not told,” Jo replied.
“Lied.”

When Theresa realized that only she, Caylin, and Jo had shown up for “active duty,” she had begun to wonder if she had made a massive mistake. After all, she'd put off her early enrollment bid at the University of Chicago for what she thought would be an opportunity to put her technological prowess to good use, perhaps to help the Russian population learn job-worthy computer skills.

But that night all her questions had been answered during a top secret meeting about her true calling: to protect and serve the world on missions where a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old girl would be appropriate and/or the least likely to be suspected. The whole seventeen-member-outreach-mission thing had been a ruse concocted to keep
her and her two new partners from walking out of The Tower
tout de suite.

“It took some convincing for me to believe The Tower was legit,” Theresa recalled. “But once convinced, I realized I was up to the challenge.”

Are you really? a little voice in her head asked. She pushed it aside quickly. She'd made it this far, after all. It was too late to talk herself out of her decision now.

•  •  •

After a long, refreshing shower Caylin wrapped herself in the lush terry bathrobe provided by the Ritz, towel-dried her shoulder-length blond hair, and padded out into the living room of the suite. Theresa was hooking up her laptop and Jo was gabbing on the phone in Portuguese—probably to her aunt. Quietly Caylin picked up the memo from The Tower and looked it over one last time to be absolutely sure she had the specifics of her mission straight before she went to bed.

She couldn't wait for the morning to come. Patience, to Caylin, was hardly a virtue—and the same went for sitting still. The first week of security training at
The Tower had been held in a classroom, and Caylin had wanted to pull her hair out. If she had wanted to be trapped in a classroom all day, she would have gone to UC Berkeley, where she could have surfed and swam and actually had a life. She started to think The Tower was total Snoozeville—until the real fun began. In addition to the training in concocting disguises and learning accents there had been kickboxing, skydiving, motorcycle racing—you name it. She'd even learned yoga, which had helped her to channel her impatient energies toward a more productive goal.

Her nerves jangling and her muscles aching to move, Caylin put the memo aside and sat on the floor in the lotus position. She closed her eyes, stretched her arms above her head, and arched her back, willing the tension in her body to work its way up and out of her. When she opened her eyes, she saw that Theresa had planted herself on the floor next to her and was doing the same thing.

“Helps, doesn't it?” Caylin asked.

Theresa exhaled and smiled. “Totally. The whole physical part of our training was so brutal for me,” she
confessed. “I felt like I was in sixth-grade gym class again. You know, always last to be picked for the team. Stick me in a tae kwon do class and I feel worthless.”

Caylin widened her eyes, genuinely shocked. “I always thought you really rocked as an athlete.”

“Really?”

“Me too,” Jo added, coming over to join them after her phone session.

“Me?” Theresa laughed. “It's so funny when you find out what people think of you—it's usually so
not
what you think of yourself!”

“Totally. I mean, what'd you guys think of
me
at first?” Caylin asked excitedly.

“I have to admit, my first impression was that you were a prima donna,” Theresa confessed. “But I think that's because of your Barbie-perfect looks. Once I got to know you, I realized you were down-to-earth and totally not like that.”

“Same here,” Jo admitted. “I thought you'd be way stuck-up, but you ended up being a total doll. No offense.”

“None taken—I'm used to it,” Caylin said. “Everyone
always leans on the whole princess thing. I guess it's the hair.”

Theresa laughed. “So . . . what was your first impression of me?”

Caylin scratched her forehead thoughtfully. “A very smart and together girl who needs to cut loose every once in a while.”

“I totally thought you were some elitist girl genius,” Jo admitted. “But that was probably because you had your nose buried in a book the first few hours after I met you.”

Theresa shrugged. “I was bored. With all that waiting around for those fourteen invisible others, I had to entertain myself
somehow
.”

“Well, what about me?” Jo asked mischievously. “Come on, hit me with your best shot!”

“I thought you were totally worldly,” Caylin recalled. “Been everywhere, seen everything—that type of girl.”

“Me too,” Theresa chimed in. “I immediately picked up on how confident, dynamic, and pretty much unshakable you are.”

“Thanks—but I'm not always unshakable,” Jo confessed. “Especially around gorgeous guys. Hotties are my weakness.”

“Speaking of hot, what about Jonathon Nicholson?” Theresa asked. “I know he's the main focus of our investigation, but can we say
cute
?”

“Aw yeah!” Caylin exclaimed.

“Murderers are
not
hot in my book,” Jo stated angrily. And to Caylin's shock, she stood up, walked to her bedroom, and slammed the door.

•  •  •

“Jo? Are you okay?”

“If you don't let us in, Jo, I'm going to break this door down! I mean it!”

“I'm sure you do, Cay,” Jo mumbled to herself as she lifted her tear-streaked face from the pillow. Theresa and Caylin had been pounding on the door for five minutes straight now, and the noise was hardly doing anything to make her feel better. She wiped her eyes on the corner of a pillowcase, leaving two dark mascara smears, but she didn't care. She just wanted to put the
traumas of her past behind her. Why did that seem so impossible?

The moment she unlocked the door, she was wrapped in a massive group bear hug.

“Oh, Jo, we're so sorry,” Theresa cried. “That was really insensitive of us—we didn't mean to hurt your feelings, honest.”

“It totally slipped my mind about your father,” Caylin added, squeezing Jo tighter. “I should have realized when you got so quiet in the limo today that was what you were thinking about. It was so stupid of me.”

“Me too,” Theresa agreed.

Sniffing, Jo stepped out of the hug and smiled weakly. “It's okay,” she said quietly. “It's just that all this talk about starting at The Tower and knowing that our first big mission is about to begin—it's bringing up a lot of bad memories. I shouldn't let myself get so upset about this kind of stuff . . . because I'm going to have to deal with it all the time from now on.”

“I can't imagine what you're going through,” Caylin said, shaking her head sadly. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Thanks . . . no,” Jo replied. “I should just go to bed. I'm pretty worn out, I guess.”

Theresa looked at her watch. “You're right—it's seven o'clock here, so it's one in the afternoon back in D.C. And we sure didn't get much sleep on the red-eye over.”

“Yeah, I guess we're all a little jet-lagged,” Caylin observed. “We'd better turn in so we can be fresh as daisies for our first big day.”

After they'd all said their good nights, Jo smiled, thankful that her friends hadn't pressed her to discuss her father. Some people thought Jo should talk about him, as if she could get rid of the pain by hashing out the ugly details for the umpteenth time. But Caylin and Theresa seemed to understand that sometimes Jo didn't want group therapy.

She'd convinced herself that becoming a spy would be the best way for her to get over the death of her father once and for all. But she couldn't help wondering if spending the rest of her life investigating and, hopefully,
preventing
nothing
but
death—of people, of truth, of justice—was just going to make it all the more difficult.