Spy to the Rescue (17 page)

“T
hat little brat stole my arrow-shooting gun thing!” screams Irina.

I whirl around in time to see Vanessa—or at least her shoes—disappear through the hole in the cathedral roof.

Irina, who does not look anywhere in the neighborhood of pleased, aims another of her many hidden weapons at the hole.

“The gun, now!” bawls the cop through his bullhorn.

Irina lowers her gun to the ground, kicks it in the direction of the cops, and raises both hands.

The army of NYPD officers charges up the aisle.
One of them slows down and jabs a finger at Ryan.

“Get that child out of here,” he barks.

Ryan doesn't move.

“He means you have to get me out of here,” I whisper to my brother.

Ryan grins widely. That officer just made the biggest mistake of his life. He validated Ryan's belief that he can pass as a New York City cop.

“Come with me, anonymous dripping child,” Ryan booms as he starts pushing me toward the cathedral doors. I shake him off and look back at Irina. Before she's completely swamped by cops, she meets my gaze and gives me a pained shrug.

My blood boils. It actually boils. On the one hand, I'm impressed by Vanessa's resilience. On the other hand, this will not stand. Vanessa Dominion has played havoc with the lives of my family. She does not get to enjoy another day unpunished for her crimes. She does not get to regroup. Her reign of terror ends here and it ends at my hands.

I pull away from Ryan and tear out of the cathedral, past the crowds of traumatized guests who are milling around on the other side of the police barricades. I'm vaguely aware of Ryan trying to find me among the mass of bodies, but I'm also in the grip of a righteous
fury that shows no sign of abating.

I cross the street and crane my neck up to the roof of the cathedral. I have a trained eye. I see what the average non-spy does not. If Vanessa is lurking in the shadows waiting for the crowds to disperse, I will see her. If she tries to climb down the front or side walls, I will see her. I can wait for her to show herself. I will not be distracted.

A sudden swelling of boos and jeers distracts me from my roof-staring duties. Irina, hands cuffed behind her back, is being marched toward a waiting police van. The assembled Trezekhastanis and Savlostavians immediately forget that they're mortal enemies and direct their united hatred at my birth mother, who did nothing wrong.

“Leave her alone,” I say out loud, but not loud enough for any angry guest to overhear.

From somewhere behind me, I hear a yell of pain. The yell is followed by the sound of a body hitting the ground. I rush around the corner of Twenty-Third and Eighth.

I see a guy lying dazed on the ground with a hand over his eye while a girl kicks his motorcycle into life with her perilously high-heeled shoes and roars away from me. I watch Vanessa zoom out of my life and I feel defeat.

Maybe I should be happy she got away. Maybe I
should just count the minutes till I'm back in Reindeer Crescent.

A car pulls up at the side of the street, inches from where I stand. A very small Smart Car driven by an old Chinese woman.

The passenger door opens. Dale Tookey is at the wheel. He's in my car! The self-driving, self-camouflaging design given to me by Section 23.

“You knew I couldn't sit back and leave it to the cops,” I say as I clamber inside.

“I made an educated guess,” he says.

“Nothing's changed here,” says the high, screechy voice of the car that sounds nothing like me. “You mess up, we show up in the nick of time to save you.”

“Hi, car,” I mutter.

“Wait,” says the car. “Something's changed.” It makes a sniffing noise. “You smell like an old man's underwear.”

“A toilet exploded under me,” I explain.

“Not for the first time,” says the car.

I roll down my window.

“I did the right thing, though,” I say to Dale. “If it wasn't for me, Atom Tubaldina would be dead and his Lego city destroyed.”

“Do you mean his legacy?” Dale asks.

“The cops couldn't have stopped Vanessa,” I continue. “Only I could.”

“When you've finished patting yourself on your smelly back with your smelly hand,” says the car, “you might want to stop talking and try catching her.”

“She's not getting away,” says Dale.

He starts the car and focuses on the digital street plan of Manhattan on the computer screen built into the dashboard.

“Vanessa's the worst,” I tell Dale. “She's a selfish, arrogant, violent psycho desperate to live up to her father's legacy.”

“Smells like someone we know,” says the car.

“Who? Me?” I immediately squeal. “I'm nothing like her. She's the epitome of evil. I'm awesome. I help everyone. I save lives. Dale, am I anything like her? ‘You're not' should be the first words out of your mouth.”

“You're not,” Dale says.

I relax back into the seat and enjoy the pursuit.

“You're not because you're half a spy,” he says.

“What's that now?” I say, unsure whether I heard him right.

“This Vanessa is all the way in,” Dale says. “You're not. You think you can be a spy when it suits you and then go back to your normal life. But you can't. If you're
a part-time spy, you're always going to be playing catch-up. You'll always be the last to know the latest intel. You'll always be the last to get your hands on the latest gadgets. You have to commit or walk away, Bridget. You can't just show up for a weekend and then go back to school like nothing happened.”

Am I getting a lecture here? Because it sounds like Dale Tookey is giving me a lecture.

“Wait,” I say, trying to stay calm. “Last time we talked about this, all those many, many months ago, it was you, Dale Tookey, who told me, Bridget Wilder, not to get sucked into the spy life. If you remember that far back.”

“I remember,” says Dale, staring straight ahead. “I thought you made the right decision, but now you're in New York playing spy with your new friends.”

“My new . . . ,” I begin. I don't finish the sentence. Dale's acting weird at the weirdest possible time. He's acting weird in the middle of a pursuit. We've been in a car chase in this very vehicle before and he didn't act weird. Why the weirdness now?

“Because he saw the way another boy looked at you,” says the car.

“Shut up, car!” growls Dale.

“No,” I gasp. “Really? That's it?”

“That's not it,” says Dale, his face reddening. “Forget it.”

“He never texted, he never called,” I tell the car. “Months went by. Nothing.”

“Months went by without a Sam taking you out on a date,” says the car.

“It's not a
date
date,” I tell Dale.

He stares at the digital street map.

“You know Sam's MO,” I say. “He did me a favor, I had to promise him something in return. But whatever we end up doing, I'll bring Joanna. It won't be fun for anyone.”

Dale keeps looking at the red dot as it takes the corner at the next street. We follow in uncomfortable silence. The car turns on its radio stations, flipping channels until it settles on an old song called “The Girl Is Mine” where the singers pretend they're fighting over some chick.

I turn down the volume. The car turns it back up.

“I'm not playing this game with you, car,” I say.

The car switches stations until it settles on another old song. This one's called “Jealous Guy.”

Again I go to mute the song. Again the stupid car turns it back up. I sit in sullen silence and think about how excited I was to see Dale in the Chinese restaurant. How did that feeling turn into this?

“We got her,” Dale says suddenly.

He points to his screen. “Roadwork up ahead. The traffic's down to one lane. There's nowhere for her to go.”

And just like that, we're not fighting anymore. I'm confused by how fast feelings can change, but I like that Dale's stopped being weird. I like that Vanessa's escape plan looks like it's being foiled by something as mundane as a hole in the road.

And now we can see her and—yes!—she's stuck behind a garbage truck.

“Appropriate,” Dale and I say at the same time. We both laugh. We're totally in the groove here. The previous weirdness is just a memory.

Vanessa pulls her stolen motorcycle onto the sidewalk. She starts plowing through a sea of people. As I watch her, I think back to the way I tore up the sidewalk on a stolen skateboard earlier this afternoon but, again, we are nothing alike.

The garbage truck ahead of us starts moving. I unbuckle my seat belt.

“Get me close to her,” I tell Dale. “I'll jump out, kick her off the bike, and put her down for good.”

Dale gives me a dubious look.

“You may think I'm half a spy,” I say, my emotions
building. “But I'm the right half. I'm the half that saves lives. I'm the half that gets it done.”

“I like that half,” says Dale.

“Ugh,” says the car.

Dale gets me close to the sidewalk. We draw up behind Vanessa. I open my door, and . . .

She drives the motorcycle straight through the open doors of a supermarket.

“Come on!” yells Dale.

“No no no no no!” I bawl. “She does not get to give us the slip. This is a small car. Small enough to follow her.”

“No way,” says Dale.

“No way!” yelps the car.

“This is happening,” I screech. “We're doing it. We're going shopping!”

Dale, infected by my crazed enthusiasm, yanks the car onto the sidewalk and drives straight for the open doors of Fresh & Frozen Quality Foods.

“That British brat is past her sell-by date!” I shout, triumphantly.

I
t seemed like a good idea at the time. It even seemed like a good idea as the hood of the car rolled past the supermarket doors. But then we got wedged halfway through. The car made this screeching sound, and then we couldn't go any farther forward and we couldn't reverse out. Dale put his foot down. He gunned the engine. He couldn't get the car unstuck. And what's worse, we can't get out of the car. Our doors are jammed against the walls of Fresh & Frozen Quality Goods. We're trapped.

“Do something,” yells the car, its voice suddenly crackling and distorted.

“I'm trying,” says Dale. But there's not much he can do except rev the engine, and the more he does that, the more aware I become that our gas is not going to last forever. Or anywhere close to forever.

But we're not just sitting trapped in our small car. We have an amazing show playing out in front of us. From the comfort of our seats, we get to watch Vanessa ride her motorcycle into cheese displays and send towering displays of fruit flying. We get to watch Fresh & Frozen customers screaming in fear as she chases them around the aisles. We get to watch her throw a frozen chicken at the store security guard. A frozen chicken hurled from a moving motorcycle can be a deadly weapon.

And why is Vanessa destroying a supermarket? Because she knows I can't do anything but watch. Because she's turned me into her captive audience—again.

After she's done terrorizing the staff and customers, Vanessa pulls the bike over and leaves it with the shell-shocked manager of the deli counter. She takes off her helmet and picks up a banana from the ground.

Vanessa walks toward the car, her eyes on mine. She peels the top of the banana and takes a bite.

I pull out Red and throw him at her. He bounces straight off the windshield and flies back at my face. I scream in shock as he whistles past my ear.

“Shatterproof,” says Dale.

Red bounces off the back window and comes flying at me again. I make a grab at him and shove him back in my pocket.

Vanessa struts right up to the car.

“Three steps ahead, peanut,” she says.

Then she gives Dale a little pouty smile. “You can do better,” she tells him.

Vanessa climbs up on the hood of the car. She stretches out a leg and lifts herself onto the roof. I hear her slide across. I squirm around in my tiny seat and watch her make her way down the trunk and back onto the ground. She holds up the banana for me to see, wiggles it in a good-bye gesture, and then she sticks it in the tail pipe. We were never going anywhere, but she couldn't resist one last slap in my face.

I watch Vanessa walk away, slowly and leisurely, because once again, she knows my eyes are on her.

“Sorry,” says Dale.

“It's not your fault,” I say, turning back around. And now I see he wasn't saying sorry to me. The staff and customers of Fresh & Frozen Quality Goods are heading toward the car. They do not look happy. Vanessa was a moving target. She had the element of surprise. We do not. We're stuck here.

I kick at my door. Useless, of course, but I can't just sit here. I've got all this anger building up in me. How could she do this to me again? I punch the dashboard. I punch the roof.

“Stop hit-hit-hit-hitting me,” hiccups the car.

“How can this car speak, how can it drive itself, how can it have a fake driver in the window but it doesn't have a sunroof?” I yell.

A can of peaches hits the windshield. I scream in fright. The Fresh & Frozen mob has turned ugly. A can of peas follows. Then an egg splatters across the windshield. More eggs follow until a sheet of yolk and egg white acts as a curtain between us and the angry staff and customers.

“Stooooooop thrrrrooooooo
wwwwwing
foooooood,” groans the car, its voice slowing down and coming to a long moaning halt.

“I don't know if this is going to work,” says Dale. “It probably won't.”

“What?” I say.

“I found this,” he says. “Lying on the highway. After the whole thing with Spool.”

He holds a tube of lip balm out to me. Burned. Dented. But still recognizably . . .

“Smoky pear,” I breathe.

I twist the bottom. Was it once for smoke, twice for Taser? I could never remember.

A laser beam shoots out. It burns a hole in the dashboard.

“Sorry,” I say, wincing because I've caused the wounded car even more pain.

I point the laser up at the roof and turn it in a circle. Dale gets up and pushes both arms over his head. I join him. We make a hole. A hole big enough to climb out of.

“Bye, car,” I say sadly as I take my leave. We had our differences, but I'll miss her.

I emerge from the roof of the trapped car to see a frozen chicken headed straight for my face. I whip my laser at the bird and it defrosts, smokes, and catches fire in seconds.

The angry mob freezes.

“I'm sorry about the mess,” I say. “We won't pay for it and we won't help clean it up, but we're going to do something better. We're going to catch the perpetrator, we're going to drag her back here, and we're all going to throw eggs in her smug face! Who's with me?”

A few cheers. Not the hysteria I was hoping for. Whatever. I slide across the roof and down the trunk on to the ground. And now I start running.

I don't have to run far. Vanessa is only half a block
ahead of me and she's impossible to miss. Traffic is backed up and she's on the roofs of the cars, skipping from one to the next.

Incensed drivers honk their horns and shake their fists at her. Some climb out of their cars and try to catch her, but she's too fast. She keeps skipping from roof to roof.

And then Vanessa stops on the roof of a black Mercedes.

A rope ladder seems to drop from the sky and unfurls in front of her. She grabs it and starts to climb. The driver of the Mercedes gets out of his car and stares upward in disbelief. The other drivers trapped in the snarl-up do the same. Dale breathlessly catches up to me and says “Come on!” again.

He's right. What else is there to say when you watch your adversary making her latest escape up a ladder into a waiting helicopter?

I pull back a hand to throw Red at her but I know it's a fruitless gesture. I can't ask any more of the little guy, so I let my hand drop back down to my side. Dale takes it.

“There'll be another time,” he says.

I nod. I know he's right. I need to accept this is over and move on.

But then I hear something. It's faint but it's high and piercing.

Laughter.

Vanessa's laughing at me.

Even from this distance, even over the roar of traffic and helicopter blades, I can hear her mocking, condescending, triumphant laughter. (Or maybe I'm just imagining it because—I don't know if I've mentioned this—I hate her so much.)

“This will not stand,” I say out loud. “You do not get to make a cool getaway!”