Spy to the Rescue (6 page)

I
'm in the back of Alex Gunnery's SUV as it makes its stop-and-start-journey along the dull, gray expressway to Brooklyn. Our drive back from the airport is taking so long, Mrs. Gunnery informs us, because the eldest son of a high-ranking official from the government of someplace called Trezekhastan is celebrating his fourteenth birthday tomorrow and half of Trezekhastan is making its way into New York to join in the festivities.

“Trezekhastani children undergo such a fascinating rite of passage,” says Mrs. Gunnery. “It's my understanding they have a service where they bid farewell to
all their favorite childhood keepsakes, whether they be toys or bicycles or books. It's hard to imagine a tradition like that catching on in America, right, guys? We love our possessions too much.”

“I don't know,” Sam replies. “Material things don't matter as much as the strong bonds of family and friendship.”

I laugh out loud at this parent-pleasing nonsense, but as I do, I realize I am the only one laughing and I quickly turn my laugh into a racking cough. (It goes something like “Ha-ha-ha-hacccchhhh-haaaaccchhh.”)

“That sounds nasty, Bridget,” says Alex.

“I'm fine,” I assure her.

“Sam,” she says, “remind me to make Bridget a jug of my therapeutic licorice-root tea when we get home.”

Sam dutifully inputs the instruction into his phone.

Little Lucien sits next to me, playing rock-paper-scissors with Joanna. Again, adorable. (Especially when he says
thissers
because of his missing front teeth.) Sam is up front, shooting periodic glances at his phone but mostly listening to and agreeing with his mother, who is now yammering about the Brooklyn Flea. For a second, I thought she was painting a cautionary picture of a winged predator found only in her community. But now that I pay a little more attention, she is talking at great
length about the exciting flea market where she works most weekends selling antique furniture and overpriced trinkets.

“Jojo's been a big help at the stall,” pipes up Sam. “She's a real people person.”

I am so glad not to be drinking Alex's licorice-root tea at the moment Sam says this or liquid would be spraying out of my nose. I give Joanna a sidelong glance of amazement but she does not divert her attention from little Lucien.

“You'll get to see her in action on Saturday,” promises Mrs. Gunnery. “And that's not the only treat I've got lined up for you.” She grins at Sam. “Should I tell her?”

“Why not?” smiles Sam.

Mrs. Gunnery gives a little shiver of anticipation. She checks to see that the traffic ahead is moving slowly enough to look back at me without causing a horrific accident, then she squeezes around and says, “I'm taking you to Nasturtium!”

“Really?” breathes Joanna, like she's just heard she's been nominated the new pope. “It's back?”

Mrs. Gunnery turns to give the busy road ahead her undivided attention, but that doesn't mean she stops talking. The words come pouring out of her. Nasturtium is the most amazing pop-up vegan restaurant anyone has
ever been to ever. The meal they served her earlier this year changed her life. Literally.

“Mine too,” says Sam, who seems like every parent's dream child.

“Remember the saffron coconut curry with rainbow cauliflower and cilantro pesto, Jojo?” says Mrs. Gunnery. “A religious experience.” She lets out a loud groan. “You're in for a rare treat, Bridget. Something to tell the folks back home.”

Forget for a second that I'm Bridget Wilder: Spy. Focus instead on the fact that I'm Bridget Wilder of the Sacramento Wilders. My dad makes guacamole tacos—and not the healthy kind! We eat at Leatherby's Family Creamery. We shared a buffalo chicken pizza just the other night. I beat up my school's Big Green healthy eating vending machine. I like food that tastes good. This fancy-pants vegan stuff is not for me. And it's certainly not for Joanna, who I've seen snap into a Slim Jim on numerous occasions. If I were legitimately in New York to visit with my best friend, I'd be freaking out over the way she's swapped her true—i.e., unpleasant—personality to fit in with her warm, caring, and slightly irritating relatives.

If I had time, I would take Joanna by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. “Remember who you are,” I'd bark. “Remember the Conquest Report? All that bitterness and spite: Was it for nothing?” But I don't
have time. I have a missing father to find.

“Uh, Mrs. Gunnery?” I say.

“Alex, please.”

“Alex. This sounds like an amazing weekend. It's so thoughtful of you to have planned out my whole visit.”

“It's my absolute pleasure, Bridget,” she says.

“There's something else I'd like to do while I'm here.”

Alex frowns a little at this.
Control freak
, I think, pleased to see even a slight flaw in her motherly perfection.

“There's this place in Manhattan. I'm sure you know it. The Dominion Brothers Building? On Broadway? I've always wanted to see it. Me and Jojo both.”

Joanna gives me a sharp look. I raise my eyebrows at her.
Have my back here
.

“Right” is as much as she's prepared to mumble.

Not me. I'm in full-on lie mode. My plan is to hide in plain sight among a bustling tribe of Gunnerys while I scope out the building and look for clues pointing to Strike's whereabouts. So I put on a hushed, breathless voice and let the dishonesty flood out: “The ambition of those brothers. The sense of history in that building. It's so inspiring to me. I just . . . I don't know, this probably sounds stupid . . .”

“Don't undermine yourself like that, Bridget,” says Alex. “Go on.”

“We're all listening,” adds Sam, needlessly.

“I always thought, and I know I'm speaking for Joanna as well, that I'd be just as inspired if I was ever lucky enough to be able to . . .”

Screeeech
.

Alex drags the SUV across two lanes of traffic, amid horn honking and fist shaking from angry drivers. She takes the exit to Manhattan. As she drives toward the city, she launches into a story about the buildings, churches, and libraries that inspired her when she was even younger than me. I make the occasional
ooh
or
wow
sound but I'm not really listening to a word she says. Carter Strike may have wanted me to be-normal-stay-normal, but the spy in me cannot be denied. I made it across the country more or less under my own steam. I was able to track down the location of my abducted biological father. And now I'm going to blend into the bosom of this warm, caring, annoying, and entirely unsuspecting family. Until it's time to go into spy mode.

G
argoyles with leather wings, horned heads, clawed hands, and bared fangs grimace down from the concrete tower at the top of the Dominion Brothers Building.

“There's your boyfriend,” says Joanna, pointing upward. This sudden flash of the real Joanna startles me and also gives me a pang of sorrow about the continued absence of Dale Tookey from my life. Not that he was ever my boyfriend, obviously.

“Good call, B,” says Alex Gunnery, gazing up at the full dark majesty of the building. “I've worked in the city
for years but I don't know it, not the way I should. I must have walked past this magnificent, imposing structure a hundred times and been so wrapped up in my little world that I didn't even notice the grandeur that was right under my nose. And then you come in from”—she wrinkles her nose in distaste—“California. From the suburbs. And it's you who teaches me to open my eyes.” She throws an arm over my shoulder and draws me in close to her. The fall wind blows those billowing scarves into my face. Alex looks up at the Dominion Brothers Building and lets out a long sigh. I don't want to seem rude so I refrain from pulling away, but I find myself wondering what lies behind those windows. Is Carter Strike in one of those rooms? Is he still sedated, still packed inside a wooden crate with no idea of his location? Is he being tortured in there? Is he even still alive?

I let out a sudden, involuntary moan of fear.

“I know, B,” says Alex, pulling me all the way into her arms and embracing me until I'm fully consumed inside the masses of scarves. “We're just so small and insignificant. But art gives our lives meaning. It makes us immortal.”

I disentangle myself from Alex and point to the arched entrance to the building.

“We should head inside,” I say.

“Avanti,”
she agrees, probably not meaning to be irritating.

I may have
pretended to be awestruck by the very idea of visiting the Dominion Brothers Building but now that I'm in the actual lobby, there's no pretense. My eyes are bugging out and my jaw is on the floor (not literally. That would require medical attention). Little Lucien is running around with his arms spread open and his head thrown back, gazing up at the twinkling, glass-mosaic domed ceiling hundreds of feet above us. He's screaming “Waaaaaaah!” I know what he means. Everything in the lobby is oversize and spectacular. Huge concrete pillars surround us. The staircases, although roped off to the public, are as sweeping and spectacular as advertised. Beneath our feet, the vast black floor tiles are embedded with what I'm guessing are actual diamonds. Portraits of the Dominion Brothers carved in stone look down on us from the cornices.

“Six days after the building to which he'd devoted his every waking hour was finally unveiled, Arthur Dominion jumped from the twenty-second floor,” says a tour guide to the small, stunned gaggle of tourists following in his wake.

“Did he die?” asks one tourist.

“He did not survive,” says the guide. “But some say his ghostly presence still roams the tower of the building.”

“Waaaaaah!” screams little Lucien as he runs toward the tourists, arms flailing.

Some of the out-of-towners gasp in fear, as if Lucien is possessed by the spirit of Arthur Dominion. Joanna runs after Lucien to restrain him but he thinks she's playing a fun game with him, which only amps him up to new heights of running and shrieking. Two uniformed security guards emerge from behind the pillars and head straight for Joanna and Lucien. Alex, who up to this minute has been lost in the sheer opulence of the lobby, snaps out of her reverie and hurries to calm her child. All of this is pretty much what I hoped would happen when I secretly slipped little Lucien a mini Snickers as his mom parked the SUV.

With the guards, the lobby staff, and the tourists' attention all directed toward the sugar-crazed Lucien, I am free to do a quick sweep of my surroundings. There is a visitors' desk where guests sign in, and the official in charge of the desk sits facing a computer screen that offers surveillance feeds taken from cameras all over the building. I need to see those feeds. I need to see if there's footage of Strike. I need to know if his crate was delivered to this address and I need to find out who received the
delivery. At the front of the visitors' desk is a panel containing a list of all the occupants rich enough to live or work in the Dominion Brothers Building. I see names of real estate tycoons. I see banks from all over the world. I see the American Hook and Tin Company on the thirty-ninth floor. But I do not see anything above that. After all these years, half of the building remains empty.

Feigning interest in the diamond-studded floor tiles, I make my way toward a bank of six golden elevator doors. Two men and a woman wait for the elevators to descend. All three wear business suits. All three have important airs about them, as if they're powerful people with much to accomplish and little time to do it. None of the three acknowledge one another. One of the gold doors slides open. The two men hang back. The woman enters. A second elevator door opens. One of the two men walks inside. A third door opens. The last of the three disappears through the doors.

I watch the gold clocks above each door showing the ascension of the elevators. The first one stops at the thirty-ninth floor. So does the second. I look at the third gold clock. Once again, the journey ends at the thirty-ninth floor. My spy senses tingle. Three people who traveled to the same destination but did not ride together. Maybe each of them felt too important to mix with the others?
Maybe there's bad blood between the hook people and the tin people? Maybe getting off on the same floor was just an incredible coincidence? Maybe not.

I glance around the lobby. Little Lucien is still flailing around. Joanna is still trying to catch him. Alex is deep in conversation with the security guards. She's making big extravagant hand gestures and the guards look like they want to retreat behind the pillars. I make my way back to the elevators. When the first gold door opens, I hop inside. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the elevator are mirrored. I see a million plucky young spies trying to look like we're ready for anything. I press gold button number thirty-nine. Nothing happens. The doors remain open. I try again.

“You need one of these,” says Sam Gunnery, standing in front of me holding up a white plastic key card, and grinning as if to let me know that he knows something about me. Something secret.

“T
he cards are embedded with a code that changes on a daily basis,” says Sam Gunnery. “So they don't fall into the wrong hands.”

The Sam Gunnery facing me between the gold elevator doors is not the same slightly sappy, eager-to-please, perfect son who feared I might have been offended by his offer to carry my backpack. He's not the same boy who hung on his mother's every word in the SUV. He's a different guy. I don't know much about him, but I do know one thing. He's waiting for me to say “So how did you get one?”

He looks in the mirror behind me.

“Security,” he says.

I look over his shoulder. There's a guard approaching.

He steps inside and swipes the card across a scanner above the gold number buttons. The doors slide shut. He does not press another button. We're not moving. There is silence in the elevator between me, this version of Sam Gunnery, and our million reflections.

“I knew,” he says. “I knew from your face when you saw us all at JFK. I knew when you started in on Alex about your lifelong obsession with the Dominion Brothers Building. I knew when you sent the
frère
into sugar shock. You're not here to hang out with Jojo. You're here for something else. Something that involves this,” he says, holding the key card close to my face and then pulling it away.

“You don't know anything,” I say. I don't like what's happening here. I don't like the way he's talking to me. I don't like that he made me think he was one thing and now he turns out to be quite another. And obviously I don't like that he has something I want. Most of all, I don't like that I am now forced to gesture to the plastic key card in his hand and utter the words, “So how did you get one?”

He raises a finger in the air, takes out his phone, scrolls through a few texts, and then sends a couple of replies. I have no doubt he is doing this to demonstrate that he currently has the upper hand. Now, I don't think he does have the upper hand. I think my spy background gives me the way upper hand. But that self-same spy training reminds me that the Sam Gunnery pretending to be engrossed in his phone is not the sappy Sam Gunnery I thought I knew. So in fact, right now neither of us has the upper hand. I wait patiently for him to slip his phone back into his pocket.

He gives me an
oh, you're still here?
smirk. Holding the key card between forefinger and thumb, he says, “Someone did me a favor because I did them a favor. And now I'm in a position to do you a favor, which I really want to do. But first I need to know what you can do for me.”

I feel like applauding Sam Gunnery the way Casey, Kelly, and Nola applauded me when they believed I was feigning innocence over the whole rival party thing. Except Sam Gunnery is really good. The guy his family believes him to be and the cocky, cool, calculating hustler wondering how best to exploit me are two radically different humans.

I could just kick the card out of his hand. I have a really good, really fast kick. But we're in an enclosed
space. Shattering a mirror or damaging the elevator might trigger a hundred alarms. I have a better idea.

“Here's what I can do for you,” I say.

I take Red out of my pocket and let him see it in my open palm.

“Is that a marble?” he says.

“A red one.” I nod.

“Is it your special one?” he asks, in a tone that suggests he thinks he's talking to a small child.

“Yes, it is,” I say.

I open my palm and Red shoots across the elevator and drops into the pocket where Sam keeps his phone.

This is how cocky, cool, and calculating Sam Gunnery appears to be. I won't say his eyes don't widen. I won't say he doesn't flinch as Red makes contact with his cell phone. But he doesn't freak out the way I hoped he would.

Red jumps back into my hand.

My phone announces a text has arrived. I remove it from my pocket.

“Okay, how did you . . . what is that . . . where did you get it?” Finally, I get the flustered reaction I was waiting for.

I raise a finger in the air, leisurely look at my phone, scroll through a few texts, and then I look up at him with
what I hope is an infuriatingly smug
oh, you're still here?
smirk.

“Gg45 wants a plus-one for the secret Action Bronson show, cheetamode has a source for the green camo Pumas you wanted, and tedb says, Where's the money you owe me, I ain't asking again . . .”

“Okay, stop,” says Sam. “What do you need from me that will get me one of whatever that thing is?”

“I need access to the building's surveillance camera feeds—from first thing this morning till now.”

Sam takes out his phone and sends a text. He looks up at me. “That all?”

“Seriously?” I say. “It's done?”

“Good as,” he says. “The Squirrel's on it.”

Sam correctly interprets my reaction as dubious.

“This squirelly little hacker who's hugely in my debt. He needed a place to hide out for reasons I don't need to know. I hooked him up, so he'll get right on it. What's next on the list?”

This Sam Gunnery seems very full of himself, but I could use a thimbleful of his confidence right now when I'm in a strange town and wildly out of my depth on a mission I've barely prepared for

“Thirty-ninth floor,” I say.

He presses the gold button. The elevator starts to rise.

“Alex,” he says into his phone, “Bridget Wilder and I are going to hang out here a while. There's an archive section with some of the original blueprints. The history of this place is so rich and inspiring, I really feel like I'm learning to see through the architect's eyes. Why don't you and the kids head home? I'll introduce Bridget to the wonders of the Brooklyn-bound F train and we'll catch up with you later. Good idea? Love you lots.”

He smiles at me. “That's how it's done.”

“How what's done?” I say. “Why the torrent of lies? You're not coming with me.”

“Listen, Bridget Wilder, if that's even your name, you and your marble owe me. You're not going anywhere till that little red thing is in my hand.”

I'm about to protest, but the truth is, Sam Gunnery appears to be a very, very connected guy and, even by my own lofty standards, a very, very skilled liar. He also seems to have a whole lot of experience keeping secrets, so why wouldn't I want him around as I blunder into unknown territory?

“Fine,” I pretend to sulk as we rise past the fourteenth floor. “Say nothing, ask no questions, don't get in my way. Do your best to be unobtrusive, check in with your squirrel about my surveillance feeds, and then you'll get a marble.”

“A
marble
?” he says. “I want that marble.” He points at Red.

“Really?” I say, in a tone that suggests I'm talking to a small child. “You like the bright shiny color? You don't think that might be the prototype and I've got access to a more advanced model?”

“Um . . .” is all he can manage. The truth is, I like Red's bright shiny color; I like the way he—I've decided he's a he—nestles in my palm. I feel an emotional attachment to the little fellow. Maybe I'm not a cat person after all. (Sorry, Boots.) I'm not giving Red to Sam Gunnery. I'll give him a different marble from the metal box. I'm pretty sure it'll bounce up his nose and then come rolling back to me.

The elevator passes the high twenties. Sam starts sniffing the air close to my face. I back away from him.

“Don't get weird around me, Gunnery,” I warn. “Or no marble for you.”

“Just thought I picked up a familiar scent,” he says, smirk in place. “The smell of looming disappointment. I know how this is going to turn out. You're stalking your favorite boy band member. Or some guy you've been following on Instagram. That's where this is going.”

I know what he's doing. He's trying to goad me into telling him why I'm in an elevator in New York with a
box full of nanomarbles. Information is power for guys like him. The thing is, I want to tell him. We're both liars, we both lead double lives. Why not share?

“What did Joanna tell you about me?” I ask.

He has to think about it. “Your sister's really popular.” He nibbles on his lower lip. “You play the clarinet?”

“That's it?” I squeak. “And it's the flute. I play the flute.”

“I'm sure you're very talented,” he says, amused by my outrage.

“Not as a flautist,” I say. “But I do have other skills.”

He says nothing. I opened this door. Am I reckless enough to charge through it? I gesture to him to move closer to me. He inches forward. I lower my voice, letting him know what I'm about to tell him is classified information.

“My dad—my biological one, not the one who's raised me—is a spy. Was a spy.”

This isn't going as smoothly as I'd hoped. Do I stop now or keep stumbling along? I opt to stumble.

“The people he worked for trained me to be a secret agent, except it was a setup so they could smoke my father out of hiding. But I turned it around on them and I cut a Mercedes in half with a laser-powered lip balm and put them out of business. But now he—my biological
dad—has been kidnapped. Someone put him in a crate and shipped him here to New York. I don't know exactly where but I think he's in this building and I have to find him before something bad happens to him. So. When's that squirrel of yours going to find those camera feeds?”

Wow. My face got really red during that recap of my interesting life. Sam Gunnery's expression is impossible to read. He doesn't look amused or dubious or horrified. He retains his cocky, cool, calculating veneer.

“At least you have some idea where your dad is,” he says, and just for a second, I get a glimpse of a Sam Gunnery who isn't an eager-to-please mother's boy or a cocky, cool calculator.

Then the elevator reaches the thirty-ninth floor. The doors hiss open to reveal Carter Strike.

“Small world,” he says.