Undercover with the Hottie (Investigating the Hottie) (18 page)

“Where have you been?” Sidney asked. “We haven't seen you in forever.”

“Actually,” Will said, “it was only a little more than twenty-four hours.”

“It felt like a week,” Leah said. “Come on in.”  She stepped back from the door and we entered.

Logan was in the middle of a game with three other guys, West, Ethan, and I couldn't remember the third guy's name. He didn't run to us squealing but he did wave at us excitedly, taking his hand off the controller long enough for West to yell at him.

“What are you doing, dude? You're gonna get me killed. Cover me!”  West never took his eyes off that giant television screen.

“Hey, Will, you wanna play?” Logan called.

Will dutifully wandered over to the guys.

After scanning the rest of the loft, I looked at Leah and Sidney. “Where are the other girls?”

“It's just us, tonight,” Leah said with a smile.

“Now we can really talk,” Sidney said.

Uh oh. I knew we had read them in on most of the mission, but I wasn't sure what subjects were off limits. Like my aunt getting taken and held captive. And Nic had specifically said to do a minimal amount of talking so as not to reveal anything by accident. But this was Leah and Sidney. Wouldn't they be safe enough?

“Okay, but be warned, I haven't had much sleep. I don't know if I'll make any sense.”

Sidney snorted. “Don't be ridiculous. We need to tell you what we've been doing.”

“And hear about where you've been,” Leah added. “Let's go up to our room.”

“You guys share a room?” I asked. I wouldn't mind having a sister, but the idea of not having my own space didn't appeal to me.

Leah nodded. “Here we do. Logan has his own room, and Dad has his room and his private office. That leaves us having to share. But at Mom's we have our own space. So it isn't too bad.”  

“When we watch scary movies, it's actually kind of good,” Sidney said.

We climbed the stairs to their room. The room was a total decorating mismatch. Sydney’s comforter was lime green with bright yellow smiley faces on it, and the wall next to her bed was covered in posters. Leah's was soft pink and teal green with flowers. She had white shelves on the wall with necklaces and bracelets hanging from hooks. The hardwood floor was covered with a plush red rug that didn't match anything.

“Wow,” I said as I took it all in. “It's bright in here.”

Sidney pulled out a hot pink butterfly chair from the corner. “You can sit here or on the bed.”

Even though it probably wasn't the best choice from an espionage point of view, I decided on the chair. As I sank down into it, I realized two things—I wasn't going to get to a standing position very quickly and my back was to the door. Double no-no's.

Each of them jumped on their beds and got comfortable sitting cross-legged.

“Tell us everything,” Leah commanded.

“Well,” I said slowly as my mind raced through all that had happened for something I could tell them. “First thing is that Sydney’s date with Will is almost definitely on.”

“Yes,” the younger sister said, pumping her fist into the air.

“That's pretty cool of him,” Leah said. “And cool of you too, since you're loaning out your boyfriend.”

I shrugged. “It will be fun to see how it goes.”  With a great deal of effort, I managed to avoid gritting my teeth.

“Yay! What else?” Sidney asked. “Where did you guys go? Did you do something cool like sneak through the heating ducts to spy on bad guys?”

“Not exactly.”  I sighed. “We did free a hostage and capture the man who took her. We're hoping he gives us some good information on the people behind the plot to assassinate the Secretary-General.”

“Did you and Will take him down?” Leah asked, eyes bright.

Not even close. “We were involved, but other agents did the actual wrestling him to the ground and cuffing him part.”

“Oh.” Sidney frowned.

I wanted to tell her about the gym, and how brave I'd been. Maybe if I were vague. “I did find the main piece of evidence that gave us the lead to identify the hostiles and rescue the hostage.”

I had their interest again.

“That's awesome. What was the evidence?” Leah asked.

“And where did he have the hostage?” her sister chimed in.

“I found some video footage that showed the attacker taking the hostage,” I said. “And the hostage was in a nasty motel that smelled horrible.”  That should be vague enough.

Sidney leaned forward. “So the guy was involved in the plot? OhmyGod was the hostage the Secretary-General?”

“No. The Secretary-General wasn't the hostage.” I hurried on so they wouldn't ask who the hostage was, “But we should be able to trace this guy back to the people who hired him. Once we take them down, the Secretary-General will be safe.”

“I wish  my life was as exciting as yours,” Leah said. “How did you get picked?”

I explained about my aunt and the training. Then I told them about my first mission and meeting Will.

They were rolling with laughter when I finished.

“So Grandma really is Will's grandmother, and your real aunt is your 'mother' on this assignment.”  Sidney smiled. “You are so lucky.”

Since I had them here, I may as well ask them about me and Will. “Before you busted us kissing, how were we doing? Did you think we were brother and sister? Or did we seem weird.”

Leah considered for a moment. “I thought you were twins. You acted like brother and sister.”  She shrugged. “I think you pulled it off.”

Sidney agreed. “But we didn't really have any reason not to believe what you told us. I mean, nobody's ever pretended to be a family to spy on us.”

“Not just you guys,” I hurried to say. “Everybody.”

“Plus, Sidney was so distracted by Will,” Leah teased.

“Like you weren't,” her sister snapped. “You did your share of staring.”

Leah blushed. “You are pretty lucky, Amanda.”

Heat spread through my cheeks and I smiled, unable to stop myself. “Yeah, I know.”  When they finished giggling at my reaction, I said, “But it would be better if we lived in the same city, or even the same state. And I can't tell my friends that he even exists. It would be great to be able to talk to my friends about him.”  I shook my head. “My parents don't even know I'm a spy.”

Sidney inhaled in a whoosh of shock.

“How could they not know you're a spy?” Leah asked.

“Aunt Christie took care of it. I was supposed to tell them last week, but this came up.”

“Don't you feel bad about lying to them?” Sidney asked.

“Yes. I totally do. I am going to tell them as soon as I can.”

“That's awful that you can't talk to anybody about having a boyfriend.”  Leah looked thoughtful. “I would want to show his picture to everybody. I would want to tell my friends about all the sweet, romantic things he does.”

“Yeah,” Sidney said. “Valentine's Day is coming before too long. Can he even send you flowers?”

“I don't know. I never thought about it.”

“Can you tell us where you really live? And your real name?” Leah waited expectantly.

“No. I can't. But if you want, I think I may be able to figure out a way for us to stay in touch.”

Sidney grinned. “That would be amazing.”

“Not with Will,” I said, giving her an exaggerated glare. “Just me.”

She giggled, unfazed by my threat. “Just you is cool. If you know... you're that insecure.”

“Girlfriend,” I said, “if I could get out of this messed up chair, I'd tickle you til you cried for that.”

Her resulting giggling fit lasted a full three minutes.

“You guys are fun. What have you been doing while we've been gone?”

“Oh,” Leah said. “We did so good. We gave out all fifty of those chargers.”

Fifty more chargers would get us a huge amount of surveillance. Especially since they'd be used by more than one person and get us access to multiple households. “How?”

“We had a bunch of people over last night, and we told them that we got a ton of chargers for Christmas because our parents were making fun of us for losing them. They thought it was funny to take one so we'd run out sooner.”  Leah grinned. “So that was about ten.”

“Then today,” Sidney said, “we took some to Church and gave them to everybody who showed up for our youth group ice skating party.”  

“I wonder if it was a sin to do that,” Leah said. Then she shrugged. “Oh well. It's for a good cause.”

“You guys went ice skating today? I'm so jealous.”  I'd only been a couple of times since middle school. “I would love to skate at Rockefeller Center, and see the tree.”

“It's so cold, though,” Leah said. “Last time I went to an outdoor rink, I wore two pairs of pants to keep warm.”

Sidney started giggling. “She could barely move her legs. She looked so ridiculous, and then she fell and couldn't bend her knee enough to get back up.”

Leah rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “I don't recommend it.”

“It took Logan and West and me to get her upright.”

“If I get a chance to go skate, I promise I will only wear one pair of pants.”  Hopefully I wouldn't have to wear the body armor.

“Have you gotten any leads from the chargers we gave out?” Sidney asked.

“Actually, I don't know. We've had a rough time today. I'll have to ask Nic since a couple of other teams are working on the data analysis. I'll try to let you know soon. I'm sure we are getting some good stuff. After all, you probably doubled our reach.”

The two sisters high fived.

The knock at the door startled all three of us.

“Come in,” Leah called.

Will peeked in. “Hey, guys. I think we have to get back to our place. Nic, er, Dad, only gave us two hours.”

They protested, but I knew Will was right.

I used all my leg muscles to propel myself out of the chair with some degree of grace.

“We should see you tomorrow,” I assured them. I turned to Will. “Don't you think?”

He nodded. “And Logan told me about the chargers when the other guys went out for West to smoke. That's great. Thanks.”

Chapter Seventeen

When we got back to our loft, Christie was still sleeping in Nic's arms.

I rolled my eyes at him.

“What?” he whispered. “I didn't want to wake her.”

Will echoed my thoughts. “Whatever, man.”

We told him about the chargers, and he had to admit that he hadn't checked in lately.

“I guess I'll get up and do that,” he said, with a sad look at my aunt.

“She's been sleeping for decades now,” I said, unable to resist making fun of him. “I'm pretty sure she can do it without help.”

Will laughed, and Nic carefully slid off the couch, making sure not to wake her.

“I may have to take that from some of the guys, but I don't have to take it from the two of you,” Nic said.

Interesting. So the other guys were teasing him about her too.

Nic went over to the kitchen table. “I'm just looking out for my partner. Being around you two is like watching a video about how to flirt. It's sickening.”

“Geez, Nic,” Will said. “Don't pull any punches.”

“You know I'm right,” he said.

Yeah, so Nic was not in a good mood.

He tapped on the keyboard and started scrolling down. “Okay. Here's the message from the analysts. They really did double our reach. No, they tripled it. The guys at Headquarters are excited about what they are finding, but so far, no leads linked to our case. They have given some info to the DEA about the location of a high level dealer.”

“Was that from teenagers?”  Surely not.

“No. It looks like one of the kids from the skate party already had her purse stolen. Lucky for us, the thug kept the charger along with her cash.”

“Can we tell them about it?” I asked. “They will love it.”

“Yeah,” Nic said. “I hope we'll have more to tell them before this is over.”

Nic was looking over my shoulder, so I turned to see that Christie was now awake and sitting up. She was facing us, but her blank expression made me wonder if she was all the way here.

“Are you okay, hon?” Nic asked.

She nodded.

“You'll tell us if you need anything?” he asked.

She nodded again. I didn't know this quiet Christie, and frankly she had me worried.

We turned back to the laptop.

“There are some more questions for your aunt,” he said in a low voice. “I'll put that off until she's more alert.”

“Have they made any progress with the mercenary?” Will pulled out a chair and sat down next to Nic.

He searched through his messages for a minute. “The team found a cell phone stuck under the mattress in the motel room. The phone belonged to the sniper who was killed trying to take down the Secretary-General before Christmas.”

“So he was tied to that crime as well?” Will asked. “But people don't usually pass on their phones. Don't they just use cheap prepaid phones?”

“It doesn't make sense,” Nic said. “You're right about that. However, he may have held onto the phone if he wanted to use it against someone else. The team is still tracking the calls made by the sniper. I don't know what the mercenary was doing with it, but it's a great find for us.”

“Did he finish with the sketch artist?” I asked.

“Yes, he did.” He opened up a pdf of the sketch. “Here's our second abductor.”  

The sketch was detailed, and if I'd ever seen the woman before, I knew I could recognize her from the sketch. Unfortunately, I hadn't seen her.

“I'll show it to Christie in a minute,” Nic said. “For now though, they don't have any leads on her. We should have been able to find something in our system through facial recognition. We usually don't have to work this hard. First, going to Interpol about the man. Now we can't identify the woman right away. I'm not liking this case one bit.”

We waited while Nic pulled up more updates.

“The evidence is pointing to the Avaritia Militia. The bank deposit tracked backward to an account in one of the banks they use. The sniper had exchanged calls with someone from the AM. We don't want to jump to any conclusions because the AM is a powerful group. GASI has never had to take them on before. Nor has any agency in the US. That's why we don't know very much about them.”