Undercover with the Hottie (Investigating the Hottie) (8 page)

“We wanted to see if they could hang out.”

“Yeah, can you hang out?” April asked, her eyes glued to Will as she twisted a strand of her blond hair around her finger.

“What are you guys up to today?” Christie asked.

“We don't really know yet. I guess we'll hang out at Leah's place like always.”

“Oh, we could go shopping!”

“Do you like to shop, Will?”

Will didn't answer for a moment. He glanced at me for help.

I didn't know if that would help us get the information we needed or not. I shrugged.

“I'm not that into shopping,” he told them.

“Yeah,” one said. “Me either.”

Her friends actually snorted.

“Do you like to eat?”  April glanced around as if afraid of censure from her friends. “We know some great places. Or we could maybe show you guys around the city, since you're new.”

“Sure,” Will said. “Let's grab some food and go from there.”

“Is Leah going?” I asked. I didn't have the guts to ask about the guys in front of Grandma, Christie, and Will. If we were going to get information, we probably should split up, but I didn't want to be stuck with strange guys.

Daphne shrugged. “She was still drying her hair. We'll have to go see.”

“Yeah, but then we'll be stuck with Sidney.”

Did I meet her. Him? “Who's Sidney?”

“Leah's little sister.”  Daphne shook her head at April. “She's really not so bad.”

“She's a tattletale...” April glanced over at Christie and Grandma. “Not that we're doing anything at all that's wrong...”

“Let's go check on Leah and Logan,” Will suggested.

“Grab your jackets,” Christie said. “And text us where you're going.”

I rolled my eyes. As if they wouldn't know exactly where we were at all times. “Yes, Mom.”  I walked over to the counter and grabbed my purse and coat.

Will slid his phone into one back pocket and his wallet into the other. It wasn't until Grandma laughed that I realized I was checking him out right alongside the other three girls. I glanced away as fast as I could. Christie cleared her throat, a warning for me to be more careful to act like he was my brother. Uggh. I was never going to get this right.

Will's cheeks were pink when I looked back at him. He must have caught some of the ogling. “Let's go then,” he said, slipping his jacket on.

He opened the door and motioned us through, “After you.”

“He's such a hottie,” Genesis whispered.

I was totally not having fun on this mission so far.

Leah had finished her hair, along with her makeup and jewelry, and she looked ridiculously pretty. I made sure to avoid looking at Will. I didn't want to know if he was checking her out.

“I can't go with you guys,” Leah said. “I have some shopping to do.”

Genesis glared at her. “Go tonight instead.”

“I can't. We're going to Matt's party tonight.”

“So go tomorrow.”

Leah sighed. “I'm going today. It's important. You guys will have to go without me.”

“Hi,” a small voice said from beside me. “I'm Sidney. You must be Amanda.”

The girl was smaller and plainer than her sister and their friends. She wore a hoodie instead of a sweater or form fitting top like the other girls. “Nice to meet you,” I said. “Have you met my brother yet?”

Sidney didn't answer. She stood, her mouth ajar, staring at Will.

Uh oh. Another Will fan.

“Sidney,” Leah said. “Oh for heaven's sake. Close your mouth.”

Sidney's mouth snapped shut.

“Oh, and,” she leaned in close to her younger sister and said, “dibs.”

I tensed.
Over my dead body
.

With her eyes glued to Will, Sidney said, “You can't date everybody, Leah.”

“Can I hang out with you today?” I asked. “My brother is getting on my last nerve.”

Leah shrugged. “Sure. Brothers can be a pain.”

“I'll say,” Sidney said, rolling her eyes. “You can come with us.”

“Thanks! What are we shopping for?”

“It's kind of a secret,” Sidney said.

A secret? I loved secrets, and if I got lucky, it might even lead me to the assassination plot.

The last thing I expected was to get in an SUV and fight our way out of the city to the suburbs. I should have gone with the others. I didn't think a lead on the assassination plot was likely to be hiding in New Jersey. It was possible, but unlikely.

Forty-five minutes later we pulled up in front of a big chain toy store. A store I could get to anytime back home, in a whole lot less than forty-five minutes.

“We're buying toys?”

“You'll see,” Sidney said.

Yeah, so would the team that was following us. I hadn't spotted them though, and I didn't expect to.

I followed them into the store. Sidney and Leah each grabbed a cart. “Get one too,” Leah directed.

Okay. I guess we had a long list. Of toys. To get after Christmas. Yeah, I didn't have a clue.

Leah pushed her cart to the back of the store. Sidney was behind her, and I brought up the caboose. I had pictured us shopping some high-end designer store that I'd only seen in movies. Some place magical where the high price tag guaranteed that the clothes would transform me into a classier version of myself. Instead, I had a crying baby on the next aisle, two boys running through the store with swords and almost crashing into us, and an angry mom swatting her toddler on the diaper-clad bottom.

Suddenly, Leah stopped, eyeing the shelves to the right. They were stuffed with preschool toys, specially packaged for Christmas. Castles, pirate ships, barn yards, school buses, doll houses.

“Here we are,” she said, gesturing to the toys. “The motherload!”

Yeah, the toys were kind of cool. I eyed the spaceship with its “safe for children under age three” astronauts. Not too shabby. Was that an alien?

Then I saw the little paper tabs hanging off the shelves. Fifty-percent off. Clearance sale.

“They were already a good deal,” Leah explained. “They only sell these sets before Christmas, and they run ten and fifteen dollars. I can get twice as many for the kids, store them in my mother's garage, and donate them next year to the toy drive.”  

Leah wasn't a mean girl at all. She sure had fooled me.

“That's actually brilliant,” I admitted. “So how many do we get?”

“Almost all of them,” Sidney said, sliding toys into her cart. “Then we'll go to the other four locations that we can get to. If she doesn't use her whole budget, we'll keep going tomorrow.”

I was almost afraid to ask. “What's the budget?”

“This year I saved over three thousand dollars.” Leah's face brightened with her smile.

“That's...” As many as twenty toys per hundred dollars times thirty... “about six hundred toys?”

“Probably less. A lot are seven dollars and fifty cents. Plus tax.”

Six hundred toys. Okay, fine, between... fourteen times thirty... four hundred and six hundred toys. Whoa. “That's a lot of toys.”

“A lot of happy kids,” Sidney said. “She's been doing this since she was twelve.”

“Target and Walmart usually have some great buys too. The trick is to catch them before all the good stuff sells. Once I got seventy-five percent off.”

Four times as many toys as if she bought them before Christmas. I didn't know much about this girl, and it occurred to me that Christie and Grandma could have given me a whole lot more information. Had she gone without toys at Christmas? It didn't seem likely from the looks of her dad's apartment.

“I have two hundred dollars from Christmas,” I said. “Let's use that too.”

Sidney and Leah grinned at me.

“We'll leave a few toys here. Just enough for somebody who only got ten dollars from their grandparents to buy something cool. Then we'll get the rest, and head over to my mother's. We can unload before going to the next store.”

I started stacking the boxes of castles and pirate ships into my cart. “I'm so glad I came.”

“So am I,” Sidney said. She grabbed some doll houses and neatly stacked them to fit as many as possible into her cart.

We met up at the loft, and my excitement faded as I saw what Will had been up to. He'd spent the day flirting. Image after image of the girls leaning close, whispering in his ear, making eyes at him.

“Did she just kiss you?” I asked in horror.

Will turned red. “On the cheek. Like a European thing.”

Grandma grinned at his discomfort. “You mean both cheeks, I think.”

I was buying toys for underprivileged kids, and he was getting kisses.

“Nice of you to make such sacrifices for us, Will.”  My aunt thought she was funny. She was wrong.

“There's a big party tonight,” Will said. “With a couple of bands.”

“Do you know where?” Christie asked.

I couldn't believe she didn't know where. Didn't she know everything?

Will shrugged. “I don't think they said.”

“Amanda, can you play the 'my mother needs to know or I can't go' card?”

“I can, but why me? Why can't Will ask?”

My aunt gave me a guilty wince. “Um.”

“Are you seriously treating me and Will differently based on gender?”  She couldn't be serious.

“It just made more sense for you to do it, Amanda. That's all. No hidden agenda. No gender bias. No parenting judgments based on boys versus girls.”

Grandma just chuckled to herself.

Will shifted in his seat. “It's okay, Amanda. I'll ask them where the party is.”  

“Not necessary, Will. I wouldn't want to undermine your reputation with the guys. Apparently only girls have to check in with their parents.”

“It's not a problem,” he said.

“Amanda, I'm not a parent. I don't have a clue about raising teenagers, especially twins who aren’t really twins but are actually secretly dating! Hello! I'm running a spy op here, and my gut was to have you do the asking. I'm not prepared for debates on parenting or psychology or sociology.”

Maybe I overreacted a little bit. Possibly because I was already annoyed about the lip action Will was getting. But I wasn't wrong about the concept, and I was proud of my feminist tendencies. I sighed. “Fine. I get it. Best for the mission.”

“I'm not even sure that was offensive to you. I was probably insulting myself.”

I put my hands on my hips and glared at Christie. “Huh?”

Grandma chuckled again.

Will could read me pretty well, and he tried to intervene. “Um, Christie. She was already over it. Maybe you should have left it alone.”

My aunt gave Will a glare that should have shriveled his eyeballs. “Thanks for your input, Will. I was going to say that what I had actually done was stereotype myself in my role as 'the mother' by making the assumption that 'the mother' would pay more attention to the whereabouts of the daughter.”

Seriously? She was offended on her own behalf. I shared a look with Will. His blue eyes held a glint of laughter.

“We should move on,” Grandma said. “We have a lot to discuss.”

Chapter Eight

Christie opened her mouth as if to say something but then apparently thought better of it. Her chest rose and fell as she took a deep breath. Then she said, “Okay. Let's cover the inroads we've made already with the networks and devices. Nic should be updating us shortly. Then we'll discuss the best approach to the party.”

“All we have to do is plug chargers into just about every outlet at the party, and they will disappear very quickly,” Will said.

“He's right.” I could think of dozens of times I'd heard people complaining about somebody taking their phone chargers. “Nobody will remember to bring theirs out with them, and their batteries will run down.”

“Guys are even worse,” Will said. “About not charging their phones.”  He glanced at me. “I'm not making a social commentary about all teen males.”

I socked him in the shoulder. “The hard part is going to be keeping people from noticing. I mean, it's kind of weird to go to a party and take a bunch of chargers.”

Christie nodded. “I guess you would look a bit odd. Like you were peddling cell phone accessories or something.”

I leaned forward in my chair. “We can sit somewhere, plug in the charger, pretend to text or something, and then get up and move somewhere else but leave the charger. Then start the process over.”

“As long as you aren't being antisocial,” Christie cautioned. “You don't want to alienate our assets.”

“We can put some in the bathrooms and bedrooms too.”  Will blushed. “If it's at somebody's house.”

“Right.” Christie looked pointedly at me as she said, “We'll know more when we find out where it is.”

Oh, for crying out loud. I pulled out my phone and texted Leah. How frustrating.

Me: Mom needs to know where this party is. Whose house is it at?

Leah: Uggh. Parents! It's at Matt Daley's in Merrill Hill.

Me: Thanks. Yeah. Mothers! :(

Leah: You are going, right? And remember not to tell anybody about today.

Me: I'm going for sure, and my lips are sealed.

When I looked up, everybody was staring at me.

“You were smiling,” Will said, nudging me with his elbow. “I guess you got the info.”

“I sense that I was the butt of that smile,” Christie said.

Huh? “Are you losing your mind?”

Will snorted. “Smiles don't have butts, Christie. Or chins, or arms, or...”

“I meant like the butt of a joke. You know joke... smile?”  Christie looked from Grandma to Will to me. “Okay fine. Where is the party?”

“Matt Daley's.”

Grandma typed quickly on the keyboard she'd attached to her tablet. “His mother and stepfather live in Merrill Hill. His father lives in Tribeca.”

“Merrill Hill,” I said.

Her face lit with a smile. “Isn't this convenient. His stepfather is Steven Nguyen, an Australian national and high ranking UN staffer. And his mother is an artist, and a pretty talented one. Her art will be the perfect excuse to wander the house.”

“We can't both be interested in art, though,” Will said. “That wouldn't be realistic.”

“You can go looking at art, and Amanda can go in search of you.”  Christie held up a hand as if to stave off any argument. “If boys think you are just around the next corner, they will be more likely to behave with Amanda.”