Okay, maybe that last one was stretching it just a bit.
“Toby?” Kiki prodded. “About the—”
“Hey Keeks,” Jack cut her off, leaning back in his chair to get a better view of the girl in question.
Kiki got really obviously flustered at the attention. Unlike most cheerleaders I’d met, concealing her emotions really wasn’t her strong suit.
“Yes?” she squeaked. Despite her squeaking, she made a masterful attempt at batting her eyelashes at my homecoming date.
“I like your sweater.”
Jack’s compliment left Kiki speechless. Five seconds later, a new message popped up on my IM.
JackOfDiamonds: You’re welcome.
Apparently, I was supposed to thank him for flirting with another girl. Then again, I thought as I logged into my brother’s email account and began messing around with his settings, aforementioned flirtation had distracted Kiki from talking to me, which just confirmed my suspicion that Jack Peyton was the kind of guy who always knew exactly what to give a girl. Some girls liked diamonds. Some girls liked pearls. I liked having someone running interference between the rest of the student body and me.
And, as much as I really, truly, deeply hated to admit it, I liked Jack.
TaeKleinDo: Shut up.
JackOfDiamonds: Yeah, Ev. Love you, too.
When the bell rang a moment later, I wasn’t sure whether I was thankful or disappointed. In fact, the only thing I knew for certain was that I’d wreaked enough havoc on Noah’s email account that he wouldn’t be sending out messages of any kind for a very, very long time.
CHAPTER 17
Code Word: Blend
By the time I got to the Quad, everyone else was already there.
“Hello, Toby.”
One look at the half smile on Tara’s face had me preparing myself for her trademarked understated form of teasing, but Tara didn’t get the chance to say whatever she’d planned to, because the others beat her to it.
“I hear that you love puppies.” Brittany stole Tara’s thunder.
“Yup, Toby just wuvs cute wittle bitty—”
“Shut up, Tiffany. Don’t you guys have something to glitter?” It occurred to me a second after I spoke that encouraging the twins to apply any sort of cosmetic product to anything was seldom a good idea—especially since there was at least a ninety percent chance they’d choose to apply it to me.
“What’s wrong with puppies?” Bubbles asked, mystified. Of all of the girls, Bubbles was the only one whose inner depths I’d never discovered. I was pretty sure that she didn’t actually have depths. She’d joined the Squad because of a freakish ability to contort herself into odd, but useful positions. It was an incredibly handy skill, and Bubbles was probably the single stealthiest person I’d ever met in my life, but she wasn’t exactly a rocket scientist.
“There’s nothing wrong with puppies,” I told Bubbles, shooting daggers at the twins with my eyes and daring them to say something else. “I’d just prefer it if the puppies of the world weren’t endorsing my candidacy for homecoming queen.”
Bubbles frowned. “The puppies are voting for you?”
She sounded equal parts confused and offended. Oh, Bubbles.
“Noah just sent this email thing around,” Lucy explained. “It had the cutest picture of a puppy in it. I think it’s sweet that he’s trying to help you, Toby.”
“He’s trying to drive me nuts,” I corrected her. “And it’s not sweet. It’s pathological. And in the future, please do not use the words Noah and sweet in the same sentence.”
Lucy chose to pretend I hadn’t spoken at all, forcing me to wonder what was going on in that cheerful little mind of hers. Was she actually into Noah?
Like I was actually into Jack….
“Are we going to get ready for our missions or what?” I cut off my own train of thought with a question. If I could just flip into spy mode, then I wouldn’t have to worry about anything that existed within the walls of this high school. I could concentrate on terrorists, biological weapons, and reconnaissance, which was a definite step up from boys, brothers, and homecoming.
“I agree with Toby.” At Brooke’s words, the world stopped spinning on its axis. “We may just be tailing the TCIs, but this mission is important. If we want Washington to deal us in on the action when things go down, we need to nail this.” She paused. “That means following orders. Don’t let the TCIs out of your sight, but don’t engage them. Get as much video and audio feed on them as you can, but don’t let them see you. The night shift will take over at 2100 hours, but until then, the TCIs are ours.”
The “don’t screw it up” on the end of Brooke’s sentence went just barely unstated.
“We’ll be working in three groups. Group one will be following Anthony Connors-Wright. Chloe and April, you’ll be working with Bubbles and Lucy on this one. Strategy is up to you, but we want as many angles of surveillance as possible. Same goes for team number two. Britt, Tiff, Tara, and Zee, you’ll be tailing Amelia Juarez.”
“What about me?” I narrowed my eyes at the captain. Tara was my partner. We worked as a team. So why had Brooke assigned Tara and Zee to work together? Shouldn’t Zee have been working with her partner?
“You’ll be with me.” Brooke’s words reminded me just who Zee’s partner normally was. “I want Zee in the field. The closer we can get her to the TCIs, the better she’ll be able to read their body language. You and I will be stationed near Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray, so that we can keep an eye out for anything there. As bad as having a biological weapon in Bayport is, it would be much worse if the firm got a hold of it. If we see something suspicious, the Big Guys will be sending a team in, but if they can’t get there fast enough, it may be up to us to make sure nothing goes down.”
Brooke dangled the chance of action in front of me like a carrot.
“Besides, I don’t trust you to stick to orders. If I sent you to tail one of the TCIs, you’d probably manage to get yourself killed.”
“I would not!”
“Get yourself killed or go against orders and engage your mark?”
She had me there. “The first one.”
“Says the girl who almost got blown up yesterday.” Brooke waved away any further objections on my part with a flick of her wrist. “Brittany, Tiffany, go prep the salon. Given the nature of our mission, all teams will be going with a B3 cover.”
Brittany nodded, and Tiffany—for reasons that eluded me—sighed. “We’ll be ready in five.” With that, the twins headed off to their torture chamber (or, as they preferred to think of it, their “beauty lab”).
“Chloe—”
“Cameras, video cameras, binoculars, communicators, and standard bug sets are ready to go.” Chloe didn’t give Brooke a chance to finish her order. “They’re already camouflaged to go with a B3.”
Brooke smiled in a way specifically designed to convey the fact that she was annoyed, but wasn’t going to say anything about it. “Great. Luce?”
“Yeah huh?” Lucy didn’t have quite the siblingesque rivalry with Brooke that Chloe did, and she docilely awaited her orders accordingly.
“I want Tasers and knockout patches, plus bulletproof push-up bras all around. We’re not engaging the enemy, but we’re not going to take any chances, either.”
“Awesome,” Lucy said. “I redid some of the knockout patches to look like stickers.” She turned her toothy grin on me. “You can have the puppy, Toby.”
Sometimes, it was really hard to tell when Lucy was being serious and when she was teasing, because she used the same earnest tone and expression for both.
Paying no heed to the puppy comment, Brooke continued dishing out orders. “Lucy, Chloe, get things set up in the guidepost, and then report to the salon. Everybody else, let’s get a move on. The TCIs aren’t going to tail themselves.”
There’s not much you can do to mentally prepare yourself for a makeover, especially a makeover of the scale and caliber the twin
s routinely pulled off. They’d pretty much single-handedly turned me from the slacker no one noticed to the reluctant teen goddess I was today. Since my initial transformation, I’d avoided their lab at all costs, but today, there was no way to avoid a B3. Whatever a B3 was.
“Care to explain?” I asked Tara. “About the B3 thing?”
“You’ll see.” Tara was less than forthcoming.
I knew that the twins’ job description included designing costuming for each mission that would play up whatever attributes would offer us the most advantages, but this was the first time I’d gone on a mission as anything other than my cheerleader self. The Squad worked because we hid in plain sight. Nine times out of ten, the stereotype was the only cover we needed.
Apparently, today’s mission was the tenth. I knew that it was ridiculous that car bombs didn’t scare me, and teenage fashion dictators did, but no amount of mental pep talking could convince me that giving the twins carte blanche to alter our appearances was anything less than bone-chilling.
“I’m not sure I’m ready for another makeover,” I muttered as we entered the twins’ lab. “I almost didn’t survive the first one.”
“Makeover?” Brittany said, wrinkling her nose. “Who said anything about a makeover?”
“Brooke did,” I replied. “You know, a B3.”
Tiffany joined her twin in giving me a blank look.
“You guys live for makeovers.” I stated the obvious. “It’s practically your middle name!”
“Silly Toby.” This was from Bubbles. As in, the girl who thought that puppies got to vote for homecoming queen. “A B3 isn’t a makeover. It’s a makeunder.”
“A makeunder?” April repeated the term. It was times like these that I was grateful that I wasn’t the only new member of the Squad.
“We need to blend.” Brooke elucidated the situation. “If we go out in groups of four looking like this, we’re going to attract a lot of attention, and since the TCIs aren’t supposed to even know we’re there, that’s not exactly a good thing the way it would be if we were planning to interact with them, but didn’t want to be seen as a threat.”
“A B3 makeunder is constructed with that goal in mind,” Tiffany said, her tone absolutely, deathly serious. “Although we can’t disguise our more striking features, we will be downplaying them. Some people call it ‘the natural look.’ We’ve spent a lot of time designing outfits and makeup/hair schema that will serve a dual purpose. To the casual observer, we’ll look average.”
Brittany took over where Tiffany left off. “But if we happen to run into anyone from school, we need to look nice enough that they won’t get suspicious. These outfits aren’t about being unfashionable; they’re about being subtle. The perfect B3 will allow its wearer to blend in, but on closer focus, she’ll stand out because of the ensemble’s simplicity.”
“A B3 says, ‘I’m pretty without trying to be,’” Tiffany continued. “It says, ‘I’m not wearing makeup,’ even though you will be. It says, ‘Don’t look at me, don’t remember me, but if you know me, be impressed with my effortlessness.’”
I think the twins might have gone on indefinitely if Brooke hadn’t sped them along. Instead, they multitasked, punctuating my makeunder with theoretical explanations I paid no attention to whatsoever. By the time they finished with me and moved on to the next person, I wasn’t sure what to expect. What was the logical result of spending a great deal of time and effort attempting to look natural?
A quick examination in the mirror revealed my answer. I didn’t look like the old me, but I wasn’t exactly Cheer Toby, either. I was a Neutrogena commercial, clean and cute. I didn’t look average, but I did look generic. Because of my height and the way the twins had styled my hair, I also looked about thirteen.
Makeunder complete.
CHAPTER 18
Code Word: Girl Talk
Brooke and I got ice cream at a shop down the street from the firm and then set up camp on a bench outside the shopping center. Along the way, we also stopped at a few stores, just for good measure, and our packages were spread out on the ground near our feet.
“So what now?” I asked Brooke.
She pulled her feet up and folded them gracefully under her body. “Now we talk.” She took in my skeptical look. “Trust me. It’s something girls do.”
So that was our cover. We weren’t cheerleaders. We were just girls. I maneuvered to get myself comfortable, until I was sitting cross-legged on the bench, my ice cream balanced precariously on one knee. “And what do girls talk about?” I asked.
“Boys. Other girls. World domination.”
I was about eighty percent sure she was kidding on that last one, but this was Brooke, who dominated our high school world with seemingly little effort, so I wasn’t willing to completely discount the possibility that she might be serious.
“Which other girls?” That one seemed the safest.
“Whichever ones are pissing us off.” Brooke didn’t sugarcoat it.
“And if no one is?”
Brooke rolled her eyes. “Then you’re lying.”
“Are you trying to say I’m an angry person?”
“Well, yes. But it wouldn’t matter if you weren’t. This is high school. Everybody’s mad at somebody.”
“So who are you mad at?” I asked.
Brooke shrugged. “Chloe for being a brat. Zee for analyzing what’s none of her business. You for almost getting blown up.”
“So, as girls, we’re supposed to sit here talking about how you don’t like me?”
Brooke rolled her eyes. “Technically, we’re supposed to talk about the people who aren’t here.”
Brooke’s phone beeped, and she flipped it open to read a text message. Then she dug into her purse and pulled out an iPod. I stared at it warily, unsure whether this was the communicator iPod that Chloe had given us, or the one that doubled as a high-voltage Taser.
Brooke put one of the earpieces in her ear, and I came to the conclusion that as painful as sitting here with me obviously was for her, she probably wasn’t frustrated enough to resort to Tasering herself. Yet.
“What’s up?” I asked her.
“Just a song I like,” she said lightly, and I got the message. She was coordinating the tails on the TCIs, but she wasn’t going to give any verbal indication of what she was doing—not even to me. Considering we were only twenty yards away from the institution our Squad was designed to combat, I couldn’t chalk that one up to anything but common sense, as much as I would have liked to blame it on Brooke’s more PMSy tendencies.
Her fingers flew across the keypad of her cell phone at high speed, and I wondered what kind of orders she was dishing out. Given an infinite amount of time and all of the technology in Chloe’s lab, I might have been able to figure it out, the same way that a hundred monkeys could eventually produce the works of Shakespeare, but I didn’t have that kind of time, or the technology, or the monkeys, so I settled for taking another bite of ice cream and watching the parking garage across the street. Trying to appear as though I were gazing vacuously off into space, I zeroed in on a car that was preparing to turn into the Peyton parking garage.
I brought my free hand up to the simple chain at my neck and fiddled with the charm. An almost inaudible click told me that my necklace, which was actually a high-definition digital camera, had taken a picture that might have been of my collarbone, but that I hoped was of the car across the street. I glanced over at Brooke and saw that her dark hair was tucked behind her left ear, clearing the way for a clean shot by the video camera installed in her earrings.
Between the two of us, we were wearing more or less an entire Radio Shack, and thanks to Lucy, I had a puppy sticker in my pocket that, if applied to a person’s bare skin, would render them unconscious in less than a second.
“Come on, Toby. There must be someone you don’t like.” Brooke was back to making conversation. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world coming from her, like she didn’t
normally roll her eyes at me eight million times a day. And that was when I realized something.
Brooke and I weren’t hanging out. Brooke’s cover was hanging out with my cover. We were supposed to be friends, just two girls chilling on a bench, eating ice cream and talking about boys and shopping and the girls on our metaphorical hit lists. So that’s what Brooke was doing, and she was doing it well.
Two could play that game.
“Hayley Hoffman,” I said. “Her JV mafia. Chip. Mr. Corkin.” I decided to stop listing people, lest I appear to be the angry girl she already viewed me as.
“Hayley’s not that bad,” Brooke said.
“If by ‘not that bad,’ you mean ‘unholy spawn of evil,’ then, yeah.”
“I mean, yes, she’s kind of a bitch, but there are worse things to be. She wants things, and she goes after them. People follow her.”
“So tell me. Are we talking about you or Hayley?”
Brooke snorted. “You’ve been spending way too much time with Zee. And we’re talking about Hayley. If we were talking about me, we’d be using words like fabulous.”
Even as we talked, Brooke’s fingers raced across her keypad. She had an uncanny ability to text without looking, and to carry on a conversation with me, whilst listening to reports from the other four teams, issuing orders, and keeping an eye on Peyton, all at once.
Personally, I was struggling with eating ice cream and watching the building across the street.
“Get your phone.”
It took me a second to realize that Brooke was talking to me, even though there wasn’t anyone else around. I dug my phone out of my purse.
“You know that guy you like?” she prodded.
Jack? My mind went there before I could stop it.
“That guy,” Brooke said again, and I followed her gaze to a guy across the street. She glanced just briefly down at my necklace, and I got the picture. With another absentminded fiddle, I’d captured his image, and a few keystrokes to my cell phone allowed me to download the pictures without ever connecting the two. Chloe may have been a brat, but she was darn good at her job.
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