Spy to the Rescue

by Jonathan Bernstein

  I look up to see a uniformed cop come charging through the cathedral door. He dives forward, grabs the gun off the ground, jumps to his feet, and aims the gun straight at Vanessa, who stumbles to a halt.

  “Don’t move,” says Ryan.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Chameleon

  That is correct. My brother is dressed like an officer of the New York Police Department and he is pointing a gun at Vanessa.

  “Ryan?” I say from my place on the ground. I try to get up but my head is still spinning from that last kick.

  “Turns out Sam had an actual cop uniform in his closet.” He shrugs. “You okay? You’re all wet. And you smell. Not your usual smell. Worse.”

  “Red blew up the toilet,” I tell him. “He did that thing you used to do with the golf ball.”

  “Classic prank,” says Ryan. “I’ve got to get one of those marbles.”

  “Ryan,” says Vanessa.

  Uh-oh.

  “So the bad guy knows my name,” smirks Ryan.

  “And you know me,” she says.

  “Ryan, you did great, but you need to go now,” I tell him.

  “Ryan,” Vanessa whispers.

  “Wait,” says Ryan. “Are you . . . ?”

  And she transforms. I don’t know how she does it, but right in front of us, Vanessa changes. Her posture, her voice. Her mouth gets smaller, her toes point inward, she seems to shrink. She may even have changed the color of her eyes.

  “Abby?” breathes Ryan.

  “It’s not Abby,” I say. “There is no Abby. There never was. Her name is Vanessa Dominion. She’s the underachieving daughter of a criminal mastermind. She stuck a needle in you and hung you on a hook.”

  “That true?” he says. “You did that to me?”

  Using her tiny, mumbly Abby voice, Vanessa says, “I did it to keep you safe. I would never hurt you, Ryan, you know that.”

  “You don’t know that,” I tell him. “Everything she ever said to you was a lie.”

  “Not everything,” says Vanessa. “I never lied about how I felt.”

  I see Ryan’s face cloud with confusion.

  “Ryan, give me the gun and get out of here,” I tell him. “You can’t be around her.”

  “Bridget never liked me,” says Vanessa, walking slowly toward him. “She doesn’t know what we have, the two of us.”

  “You have nothing,” I say to Ryan. “Abby doesn’t exist. This is someone you don’t know. Someone who just tried to kill me.”

  “Give me the gun,” Vanessa tells Ryan. “I’ll get us out of here. We can disappear and start a new life together.”

  I pull myself to my feet. “Ryan, don’t fall for this.”

  Vanessa moves closer to him, close enough that she could reach out and take the gun from him, which is what I very much fear she’s going to do. Vanessa’s firmly in Blabby mode now, speaking so quietly I can’t make out a word.

  “But how can I ever trust you again?” says Ryan, and then he says, “You swear? You’ll never hurt anyone again?”

  “NO!” I bawl. “Don’t be so stupid; she’s exploiting your weakness. You’re nothing to her. You were never anything but a means to get to me.”

  Ryan turns to me, a furious look on his face. “Right. Because no one could ever like me. Because everything’s got to be about you, Bridget.”

  Vanessa takes the gun from Ryan in one blurry movement. One second it was in his hand, the next it’s in hers, and she’s pointing it at him.

  “NO!” I bawl again, and put myself between Vanessa and Ryan.

  “And here we are again,” says Vanessa.

  “Abby,” says Ryan, aghast.

  I feel bad for him, but at the same time I’m incensed. “Stop calling her Abby! Don’t you get it? Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said?”

  Vanessa laughs her musical little laugh. “I’m flattered,” she says to Ryan. “Abby made an indelible impression on you, as she was intended to do. Because your sister is absolutely right: you were a means to an end.”

  I see Ryan struggle to understand. His shoulders slump and he hangs his head.

  “Awww,” she mocks. “Don’t be sad. Abby really liked you.”

  Every time I think I’ve reached the depths of my hatred for Vanessa, she pushes me deeper.

  “Like you said, peanut, you’ve got a lot of people who care about you, which means you’ll always be weak,” she smirks.

  I glance upward so I don’t have to see her eyes mocking my rage. That’s when I spot clouds of what looks like sawdust drifting down from above. The dust is being expelled from a wooden beam that stretches across the ceiling. The beam is starting to splinter and break. Ryan and Vanessa follow my gaze. They see what I see. The wooden beam breaks in two. The air ripples. The outline of a human body begins to form as it falls to the ground. Vanessa aims her gun. Irina lands in front of me and snatches the weapon from Vanessa’s hand. I see the frayed rope knotted around her wrists and ankles.

  “That’s right,” says Irina, keeping her eyes on Vanessa. “She soaked me in the cloaking liquid and hung me upside down from the cathedral ceiling so I could watch her shoot my target. It was cold and calculating. Exactly the sort of thing I would have done.”

  “Well, of course, I’m such a fan of your work,” gushes Vanessa with the biggest, brightest smile on her face.

  “Take your brother and get out of here,” Irina says, her face grim. “Miss Dominion and I have unfinished business.”

  “I’d love to pick your brains about the whole assassin thing,” chirps Vanessa. “I have so much to learn.”

  “And so little time,” says Irina.

  I see fear flash across Vanessa’s face. I was too slow. Ryan was too confused. Irina won’t be either of these things. Wiping out Vanessa will be like sneezing to her. I take Ryan’s arm.

  “Come on,” I say.

  “Hey, Ryan,” Irina suddenly calls out. He looks around at her.

  “You can do better.”

  I watch the defeat start to leave Ryan’s face. He stands a little straighter. I wish I’d been the one to do that for him.

  “Who is that?” he says as we head for the doors.

  “She gave birth to me,” I say.

  “Despite that, I like her,” he says. “Where’s she been hiding all these years?”

  “I’ll tell you the whole story,” I say, pushing him up the aisle and toward the door. “But right now, you and I need to leave here and we need to not look back.”

  So we look straight ahead. We see the cathedral doors burst open and a hundred cops swarm in, all with weapons drawn. Ryan and I both raise our hands in surrender.

  “Put the gun down now,” screams a cop through his bullhorn.

  Behind us, we hear a gun go off.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The Fast and the Furious

  “That 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.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Cleanup on Aisle Seven

  It 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.