I go to glance at my watch.
“We’ll make it in time,” Strike assures me. “Do you know how often I’ve saved the world with seconds to spare?”
“A lot, I hope.”
“So relax,” he says.
I relax for 0.00000002 of a second. “I heard the CIA put you and Irina in a box,” I pipe up. “Obviously, you made it out.”
“Note to self: probably not a good idea to get back in business with an agency that doesn’t trust you.” He gives me a rueful smile.
“So, the Forties?” I ask.
“Under new management.” He shrugs.
“And you and Irina?”
“We might need to go off the grid for a while.”
“Does that mean I’m not going to see you?”
“It might be better,” he says. “For you and your family. Once the trust is gone, it’s hard to get back.”
“We’re doing important stuff here,” I tell him. “We’re saving the country from a madman who wants to be president.”
“We’re never going to be short of madmen who want to be president,” Strike replies. “People who are always there for you and put their needs before their own? Not so many of those. Don’t lose them.”
“Are you firing me from being a spy?” I shout.
Strike opens his mouth, but before words emerge, he is dragged from the golf cart and thrown onto a motorcycle driven by Adina Roots.
“Strike!” I wail.
He tosses me his police cap.
“Bridget!” he shouts back at me. “Save the world! Press the green button on the wheel.”
What green button? What wheel?
“Bridget,” shouts Roots. “Don’t press the green button. Get off the cart and turn yourself in.”
I look around at Roots as she snaps handcuffs around Strike’s wrist. “Thanks for believing in me,” I tell her. “Thanks for thinking I might have been set up. I’m being sarcastic. And now I’m pressing the green button.”
I jam the police hat down over my face and toss her a non-respectful salute.
“Get her!” Roots commands. I hear the sounds of motorcycles roaring toward me.
I press the dime-size button in the center of the golf cart steering wheel.
Things That I Would Really Like to Happen Right Now:
1.The golf cart sprouts giant monster-truck wheels and I get to crush all the vehicles in my way.
2.The golf cart goes into suction-wheel mode and allows me to ride straight up the walls of Healy Hall without falling off.
Things That I Would Really Not Like to Happen Right Now:
1.The golf cart explodes.
The golf cart does not explode, but it jolts and shakes, and then it sinks into the ground. That’s because the wheels are gone. That is correct: I am being pursued by Secret Service agents on motorcycles, and I am sitting in a golf cart whose wheels disappeared because I pressed the green button without first thinking to ask, “What happens when I press the green button?”
The cart stops sinking into the ground. I feel another jolt and then the cart rockets into the air.
I let out a scream of terror and grip on to the sides of my hard plastic seat. I feel my phone vibrate. Hello, Joanna, perfect time to call.
“Hi,” I say. “And that’s both a greeting and a description of my current location.”
“You’re in a drone cart,” Joanna replies. I can hear the relish in her voice as she gets to explain something about the spy world to me. “It’s a prototype Strike stole from the Forties on his way out. Dale forwarded the instructions to me because I’m now known in the world of international espionage as Bridget Wilder’s handler. Should I have a special handler name? Or maybe it should be a letter. J’s probably too obvious. Maybe a number? Seven?”
“Okay, fine,” I yell. “How do I drive this thing, Seven?”
“It has a switch on the dash with four settings,” says my new handler. “Memorize this: F for Forward . . .”
“R for Reverse, U for Up, and D for Down. Got it,” I say.
“You have to steer it like a car, or it’ll keep going up and finally it will fall from the sky and you will be squashed like a bug. Splat!”
“That puts my mind at ease,” I tell her. “Where am I going?”
“Head to the fourth floor. That’s the location of Gaston Hall, the auditorium where the debate’s taking place.”
I click F and the drone cart lurches to a halt, and then shoots straight at a concrete spire. I yelp with fright and click R. The cart drops like a stone. I feel the contents of my stomach splashing their way up into my throat. The prototype drone cart doesn’t work. Like everything else that ever came out of the Forties, it’s defective.
I look at the dashboard. Oops. I clicked D when I meant R!
“I hope the next spy I handle is more competent than you,” I hear Joanna grumble.
I switch to U, and the cart ceases its rapid descent and floats upward again. A plan takes shape in my head. I will pilot my strange little vehicle up to the fourth floor, where I will hover outside the window of Gaston Hall. The moment Font shocks the president by bringing out mind-controlled Jamie Brennan, I will fire my amnesia atomizer, and Jamie will forget all the lies she’s been programmed to tell. Victory will be mine.
“I need full concentration,” I tell Joanna. “But thanks, Seven.” I click the phone off.
My cart drifts skyward, and two floors below my final destination I pass a window where I think I catch a glimpse of Morgan Font and Jamie sitting in front of mirrors having their makeup done. Victory is prematurely mine. I switch to D so I hover level with the window. I keep one hand on the switch and slide the other hand into my pocket for the squirter. The cart suddenly lurches forward. Did I touch F by mistake?
The drone cart smashes through the window. I throw my hands over my face to protect myself from the shards of glass spraying all around me. When I take my hands away, I’m in a long dark room filled with old and expensive-looking paintings. The corner of the room nearest to me is illuminated by makeup mirrors ringed with searingly bright bulbs. I look down on Font, who does not seem at all surprised to see me, and Jamie, who has a vacant, faraway look in her eyes. The makeup people, who continue applying powder to Font’s and Jamie’s faces, have the same vacant look.
I aim my atomizer at Jamie and gaze down at her kidnapper. “Three words, Font,” I tell him. “Nick. Of. Time.”
Font remains unruffled. “Three more words, Bridget,” he replies. “Meet the Wilders.”
He gestures to a shadowy corner of the art room. My mother, my father, Ryan, and Natalie are pushed out of the darkness by three large men carrying large guns and wearing extra-large Font Force T-shirts. My family look terrified but they do not seem like they’ve been brainwashed. Morgan Font wants them to experience every minute of this.
“Oh my God,” I moan.
“Oh my God!” shrieks my mother.
My father just stares at me in the hovering drone cart.
Natalie dissolves into tears of confusion.
Ryan puts an arm around her shoulder and gives me a helpless shrug.
Font gestures to me to land the cart. I touch the D switch and hit the ground with a thump.
“I don’t have to give you the big ‘hurt me and I’ll hurt them’ speech, do I?” he asks me. “We’re on the same page with what’s happening here, right?”
I feel my family’s wide, disbelieving eyes on me as I clamber out of the cart.
“You were supposed to stay in the embassy,” I tell them.
“Who are you?” breathes Natalie.
Font laughs. “I tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t believe me. ‘Your daughter’s a superspy,’ I told them. ‘Who, Bridget?’ they said. ‘Our Bridget? Nah.’ Being underestimated is a very effective cover, Ms. Wilder.”
I feel my mother’s eyes on me. I don’t want to look at her. This is the time I need to be strong and smart. If I look at my mom, I won’t be either
of those things. But I know how confused she must be, and how hurt.
Font puts on a serious face, and turns to me. “Foreign governments can’t gain access to the Trezekhastan Embassy, but my money opens every door. The ambassador was happy to hand your family over.”
He waves the makeup girl away. “Enough,” he says. Font gets up from his seat and examines his reflection. He tries a few expressions—proud, offended, passionate, sincere.
“You probably want to spend some time with your daughter,” he says as he guides Jamie from the room. “Assuming she really is your daughter. Because it doesn’t seem like you know her very well.”
I want to go after them. I want to stop Font and save Jamie. I can’t. I can’t do anything. Not when the people I love most in the world are trapped in this room. Not when there’s a chance they could come to harm if I attack their captors.
My family are trapped in a room with three men who have guns trained on them. I can’t help but notice that, except for Ryan, they all look a lot more scared of me.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Of All the Times the Stupid Chickens Had to Pick to Come Home to Roost, Why Now?
I am a liar. We know this about me. I lie a lot, and I’m good at it. But of all the individuals I’ve hoodwinked, the most consistently gullible has to be Bridget Wilder. Right from the start, I told myself that this would never happen. That my two worlds would never collide. That I could take part in spy missions without my family ever knowing or ever being involved.
Sure, there were unexpected detours along the way. First Joanna and her cousin in Brooklyn, and then Ryan. But there was something cool about having a small intimate circle who knew my secret: it bonded us, and, if I’m really honest, I liked picturing them thinking about me and imagining the action-packed adventures I was having. I liked the new way they looked at me, like I was someone special. It was the exact opposite of the way my mother, my father, and my sister are looking at me now. They stand in a tight huddle, their eyes gazing in my direction as if I were an animal that snuck into their house and they’re calculating how to expel it before it attacks them. I can see Ryan wants to come to my defense, but he’s not sure what to say without implicating himself as another liar lurking under the Wilder roof.
“What’s that thing?” my mom suddenly says.
Is she talking about me? Is that what I’ve become to her: a thing? Then I see she’s looking at the vehicle in which I made my dramatic entrance.
“It’s a prototype drone cart,” I tell her. “Maybe in a few years your courier company will be using them instead of vans.”
“What does it run on?” asks my dad.
“Who cares what it runs on!” yells Natalie. “She flew through the window in it. She pointed a gun at a presidential candidate . . .”
“Who kidnapped you,” I remind her. “And it’s not a gun, it’s a . . .” I’ve forgotten the word again. “Squirter.”
“How does a presidential candidate even know you? Where do you get a flying car . . .”
“Prototype drone cart,” I mutter.
“All those things Font was saying about you,” Dad says. “They’re true?”
“Yeah, but, Dad, all these things you told me about him, about how we’ll all be in trouble if he gets into power, they’re all true, too. But it’s much, much worse. He’s planning on brainwashing people into voting for him. I’ve got to stop him.”
“You?” Natalie laughs harshly. “How are you going to stop anybody? Who made you a spy?”
“Does Irina have something to do with all of this?” my mother asks.
“No!” I respond too fast. “Well . . . yes, but . . .”
She throws her hands in the air. “I knew it. I knew there was something I didn’t like about her.”
“How long have you been doing . . . whatever you’re doing?” asks Dad.
“Were you a spy when they adopted you?” chimes in Natalie. “How far back does this go?”
My mother looks shocked at the suggestion. I see her mind working, doing the calculations. I am even more shocked.
“Mom, no!” I shout. “How can you think that way even for a minute?”
“How do I know what to think?” she says, near tears. “All those times you lied to me. Right to my face.”
“Leave her alone,” Ryan interrupts. “She hasn’t been a spy for very long, less than a year. If she lies to you, it’s because she wants to protect you. She protected me.”
I have mixed feelings about what my brother just said. I am filled with gratitude, but I am also primed for an explosion of parental outrage.
“You knew?” shouts Mom.
“Are you a spy, too?” asks Dad.
“I’ve played my part in spy action.” He smiles. “That whole invading-the-embassy thing? That was me buying time for Bridget to save the president’s daughter.”
Which I’m not doing a great job of right at this emotion-packed moment.
“See, I would believe Ryan as a spy,” says Natalie. “That makes sense. But Bridget . . .”
I glare at her. “You’re not the only one things happen to,” I say.
“And I would never want to be,” she fires back. “I always tell people, you’d like Bridget if you got to know her, but then you do insane things like soak the first lady with a fire extinguisher . . .”
“That was to save her from being stung by a fly with a lethal mutant stinger attached.”
Natalie gives me a sad look. “Do you know how hard it is to be your sister?”
My mouth falls open. “Do you know that the Secret Service thanked me for doing that and recruited me to stand in for Jamie Brennan? Do you know that it was me who called you to choreograph Jamie’s big viral hit dance number? It was me who got you the private jet. It was me who danced with you at the hotel. It was me you hugged when everybody was cheering, and . . .” I look at Mom. “It was me you talked to on the phone when you said Bridget didn’t really have a thing . . .”
I see Mom replaying the conversation in her head. She looks shaken.
“Take that back,” blurts out Natalie, her face reddening. “The first lady called me personally. It was all her idea.”
I walk up to her. My face inches from hers. “It was all my idea.”
Natalie tries to push me away. I stand my ground, which infuriates her even more.
“Are you so jealous of me you’d try to ruin my most cherished memory?” she yells.
“This isn’t about you,” I shout back. “This one time something isn’t about you.”
One of Font’s men lumbers forward. “I think we’re going to need to separate you.”
“I thought my family was bad, but these guys never shut up,” one of his colleagues says, nodding.
The first Font guy gestures with his gun for Mom and Natalie to follow him, but Dad puts himself in front of them.
“Very noble,” smirks the guy.
I put myself in front of Dad and point my squirter in the guy’s face.
“I’m guessing you’re not a standoff veteran,” the guy says calmly. “Here’s what generally happens. The first person to shoot usually dies, and the people she’s trying to protect usually die, too. Your move.”
“Bridget, please,” Dad says. “Put the squirter down.”
“I’d take your father’s advice.” The guy grins. “He seems like a smart guy. In fact, why don’t I take that little piece of plastic out of your—aaah!”
The Font guy never reaches the end of his sentence. The end of a long white towel flies into his open mouth. His gun is whipped from his hand by a second towel. It flies in the direction of the broken window. Adam Pacific catches the gun as he jumps through the window. He points it at the other two Font men and lands on his feet beside me. I fight a smile. Now both of us are guarding my family, and we’re both pointing weapons at the Font guys.
“I guess I’m gaining standoff experience,” I tell the Font guy who is staggering in a circle, trying to pull the towel o
ut of his mouth.
“Saved you again, Wilder,” says Pacific.
“One-towel pony,” I reply.
“Better a one-towel pony than a no-towel corpse,” he retorts.
“Excuse me,” Mom breaks in. “Who is this?”
“Adam Pacific, the Wilder family of Reindeer Crescent, Sacramento,” I mumble. “Wilder family, blah-blah-blah.”
“Dude, much respect re: the towel thing,” says Ryan. “You need to sensei me on that.”
“Are you a spy, too?” asks Natalie.
I wince. This is the perfect cue for Pacific to say something mean.
“I’m no Bridget Wilder,” he says. “But I do what I can.”
“Did you just say something nice?” I ask, amazed. “How did that feel? Was it weird?”
“Like eating smoked eel,” he replies. “Tastes weird. You can’t chew it or swallow it. Leaves a nasty taste in your mouth.”
“Oh my God.” Natalie giggles. “You two are totally into each other.”
“We are not!” Pacific and I reply in unison.
“Um, standoff,” Dad reminds us.
“Right,” I say.
Pacific and I point our weapons at the two Font men. They point their weapons at us. This is not an ideal situation. My little squirter has almost no bullets, and Pacific, as he admitted in a moment of weakness, has never fired a gun. If my family weren’t standing behind me, I’d hurl caution to the wind and take out both of these Font lackeys, but my family is standing behind me—literally, if not figuratively—and I can’t take the chance.
“Shoot them!” coughs the Font guy who has finally removed the towel from his mouth.
“We’re professionals,” the guy wheezes at his partners. “We have kills to our name. They’re two little kids. What’ve they got?”
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