by Heidi Lang
“Did you see reason?” Ann asked. “Change your mind?”
“Who do you think you’re talking to?” Jessie scoffed.
Ann sighed. “What, then?”
“Can I borrow one of your bikes?” Jessie grinned. Two minutes later, she was racing through the night, the wheels of Ann’s spare bike whirring softly beneath her.
The next morning, Jessie was practically bursting as she waited for Wes on his doorstep. And waited. He was late. It was full-on morning by now, the sky bright and turning blue as the sun rose lazily into view. She knocked on his door again and again until, finally, he opened it.
“What do you want?” he demanded, then sighed. “Never mind. Don’t answer that. Just . . . just give me a few minutes to finish my coffee, and I’ll be right out.” He shut the door so quickly she couldn’t even manage her foot save.
Jessie paced back and forth. Something about his words bothered her. Why wasn’t he drinking on the porch? He always drank his coffee on the porch. He . . .
Wait a second. He didn’t drink coffee! He always drank tea! What was going on?
Wes came outside. He looked . . . different somehow.
“What?” he asked. “Why are you staring at me?”
“Did you brush your hair?”
“Maybe.”
Jessie narrowed her eyes. “Why? You never brush your hair. You told me the dogs don’t care what you look like.”
“Well, maybe I thought I’d make an effort anyhow.” Wes scowled, running a hand self-consciously through his long grayish-blond hair.
“And why are you drinking coffee?” Jessie demanded. “I thought you said it was a crutch.”
Wes’s furrow deepened. “Do you want to stand here and ask useless questions, or do you want to get going?” He didn’t wait for an answer as he headed to his car.
Jessie glanced once more at his closed front door and then followed him. She felt unsettled, like she was wearing two different kinds of shoes. Wes had always seemed like the kind of person who would never change. She didn’t like that he was suddenly taking his appearance seriously and drinking coffee. She didn’t like it at all.
Wes settled in the front seat of the car and waited until she climbed in back and clipped in her seat belt before saying, “I thought we would start with—”
“Angel,” Jessie said quickly. “We need to drive to Angel’s house.” All thoughts of Wes’s weird behaviors vanished as Jessie told him her plan. The one she had already implemented.
“So you want to keep doing this,” he said.
Jessie frowned. Was that a hint of reluctance? “Has Monique quit the biz yet?” she demanded.
“Doubtful.”
“Then yes, I want to keep doing this.” Jessie crossed her arms.
Wes’s lips twitched upward. “OK then.”
A few minutes later, he pulled in behind a large gray van. “This work?”
Jessie looked out the window. They had a perfect view of Angel’s house. She nodded, then settled back in her seat to watch. Would this be the thing to break Monique, to send her out of the business and out of Wes’s way?
She thought of Max suddenly. Max, who she hadn’t seen since that disastrous party last week, when he’d been kissing Loralee right in front of her. Max, who had told Loralee she couldn’t come to dinner Friday night . . . Jessie put her hands against her face. Her skin felt too hot. She didn’t care if Max moved away and she didn’t see him ever again. It didn’t matter to her.
She had to stop thinking about him.
Jessie glanced at Wes. He was obviously lost in his own thoughts, his lips curved up in a smile. Weird. “Hey.” She nudged his shoulder. “You haven’t asked me how the afternoon dog walks went.”
“That’s because I have the utmost faith in your abilities.”
“Really?” Pride filled Jessie’s chest until she thought she might burst with it, like an overinflated balloon.
“Of course. You were trained by the best.”
Jessie deflated a little. “So really, you have the utmost faith in your own abilities.”
“Exactly.”
“Fine then, I’m not going to ask you how your date went.”
Wes’s smile vanished. “It wasn’t a date.”
Jessie blinked. “But, you went to lunch with Hazel’s mom. It sure looked like a date.”
“It was merely lunch with an old friend. I don’t date. Not anymore.”
“But—”
“Oh look, our target is approaching.”
Jessie shook her head but dropped the subject as Monique parked in front of Angel’s house and went inside the gate. A few minutes later Angel was pulling her straight to the car. Monique opened the door to the back, and Angel dove in . . . and then started barking like mad, jumping around, leaping into the front, then the back.
“Angel, stop! Angel, in back!” Monique tried to get the pit bull under control, but Angel was a dog on a mission and he wasn’t stopping for anything.
The front door opened. “What the heck is going on out here?” Bill, the owner, demanded.
“Oh, uh, he’s just a little extra excited today,” Monique said, as behind her Angel attempted to rip apart the seat. “Angel! Stop that!”
“Are you sure you can handle him?” Bill’s shoulders hunched up so high Jessie thought they might wrap right around his head.
“Of course I can. I’ll just . . . I’ll be off now.” Monique got in and shut her door, and Jessie watched her drive off, Angel still jumping all around the back seat. Jessie glanced back at Bill. He was watching the car, too, and he didn’t look happy. Not happy at all.
“I’d call that a success. I just hope the rest of her dogs are as difficult.” Wes grinned. “Good job, apprentice. You’ve really taken to the art of sabotage.”
Jessie wanted to feel proud, but somehow his words felt more like an insult.
The following day, Wes gave her the morning off from dog walking and had her meet him at noon on the far end of the park. Thanks to Jessie’s spying, they knew Monique always took a midday reading break on a bench in the middle of the park, leaving her car unattended.
“I figured it was my turn to come up with something,” Wes explained. He leaned casually against a nearby tree, a yellow towel slung over his shoulder and a bucket at his feet. The bucket was full of a congealing liquid that smelled strongly of bacon.
Jessie shook her head. “I’m not sure we should do that.”
“What?”
“Whatever it is you have planned with that, that . . . what is that, anyways?”
“This?” Wes lifted the bucket. “It’s bacon grease.”
Jessie wrinkled her nose. “It’s disgusting.”
“Are you a vegetarian?”
“I might be now,” she muttered, as another waft of the smell hit her. The heat of the day baking around them certainly didn’t help, either.
Wes grinned. “Well, your plan yesterday and the day before got me thinking. I was a little skeptical initially, but I’ve decided that maybe you’re on the right track.”
“You really think so?”
“Absolutely,” Wes said. “If all we have to do is make things a little more challenging for our competition, then I’m all in.” He tossed Jessie the key. “Leashes,” he ordered.
Jessie glanced around, then unlocked the car and pulled out the tangle of leashes. Grimacing, she dunked each of them into the bucket of grease, trying to ignore the pieces of fat, the way the liquid sloshed around, all oily and awful. She was never eating bacon again. Probably.
“Now pat them dry, but gently.” Wes handed her the towel. “And quickly.”
“You could help, you know,” Jessie grumbled as she patted each leash, trying to soak up the extra fluid. “After all, this one was your idea.”
“I am helping. I’m supervising.”
Shaking her head, Jessie finished with the leashes, dropped them back in the car, and locked up.
Whistling, Wes picked up the b
ucket and headed down the trail with Jessie at his heels. “The first half of Operation Three is complete. Ready for the second half?”
“We’re doing more today?” Jessie glanced over her shoulder, but no one was watching. “Don’t you have your own dogs to walk?”
Wes’s good mood evaporated. “No, actually. I don’t have any dog walks this afternoon.” Silence thickened around them until Jessie felt like she was swimming through that bucket of bacon grease.
“Er, what’s the second half?” she finally asked, unable to take it any longer.
“I thought you’d never ask.” His grin was back in place, but it looked fake, as if he’d remembered to pull his lips back but forgot to tell the rest of his face that he was smiling. Jessie had to look away, and she didn’t complain, not even when he told her the plan. Not even when he told her what she’d have to do. And not even when he handed her the horrifying bucket.
“Zelda, stop! Stop, you, you muppet!” Monique’s voice was loud and shrill, easily carrying over the sound of barking. “Ack! Sweetpea, no! Why are you doing this? No, no, Sammy, not you, too!”
Jessie peeked out from behind her tree. Monique was struggling to walk three dogs down the main path. Each dog was very intent on jumping at the leashes of the others. So intent they didn’t seem to care if they crashed into each other, or into Monique.
“I say, can’t you control your dogs?” a passerby said.
“This is ridiculous,” another person declared. A third person took a quick picture as Monique flushed and pleaded with the dogs, eventually getting them into some sort of order.
Jessie chewed her lip. Monique looked like she was on the verge of tears, and it made Jessie’s chest feel tight. She knew exactly what that felt like, how hard it was to keep moving when your eyesight was all blurry, and you couldn’t blink or the tears would tumble down your cheeks and everyone would see you were crying. Did Monique really deserve this?
The people around here are practically begging me to take their dogs out. Wes will be folding up his business in no time.
Jessie recalled Monique’s words, and her hands clenched around the handle of the bucket. She squashed the guilty part of herself down, picturing it as a piece of paper to be crushed into a tiny, tiny ball. She had to stay strong. Monique could always quit and do something else, something that wouldn’t ruin Wes’s life and take away the one thing he cared about.
Jessie headed further into the park, along the route she knew Monique would take, spilling bacon grease along the way until the bucket was empty. As she jogged back through the park, she could hear the dogs barking, could hear the desperation in Monique’s voice. She reminded herself again that Monique deserved this, and she tried not to listen to the sounds of chaos behind her. She imagined herself once more as a spy. Just a spy following orders.
CHAPTER 23
“Mom is on a rampage,” Ann said the moment Jessie walked in the door. “I guess our Thursday night fish has gone missing?”
Jessie froze, her heart in her mouth. She could taste its pulse beating in her throat. It tasted like blood and panic, smothered in guilt. The image of her aunt smiling proudly filled her head, and her stomach twisted like one of Monique’s leashes.
“Stop looking like that,” Ann said. “It’s not that big a deal. Dad said he’d take us all out to Bantavi’s for dinner. He thinks maybe he just forgot to buy the fish this week.” Ann shrugged. “If you can stop making that face and keep your mouth shut, we’ll all be eating ravioli and this whole thing will blow right over.”
Jessie swallowed, then nodded. She tried to smooth out her expression, picturing her face as a mask, blank and lifeless.
“Now you just look constipated,” Ann said.
Jessie scowled at her.
“That’s better.” Ann laughed.
“Ah, Jessie. Glad you’re here,” Uncle David said breezily. “We’re heading out for dinner tonight.”
“Ask her about the fish,” Aunt Beatrice called from the kitchen.
“For the last time, Bea, forget about the fish!” Uncle David yelled. “Let’s just go, have a nice family dinner, and move on, OK?”
Jessie got ready quickly and quietly, then spent the whole drive into town looking out the window, trying to avoid eye contact with anyone.
“Stop looking so twitchy,” Ann hissed as they trailed her parents into the restaurant. “It just screams guilty conscience.”
“I’m not being . . .” Jessie’s jaw dropped, the words falling right out of her mouth.
“What? What are you looking at?” Ann spun, searching the room, and then she saw him, too. “Oh my,” she whispered.
Sitting in the corner, looking strange in a button-down shirt with barely any dog hair clinging to it, was Wes. And he wasn’t alone, either. At first Jessie thought he was out on another one of those nondate dates with Hazel’s owner. But as they followed the hostess past his table, she got a better look at the woman, and she realized she wasn’t Hazel’s owner. Still, she did look familiar. A sudden image came to mind, an image of a woman leaning against Wes with a leash wrapped around her wrist, a woman with long, frizzy, blond hair.
Was that . . . Wes’s ex-wife?
“Stop staring,” Ann hissed.
But Jessie couldn’t help it. Was this why Wes seemed happier recently? But he didn’t look happy now. He looked . . . like her dad, she realized. Like her dad whenever they went out to dinner with his friends. Like part of him was sitting there and laughing with them, but the rest of him was endlessly searching the space between the seats, waiting for Jessie’s mom to come back and knowing she never would.
Jessie finally tore her eyes away from Wes, and when the waiter came for her order, she found herself ordering the fish, even though she was tired of it, even though this was her chance for something different.
She wanted to pretend things didn’t always change.
Beep-beep! Beep-beep!
“Turn it off, would you?” Ann threw a pillow at Jessie. “It’s been going off for, like, five minutes already.”
“Sorry, didn’t hear it,” Jessie mumbled, hitting the off switch on her alarm. She hadn’t slept well, and she felt like her head was stuffed full of cloth. Still, it was Friday. Just today and she could take the weekend off. She loved walking the dogs, but these sabotage missions were taking their toll on her.
“You’re the worst,” Ann grumbled. “These sunrise excursions have got to end. Seriously.”
“Duly noted.” Jessie got dressed quickly and was out before Ann could yell at her any more.
She found Wes outside his house with his mug of tea. She’d planned on asking him about his date, but he actually looked happy to see her for once, and she didn’t want to ruin that.
“I have good news, kiddo,” he said.
“Should I be worried?”
“Very funny.” He took a sip. “Zelda is back.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Apparently her people heard how much trouble the other dog walker was having with her. No amount of pictures and cute notes could smooth it over.” He chuckled.
“That’s . . . that’s great,” Jessie said.
“It gets better. Sweetpea is back, too. Her people decided they didn’t want someone so irresponsible to be walking her. Something about leaving bags of poop on the trail?” His grin was so wide Jessie felt sure his face would split.
Jessie tried on her own smile. She wasn’t sure why, but it felt unnatural, like forcing a glove over a foot. “So, does that mean we won? We can stop Operation Sabotage?” Maybe she just wasn’t cut out for this life of crime.
“No, kiddo, this is just the beginning.”
Jessie’s heart sank. “Oh.”
Wes carefully placed his mug on the coaster on the top porch step and stood up, streaks of light slowly lengthening across the sky behind him.
“Do I at least get another Rule of the Ruff?” Jessie asked. “Something like ‘It’s a dog-eat-dog world’?”
/> He winced. “That is a particularly offensive expression. And no. No new Rules today. Instead, I have something else planned.” He led her around to his backyard, where he picked up . . .
“Not another bucket,” Jessie groaned.
“Don’t worry, this one just smells like paint.”
“Why?”
“Because it is paint.”
“Oh.” A few seconds later, she had to ask. “Er, why are we bringing a bucket full of paint?”
Wes grinned. “You’ll see.”
Jessie felt like she’d created a monster. Like her first pranks had just opened the door for Wes’s inner child to come roaring out, and now there was no shutting it back in until he was done. Just like when she’d run with Angel, all she could do was hang on and see it through.
Crackle-crackle. “Done yet, kiddo?” Hiss-crackle.
“Roger that.” Jessie carefully folded the towels and put them back on Monique’s front seat. Then she locked the door and slipped away with the bucket of remaining paint, not stopping until she reached a large elm tree. Hiding the bucket, she sat down and waited. She didn’t have to wait long.
“. . . believe you two, jumping into the pond like that,” Monique was saying. She had a pair of very bedraggled white poodles with her. “Honestly. Why do you always do that?”
The dogs looked at her, their dripping faces unapologetic. Jessie shrank down farther as Monique unlocked her car and grabbed one of her green towels.
“What the—oh no. No. How? How is this happening?” Monique’s voice dropped to a low mutter as she wiped frantically at the dog’s fur, which was turning more and more green.
Jessie stood up and quietly crept away, holding back her laughter. At least this was harmless. Wes had assured her the paint was completely nontoxic, so it would just wash out and wouldn’t be a big deal—
“What have you done to my dogs?”
Jessie stopped and turned back. A very tall, thin man was yelling at Monique, his voice cutting across the quiet of the park until everyone was watching. “Look at them! Just look at their beautiful fur. Once so white, so fluffy . . . and now this!”