“Why didn’t you tell me this before? Don’t you think that’s kind of important information for me to have?”
Bonner drops back into her seat. “No, I just presumed you would act like the professional you allegedly are. You need to make sure our guests are well taken care of, do you understand?”
I stare at her until she looks away. It takes only a few seconds. Is she setting us up? Is the vice president?
“You’re dismissed,” Bonner says without meeting my gaze. I wait a few more seconds to make her squirm, then I turn and put my hand on the doorknob. “But, Iris . . .” I glance back. Fear has taken the place of anxiety. I’ve never seen her look like this before.
“Don’t let me down,” she says. “You can’t afford it.”
CHAPTER 6
“So when do we get to, you know, do stuff?”
I stop and set my pen on top of the notes I’m taking concerning a mission in 1945 when my dad took a bribe from the president of an energy company. I look at Colton. “What?”
“You know.” Colton waves to the back staircase, leading down to the gravity chamber and situation rooms. “Stuff. Like what the dude with the orange hair and the guy with the crooked nose are doing.”
I’m sitting on the library’s burgundy Persian rug with about a hundred documents spread around me and a yellow legal pad on my lap. It’s Wednesday. Only two days left until my mom has to be out of McLean. I’m trying not to think about that because I don’t have a solution. Hell, my mom hasn’t even returned my call from last weekend.
But then again, that’s not unusual. When she’s manic, she has way too much going on to think about making a phone call, and when she’s on a low, she can’t bring herself to press the numbers.
Paige is sitting next to me. She bites her bottom lip and reaches into the box for another stack of documents. Mike is spread out on the couch and doesn’t bother to look up either.
Yellow and Green were both summoned to meet with federal investigators downtown this morning, and the only other Annum Guard member around is Indigo. He’s sitting at one of the two computers in the corner. He looks at me for a half second, his eyebrows shoot up in disbelief, then he turns back around.
“First of all,” I say, “the guy with the orange hair and the guy with the crooked nose have names. They’re Orange and Blue.” As I’m sure you know. As I say their names, a feeling of jealousy pricks my skin, because both Orange and Abe were sent on reconnaissance missions this morning by Bonner. Orange’s has something to do with Eta—Violet’s mom—rigging a gubernatorial election, while Abe is at a riot in Providence in the 1800s. It seems like my teammates are going on missions left and right, and I haven’t been on one since I stalked my dad in 1939.
I shake my head—like that will get rid of this feeling. “And second of all . . .” I think about how to word this. Be nice to Colton. Be nice to Colton. I swallow my pride. “Second of all, only very select people can project, if that’s what you’re talking about. And I hate to break it to you, but you’re not one of them.” And then I laugh this phony, contrived laugh that no one joins.
“Well then, when do we get to sit in on briefings and stuff?” Colton asks.
Never, jackass. NEVER.
“That’s not up to me.”
“No offense, but this is boring.” Colton waves his hand at the piles of paper stacked all over the library.
“Dude,” Mike says, finally looking up. “Chill.”
“Shut up, Baxter.” Then Colton looks at me. “I mean, don’t take this the wrong way or anything”—I brace myself—“but we’re all kind of VIPs, you know?” He waves his hand around the room again. “So I thought we’d get to do more interesting stuff. I’m sure the White House wouldn’t have us reading about”—he looks at a paper and squints—“alternative minimum tax.”
At least three different responses flash through my head, but they all involve four-letter words or an insult to Colton’s manhood, so I think a little harder. I draw a complete blank.
“Hey, Iris, I have a question for you.” Mike scoots down off the couch and hands over a sheet of paper. “This here.” I look down. It’s a balance sheet from the 1970s.
Colton scowls and whips back around in his chair.
I squint at the paper. I don’t understand half of it. Three quarters of it. “Er, I’m not sure what this is. Which box did it come from?”
“Oh, don’t worry about it.” Mike leans in closer to me. The stubble from a day-old shave brushes my shoulder. “I don’t really have a question.” He shoots a half-glance at Colton, then drops his voice to a whisper. “I know he can be difficult. It’s part of the culture he grew up in.”
“Mm-hmm,” is all I say. Because that’s such a BS excuse. Mike and Paige grew up in the same culture, and somehow both of them are perfectly capable of acting like normal people.
“I think we’re going out to grab a bite to eat later tonight,” Mike whispers. “You should come.” But before I can answer, he slips back onto the couch.
I reach down and grab a stack of papers. It’s a stack that Paige worked on. I can tell immediately because it’s highlighted and tabbed with about eight different colors—as if a gay pride flag mated with a bag of Skittles, and their baby threw up all over the pages.
Paige looks over and sees me holding her papers. “Do you need the key I made again?” She grabs a three-by-five index card and thrusts it into my face. “Pink highlighter means an economic issue. Yellow highlighter is political. Blue tabs are companies to investigate, while green is—”
I hold up a hand to stop her. “I’ve got it,” I lie. I don’t look very hard at Paige’s work. I learned early on that she’s the kind of person who highlights 90 percent of the page, which completely defeats the purpose. But seeing as how none of these documents have anything to do with Eagle, I haven’t called her out for it.
“It’s fine, Paige. Really.” I set down the stack and pick up another. Colton’s initials are in the top-right corner, but other than that, the first page is untouched. I flip to the next, then to the next, then to the rest until I’ve hit the end. No highlights, no tabs, no notes, nothing.
Colton is now sitting with his back against one arm of the couch. One leg is tucked underneath him, while the other is splayed straight out. He has on headphones—the big, bulky kind that don’t actually make the music sound any better but are meant to advertise that you dropped a grand on them—and is moving his head back and forth with his eyes closed.
“Colton!”
I don’t get a response.
“Colton!”
I ball up a piece of paper and send it flying. It bounces off his forehead, and his eyes spring open.
“What the hell?” He pulls his headphones down so that they rest on his neck and glares at me.
I hold up his papers. “You didn’t mark anything on these.”
He shrugs. “I didn’t think there was anything worth marking.” He slips the headphones back onto his ears and looks down. It takes him only a second or two to get the sway back.
I clench my hands together. Not because I don’t agree with him—there’s basically nothing worth marking in any of these documents—but because I don’t think there’s been a second in Colton’s presence that I haven’t wanted to punch him. I stare at him for so long that he has to feel my gaze. He has to know how annoyed I am. And yet he doesn’t look up.
I reach for the next stack. Mike’s initials are on the top. I scan the first page. It’s one of Orange’s missions. He tracked my dad’s 1968 meeting with some guy named Xavier Portis who worked for RA Enterprises. Yeah, whatever. I drop the stack onto the floor, then stop.
Wait.
I grab it and check the name again. Xavier Portis.
XP.
“Hey, Mike, come here a second,” I say without looking up. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him get up and sit down next to me. I hand the page over and let him scan it.
“Oh yeah, the RA thing. I remember
this.”
“When did you look at this?”
He shrugs. “Two days ago, maybe?” And then his face lights up. “Is it important?”
It’s the best lead we’ve had in four months. But I can’t tell him that. I can’t tell anyone that. Bonner and Red are the only people in the Guard who know about XP.
So I give him a shrug of my own. “Where are the boxes of documents on this?”
Mike leans in closer to the page, and his shoulder brushes against mine. He smells good. Like expensive cologne and peppermint. His fingers find the middle of the page. “Boxes 347 and 348. I’ll see if they’re still in the library.”
But before he can even move, an alarm blares.
This isn’t the security alarm, which is loud and chirpy. This is two low, slow blasts, like a siren.
“What is that?” Indigo asks, jumping up from behind the computer.
Both of us scramble to the door as two more blasts sound through Annum Hall. Violet rushes down the stairs and jumps into the foyer.
“What’s going on?” she asks. “I’ve never heard that before.”
I look back into the library. Paige is sitting on the floor, with her mouth open, and Mike hasn’t moved an inch, but Colton is up and heading for me.
I hold out my arm. “You stay there! All of you, stay there!”
Then Bonner’s door bangs open. She looks at us for a split second, and her face says it all. Something is very wrong. She rushes past us to the back stairwell. Her heels stomp-stomp down the concrete staircase.
“Stay there!” I yell again into the library, then I glance from Indigo to Violet. The three of us react at the same time. I nudge Indigo out of the way as I race to the back door, while Violet straight-up bodychecks me, flinging me into a table. I steady myself and follow her down the stairs, Indigo right behind me.
It’s not hard to figure out where Bonner is. The door to Situation Room One is wide open, and the three of us barrel inside. Red is standing at the front of the room, staring at a computer projection screen that’s totally black except for the words “ERROR: SUBJECT NOT FOUND.” His shoulders are tensed, like he’s forgetting to breathe.
“What do you mean it just deactivated?” Bonner yells over the blare of the alarm. “It can’t just deactivate! And shut the damned alarm off!”
“I’m telling you, it did!” Red shouts back. “And I’m working on it!” He bends over a laptop and punches the keys.
“Do you have anything?” Bonner asks. “Vitals? A location?”
“Nothing! I have nothing. All I have is—” Then Red’s head snaps up and his eyes narrow at the sight of me, Indigo, and Violet. “What the hell are you all doing here?”
Bonner turns around, too. But surprisingly, she doesn’t look mad at the intrusion.
Violet takes a step back. “We just wanted—”
“What’s going on?” I demand as the alarm blares again.
“Red, turn that blasted thing off!” Bonner says. “You three, come inside and shut the door.”
Red grunts in frustration, taps a few more keys, and the alarm shuts off, midblast.
“Sit,” Bonner says, her eyes still on us. Indigo and Violet drop into chairs. I take a little more time. The three of us stare at her and wait.
Bonner takes a slow breath. “Orange’s tracker deactivated about two minutes ago.”
I gasp, and I hear Indigo and Violet do the same. That’s another new thing around here. After Yellow and I proved just how easy it was to get rid of the old trackers, one of Bonner’s first orders of business was to insist on new ones. Better ones. Trackers that required a surgical procedure and general anesthesia to implant computer chips at the bases of our necks. There’s no cutting these things out without risking death. And there’s no deactivating them either. This can mean only one thing.
“Orange is dead?” Violet whispers.
“No!” Red says. “We don’t know that. We don’t know anything at this point.”
“We need to send a team in immediately to assess the situation,” Bonner says. “The three of you won’t have much time to prepare.”
“We don’t need time,” Indigo says. “What was Orange’s exact mission?”
“Simple reconnaissance,” Red answers, but his eyes shift to the left, which makes me sit up straighter. He’s not telling the whole truth. “Observing a previous mission in which Eta tampered with the 1904 Massachusetts governor election.”
“No problem,” Indigo says, jumping to his feet. “I’m very familiar with that time period. I’ve gone on a ton of early twentieth-century missions. Plus, Yellow never shuts up about it.” This is the truth. We all have time periods we specialize in. Yellow’s is the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. That girl will talk your ear off about corsets and courtesy.
Red nods. “Change and hurry back. I’ll tell you where you need to go.”
“No, I will tell you where you need to go,” Bonner says, like she’s reminding us she’s still in the room.
Indigo and Violet exchange a glance and start for the door. “Wait!” I say, turning to Red. I ignore Bonner’s scowl. “Abe—I mean Blue. Is his tracker still on?”
Red nods. “For now.”
That’s not the reassurance I need. “Should we send someone back to get him?” I hear the anxiety in my voice.
“No,” Bonner says.
“I agree,” Red says. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with. For all we know, we could be sending you into an ambush.” The way he says that word—ambush—makes me pause.
I follow my teammates out the door. Indigo and Violet go up the main staircase, but I stop in the library.
“What’s going on?” Paige asks with a worried look on her face.
“Alarm malfunction. It’s nothing,” I say. “Why don’t you guys call it a day, go home, and we’ll see you back in the morning?”
Mike raises an eyebrow, clearly not buying the explanation, which . . . duh. No one would buy that explanation. “Are you sure we can’t help?” he asks.
“Positive. An IT contractor is on his way over. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
Colton slings his bag over his shoulder. “Whatever. Anyone want to go to a bar? I’ve got my fake ID on me.”
“No, Colton,” Paige says as she slides the handles of a brown purse onto her arm.
Mike doesn’t say anything else. He just . . . stares at me. I can’t quite read the look, but I don’t have time to decipher it.
“The dinner offer still stands,” he finally says to me.
“Thanks, but I really think I should stay here until IT shows up. Maybe next time?”
He gives me a smile that’s equally warm and wary, then shuffles behind his friends. Paige nods a good-bye. Colton is already halfway down the block.
I shut the door after them and lock it.
My mind flies to Abe as my feet pound up the steps. He has to be okay, he just has to. But then I stop myself. Worrying about Abe isn’t going to do any good. It’s just going to distract me from finding Orange, which is what we have to do.
Orange can’t be dead. There’s like a zero percent chance of violence on these stupid recon missions. Okay, maybe not zero, but less than one. We get in, we watch from a distance, we get out. And if we’re compromised, we abandon immediately. Them’s the rules. No, there has to be another explanation.
I think of the weird vibe I got from Red. Maybe this wasn’t just a simple recon mission. Red and Orange are pretty tight. What if they were up to something?
The sinking feeling in my stomach lingers as I step into a swath of purple fabric that Yellow refers to as my “afternoon dress,” and I slip on a pair of low boots with pointed toes and buttons on the side. What if Orange is dead? What if we go back and find his body? I don’t think I can bear it. I mean, I don’t know Orange very well, but I certainly don’t want to find him dead.
Violet’s shutting her door as I open mine. Her dress is very similar to mine except that it’s salmon
pink. The color really works with her light-brown skin. She has her short hair pulled back into a tight bun and looks like she’s about to puke. She’s never been the best in high-stress situations.
Indigo’s waiting for us by the stairs, in gray, high-waisted pants with a vest and jacket. He drops a top hat onto his head.
“Any problems letting me lead this one?” he asks. Violet and I both shake our heads. Now is not the time for a who’s-better-than-whom pissing match. Indigo knows the historical period the best. We’ll defer to him.
Bonner and Red are standing in the hallway outside the gravity chamber. Red clasps Indigo on the shoulder. I guess it’s obvious he’s leading this one.
“It’s been eleven minutes already, so we need to hurry,” Red says. “Orange was last tracked inside the State House, standing on the west side of the rotunda. By all accounts, the rotunda should be full of people, so someone has to have seen something. I would imagine you’re walking into chaos and confusion. Can you do this?”
Beside me, Indigo swallows what I can only assume is a gigantic lump in his throat and nods. “We have to do this.”
Bonner holds open the chamber door for us but doesn’t make eye contact. I don’t know if she’s worried or angry or what. Red tells us the date and time to set our watches, and then he wishes us good luck.
I take a step closer to Red and whisper, “Are you sure there’s nothing else I need to know?”
Red looks into my eyes, and I see hesitation and understanding. But all he says is, “Watch yourself.”
I don’t know if he’s talking about the mission or my question.
I step into the gravity chamber, slam my watch face shut, and I’m tumbling down to 1904.
CHAPTER 7
As soon as we land in the past, we’re on our feet and running. The gold dome of the State House hovers over us. A crowd is milling around the entrance on Beacon Street, and I shove a man out of my way as I race up the steps toward the door.
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