The Inside Job

by Jackson Pearce

  And then I scowled at myself, because there I was again, wishing for SRS.

  “Let me think,” Otter said. Behind him, Clatterbuck hopped up and down on his toes. He looked like he might burst. Otter turned to look at him. “Don’t tell me—you’ve got suits in your suitcase of disguises? Or wait, no—tuxedos. Ball gowns?” Otter sounded oddly hopeful.

  “No—well, yes, but they’ll fit only me. But I do know where I can find something for Hale and Walter. Hang on,” Clatterbuck said eagerly, and took off through the house. Curiosity got to me, Walter, and Otter; we followed Clatterbuck, who stopped in the center of the hallway and yanked on a cord, revealing attic stairs. We climbed up after him into a surprisingly tidy attic. There were boxes everywhere, but they were neatly labeled, and plastic sheets protected what little furniture was there. Clatterbuck threw open the lid of a nearby trunk, the old-fashioned kind with an arched top.

  “I checked the whole place for bugs the first day, and I saw these,” he explained as he rooted around in the trunk, his body blocking our view.

  “Really?” Otter asked, impressed. I’ll admit it—I think we all sometimes forgot that, strange as he was, Clatterbuck had been a League agent once. I felt smug on Clatterbuck’s behalf, and I grinned at Otter’s surprised expression.

  “Here, here,” Clatterbuck said, finally rising from the trunk. He was holding . . . some folded khaki pants.

  “Huh?” Walter asked.

  “The style hasn’t changed in . . . well. In forever, basically. So they won’t even look out of date!” Clatterbuck said excitedly.

  “Khaki pants?” I asked.

  Clatterbuck laughed. “No!” He let one pair of pants unfold and then held them up for us to see. “It’s a riding habit. This farm only does breeding now, but before the owners retired, they were a show stable. This is what you wear to ride a horse in a fancy show.”

  I grinned. “Or what we’d wear if we’d just finished riding horses at a fancy country club?”

  “Exactly!” Clatterbuck says, pleased. “And maybe I can find some hats! And a riding crop! And maybe we can even borrow one of the horses—”

  I patted Clatterbuck’s shoulder. “I think the clothes will be plenty.”

  It took a few changes before Walter and I found habits that fit. Well, “fit” is a word I’m using very, very loosely.

  Walter, given the fact that every day the guy practically grew another inch, looked like an honest-to-goodness Olympian. I mean, seriously—he could have walked right out and jumped on a horse and won the gold medal for the Republic of Muscle Tone. I, on the other hand, looked like a sausage being strangled. My legs barely fit into the spandex-y pants. They were a little too long, which only made me look shorter. The white shirt was decent enough, but when I tucked it in, my body kind of looked like a mushroom cloud of smoke erupting from the pants.

  You’d think this kind of thing wouldn’t bother me as much anymore, now that I wasn’t surrounded by classmates making fun of me. You’d be wrong.

  But we had work to do, so I sighed, gave Walter a yeah, I know it’s bad look, and the two of us went on our way.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Geneva Country Club was right on the edge of Lake Geneva, the lake the city was named after. It had a spectacular view of the snowcapped mountains and a billion old trees with gnarled branches thicker than my body. It also had a very big gate out front, with a very big security guard. He waved people in fancy cars through one at a time, smiling and greeting them in a variety of languages—it was pretty impressive.

  “Excusez-moi, monsieurs!” the guard said, stepping in front of us. “Peux-je vous aidez?” Can I help you?

  I smiled at him brightly and answered in French, but I let my voice take on a bit of a British accent, since the Kessel brothers were at school in England. “Hello—Sven, yes? We’re here with our father, Monsieur Theodore Kessel.”

  “He’s an oil baron!” Walter said cheerily. I did my best not to glare.

  “Monsieur Kessel?” the guard said, eyeing Walter suspiciously. “But he went in ages ago. Why weren’t you with him?”

  I looked at Walter and folded my arms. “That would be because of my dear brother here, and his big mouth. Victor complained about father not sending any decent horses with us to school. Then they got in an argument. Then Father said that if we were going to be so unappreciative, perhaps it’d do us well to learn the value of hard work. And then—well, let me summarize it for you: he threw us out of the limo a kilometer back. I think my brother’s a little dizzy from all the walking here,” I said, lowering my voice at the end.

  Sven laughed broadly and gave Walter a pitying look. He dropped his voice a bit. “Well, that was a bold thing for him to say, seeing as how your father inherited his fortune, no? But let’s leave that between us.” He winked. “All right, all right—go on in, gentlemen. Passez un bon après-midi!”

  I grinned at him, and Walter and I hustled in. Walter looked like his heart rate was just now slowing—the whole bit about getting thrown out of the limo was off book, and it’d rattled him. What was crazy about Walter was that he had all the skills to be an amazing spy. It was just that he always freaked out and worried he didn’t, and that wrecked him.

  “You okay?” I asked him.

  “Yeah. Yeah,” he said. “Sorry. I just haven’t done any real fieldwork in . . . well. Since you and I were on that mission to the sports school for SRS.”

  We walked toward the country club’s main building, sidestepping golf carts and the occasional horseback rider—who were indeed wearing the exact same clothes Walter and I were. We stuck our chests out, like the proud sons-of-a-rich-guy we were, looking down only to check that our nails were clean.

  The main building looked something like a castle—in fact, I think it used to actually be a castle. It was solid stone, with large, arched wood doors and honest-to-goodness turrets at the tops, which were dotted with white and red flags. Behind flower-covered windows, I could see giant leather sofas and ladies wearing thick pearl necklaces. Black cars were delivering a constant stream of fabulously dressed people to the wood doors, where a butler wearing white gloves bowed a bit and ushered the visitors inside. For a moment I worried that the butler would question us like the guard had, but no—when we walked up, he merely tipped his head to us, smiled, and held the door. We were in.

  Now we just needed to find some kids our age. Here was what I figured—the books were likely stolen by one of the adults at Hastings’s birthday party. Those adults were in their sixties now. And their kids—the ones who were Hastings’s age—were in their thirties and forties. But their kids would be around my age and, if I had to guess, didn’t even know those fancy jeweled books in their family castle were stolen. Because, come on—what kind of parent would tell his children that dear old mom and dad were thieves?

  We found a handful of kids our age down by the pool. There were only about six or seven total—hanging out at your parents’ country club probably wasn’t the most popular of activities—but together they looked like a collection. These kids all looked like variations on the same thing—the same way stamps or coins or different types of cats are all variations on the same thing. They all had the same bored expression. They all had on designer sunglasses. Almost all were tapping away on phones or tablets or laptops. The handful that wasn’t was lying on towels, looking bored, or reapplying lip gloss (both the boys and the girls).

  Two girls looked up as we walked into the pool area. Their eyes glanced off me immediately; when they saw Walter, they tipped their sunglasses down their noses and grinned.

  I ducked my head so no one would see me talking into my comm. “Beatrix, we’ve got two girls—thirteenish. One brown hair, one blond hair. Blonde has a Band-Aid on her arm, the sort you’d get after you get a shot—”

  “Okay, okay, hang on . . .” Beatrix typed frantically back at the poney farm. “Perfect—the blonde is Aria Stoneman—she’s the youngest of the Stoneman family, and the
y were at Hastings’s party. Pulling up records now . . . Looks like Aria just got inoculations for a glamping trip to Africa.”

  “Glamping?” Walter muttered.

  “Glamour camping. It’s like camping, only the tent is a five-star tent with running water and a Jacuzzi.”

  “Wow. Okay, glamping. Got it,” I said, which was a lie. I most certainly did not have this. We approached.

  “Hey,” I said. Walter grinned at me, as if to say, Strong start!

  “Hi,” Aria said simply, though not unkindly. “You’re new.”

  I laughed nervously. “Yeah—to this club, anyway. I’m George. This is Ringo.” Walter frowned at his new fake name—but it wasn’t like we could have been Albert and Victor Kessel to these people. They probably knew the real Kessel brothers, or at least, would know that we weren’t them.

  Beatrix tittered in my ear. “Ringo?”

  Aria smiled. Her teeth were perfectly straight. “Parents have a thing for the Beatles, huh? My name’s Aria. Were you two out riding?”

  I laughed a little. “Yeah. Didn’t think to bring a change of clothes, and now we’re stuck here till Dad finishes his golf game.”

  “I know the feeling,” Aria said. “My mom’s always, Aria, they have a pool! It’ll be fun! And then I’m stuck here for hours and hours and hours. Like I don’t have anything better to do than sit at her country club—”

  “Glamping. I know what glamping is,” Walter interrupted. I lifted my eyebrows at him. Slick, Walter. Slick.

  “Uh . . . cool,” Aria said, then looked back to her book.

  Walter gave me an apologetic look; I tried not to sigh too heavily at him. I turned my head to give Beatrix physical descriptions as often as I could, and eventually, she’d helped me pinpoint Jeffery Alabaster and Archimedes St. Claire in addition to Aria. Three grandchildren of our potential art thieves.

  Those were the kids we had to get talking.

  I sat down on a pool chair close to Archimedes St. Claire; a waiter on the other side of the pool whisked over a glass of water so fast, it made me jump. I thanked him and tried to find my way back to a conversation—it’d mostly fizzled, with nearly everyone returning to their phones or drinks or bored stares.

  “So, what would you be doing if you weren’t here, then?” I asked Aria.

  Aria frowned. “I don’t know. Something else.”

  “Movies! People go to movies,” Walter said.

  I was beginning to wish I’d sent Walter to the movies.

  Aria looked bemused this time. “Sure. I could go to the movies, I guess. Or . . .” She put her book down and looked suddenly discouraged. “I don’t know, actually. I’ve just always had to come to the country club or go on their yacht or to the house in Paris.”

  “Or that fancy hotel in Australia,” Archimedes chimed in.

  “Yeah. That. But I bet I could find something to do,” Aria said wistfully.

  I nodded. “I get it. Sometimes it feels like you just live in your parents’ world, right?”

  “Right,” Aria and Archimedes said in unison.

  The conversation drifted off a bit—I had to get them back on board, keep them talking, so I could steer us into discussing art and whether a set of fancy books might be tucked away in their basements. The easiest way to keep someone talking was to give them something. An offering, a trade, a token of trust—a gift, no matter how small, greased the wheels. But what could I give kids who had everything?

  Exactly what they wanted: a way out of their parents’ world.

  I looked over at Walter, and said loudly, “Let’s get out of here, man.”

  Walter frowned. “Huh?”

  “Let’s get out of here. I saw some golf carts out back by the trees. That’s way better than sitting around by a pool. We could do this at home.”

  With my peripheral vision, I saw heads lift, eyes flit onto us. Walter spoke again, a little loud, a little too much like he was in a play, but it’d do. “All right. Yeah. The pool is lame!”

  “So you’re going to go play golf?” one of the collection kids—it was Archimedes—said from a few lawn chairs away. He looked skeptical.

  I laughed. “No. We’re going to steal a car. Well. A golf cart.”

  Now I really had everyone’s attention. Aria closed her book; Jeffery put his phone down and sat up. The other collection kids leaned forward. I waited till they were all staring, all eager, to say, “Anyone wanna help?”

  No one said anything.

  I shrugged. “All right, fine. Stay here. Have a nice day, ladies and gentlemen.”

  “Wait!” Aria said, and jumped up. She grinned. “I wanna help. I mean, it’s just a golf cart. We can’t get in that much trouble, right?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The others agreed with Aria (“I mean, even if we get caught, it won’t be as bad as the time I burned down the guest wing . . .”) and followed me and Walter outside. The golf carts were where I expected them to be, based on the traffic patterns I’d noticed out front, but there was a caddie standing at the front of each, his eyes glazed over with heat and general world-weariness.

  “Beatrix—” I muttered into my comm.

  “Please, Hale. As if I wasn’t already doing it,” she said, laughing. Another second, and suddenly the caddie’s walkie-talkie crackled. A voice—Clatterbuck’s voice—said, “We need all caddies out front. We have an emergency. Someone’s golf clubs have . . . uh . . . exploded.”

  “What?” the caddie said just as I said the exact same thing to Beatrix.

  “I told him to come up with a caddie emergency!” she said.

  “I do not get paid enough to deal with exploding golf clubs,” the caddie muttered in German and then ran toward the front of the building. I crossed the path as he rounded the stone wall; the others followed me, looking delighted and confused. I motioned for everyone to get into the golf carts that were on the shady side, where the trees would hide us from view of the restaurant’s veranda.

  I stopped at the first cart and swallowed. I’d read about doing this in Automotive Handling class at SRS but had never done it. Walter looked as anxious as the collection kids, which wasn’t giving me much confidence—I’d been hoping he’d be able to help, if I forgot . . .

  “I need your hair band,” I said to Aria.

  “Wait, what?” she said.

  “It’ll be great—trust me,” I said, holding out my hand.

  Aria looked at Archimedes, Jeffery, and the rest of the collection, and then reached up and pulled the rubber band out of her hair. I grinned the way I thought my dad would—he’s the mischievous sort—then popped open the plastic cover behind the golf cart seat.

  “So, there’s this thing on golf carts—they call it the governor. It keeps you from being able to go really fast,” I explained as I reached down into the engine. “But you can disable it with”—I withdrew my hands and looked up at everyone—“a well-placed hair band.”

  “So we can . . . go fast in a golf cart?” Archimedes said, sounding unimpressed.

  “You’d rather go back to the pool?” Walter asked, folding his arms.

  Archimedes shook his head emphatically and then turned to another one of the collection girls. “Give me your hair tie, Merry. Or wait, no—give it to him. You can take the mayor off this one too, right?” he asked, tapping the next golf cart in line.

  I grinned. “The governor. And absolutely.”

  There were eight of us—me, Walter, Aria, Jeffery, Archimedes, and another three collection kids, so we packed in the carts four each. Archimedes was driving the second; he climbed in, gave me a tentative look, and then tapped the accelerator. The golf cart lunged forward—Archimedes braked and then grinned recklessly.

  “This is going to be awesome,” he said. “Let’s go!”

  Then he floored it; the cart tilted onto two wheels and nearly tipped, but then it shot forward like a bullet from a gun. Walter slid into the passenger seat of my golf cart; Aria and Jeffery leaped onto the back, cl
utching the edges of the roof.

  “Go! They’re getting away!” Aria squealed, pointing.

  I smashed my foot onto the accelerator, and we jetted off. Aria and Jeffery howled from the backseat as we raced after Archimedes and the others. We broke out of the shade and onto the shockingly green golf course. I glanced toward the main building; a few heads were turning, people looking up from wine and brandy to see what the shouting on the course was all about. Walter waved.

  “That’s my dad on the veranda! He’s going to kill me!” Aria yelled, but she sounded thrilled about it.

  Archimedes braked as he went down a hill—I didn’t. We crested the hill with a bounce so hard, Walter’s head hit the top of the golf cart, and for a second I thought Jeffery had fallen off entirely. But no—I heard him yelling out insults as we shot ahead of Archimedes, away from the golf cart and toward the equestrian trails—

  “Turn right! Right!” Aria roared. “Or we’ll have to go over the stream!”

  I nailed the brakes and spun the steering wheel hard to the right so that the car slid into place—then shot off again. Archimedes was behind us, but he was getting farther and farther away. The wind was making my eyes water, and I could smell the golf cart’s engine burning, the consequence of making a car meant to go five miles an hour top out at thirty. I pressed harder, and we careened over a small fallen log; I almost lost control, but they didn’t teach SRS kids how to drive getaway cars in third grade for nothing. Walter and I seamlessly leaned to the left, rebalanced the car, and kept going.

  “What are you doing? Why is it so loud?” Beatrix shouted in my ear.

  “Golf cart race!” I shouted back, knowing Aria and Jeffery couldn’t possibly hear anything over their own howling laughter.

  “Oh. Carry on,” Beatrix said. “Except know they just entered you guys into the security log—they’re coming after you on . . . well. On golf carts.”