The Profile Match
Page 1
Contents
Mission 4: Cambodia
Dedication
Call to Action
Mission Background Report
Report Number 1
Report Number 2
Report Number 3
Report Number 4
Report Number 5
Report Number 6
Report Number 7
Report Number 8
Report Number 9
Report Number 10
Report Number 11
Report Number 12
Report Number 13
Report Number 14
Report Number 15
Report Number 16
Report Number 17
Report Number 18
Report Number 19
Report Number 20
Report Number 21
Report Number 22
Report Number 23
Report Number 24
Report Number 25
Report Number 26
Report Number 27
Report Number 28
Report Number 29
Report Number 30
Report Number 31
Report Number 32
Report Number 33
Report Number 34
Report Number 35
Report Number 36
A Note From the Author
Keep Reading
Join the Club
About the Author
Other Books By Jill Williamson
Copyright Notice
Mission 4: Cambodia
When Spencer Garmond’s friend is kidnapped, the young Mission League agent-in-training decides he’s had enough. Determined to stop the criminals he suspects are responsible, he petitions the Los Angeles Field Office to give him the lead on the case. Now he’s investigating his favorite actress, the movie director who pretended to be his dad, and even his own uncle. Weird much?
As he struggles to find the connections between this unlikely group of suspects, he uncovers a clue that could create a worldwide scandal. When the Field Office steps in, Spencer realizes he’s not really in control of the investigation at all. Can Spencer trust God to bring about justice, or will his need to be in control jeopardize the very people he's trying so hard to protect?
The Profile Match is the final installment in the award-winning Mission League series by author Jill Williamson.
To Janelle, Emily, and Heather
for being Spencer’s biggest fans,
And to Alice, Carol, Jane, and Sheila
for helping me make this
book the best it could be,
Thank you.
YOU HAVE ACCESSED THE INTERNATIONAL SERVER FOR THE MISSION LEAGUE. THESE FILES CONTAIN CLASSIFIED INFORMATION ON THE ORGANIZATION, AGENTS, CRIMINALS, PROCEDURES, TRAININGS, AND MISSIONS.
GOD HAS CALLED. YOU HAVE ANSWERED.
MISSION BACKGROUND REPORT
REPORT TITLE: It’s My Last One!
SUBMITTED BY: Agent-in-Training Spencer Garmond
WELL, THIS IS IT. MY FINAL REPORT. I CAN’T believe I’m saying this, but I think I’m actually going to miss writing these things.
High school has been a crazy ride—made more so by my involvement in the Agent Development Program of the Mission League, which is a secret branch of INTERPOL. It all started for me at the end of my freshman year with what looked to be a teen mission trip to Moscow. Really, it was my first training mission. There I ran into a woman named Anya, who recognized me as one of several people on some kind of watch list for a person called the Profile Match. And whoever this person was, he was supposed to identify someone called the First Twin.
It was all very hush, hush, filled with intrigue and code words that made no sense.
Anyway, Anya told her bosses about me, and they wanted to “talk,” a.k.a. kidnap and torture me for information about the First Twin—information I didn’t know. They sent goons after me, pretty girls after me, my own classmates after me . . . Turns out I was mostly hard to catch or had been lucky enough to get away on those rare occasions that they’d managed to grab me.
Two summers back they tried a new tactic. One of them pretended to be my long-lost father. I know what you’re thinking. How very Darth Vader. Don’t worry. Irving MacCormack, the famous movie director, was lying about being my old man. But since he was pretending, I pretended too, hoping to learn something helpful.
Then a couple months ago in Alaska some new goons tried to grab me. (This was the same trip in which Grace Thomas became my girlfriend. That’s right. I have a girlfriend now. You’re probably thinking, “TMI, man.” But the thing is, Grace is important. Because if she hadn’t been my girlfriend, they never would have taken her.) But I digress.
Just before the Alaska trip, the goons had kidnapped the sister of my (sort of) friend Nick’s to blackmail him into helping them catch me. Me and some of the other agents-in-training put a stop to that, though. The problem? The bad guys called my uncle Kimbal by name—only they used the name Liam, which wasn’t the name I knew him by.
Kimbal also lied to me. Erased some footage I had recorded of some people running a drug lab in Pilot Point. I was smart enough to make a back-up, though, and the drug makers got caught. Kimbal wasn’t incriminated with them, though. So I need to find out what my uncle is up to. Why did he erase my footage? How do those goons from Alaska know him? And why did they call him Liam?
I’ve included some of Grace’s reports in here to fill in some gaps with stuff she learned from Brittany Holmes, star of the Jolt movies. Brittany and Grace became pretty close through all of this so it made sense for Grace to interview Brittany and write those reports herself.
I forgot to say anything about basketball. I’ve been trying to earn myself an NCAA, D1 scholarship so I could play ball for one of the top colleges. I was close a few times, but accidents and stupid friends kept my dream just out of reach. I’m not giving up, though. This is my senior year, and our basketball team is top notch. There’s no reason I still couldn’t get a D1 offer before graduation. It’s not the norm, but it could still happen.
It could.
And I’ll prove it. But first you have to read this report.
Spencer Garmond
Agent-in-Training
Pilot Point Mission League
REPORT NUMBER: 1
REPORT TITLE: Homecoming, Round 1: Just Me and My Girl
SUBMITTED BY: Agent-in-Training Spencer Garmond
LOCATION: Pilot Point Christian School, Pilot Point, California, USA
DATE AND TIME: Friday, October 26, 11:51 p.m.
On my knees at my locker, I stared at my iPhone. I’d pulled up my profile on the ESPN National Basketball webpage. Nothing new. I was still ranked a three. And it still said U of Arizona had offered me, even thought they’d pulled the offer after my arrest last spring and given my spot to someone else before I had a chance to prove my innocence.
I suppose the profile looked better this way. I just hoped the offer wouldn’t keep other schools from making contact. Because I was back. Fully. Mario, my physical therapist, had signed off on my knee. I could run again. And I was finally able to play ball with my team.
The open contact period for the NCAA Clearninghouse had ended on Wednesday. I’d done all I could on my end during that time to reach out to coaches, reminding them of my interest, that my knee had healed, that I was playing well. Oh, and that the arrest had been a mistake, charges dropped. So fun to have to bring that up again and again.
Still, so far no takers.
That’s a lie, actually. Truth is, several schools had offered me. Two D2 schools and one NAIA. But D1 was my dream. PAC12 was my dream. It made my chest tight to think that I was so close to achieving everything I’d always wanted ye
t could do nothing to make it happen.
Short of playing well. That should help. Right?
Our first game was a little over a month away, our team was playing like an actual team this year, not like five guys vying for the spotlight. Recruiting coaches would be watching. If we had a great season, surely someone would offer me.
The warning bell rang. I pushed my phone into my back pocket and reached for my calculus book. Movement behind me. Small hands covered my eyes. I flinched and fought the urge to grab whoever this was and roll them into a takedown.
Combat training, anyway. It was dangerous to be my friend.
“Guess who?” a girl said in a fake, lowing voice that made me grin.
“No idea,” I said.
“Guess!” The voice was normal this time, and very familiar.
“Mair.”
The hands slid away. I twisted around, and there was Mary Stopplecamp, beaming down. With me kneeling, she was finally taller than me—me who loomed over the rest of this school like Roald Dahl’s BFG.
Mary and Martha had been in the ninth grade for over a month now, but it was still weird to see Gabe’s little sisters on this end of the school.
Mary and I were pals now. Getting kidnapped by psychopaths will do that to people, which was what had happened the summer we’d gone to Okinawa. Plus, Mary and I both played basketball, and I’d been helping her with her outside shot.
“Guess what?” Mary asked.
I gripped the side of my locker and pulled myself up, suddenly the tallest person in the building again. “You found out you had a long-lost identical triplet?”
“I made varsity swing.”
“Mair, that’s great!” I gave her a brotherly side hug.
She shrugged like she’d lost out. “I wanted straight varsity.”
“Give it time,” I said. “There are a lot of senior girls this year. Prove yourself, and next year when the seniors are gone, you’ll be starting.”
Another shrug. “I guess.”
“What class do you have next?”
“Geometry.”
“I have calc. I’ll walk you.” I slammed my locker, and we headed for the math wing.
Mary trailed alongside me. “How are you and Grace doing?”
Awkward question to ask a guy. “We’re good.”
“Last week was your two-month anniversary.”
“You had a prophecy about my anniversary?” Which, seriously, is two months really worth celebrating? Don’t get me wrong, every day that Grace remained my girlfriend was a miracle in my book, but it seemed overkill to celebrate this fact weekly. And now monthly. And also unfair for a guy to get in trouble for forgetting such ridiculous milestones.
Mary gave me a look that said: “You’re an idiot.” She paused at the door to Mr. Cash’s classroom. “I heard Grace tell Arianna at youth group. She was showing us all pictures of her homecoming dress.”
“The white one?” I asked. The white one was my favorite.
“White and very short,” Mary said.
Yasss. That was the one.
“Well, the next few months are going to be a little crazy for you,” Mary said. “So just . . . hang in there. Okay?”
I stared at her, amazed how someone so much smaller than me could wind me with a few words. I knew from experience to listen when Mary gave advice. We had the spiritual gift of prophecy in common, though she knew how to use hers far better than I had ever used mine.
Before I could reply, she walked into her class, leaving me standing in the doorway, clogging up the entrance. Several underclassmen had clustered behind me, too afraid, perhaps, to tell the six-foot-four senior to move over. Luke Williamson, who I called El McWilly, was one of them. The kid had all but saved my life last summer in Alaska, and still he barely talked to me.
“Hey,” I said to him.
“Hello,” he said. A grin materialized and vanished in the space of a quarter of a second.
I stepped aside, and the underclassmen poured into the geometry class like they actually wanted to be there. How odd.
I drifted across the hallway and into the calculus classroom just as the final bell rang, weirded out by Mary’s warning. Just what was the girl’s definition of crazy?
● ● ●
At lunch I checked my phone, and a text from Grace came through.
Grace: Wat time u pikn me up?
I texted back: 6
Grace: kk *kissy emoji*
I sighed, my soul shriveling inside. I hated dances. So. Much. And Grace was insisting that we go to both her homecoming dance and mine. That was two formal dances in back-to-back weekends. Hers was tonight and would be the worst of the two since I didn’t know many people at Pilot Point High. To make matters worse, Grandma had forbidden me to drive Grace anywhere until I turned eighteen, which wouldn’t happen until the end of February, five months away. March 1, technically, since my birthday was Feb 29, and this wasn’t a leap year.
This meant Grace and I constantly had to beg rides, which was pathetic. We were going to ride with Lukas when we went to my homecoming next weekend, but tonight we had to ride with my security detail, which were the agents that followed me everywhere to make sure the bad guys didn’t nab me again.
It was better than Grandma driving us.
As I saw it, only two good things would come out of tonight: spending time with Grace and seeing her in that white dress.
● ● ●
That afternoon, I stood in the bathroom and stared at my face in the mirror, having just shaved off the rogue red hairs on my upper lip and chin. Grace had made some comment last week about how much she liked guys with facial hair, but I didn’t seem to have what it took to grow anything more than chin weeds.
I crossed the hall to my room. But before I put on my swanky rental suit, I recorded another video for my YouTube channel, gave my 1812 basketball fans/subscribers an update about the condition of my knee and the state of our team. I was optimistic.
I also showed my followers the suit I’d rented as per Grace’s instructions and asked their opinion on formal high school dances. Last month, Isabel had told me I’d get more followers if I told them what was happening in my life and encouraged people to comment. I’d given it a try, and turned out she was right.
I set the video uploading and got dressed. Grace had picked out two different suits to match her two dresses. She was the junior class princesses and had been freaking out about how everything had to be just perfect. She’d warned me I might not like her choices, but that I should trust her—that we would look good. I didn’t see what was so bad about this suit—a black jacket and slacks, a white button-up shirt, and a Bulldogs blue necktie. It was James Bond-ish enough.
The third time I messed up the knot on the necktie, I went looking for Grandma. I found her in the living room, crocheting yellow yarn into a blanket.
“Can you help me?” I asked, holding up the tie.
She peered over the top of her black wire glasses. Her eyes ran me up and down, then landed on the necktie in my fist. “Certainly,” she said. She set aside her yarn and stood.
Grandma had been a bit of a punk rocker in the 80s, and she’d never fully given up the glam. Her black T-shirt had a picture of a tiger on the front that was made out of sequins. Her pants were tiger print, and she was wearing black, dangly earrings made out of feathers. Her hair was white, short, and spiky. Her fingernails were bright pink.
She took the tie, flipped up the collar of my shirt, and threaded the blue fabric behind my neck. “You sure you can afford all these fancy dates?” she asked.
“Nope,” I said. “Just trying to keep my girl happy.”
For Grace and my second anniversary, I’d taken her to the Olive Garden to celebrate, because that’s where she’d wanted to go. That and the two homecoming dances would eventually set me back about three hundred dollars when you added in the dinners, two sets of homecoming tickets, flowers, pictures, and suit rentals.
Lucas said I
was whipped.
At least I had a girlfriend.
“Well, you look very nice,” Grandma said.
Grandmas had to say those kinds of things, but as I glanced at myself in the hallway mirror, I had to admit that I cleaned up good.
I left the house and found the black sedan parked at the curb behind my car. As I passed the Banana—which was what I called the rusty old yellow 1984 Dodge Colt Mrs. Daggett had given me—I patted the hood. “Not tonight, my friend,” I said.
I climbed in the back of the sedan. It was occupied by two undercover Mission League agents: the guy I called Nose—because of his crooked nose—whose real name was Alec Bridges, and Jean “Sasquatch” Sloan—or his identical twin brother Christophe. The twins were part of the Project Gemini program and shared one identity.
I called these agents my security detail, since it was their job to follow me everywhere and make sure I didn’t get kidnapped or murdered. After two and a half years, I’d gotten used to them. My uncle, Dave Kimbal, used to head up the team, but I hadn’t seen him around much lately. The other day Prière, the intercessor for the Pilot Point Mission League, had told me to be careful around my uncle, which only increased my suspicions that he was up to no good.
Whichever Sloan it was tonight whistled. “Looking sharp, Spencer.” He had a thick British accent.
“I’m going to need to take some pictures,” Bridges said.
“Nobody’s taking pictures,” I said.
The men chuckled, and Mystery Sloan started the car.
“Still no Kimbal?” I asked.
“Not for another week,” Bridges said. “He took some time off.”
I perked up at this news. I’d been itching to sneak into Kimbal’s place and snoop around, investigate the man myself to see what I could find. Now I finally had a chance.
● ● ●
When Grace opened her apartment door, at first I thought she was wearing a towel. A closer look proved it was actually the white dress. Man. It had looked different on the hanger.