Double Down (Lois Lane)

by Gwenda Bond

  I suspected that word would get him. I was right.

  “Come in,” he said. “I always have time for students, as you know. Particularly with urgent troubles.”

  I shut the door with a click.

  His silver eyebrows rose.

  “Confidential, like I said.” I took my usual seat. And I spotted my massive permanent file still on the corner of his desk—even though it wasn’t Monday. Someday I would get a look at that thing.

  Not today, however.

  “I need a favor,” I said.

  His tie tack had little faux diamonds on it that caught the light when he leaned back in his chair. “I know we’ve developed a rapport over these few weeks, but principals don’t normally do favors for students.”

  James owed me for this. Big.

  “I agree, but I’m convinced you mean it when you say the Warheads thing was out of character—that you care about your students.” I tried to tell myself to soften it, but I was only capable of so much.

  “I do care,” he said, eyes narrowing. “Which is why I was so concerned to hear your performance on your biology test this week wasn’t up to par. That’s a golf term, by the way. I was thinking I might call up your father for a round or two. I never have managed to meet him.”

  Right, he just reminded you he’s a climber. Use that.

  “I promise I’ll get on my grades ASAP,” I said. “Well, after today. I know you’ll understand why once I tell you what I’m about to, but first I need to secure your promise you’ll keep quiet.” I paused, waited to make sure he was listening closely, then reeled him in. “You see, the favor isn’t really for me. Or not just for me. It’s for James. More specifically, it’s for James’s father, Mayor Worthington. What would you say if I told you that he was innocent and you could help clear his name? Get him back into office?”

  He was speechless.

  That was a welcome development.

  “I can only imagine how thankful he’d be,” I said.

  “Explain,” he said.

  Yesssss. One more piece, falling into place. “Let me send one quick note,” I said, and pulled out my phone before he could tell me not to. I sent a text to Maddy, Devin, and James: I’ve got him. I’ll meet you all in the study room. Don’t bother going to class.

  I hit send, then directed my attention back to the curiously, peevishly waiting principal.

  “The main thing I’ll need you to do is go to Worthington Manor and give a letter of invitation to some… guests… of the ex-mayor at precisely two thirty.”

  “He’s on house arrest. Won’t he be there?” he asked.

  I smiled. “Not if everything goes as planned.”

  CHAPTER 30

  The library was filled with students either working studiously away with reference books or goofing off and ignoring the same. I hurried to our usual private study room, and found Devin and Maddy tucked away inside.

  “Finally,” Devin said. “Maddy was getting antsy.”

  Devin had a set of plans spread across the work table, with a few annotations made in marker in his incredibly neat handwriting. From the look of it, he’d printed a dozen sheets of letter-size paper with various parts of the schematic, and then taped them together to build the plans for City Hall.

  “How very crafty of you,” I said, peering at the lines and shapes. Architecture was practically art. I asked Maddy, “Why so antsy?”

  “Because I had to get the librarian to bump the study group who had the room reserved,” Maddy said. “And I couldn’t come up with a decent excuse, so I told her Scoop business.”

  “The truth is always a decent excuse.” I dropped my bag on the table beside the printouts. “But I can tell you’re off your game—you didn’t even make me use a password.”

  “True,” Maddy said. “I’m just glad Melody’s safe. That guy… well, both of them, but especially the scientist. Yikes to the nth degree.”

  Donovan, she meant. Yikes was right. “I join you in a mental shudder. Dev, what options do we have? And by we, I mean me.” I pulled out the chair beside him and slid into it. My experience with architectural plans was extremely limited. As in zero.

  “How’d it go with Butler? Are we in trouble for skipping class?” Devin asked.

  “I told you he was handled, and he is.”

  To prove it, I reached over and dug in my bag to produce the pink excused absence slips. They weren’t even stolen ones. He’d filled them out.

  “One for each of us.” I handed Maddy and Devin theirs, and left James’s out for when he joined the prep party.

  “Nicely done, and a little scary,” Devin said. “I hope you didn’t have to promise to meet with him daily instead of weekly.”

  “Even my sense of duty has limits,” I said. “I forgot to ask about your mom—anything from her yet?”

  “She left early to go to a breakfast meeting with Perry. If she thinks there’s any way it’s true and proving Mayor Worthington’s innocence will take down Moxie or Ellis, she’ll go for it.”

  I held up crossed fingers.

  So far, so good. Everything was coming into alignment. James had instructions to call his grandparents and make sure they would fall in line with the cover story about the secret twin if asked. As long as he convinced them, it was just a matter of… everything else working out exactly according to our plan. The plan to clear James’s dad and send away a certain mobster and mayor, ending with a press conference and a front-page scoop.

  We had a big, complicated day ahead. Which meant it was time to discuss breaking and entering City Hall—or, more precisely, my uninvited visit to the mayor’s office and taking James’s dad’s stockpile of proof—upon which the rest depended. Without that evidence, our efforts would be worth precisely nada.

  “Tell me you’ve got me a way into the mayor’s office, and his ceiling,” I said. “We’ll have a limited window—as soon as he’s summoned by Boss Moxie, I’ll need to get in there.”

  There was a tap on the skinny rectangular window. James. He opened the door and joined us. He was more mussed than usual, his hair messy and button-down untucked, probably from racing across town all morning.

  “All good?” I asked.

  “All good as far as Dad, Mom, and grandparents are concerned,” he confirmed. “The calls have been made. Dad wrote a letter for me to read them once I was out of the house, so they’d buy the clone part but not talk about it. My granddad is more skeptical, but he said as long as it played out like I described then he’d believe it and go along. My grandmother, on the other hand, was a little too enthusiastic about helping come up with a whole story about how my dad’s twin left the family as a teenager for a life of crime and so they destroyed all records of his existence to protect their squeaky-clean son’s future. She seems to think this is the kind of thing rich people do every day.”

  “She’s probably right,” I said.

  The Worthington family money was probably how they’d kept the house, when Moxie hit the mayor’s own finances.

  “Do we think that’s going to be enough?” Devin asked.

  “Easier for the public to swallow than the existence of a clone, don’t you think?” I shrugged, and no one challenged the point.

  James asked, “Where are we on everything else?”

  “Devin’s just getting ready to tell me it turns out there’s a simple, easy way for me to get to the hidden evidence. Aren’t you, Devin?”

  “Not exactly.” He laid a finger on a square in the center of the plans he’d assembled. “This is Ellis’s office.”

  “Not for much longer,” James said.

  I smiled. “I like the enthusiasm. Go on, Dev.”

  “As you’ll see, there’s a reason they put it there. The security people did a good job of situating it for maximum protection. Second floor. And there’s only one door in a
nd out. I’m guessing his assistant isn’t going to let you waltz in through it.”

  Argh. Neither would the security guys who’d been posted outside the other day. “What politician doesn’t have a secret exit?”

  “I could’ve told you there isn’t one of those,” James said. “But if Dad hid the evidence in the ceiling, doesn’t that mean the ceiling has room in it? What about going in that way?”

  “Yes, it does have room.” Devin leaned over the plans, feverishly tracing a line with his finger. “There are offices on either side, occupied, but here. There’s this larger room in the mayor’s office suite, maybe a conference room. If it was unoccupied and you could get in the ceiling there, it looks like you wouldn’t have to go that far. And it has an entrance from the hallway.”

  “That door is always locked,” James said, examining the plans. “It’s not a conference room, it’s the break room for the mayor’s key staff. And because the break room door is always locked, in order to get to it you have to go through an internal hallway that passes by about five offices inside the mayoral suite.”

  Maddy and Devin, in unison, asked, “Can you pick the lock?”

  Thanks again, Dad. I should’ve known this wouldn’t go so easily.

  “A rule-follower like James wouldn’t want me to do that. Not again. Not in City Hall.”

  “That’s… true,” James said. “But what’s the real reason?”

  “I lost my tools in the Great Dad Showdown of last night.”

  “Oh.” James was examining the plans too now. “I have an idea. I do know Ellis’s assistant—he’s a holdover from Dad’s time there. His desk is right here.” He tapped an area inside the main entrance to the mayor’s office, directly in front of where I needed to get. I could see the inside, non-public hallway and offices James mentioned, leading up to the break room. “I could go in and say hi to him, ask if I can snag a candy bar from the machine in the break room—”

  “And open the door to admit me. Are there tables and stuff in there?”

  James smiled. “It’s a break room, so yes.”

  “Ones that I could use to climb up into the ceiling?”

  “Oh, yes, and I can give you a boost.” He shook his head. “We’re just bending the rules.”

  “Lois crawling through the ceiling is bending rules?” Maddy asked, grinning. She added, singsong, “Someone’s rationalizing.”

  She wasn’t wrong. James didn’t like even bending the rules, not if we didn’t have to.

  I tried to think of any other plan we could use that wouldn’t depend so much on James’s rule bending. But this was it, as far as my brain was concerned. “This is the best way we have. We’ll have to go with it. And hope I don’t fall through the ceiling.”

  “But—but—” James said, struggling to find words, “did you think about what if someone’s there? What if it doesn’t work? That’s a really high ceiling.”

  “It was your idea,” I said. “And you’re the one who was so confident we’re getting rid of shady mayor. If we run into trouble, we’ll wing it.”

  “Wing it? Our plan is to wing it?” James was definitely getting worried.

  I patted his arm. “This is going to be good for you. A growth experience.”

  “I almost wish we could go just to watch,” Maddy said.

  I could sense an invite in the offing from James to Maddy to join us, a reflection of his shifting feelings for her.

  He opened his mouth, but I spoke before he could. “Too many of us might make it harder to stay under the radar. Especially since I have the tendency to show up like a heat-seeking missile on the radar of anyone official. You guys head to the Scoop and be on standby. If all goes well, we’ll see you there before we go back to the courthouse for the 2:45 press conference that ruins evil in Metropolis’s day, week, month, and next few years.”

  My stomach sank as I realized that I’d overlooked an obvious element. “Except. I was planning for us to go wait across the street until the mayor leaves to hook up with Moxie. But how do we know he’s there?” I paused, chewed on my lip. There had to be a way… I pointed to Devin. “Can you hack his assistant’s computer or something?”

  “I may be a rule-follower,” James said, “but that’s not necessary. The mayor’s public schedule is posted on his website.”

  Devin whipped out his phone, but James held up a hand. “No need,” he said. “I pulled it up this morning. He’s chairing a meeting of the Neighborhood Revitalization and Waterfront Development Committee. It lets out in half an hour. He won’t leave before then.”

  “Oh, the irony,” I said.

  “The committee meeting?” Devin asked. “Yeah.”

  “No,” I said, “that James’s knowledge of the rules has proved so helpful.”

  “Ha,” James said.

  “I meant it affectionately, almost like a compliment.” I gathered my bag and slung it over my shoulder. “Let’s get going, boy scout. Time to stake out City Hall and wait for our moment to strike.”

  Maddy sighed. “I really do wish we could watch this.”

  *

  James and I sat on a bench across from City Hall, attempting to look casual about our surveillance. It was hard not to feel like spies on a mission—which I suppose we were. Well, James wouldn’t like being described that way. So, I was like a spy on a mission.

  The weather was as beautiful as had been predicted, and the sky above us was—I liked to think—the blue of victory.

  Assuming so many things fell into place. And that I was not just a spy for good, but a good spy who could successfully retrieve the evidence.

  What if it wasn’t there anymore?

  Stop thinking that way. You got this.

  But I couldn’t quite convince myself.

  “I hope this works,” James said, echoing my thoughts.

  People—lots of people, people who were frustratingly not Mayor Ellis—entered and exited the building opposite us, taking the broad steps at varying degrees of speed.

  James continued, “I don’t know how the disappointment would affect Dad. Now that he has the ability to rehab his image… If he loses that chance, he’ll be shattered.”

  “One, he won’t lose it,” I said. “Two, you’re wrong. I don’t think he cares as much about the public as you think, not anymore—” James started to protest, but I went on. “I know he cares about his job, his duty, all that. But as far as image, caring what people think, all he cares about is that you and your mom will believe in him again. And that’s settled, no matter how this goes. Isn’t it? Your mom knows?”

  “Yes, but she’s skeptical,” James said. “Like I was. She doesn’t really buy the whole story, and not being able to talk about it makes it harder. But if we get this evidence, she will. Maybe you’re right.”

  “Don’t sound so shocked. Of course I am.”

  The doors swung open and a guy in a sharp suit wearing an earpiece appeared. A member of a security detail? James and I both leaned forward in anticipation.

  Nope, just a guy with an earpiece talking on the phone, followed by no one.

  “Could be a guy leaving the meeting Ellis’s in,” James said.

  “Here’s hoping. I was not born to wait.” But there was no reason to sit idly. I had another piece of business to discuss with James. I could employ the same method Maddy had on me in the cab. “So, Maddy. Why the sudden paying attention to her?”

  “Um, what?”

  “You mean who. Our colleague, Maddy Simpson.” I held out a hand in the air in front of me, “A few feet taller than this, has a streak in her hair, knows a lot about music. Style editor. Am I ringing any bells?”

  “I know who Maddy is.” James looked away and shifted uncomfortably on the bench. “But, what do you mean?”

  So that’s how he was going to play this. “James, she’s had a crush o
n you this whole time, but all of a sudden she gets a boyfriend and you’re interested. Not cool.”

  He turned back to me, happy surprise in his eyes. “Maddy likes me?”

  “Yes, Mr. Oblivious, she does. Well, did. But she’s seeing Dante now, and they seem into each other. And good with each other.”

  “I noticed,” he said, glum.

  I remembered something important: James was my friend too. My sympathies engaged. “Why the change? I thought you were into Melody before.”

  “Melody and I were just using each other.” He watched closely as the City Hall doors opened and closed again.

  “That sounds bad,” I said. “And that isn’t the mayor over there, so keep talking.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.” He ran a hand through his still-mussed brown hair. “We were convenient for each other to be seen with. We were never serious. I mean… After Dad went away, I didn’t know what would happen to me, to my place.”

  I knew what it meant to feel like you had a place. And it was easy to imagine what it would be like to feel it slipping away.

  “Melody saw that,” he said. “She made sure I still had a lunch table to sit at, that no one treated me any differently. I don’t even know if she knows how much it meant. So my gratitude expressed itself… confusingly. But then, this week…”

  The City Hall door opened again, and this time it was no false alarm. Two security detail guys came out first, followed by Ellis. Two more security guys followed them. A sleek car, no doubt bulletproof, pulled up to the curb, and the mayoral posse headed toward it.

  James got up, and so did I. But I stopped him. “Hold on. This week?”

  He shook his head. “This week, seeing Maddy and Melody together, watching them fight. It made me realize how much more to Maddy there was than I’d seen. How much we have in common.”

  I had no clue what Maddy and James had in common other than the Scoop, but I didn’t go there.

  “You still will, if she and Dante break up. I think you should wait and see if this sudden change of heart sticks.” I paused. “She’s worth waiting for, if what you feel is real.”