Going Rogue

by Robin Benway

  “They’re after you next!” he yelled. “Especially you!”

  “Excellent, that’s great,” Roux said under her breath, reaching for my arm and pulling me away from the man. “Let’s just step over here and get out of Insane Land, okay? There we go.”

  I watched as the man staggered down the street, blending in with the late-afternoon crowds. “Well, that was weird,” I said.

  “Do you know him?” Roux asked.

  “I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

  “You!” the man yelled again, this time pointing at a nanny pushing a stroller. She didn’t even blink. “Especially you!”

  Roux just shook her head. “Welcome to Manhattan.” She held her arm out for a taxi. “It’s almost four, they’re all going off duty soon, and I am not standing on a subway platform in this heat.” She stepped farther into the street so that the next cab would have to hit her or stop for her, not even flinching when one nearly grazed her as he slammed to a halt. I couldn’t hear the driver, but I could read lips well enough to know that he was using some pretty unique and colorful curse words.

  He and Roux would get along just fine.

  “I’ll text you later?” Roux said as she climbed into the backseat.

  “You better! Enjoy your class! Don’t break anyone’s nose!”

  “I make no promises!” She stopped and pushed her sunglasses up on her head. “You sure you’re not bored?”

  Now I could hear the cab driver, as well as all the car horns behind them, mad that Roux was holding up traffic. “Definitely not bored,” I told her. “Trust me, I’m done. I’m a civilian. I’m out.”

  And I meant it.

  Until I got home and heard the news.

  Chapter 2

  I first knew something was wrong when I rounded Spring Street and our loft came into view. Everything looked normal, just another day in Soho, but there was opera music soaring out, seeping through the cracks in our closed windows and floating down toward me.

  It was “Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen” from Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

  Translation? “Hell’s vengeance boils in my heart.”

  I ran the rest of the way home.

  We’ve lived in our loft since we moved back to Manhattan from Reykjavík last year. It was just supposed to be a stopping ground, like so many of our houses were. Sometimes they felt like movie sets rather than homes, four walls with actors inside, playing our parts and then moving on to the next set, the next role. I’ve lost count of all the places we’ve lived, but we’ve been on six out of seven continents. (Let’s be honest: Antarctica doesn’t see a lot of crime-related activity. It’s too cold to even think about committing a crime.) I think this is the longest my family has ever been in one place, which is interesting. I’ve always had wings, never roots, and now I wake up to see the same four walls and have the same name—Maggie—every single day.

  Hearing the Austrian aria made me realize how quickly all of that could disappear.

  I dashed down the street and hurried into the elevator, yanking its steel door down and jabbing the button until my finger hurt and it finally started to rise. The soprano’s voice was staccatoing like rocks across a pond, making my heart match its pace. We never listened to this song, not ever.

  This song meant that something was wrong.

  The elevator doors opened at a glacial pace, and I finally got so impatient that I stuck my fingers in and practically pried them apart. Our front door was there, the dingy #3 hanging smack in the center, a stark counterpart to the fingerprint scanner that sat next to the doorbell.

  The fingerprint scanner had been installed last year, notable not only because it was, you know, a fingerprint scanner attached to our front door, but also because the Collective had no idea that it was there. Angelo had it put in as an extra measure of security, along with our new steel front door. If anyone ever tried to sledgehammer through the door, they’d quickly find a half ton of metal waiting to stop them. It was cool if you didn’t think about why we needed those things.

  This is why we need them:

  When I was four years old, a man named Colton Hooper tried to kidnap me because I was apparently a little safecracking genius and he wanted to use me for his own nefarious needs. We didn’t know it was him at the time because he hired someone to do it. Luckily, my parents and Angelo got wind of the plan and they flew me out of the country. Colton killed the kidnapper-for-hire to protect his own identity.

  That’s crazy enough, I know, but what made it crazier was that Colton was a high-ranking member of the Collective. He was our handler—in charge of assigning our missions, providing our multiple identities, and setting us up in our new locations. It turned out he was quite the multi-tasker, trying to sell information about us to Jesse’s dad’s magazine. If he couldn’t get me, he might as well make some money, right?

  Wrong.

  Look, I don’t like to brag a lot, but I’m pretty proud of the fact that we stopped Colton. And by we, I mean Roux and Jesse and me. I sort of broke code—okay, I completely broke code—by telling Roux and Jesse about my family and the Collective. But they responded by being awesome and helping me prove that Colton Hooper was a liar and very dangerous.

  And oh yeah, there was also a twenty-block high-speed chase in which Roux, Jesse, and I had to outrun Colton. Then Roux attacked Colton, and Angelo had to fly in on a helicopter and save us. Followed by taking out Colton, which made my parents be all like “What. The. Hell.”

  It was a long week, I’ll tell you. I think I’m still recovering from the drama, even though it happened almost a year ago.

  So that’s the short version of why we had a fingerprint scanner installed. I don’t even know where Angelo got it, or who installed it, but it was there now. I jammed my index finger against it and waited impatiently for the familiar sound of the bolt clicking open. I can crack the lock, of course (what good is being a lock picker if you can’t even break into your own house?), but it’s faster to wait for the scanner instead.

  Still, every second felt like an hour.

  I heaved the door open as soon as I could, and the music almost blasted me right out of the loft, it was that loud. There’s only two reasons to play music at that volume: one, a party, and two, a secret.

  And I was pretty sure that my parents weren’t throwing a party.

  My mom was the first to see me, arms crossed and brow furrowed as she stood leaning against the kitchen island. Her face totally changed when she saw me, smoothing out into a smile as she stood up straight and uncrossed her arms. “Hi,” she said, but I could only read her lips, not hear her.

  My dad was standing across from her, the same worried gaze on his face, but it took him a few seconds longer than my mom to hide his emotions. He just waved and then pretended to lip-synch along with the aria, but I was in no mood for dad shenanigans. There was a pot of something on the stove, which was just as bad a sign as the opera. My dad stress-eats when he’s nervous: after Colton Hooper was assassinated, he put on ten pounds.

  Angelo was standing next to my father, his face as calm and genteel as always. He wore a seersucker suit, a gray-collared shirt, and a pink-and-gray-striped silk tie. How he wasn’t melting in the heat, I had no idea, but that’s Angelo for you. He’s a perfect spy because he’s like a mirage, like he exists outside of the world while still living in it. Sometimes it’s hard to believe he’s even real.

  But he was very real, and very definitely standing in my kitchen, and, I knew, very much responsible for the music blasting out of the speakers.

  He gave me a small wave and a beatific smile as I ran to hug him. “You’re a jerk for being gone for so long,” I yelled, since the music was so loud. “You owe me a million espressos.”

  Angelo just grinned and reached for a remote to turn down the music. “Hello, my love,” he said. “Sorry, we were a bit loud, weren’t we. Apologies all around.”

  I crossed my arms and looked at him, trying to figure out where
he had been. Pale skin meant north, maybe Russia or Scandinavia. Tan skin meant West Africa, maybe the Mediterranean or Colombia. But Angelo looked the same, impassive as ever.

  “Well?” I said. “Is anyone going to explain why we’re deafening half of lower Manhattan with our distress signal? I could hear the music all the way around the corner! And isn’t this a speech that you’re supposed to give me, your teenage daughter?”

  My dad shrugged. “Your parents like to have fun sometimes. Let our hair down. We get crazy.”

  He may have been trying to be funny (emphasis on trying), but the wrinkles were still creased between his eyes and my mom was gripping the dishwasher handle even as she smiled at me.

  “How was Roux?” she asked me. “Still Roux-like?”

  “She’s insane,” I replied. “You know that. What’s going on?”

  Everyone looked in a different direction, desperately trying to avoid eye contact: at the floor, the clock, the window, and I put my hands on my hips and shook my head. “Nope,” I said. “Nope, nope, and nope. We talked about this, remember? We said we were going to work on communicating as a family so that you’re not surprised the next time my best friend, my boyfriend, and I are chased down by a ruthless thug. I thought that was our new rule.”

  “Sweetheart, it’s not that big—”

  “Seriously?” I said. “You’ve been training me since I was two to spot a liar and now you want to lie to me? That is terrible parenting on your part. For you, not for me. It’s working out pretty well for me.”

  My parents glanced at each other, then at Angelo. Angelo stayed serene throughout the wordless conversation, but then he picked up the remote and cranked the music back up into cringe-inducing decibels. “Come here,” he said, beckoning me over, and I steeled myself and crossed the room into our makeshift cone of silence.

  I knew that the loud music was there to screw up any potential bugs. After the Colton Hooper incident, my mom had scoured our loft and made sure it was free of all monitoring devices, but you can never be too careful. Ever. And I knew that this aria, in particular, screwed up bugs because of the pitch changes. Anyone trying to hear voices, or even inflections, would be completely out of luck.

  I knew all of this in theory, of course, but not in practice.

  My parents, Angelo, and I huddled together in the kitchen, looking like the most ragtag, mismatched football team in history, talking about plays while the clock counted down. My mom put her arm around my shoulders, and I let her because I think she was comforting herself more than me.

  “There’s been a, um, development,” my dad began as the soprano’s voice hit a particularly high note. I would probably vomit if I ever heard this song again.

  “A development in what?” I asked. “Do we have to move again?”

  “No,” my mom said.

  “Not yet,” my dad added.

  “Do they ever agree?” Angelo asked me with a knowing wink.

  “What developed?” I asked again. “Someone tell me before I throw those speakers out the window.”

  My parents glanced at each other, and I saw my dad reach down to take my mom’s hand. “The Collective was here today,” my dad said.

  “Here?” I gasped. “Here? Like, New York here, or in-our-house here?”

  “Our house,” my dad replied.

  “Our home,” my mom corrected him, then squeezed my shoulder. “Our home is wherever we are, Mags. You know that.”

  I did know that. Home is where your family is, blah blah blah. My parents had been saying it since the day I was born.

  “Did they find out about the fingerprint scanner?” I asked. “I mean, why else would they be here? And why are we blasting music if they were here?” My stomach was starting to flip and I looked at Angelo.

  “They did see the scanner,” he said, “but no, love, that’s not why they were here.”

  I thought about Roux, blissfully karate chopping fake enemies in a dojo somewhere uptown, and Jesse sitting outside in Connecticut with his mom, talking about something. Maybe even talking about me. I could feel the change coming, and in that moment I wished I could grab Jesse and Roux and not let go.

  “The Collective discovered several discrepancies”—my dad said the word in a way that made me think he didn’t believe it—“in some cases that your mother and I did a long time ago. Way back before you were born.”

  “The Dark Ages,” my mother clarified with a smile. “The prehistoric era.”

  “What discrepancies?” I asked, in no mood to be humored and teased. “And stop treating me like a little kid. You can’t bring me into this and then pretend like it’s nothing.”

  My parents looked at each other again and when they looked back at me, it was clear that all the soft-pedaling was over. “They’re saying that your mother and I stole some evidence from a case,” my dad said. “They’re accusing us of lying and they’re opening up an investigation.”

  I stood there trying to process what everyone was saying. “But it’s not true!” I said. “Right? You would never do that! Mom?”

  “Of course not,” she reassured me. “It’s false, it’s just a mistake. It’s a small mix-up that can be fixed.”

  “Then why do you look so worried?”

  And then it hit me. I knew why they were so worried, why we were blasting opera music on a Thursday afternoon, why my mom hadn’t stopped gripping my shoulder.

  “It’s because of me,” I muttered. “It’s because of Colton Hooper.”

  “No, it’s not—” my dad started to say, but I shook my head.

  “You know it’s because of me!” I protested. “They’re mad because I proved that the Collective screwed up, that they were flawed, and now they’re pissed.”

  Angelo hadn’t said a word yet.

  “They want us out, don’t they?” I continued. “Is that it? They prove that you and Dad lied or whatever, and then they can exile us and no one’s the wiser.”

  No one said anything for a long time, and then finally Angelo spoke up. “Not quite.”

  I looked at him while my parents looked at me.

  “You were not the only one whose life was threatened last year,” Angelo said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I’ve been hearing rumors about a few people that have been … disbarred, so to speak, from the Collective.”

  “For doing a bad job?”

  “No. For refusing to do a bad job.”

  I glanced over at my parents. My mom was biting her lower lip. “I—I don’t understand,” I said. “Why would … ? What do … ?”

  “They’re only rumors,” Angelo said as my mom put her hand on my shoulder. “I’ve been contacted by a few people whom the Collective has recently accused of stealing evidence or forging the wrong documents. I thought it was best to investigate.”

  “That’s why you’ve been gone for so long,” I said. “How many people?”

  “A few,” he said.

  “A few?” I repeated. “Like, two or three? Or more? Were they right?”

  “We don’t know,” my dad said.

  “You knew about this?” I asked, turning around to look at my parents. “You’ve known about this the whole time and didn’t tell me?”

  “We didn’t want to worry you—” my dad started to say, but Angelo interrupted him.

  “You know now,” he told me. “You’ll always get information when you need it. And they could just be disgruntled employees who were rightfully removed. We don’t know yet.”

  “But it’s weird that the Collective is suddenly accusing Mom and Dad of stealing evidence, right?”

  “It could be a coincidence or a filing error.”

  “It’s not like they were threatening us,” my dad pointed out.

  “So that’s why you were blasting opera music?” I countered. “Because you just really dig arias?”

  “We wanted to talk privately,” my mom told me. “Just in case.”

  “It’s a precautio
n,” my dad said. “That’s all.”

  “And what if they’re right and the Collective’s wrong?” I asked. “Then what?”

  No one said anything this time. They didn’t have to.

  I whirled around and picked up a juice glass sitting on the counter, then threw it as hard as I could. The glass shattered against the brick wall and everyone, me included, jumped at the noise.

  “Maggie!” My mom gasped, and she actually looked a little bit scared of me, which only made me more frightened.

  “This is bullshit,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “And we can’t do anything about it, can we?”

  “That is patently untrue,” Angelo said. He had barely flinched at the breaking glass or my teenage temper tantrum. “We can always do something.”

  I looked at him, then my parents. “Like what?”

  “Like prove that they’re wrong,” my dad said. “We can find the missing evidence and prove we didn’t steal it.”

  The glass was glittering on the floor as the sun moved through our windows, and for some reason, it frightened me to even look at it. “It’s not really that easy, is it.”

  “It isn’t,” my mom admitted. “It was a long time ago and it was a dangerous case. We barely escaped out of it. And that was with the Collective’s support.”

  My eyes widened as I realized what they weren’t saying. “Are we going rogue?” I whispered. I had heard rumors about spies going rogue, but they had always seemed unbelievable, unstable, completely stupid.

  Not anymore.

  “Are we going rogue?” I repeated. “Because if so, I’m in.”

  “No, you’re not,” my dad immediately said. “This is our problem, not yours.”

  “Hey,” I told him. “This is our home, and home is where your family is. And you’re my family and now we’re in trouble. I. Am. In.”

  My mom wiped at her eyes before I could see the tears. “We don’t want to put you in any danger.”

  That’s when I knew we were in serious, serious trouble. I love my parents, but they had spent my entire life putting me in danger. It comes with the job. I mean, I was almost kidnapped when I was four! A deranged madman chased my friends and me through lower Manhattan! And now they were worried about danger?