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Page 37

“Lunch?” Tara asked, looking at her watch.
I nodded. “Lunch.”
“Lunch!” the others chorused in unison. I rolled my eyes, but somehow, a smile found its way onto my face. It was amazing what a high-stakes hacking adventure with other people could do for team bonding. On principle, I refused to give any of the credit to our girl talk in the salon.
The moment we walked into the cafeteria, I was treated to three sights. The first was almost an exact replica of what had happened when we’d walked into the caf that morning. All eyes swung our way, and the sea of people parted for the seven of us. The second thing I noticed was that Jack Peyton was already sitting at the central table, his eyes locked on mine.
The third thing I noticed was that my younger brother had just sat down with a bunch of senior girls, all of whom were staring at him like he was some kind of alien species.
Maybe they were right.
Even from this distance, I could tell that Noah’s mouth was moving, and my sisterly instinct (and my unfortunate familiarity with his favorite pickup lines) cued me in to the fact that he was, in all likelihood, saying something along the lines of “Hey, baby, you’re looking a little lonely, but don’t worry, there’s enough Noah to go around.”
And then, right on cue, an enormous football player walked up to the table, slammed his tray down, and reached for Noah’s shoulder.
Here we go again, I thought. I took a step forward, but before I could so much as take a flying leap at the buffoon who was about to decapitate my brother with a fist roughly the size and shape of a cinder block, the rest of the girls beat me to it. Granted, there wasn’t actually any pummeling involved.
“Hi, Marcy! Hi, Jeff!” Lucy bounded over to the table, the rest of the girls on her heels. “Hi, Noah.” Lucy smiled at him. Noah, ever the one to take the least bit of encouragement in any shape or form as a come-on, turned his “charm” on Lucy.
“Well, hello there,” he said, his voice pitched lower than usual in an attempt to seem more manly.
While Lucy distracted Noah and pulled his attention away from the girl he’d been trying to hit on, the others worked on defusing the threat that was Cinder-Blocks-for-Fists Jeff. And somehow, they did it without a single menacing look, punch to the gut, or kick to the groin. In fact, as far as I could tell, they didn’t do anything but flutter their eyelashes.
The girls lured Noah away from the senior table and deposited him back among the other freshman boys, who then stared at my brother with reverent awe. Noah looked at the cheerleaders, looked at the boys, and then arched one eyebrow freakishly high, a devilish look on his face, and took a bow.
“I’ll see you later,” he told Lucy.
Lucy actually giggled, and then, in one coordinated motion, all of the girls headed for our table, leaving my brother to milk the experience for all it was worth among his freshman cohorts.
Note to self, I thought. Tell Lucy not to encourage him.
I joined the other girls with every intention of telling them just that—and asking them why in the world they’d felt compelled to move my little brother out of harm’s way—but when I got there, the twins had matching wicked smiles on their faces.
“You know, Toby,” Brittany said, “your brother is awfully cute.”
I think it’s safe to say that hearing the words leave her mouth had a catastrophic physical effect on my being. I shuddered and almost lost my lunch—even though I hadn’t eaten it yet.
Tiffany poked me in the side. “Yeah,” she said. “He’s adorable.”
I frowned at them.
“They’re just teasing you,” Tara whispered.
“What? You don’t like it when we talk about your brother?” Tiffany asked innocently. “But what if we wanted to ask him out? He’s such a stud.”
Okay, that was taking it way, way too far. If Noah heard any part of this conversation, he would become unbearable. He already thought he was a ladies’ man. He didn’t need the twins giving him ideas.
“Stay away from my brother,” I growled.
The twins just laughed, and as we sat down at our table—a safe distance away from Noah’s—everyone else joined in.
“What’s so funny?” Jack asked, never taking his eyes off my face.
“Nothing,” I said, giving the twins a look that promised serious repercussions if they said anything else about my brother, the “stud.”
“We still on for tonight, Ev?” Jack asked me, an amused smile playing around the corners of his lips at the look I was shooting the twins.
Before I had a chance to formulate a properly sarcastic response, the others answered on my behalf.
“Yes,” Tara said.
“You are,” Lucy finished.
I opened my mouth to object, but one of the twins grinned at me, and I got the distinct feeling that if I said so much as another word, they’d launch into a long, traumatizing, and detailed account of how much they’d just love fooling around with my younger brother.
Needless to say, I kept my mouth closed.
CHAPTER 26
Code Word: Taser
By seventh period, my high from Operation Doublemint had started to fade—in part because adrenaline had finally stopped doing the tango in my bloodstream, and in part because I’d had to spend most of the day focused on keeping the other cheerleaders away from my brother. Once they’d figured out that it was the easiest way to get under my skin, the girls were relentless, and even though I knew that Tara was right—they were teasing me, in a twisted and shockingly friendly way—I was determined to find a way to put a stop to it.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t exactly succeeded. Fortunately, however, the twins—who were far and away the worst offenders—weren’t going to have much opportunity to “tease” me for the next few hours. Operation Playboy was about to commence, and Tara, Lucy, Chloe, and I were the only operatives involved. The rest of the girls were under strict orders to finalize the details for April’s party, check up on Brooke and Zee, and paint some kind of banner for the football players to run through at the beginning of the Saturday game.
Needless to say, getting away from the twins and their “Noah Is Hot” propaganda wasn’t the only reason I was glad that I was going on this mission instead of staying behind.
“We’re going to try to keep this as simple as possible,” Chloe said, looking at me, Lucy, and Tara in turn. “We’re all going in armed, but weapons are a last resort. Ideally, we’d be able to pull this off without engaging the enemy at all. The goal is to get whatever information Peyton has given him. It might be a CD, a portable hard drive, possibly even something similar to the digi-disks we use. Whatever it is, we need it. That’s where you come in, Tara.”
I arched one eyebrow at my partner in an open-ended question, and she gave me an impish look.
“I may or may not have some skill at picking pockets,” she said delicately.
“Don’t let her fool you,” Lucy told me. “She’s the best!”
“If Tara can’t get the data unnoticed, no one can,” Chloe concurred. “In which case, we move on to Plan B.”
I couldn’t help but hope that Plan B involved kicking some international playboy booty. Was that really so much to ask?
“If Tara isn’t successful, we’re going to move on to a Flirt and Flick,” Chloe said.
“A Flirt and Flick?” I was nothing if not skeptical.
“We can’t afford to actually physically engage a Peyton client within a two-block radius of the firm,” Chloe said.
“Peyton has surveillance of its own, and the last thing we need is for them to ID one of us. So if Tara can’t steal the data, we’re going to have to find a way to get Heath Shannon a suitable distance away from Peyton before we try anything else. Since we can’t risk him handing off or transferring the data before we intercept it, one of us is going to have to stay with him at all times. Hence the Flirt and Flick.”
As much as I hated to admit it, the flirting logistics of this equation made perfect sense to me. That said…
“What’s a flick?” I asked.
“Female Liason Indemnifying Against the Possibility of Contact,” Chloe said.