Perfect Cover
Page 5

Taking advantage of the trampoline under my feet, I bounced once, twice, three times, and sailed over her, landing in ready stance between two of the others, who didn’t seem the least bit interested in the fact that their fearless leader and I were engaged in some hard-core hand-to-hand.
I crooked my finger at Brooke. “Enough with the trampoline,” I said. “Let’s play my way.”
Brooke effortlessly flipped off the trampoline and looked down at her nails. “Nah,” she said. “I’m tired of playing.” She turned to the others. “You guys see what you needed to see?”
“Yeah.”
“Yup.”
“I’m good.”
“Works for me.”
“Welcome to the squad, Toby!” Lucy, who I could only infer seriously needed to switch to decaf, squealed at high volume. She threw her arms around me. “We’re going to have so much fun!”
This was not happening.
I extracted myself from Lucy’s grasp. For the first time, I really looked at the room around me, and the venomous response on the tip of my tongue faded into what in all honesty I would describe as incoherent mumbling.
“Wha…huh…whaaa?”
While the drop to the trampoline hadn’t been more than eight or ten feet, I was now standing at the top of a spiral staircase. The others pushed and prodded me down it, and when I reached the bottom, all I could do was continue with my incoherent mumbling. The room was easily three stories tall, with thick white Plexiglas walls that looked like something out of The Matrix. I counted four doors, two staircases, and what can only be described as the world’s biggest flat-screen television.
I couldn’t help thinking of my flippant words to Noah the day before. Unbeknownst to me, the cheerleaders really did have a secret lair.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Tara took a step forward to stand beside me. Her low voice echoed in the massive space. “I’m sure you must be overwhelmed. We all were, at first.”
“Maybe you were”—Chloe delivered the words with a patented Chloe Larson eye roll—“but I’m never whelmed.”
“All right.” Tara rolled with the punches. “We were all overwhelmed at first, except for Chloe, who is unwhelmable.” Her low, even tone never changed, but the look in her eyes at the “unwhelmable” comment made me smile for the first time since I’d been told to stretch that morning.
“What exactly is this place?” I addressed the question to Tara, who seemed (teal hand incident aside) the least likely to force me to commit cheerocide.
“This,” Tara said simply, “is the Quad.”
“The Quad,” I repeated.
The other girls nodded.
“The Squad Quad,” Brooke said, and as she stepped forward, the other girls, even Tara, edged back. “An underground, state-of-the-art, soundproof, bulletproof, boyproof, waterproof, digitalized, motorized, tantalizingly secure fourteen-thousand-square-foot enclosure equipped with everything from radar to TiVo.”
“TiVo,” I repeated.
“Let me break it down for you, To-bee.” Brooke broke my name into two distinct syllables. “You’re standing in the middle of one of the government’s most elite operative agencies.”
“Operatives.” I couldn’t seem to stop repeating everything she said.
“Operatives. Secret agents. Spies. Charlie’s Angels meets James Bond meets Bring It On.”
“Bring what on?”
Brooke gave me a look. “We’re the best of the best. We’re pretty, we’re smart…” She arched an eyebrow at me, and I remembered the way she’d thrown me across the room. “We’re in perfect physical condition, and best of all, we never get caught.” She shot me a toothy grin. “After all, who’s going to suspect the cheerleaders?”
Not me, that was for damn sure.
“You’re telling me that Bayport High’s varsity cheerleading squad is a cover for a group of government superspies?” She had to realize how ridiculous that sounded.
“You know, Toby, maybe you’re not as slow as we thought.”
I didn’t have time to respond to that particular insult before Brooke lifted her hands and clapped eight times, a rhythm I vaguely remembered trying to scour out of my brain after the one mandatory pep rally I hadn’t managed to skip the year before. As soon as Brooke finished clapping, the others repeated her motions, and the lights dimmed.
“Screen on.” Brooke didn’t sound like a cheerleader. I didn’t have time to decide what she did sound like before the plasma screen in front of us turned on and an image appeared.
“Is that my yearbook picture?” I almost didn’t recognize myself. They’d blown the picture up to larger-than-life-size, and you could totally see up my nose.
“Wow. Talk about unfortunate photos.” One of the cheerleaders let out a low whistle at the picture, but Brooke glared whoever it was back into silence.
“Toby Guinevere Klein. Born August nineteenth. Brown hair, brown eyes, medium skin tone. Five feet, three inches, a hundred and three pounds as of last Wednesday.”
First the picture, now my weight and my hideous middle name. I couldn’t wait to see what they pulled out next.
“Your father’s a physicist. Your mother’s a karate instructor. Your little brother, Noah—”
“Leave Noah out of this.”
Brooke inclined her head slightly. “Fine. We’ll get back to you.”
That definitely sounded like a threat.
“Third-degree black belt, two suspensions so far this school year, a total of fourteen at your last seven schools, dating back to the third grade, when you belted a sixth grader in the groin for throwing gravel at your classmates.”
I smiled. I’d almost forgotten about that.
“You’re a novice computer hacker.”
I narrowed my eyes. Who was she calling novice?
“Next.” At her one-word command, the image on the screen changed (thank God), and I found myself looking at an extensive list of company names and dates.
“Look familiar?”
I skimmed the list: Freemont Electronics, Conley Anti-Virus, Semi-National Bank and Trust, the Girl Scouts of America…
“Vaguely familiar,” I replied before she could continue.
“It’s a list of every secure system you’ve breached in the last twenty-six months,” Brooke said, and for the first time, I caught something that might have sounded like respect in her pretty-girl voice.
“Impressed?” I asked.
Chloe scoffed on Brooke’s behalf. “Get over yourself, hacker spaz.”
Apparently, a simple “computer geek” was too passé.
“Impressed?” Brooke repeated. “Puh-lease. This is kiddie play.”
Hey! I was deeply insulted. That bank and trust one hadn’t exactly been a piece of cake.
“What is impressive,” Brooke continued, “is what you did twenty-six months ago.” She turned her attention back to the screen. “Next.”
I recognized the code the moment I saw it. “Oh,” I said. “That.”
“Yes. That.”
Before I explain what “that” was, I’d like to take this opportunity to say that when I’d weaseled my way past the firewalls and hijacked one of the user IDs, I thought the site was fake, one of those things that a hacker will put up on the Net just to see if there’s anyone better out there. I figured that if it was legit, I wouldn’t break through, as simple as that—only not, because it was legit and I did break through. My bad.
“The Pentagon,” Brooke said. “Not bad for a thirteen-year-old girl.”
“I was almost fourteen.” I glanced away.
“Four months later, your dad was transferred here,” Brooke said. “And you’ve been lying low ever since.”
There wasn’t really anything to say to that. I had been lying kind of low. I mean, the Girl Scouts? Not exactly my best showing.
“Well, you’re in luck, Toby.” The no-teeth smile was back. “It’s football season, the Squad needs ten members, and our hacker graduated last year.”