“Tastes Like Steak?” sneers Nate Wackman. “Tastes Like Fake!”
Geiger’s shoulders sag at this barrage of disapproval. He lowers his head and hugs himself. Despite his evil intentions, I find myself feeling bad for the boy. This huge heart of mine is probably a weakness in my line of work. Besides, I’m betting Geiger Senior is the real brains behind this scheme.
“Hey,” I say to Red Beard. “Let’s not make this any harder for Nelson than it has to be. Is there somewhere private we can go and talk about how we’re going to handle this?”
The man nods and pushes Geiger from the kitchen. I follow him on the board.
As I roll away, I turn back to the stunned contestants. “I know this is a cruel blow, but you’re all really talented cooks and I bet you’ll all become famous chefs.” I take a last parting glance at the Band-Aid kid. “Well, most of you.”
The chef pushes young Geiger into the walk-in freezer. He ushers me in and closes the door. I hop off my board and approach the unhappy Geiger.
“This isn’t your fault,” I tell him in my sweetest, most sympathetic voice. “You’re a pawn in someone else’s game . . .” I glance at the frozen fish products in the open freezer box nearest to me and can’t help adding, “Or should I say . . . a prawn?” He doesn’t laugh. I continue, “You didn’t come up with this plan alone.”
Geiger finally looks up at me. “No,” he says. “He helped.”
He?
I whirl around to see Red Beard swinging a gargantuan frozen swordfish straight at my head. Quick as a flash, I lift my ring and shoot Red at the frozen monster. He blasts straight through the fish and smacks Red Beard between the eyes.
“Go fish!” I shout at the evil chef as he clutches his forehead.
Everything goes black. Well, black and slightly smelling of onions. Someone just dropped a sack over my head!
Geiger! That little brat and Red Beard are partners in crime!
If I don’t find a way out of this, I’m toast!
CHAPTER THREE
Big Chef, Little Chef
The frozen swordfish put me to sleep long enough for Nelson Geiger and the diabolical head chef of Parmesan Marmoset tie me up inside the smelly black onion bag, then smuggle me out of the restaurant and into the back of a van. Which is where I am now. Stuck inside a smelly sack. Sweaty, uncomfortable, scared, headachy, but awake. Every time the van comes to a halt or judders around a corner, I’m thrown across the metal floor. I can see through the lining enough to note the Tastes Like Steak logo plastered on packs of frozen meat. I’m guessing they’re taking me to the big boss.
“I can’t wait to meet Martin Geiger,” I shout through the sack.
“Shut up!” yells Nelson from the front of the van.
“You must be so desperate for his approval to agree to this,” I continue. “And you, Chef, what did he offer you? More money? A better job?”
“Shut up!” roars the voice of the older man. He pulls the van across lanes of traffic, causing the sack to roll into a frozen steak package that jabs me in the eye. It stings, but I’m a seasoned spy and I’m used to such hardships. Frozen meat is not going stop me from my mission of making these two fast-food conspirators question themselves.
“You’re not really a super-loyal guy, are you, Chef?” I go on. “Do you think your new boss is ever going to really trust you? I know I wouldn’t.”
The radio starts to play. Drowning me out is not an option.
“Hey, Nelson?” I shout at the top of my voice. “My mom knows your mom. Vidina, right? I bet she’ll really be thrilled that you had me assaulted and abducted. ’Cause she doesn’t know about any of this, does she? Probably not going to be great for you when she finds out.”
“Shut up about my mom,” he yelps back at me.
What’s my plan here? Do I keep needling and niggling away at them until they see the error of their ways and let me go? Or will I only succeed in making them even madder? I’m stuck in a sack, so it’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.
“Another thing,” I shout over the radio. “Who do you think I am? How did I even find out Nelson was making people sick? Who do you think I work for? Because I work for someone . . .”
I let that someone hang in the air. If they weren’t scared before, I bet they are now.
Suddenly, I hear glass shatter.
“The windshield!” shouts Nelson.
The van starts weaving left and right. I’m being thrown about like socks inside a washing machine. The van screeches to a halt. A door opens. I hear a scream, then another scream, and then silence.
I tear and claw at the lining of the sack, hoping to rip enough of a hole that I can unpick the ropes keeping me imprisoned.
The door of the van opens.
I feel a tug at the bottom of the sack. I’m dragged across the floor and out of the van. Am I being re-kidnapped?
“Hello?” I yell.
“Hello yourself,” says a young male voice.
The sack hits the ground.
“Ouch!” I exclaim.
“Boo-hoo,” says the voice.
I feel the top of the sack loosen and try to push myself out. My legs are unsteady, and my eyes take a moment to get used to my surroundings. It’s dark, and I’m in the middle of a field. I look in the back of the van and gasp in surprise. Nelson Geiger and Red Beard are frozen inside blocks of ice. They look like life-size ice cubes. I turn around and see a boy who looks like he’s maybe a year older than me tossing a snowball up and down in his hand.
“Nano-snowball?” I say.
“Obviously” is his reply.
“How does it work?” I ask.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
Wow. This guy thinks he’s cooler than the round white weapon he bounces in his hand. He drops the snowball on the ground, and it immediately evaporates. Next, he pulls out a phone and sends a text while paying me approximately zero attention. I take a step closer to him.
“I don’t think you’re here to kill me or abduct me, so I’m guessing you saved me?”
He gives the smallest and most disinterested of shrugs.
“I guess I should thank you.”
Not even a shrug this time. I get up in his face and push my hand out to be shaken.
“I’m Bridget Wilder.”
His barely open eyes take me in and dismiss me in a single blink.
“And you are?” I demand.
“A better agent than you’ll ever be.”
CHAPTER FOUR
I Hate Adam Pacific
His name is Adam Pacific. He speaks fourteen languages. He can lip-read from thirty yards away. He is skilled in over twenty-nine martial arts disciplines, six of which he created himself. He can break and reset every bone in his body. He can hold his breath for eight minutes. He can slow his heartbeat down to the point where he is considered medically dead. He can turn a docile parakeet into a deadly predator with a single command. He can remove a bullet from his body and stitch the wound without the aid of anesthetic. He’s been buried alive in a safe filled with snakes, thrown out of a plane without the aid of a parachute, and submerged in shark-infested waters inside a cage with a faulty lock.
Adam Pacific tells me all this within two minutes of meeting him. In the same two minutes, he also calls me a gimmick and labels me an embarrassment to the good name of teen spies the world over.
I stare at this kid with his baseball cap tilted to the side of his head, his unblemished olive skin, his leather wristbands, silver chain, and barbed wire tattoo on the back of his hand.
“Me, a gimmick?” I snap. “You’re calling me a gimmick?”
“How’s school?” Adam Pacific replies with an unpleasant smile. “What are you wearing to the winter formal? Are you having baked corn dogs for lunch? Is drama club everything you dreamed it would be?”
I mirror his unpleasant smile with an even more insincere grin of my own. “I get that you’re attempting to rile me with those schoolgirl taunts,
” I say. “You probably don’t know who you’re talking to. So let me educate you. I’m the spy who took on Edward Dominion, the posh guy who ran the Forties. He doesn’t run anything anymore. Neither does his daughter, Vanessa. Ever heard of Section 23? I tore that playhouse down, son. You know Doom Patrol? Scary band of thugs? They watch their mouths around me ’cause I’m liable to smack them. That’s what I do. I’m Bridget Wilder. Ask about me.”
“I have,” says Adam Pacific. “You’re a gimmick.”
“You’re a gimmick” is the best response I can come up with.
He yawns in my face and then goes back to his phone.
I’m standing in a deserted field with a two frozen corrupt chefs of varying sizes and all I can think about is coming up with an insult stinging enough to wipe the self-satisfied smirk off the face of this guy who thinks he’s so much better than me.
My boiling rage is interrupted by the roar of a vehicle driving into the field. A black jeep with darkened windows hurtles toward us.
“Here comes the fat man,” mutters Adam, not moving his gaze from the phone.
The jeep stops, the doors open, and Carter Strike climbs out. My bio-dad now divides his time between the Forties headquarters in New York and his cluttered condo in nearby Suntop Hills. Two other men, junior agents, head straight for the Tastes Like Steak van. One of them points what looks like a car key at the nano ice cubes. Both cubes melt. The agent herds the shivering, confused Nelson and the head chef into the back of the van. The other jumps in the driver’s seat and pulls the van out of the field. Bye, guys.
As Strike passes Adam, the kid holds up a fist. Strike bumps it like they’re bros and then walks up to me.
“Great job, Bridget,” he says. “You noticed your mistake, and you corrected it. You can’t teach that. Thanks to you, we now have a valuable asset in the fast-food world, and you know what that means . . .”
“Free food from Tastes Like Steak for life.”
“You’re the best.” He grins.
Adam lets out a loud fake cough.
“You are, too,” Strike calls over to him. “Mr. Sensitive.”
“I’ll be in the jeep while you and the gimmick play happy family,” says Adam. With that, he slouches his way to the waiting vehicle.
“Who . . . ?” I start to say.
“Wait,” Strike replies.
He watches Adam get into the jeep and slam the passenger door.
“Okay,” says Strike.
“. . . is that jerk?” I shout. “That rude, obnoxious, arrogant, ignorant . . .”
“Remember Charlie Pacific?” Strike says.
I will not be stopped. “. . . ill-mannered, foul-smelling, grotesque, wretched . . .”
“Buddy of mine,” he continues. “We worked together in the field back in the day. He saved my life more times than I can remember.”
“How many times did he try to kill you?” I immediately say.
“Three,” says Strike. He gives me a sidelong grin that makes me forget how mad I am at Adam Pacific. We so get each other.
“What about him?” I say.
“He’s dead,” Strike replies. “Or he’s being held captive in North Korea. Same thing.”
“Sorry” is all I can muster.
“He had an inkling his days were numbered,” Strike continues. “The last few times he went out on a job, he’d call me and say, ‘If anything happens to me, I want you to watch out for Adam.’” Strike looks directly at me. “His son.”
I feel my stomach churn. This could be me. My biological parents are in charge of the Forties, an organization that employs criminals to catch other criminals. Any random work day could be their last.
My intense dislike of Adam doesn’t immediately melt away. But I feel like I understand the cool-dude facade he must feel he needs to wear as armor at all times. I’m compassionate like that.
“You’re still the Forties’ number one go-to agent when it comes to dealing with younger suspects,” Strike goes on. “But Adam doesn’t have any other family, so I made the decision to recruit him.”
“And you want me to watch out for him.” I nod. “Be his mentor. His point person. His handler. Help him heal.”
There’s a sudden honk from the jeep. Adam blasts the horn a couple more times. Strike waves in the direction of the blacked-out windows. Then he scratches the back of his head, rubs his chin, and tugs at his earlobe. He does not look directly at me.
“You don’t want me to be his mentor, point person, and handler?” I ask.
“It’s not that,” Strike mumbles, again not looking directly at me. “Adam totally surpassed all my expectations today. He tracked down the Tastes Like Steak van, took control of the situation, and saved you.”
I stand with my hands on my hips, glaring at him. “Unnecessary. I beat impossible odds all the time.”
“I know, I know,” Strike says, his eyes now searching the ground. “It’s just that . . . here’s the thing: Adam doesn’t have anyone, he doesn’t have a family, he doesn’t go to school . . . whereas you . . .”
I let out a gasp of pure shock. “You’re dumping me for that jerk because I have a family and I go to school?”
He reaches for my hand. I snatch it away and stomp furiously across the field.
“There’s no dumping,” Strike assures me as he walks by my side. “No one’s being replaced. It’s just that . . .”
I stop walking and jab a finger at him.
“It’s just what? Just that it’s so much more convenient with sideways-baseball-cap, barbed-wire-tattoo cool dude because he doesn’t have to come up with a web of lies to tell his family, friends, and principal. Whereas with Bridget, everything’s so complicated. There are so many people in her life. She always has to come up with all these stories, and alibis, and fake identities. Almost like she’s some kind of spy!”
That little tirade leaves me breathless. “Fine.” I sigh. “I understand. It makes sense. Dale Tookey told me I couldn’t be half a spy. You’re telling me the same thing.”
“What’s the story with you and Dale?” Strike asks. “I heard you and he weren’t . . .”
“Not appropriate!” I bark. “Stick to the subject at hand.”
Strike winces. “You’re my go-to,” he repeats. “The OG of tween spies. The GOAT. But you’re only one person, Bridget. An awesome butt-kicker without equal, but sadly they only made one of you. So I thought—we thought, Irina and I—the best use of your talents would be to save you for the special missions, the ones that need that Bridget Wilder magic. . . .”
I’m being handled here. I’m being flattered and manipulated by a master. I know it and Strike knows it, but it’s still nice to hear.
“Go on,” I say, fighting the urge to smile.
“For the grunt work, the meat-and-potatoes stuff, the unrewarding day-to-day grind, we have Adam . . .”
Strike shoves a thumb in the direction of the black jeep.
“He gets the dirty jobs?” I ask.
“He’s like a supermarket shelf-stocker.” Strike nods. His shoulders sag with relief that our spat is at an end.
I run a leisurely hand through my hair, feeling cool and superior.
“Like a guy with a plastic bag picking up dog poop!” I chirp. My brain crackles with images of Adam Pacific engaged in degrading menial work.
“Exactly!” Strike laughs along with me.
With bright smiles on both our faces, we walk—I actually skip!—toward the black jeep.
The passenger door opens. Adam leans out.
“Yo, Biggie,” he bawls at Strike. “Shake a leg. I’m going to be late for the stupid L4E job.”
Adam Pacific might as well have hit me in the face with a nano-snowball. My smile freezes. My eyes fix on Strike’s suddenly nervous face.
“What?” is all I am able to say.
CHAPTER FIVE
L4E
Ruth Etting is my favorite singer. I discovered her by accident on one of those YouTube search
es that’s supposed to last two minutes but eats up three hours because you keep losing yourself in more and more clips. She was a legit big deal in the 1920s and has this wah-wah singing voice that I find an absolute delight.
I sing Ruth Etting’s praises to make the point that Bridget Wilder is no mindless, slack-jawed, trend-following sucker. I’m suspicious of mass popularity. Whatever my peers are wearing, listening to, drinking, watching, following, or playing, I’m likely doing the opposite.
Except when it comes to L4E.
That’s Live4Eva to the uninitiated. Five ordinary guys from Glasgow, Scotland, who met when they were all acting in the British TV show Zoo Crew, about the lives and loves of young apprentice zookeepers. Their soaring popularity inspired a manager to form them into a boy band. Boy bands are not my thing. The screaming senseless girls who scrawl the names of boy band members on their arms and send shrieking selfies of themselves to their favorite’s Instagram account are not my thing. Spending hours refreshing some scruffy British singer’s Twitter feed in the hope he might have retweeted a birthday greeting is not my thing.
Except when it comes to L4E.
They’re not the best singers in the world. They might not even have been the best singers in the Zoo Crew zoo. They’re not the most talented dancers. Their thick Glaswegian—yes, that’s a word—accents can be hard to understand. Their concert merchandise is insanely expensive and completely defective. The tour T-shirt I bought shrank to the size of a postage stamp the first time it was washed.
But I don’t care about any of that. The first time I saw those five guys—Cadzo, Benj, Lim, Kecks, and Beano—I knew I was doomed to be one of those senseless screaming girls. I knew I’d be writing Cadzo’s name on my arm. I knew I’d try my hand at cooking Benj’s favorite fast food: deep-fried Mars Bar, a hometown favorite. (I do not recommend it, unless you want to know what drowning in chocolate-flavored quicksand tastes like.) I knew I’d be sending pictures of me with and without glasses to Lim’s Instagram to see which one he liked best, and I knew I’d be spending September 28 waiting to see if Beano retweeted my birthday greetings. What can I say? It’s like they reached out of the computer screen where I first saw them singing “No Cage (Is Big Enough to Stop Me Loving You)” and chose me to be their numero uno fan.
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