CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Career Opportunities
“Irina?” I say, aghast. “Strike? Why are you in the back of the Secret Service vehicle?”
“We’re both mothers, both professional women,” rages Irina as the SUV pulls away from my house. “We should be supporting each other. Instead, she undermines me and benigns my character every chance she gets.”
“Maligns is the word you’re looking for,” says Strike.
“That’s right, take her side,” snaps Irina.
“What are you doing here?” I ask my biological parents a second time. “Why didn’t you come into the house?”
“And be called a bad influence to my face?” sniffs Irina. “No, thank you very much.”
Adina Roots shakes her head at Strike and Irina. “The CIA really put its trust in you two to run an entire department?”
“I run it,” declares Irina. “He eats tortilla chips and plays video games.”
“So delusional.” Strike sighs.
Roots gives up talking to my birth parents and addresses her remarks to me. “I’m going to be truthful with you, Bridget. The Secret Service is underfunded and understaffed. We don’t have the best public profile. Mistakes that shouldn’t happen keep happening. I’ve worked with Strike in the past . . .”
“And yet she’s still speaking to him,” mutters Irina.
“. . . and when he forwarded me your text about the attack on the first lady, I should have given it top priority. But I didn’t.”
I don’t know exactly what’s happening in this SUV, but I do know that I’m being treated with respect and taken seriously.
Roots goes on, “I didn’t because, at the same moment I received your warning, the first daughter went missing.”
“She wasn’t under the weather like Mrs. Brennan said?” I ask.
“Jamie Brennan has a habit of disappearing from public engagements,” replies Roots. “I had to make a decision whether to concentrate on getting her back or preparing for a mutant insect attack. I made the wrong call. Fortunately for this country, for the president and the first lady, you were there. You acted quickly and smartly. You did great work, Bridget.”
“She always does great work.” Strike smiles.
“She gets that from me,” says Irina. “Maybe a bit from him.”
Adina Roots looks at me over the tip of her thick glasses. “The Secret Service cannot afford a repeat of that situation. But as we get closer to Election Day, Jamie will be called on to make more public appearances, and no matter how many times she promises to accept her responsibilities, she will find some way to sneak away.”
I inhale sharply. The girl who banged into me when I tried to get into the Reindeer Crescent school kitchen. The one with the cap pulled down over her eyes. I’ll bet that was Jamie Brennan making her escape.
“We’ve managed to locate her and bring her back in one piece,” Roots tells me. “We won’t always be that lucky, and I no longer have the time or the manpower to devote to tracking her down.”
“Which is where you come in,” says Strike.
I get a little thrilled shiver. I feel a big mission coming up.
“You want me to be her bodyguard?” I ask.
“We want you to be her,” Adina Roots replies.
“I . . . what now?”
Irina opens her black leather handbag and pulls out a white plastic circle. She fits it over her face. It’s a nanomask. A device that allows the wearer to assume another person’s face. One of the pre-CIA Forties’ most diabolical creations. In a split second, Irina’s pale, severe features disappear and are replaced by those of my mother.
“I don’t like this Irina, she’s a bad influence,” she screeches in a voice that sounds nothing like my mom. “How can someone as young as that, who dresses as cool as that, be a good mother? I am a very judgmental person.”
“Okay, you made your point,” says Strike.
Irina touches a finger to her chin. My mother’s face vanishes in a hail of static and the plastic circle slips off her face. Irina passes it to me.
“You want me to wear the nanomask and become Jamie Brennan?” I ask.
“For public engagements,” says Roots. “For the purposes of smiling, shaking hands, and posing in pictures. All the tasks Jamie finds so arduous.”
“The week you’ve been suspended from school coincides with the West Coast leg of the president’s reelection campaign,” Strike tells me. “If you say yes, we can integrate you into the Brennan family almost immediately.”
“Wait,” I say. “They’re okay with this? Jamie Brennan’s okay with this?”
“Jamie’s thrilled,” grimaces Roots. “The president and the first lady are not in love with the idea, but they understand that it makes protecting them that much easier, and they want the world to see them as a happy, functional family, which your presence would accomplish.”
I squirm around in my seat and look back at my mom’s car, which is following behind us. I smell more lies in my immediate future. When you want to paint a picture of a happy, functional family, call Bridget Wilder.
“What do I tell my family?” I ask.
“After your psych evaluation, we’re going to recommend that you spend your free week at the Secret Service foundation for at-risk youth, where we will endeavor to instill direction and motivation in you,” says Roots.
“There’s no Secret Service foundation,” Strike assures me. “It’s a total lie.”
“But we have documentation and websites, and we’ll Photoshop you into pictures and edit you into videos.” Irina smiles. “It’ll be like you’re there.”
“Can I have a minute to think about it?” I ask.
“Of course.” Roots nods. “Unfortunately, I don’t have much more than a minute.”
This is crazy. Lies on top of lies on top of lies. I look out the window as we drive through the streets of my hometown. I don’t think I have the talent to assume someone else’s identity for an entire week. I’ve never worn a nanomask before and don’t relish the prospect of hiding under it for an extended period of time. But given the choice of being locked at up at home with no internet and no human contact but a lot of disappointment, or passing myself off as the daughter of the most powerful man in the world . . .
I hear Joanna’s voice in my head singing: “Here come the spy twins on another adventure, here come the spy twins coming to your town . . .”
Would she say no to a job this big and this insane? I think she would not. And neither will I.
“Okay,” I say.
“Thank you, Bridget,” says Roots, breathing an actual sigh of relief.
“We’ll be monitoring you every step of the way,” Strike assures me. “If you feel you’re in over your head, we’ll be ready to jump in and help you.”
“I have a question,” I say.
They all look at me.
“There isn’t really a Secret Service office in Reindeer Crescent, is there?”
Roots smiles. “We rented a space in the mall. We’ll use the ninety minutes of your supposed interview to start orienting you to every aspect of Jamie Brennan’s life.”
“Plus we’ll have breakfast,” says Strike, looking happy at the prospect.
“That’s basically all he cares about,” Irina tells Roots.
I tune out my bickering birth parents and ponder the choice I’ve just made. Can I really pull this off?
“I know you can do it,” says Adina Roots. “Just one thing, though.”
She reaches toward me and pushes up the sleeve of my hoodie. The Magic Marker words Cadzo Army still run from my wrist to my elbow.
“You’ll have to wash that off.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
She’s Leaving Home
“Who would have put money on you going to juvenile detention before me?” Ryan laughs. He walks with me as I head down the driveway of our house and roll my wheeled suitcase toward the government vehicle that’s taking me to the nonexistent Se
cret Service foundation dedicated to setting troubled young people like myself on the road to a brighter future.
Mom and Dad don’t say much. Adina Roots did a good job convincing them that I’d benefit from spending time among other at-risk youths, and they agreed a week stuck at home would be a waste of time. But now that I’m actually leaving, they’re both looking a little shell-shocked.
“This is all happening so fast,” says Mom. “Maybe it’s a mistake. Maybe we should talk to some other parents with kids who went to the foundation, see how the experience was for them.”
“She doesn’t need to go to some government brainwashing center,” Dad says. “What if I took a few days off work? I’m a great motivator. I can talk to Bridget, set her back on the right track.”
I feel sick with guilt.
Ryan takes the wheeled suitcase from my hand and rolls it toward the trunk of the vehicle. He bangs the top of the trunk for the driver to open and turns back to face our parents.
“First of all,” he says, pointing a finger at himself. “This is Exhibit A in the case against Dad being a great motivator. Second, if she doesn’t go, it’ll be on her record that she sprayed the first lady and refused to take the Secret Service up on their generous offer of help. Yes, it’ll be hard to get by without Bridget’s happy face and winning personality, but we’ll have to do our best to cope for the week she’s gone.”
The trunk opens, and Ryan throws my suitcase inside. He turns and walks past me, giving me the slightest of punches on the shoulder.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
Dad hugs me. “This is nothing,” he says. “This is a bump in your road, and your road is going to take you to awesome places.”
“You are a great motivator,” I tell him, and hug him back.
Mom pulls me close to her. “I didn’t mean what I said about you being jealous of Natalie. This is all my fault. I don’t let you know enough how special you are to me.”
My throat swells, and my eyes get teary. “Mom, I know,” I try to say.
She keeps hold of me. “When you get back, we’ll spend more time together, just you and me.”
I wait for her to let me go. This is the part of being a spy I’m never going to be okay with. I open the passenger door and get in.
“Let’s go,” I tell the Secret Service employee behind the wheel.
He starts the car. There’s a series of loud bangs on my window.
It’s Natalie.
“Wait,” I yell at the driver. I jump out, and she throws her arms around me.
“I’m so mad at you,” she gasps into my ear. “But I don’t want you to be sent away.”
“I know I messed up your big day, but I’ll find a way to make it up to you,” I promise her.
“Just don’t get in any more trouble,” she replies.
I’m sitting on a toilet in the back of a Scandinavian delicatessen named Knudsen’s, somewhere in San Francisco. My head is buzzing with all the information I’ve accumulated about Jamie Brennan in the two hours since I left Reindeer Crescent under a cloud of lies and tears. Adina Roots sent me an app packed with biographical details, family photos, press clippings, and TV interviews. In a perfect world, I would have had weeks to prepare. I would have watched videos of the way Jamie Brennan moves, the time she takes between answering questions, how loudly she laughs, and how many times she chews her food. I would be familiar with the little body language giveaways that signal if she’s happy, sad, or lying. But I didn’t have weeks. I had yesterday and the car ride to San Francisco and the twenty minutes I’ve been in Knudsen’s toilet, changing out of my jeans and sweatshirt into the sort of floral shift dress Jamie favors.
This is all the stuff I’ve managed to memorize about Jamie Brennan: her upbringing in Westlake, a suburb of Fort Worth, Texas. Her childhood love of horse riding. Her favorite subjects in school. Her pets. Her best friend, Molly Costigan-Cohen. Her taste in fashion. The countries she hopes to visit. The books that inspire her. Her ambitions for the future, and the food she likes to eat.
I also know about the moment it all went wrong for Jamie. I remember Ryan referring to her as “the clumsy one,” but I never really gave that too much thought until I saw the YouTube clip that had hundreds of millions of views. The clip where Jamie Brennan fell.
Six weeks after her father had been elected president, Jamie and her parents attended an awards ceremony. Jamie, who had proved very popular with the voters in the months running up to the election, had been chosen to introduce a children’s choir. Sitting on the toilet in the back of Knudsen’s, I replay the clip I’ve been watching on repeat since yesterday.
I see Jamie looking happy and confident as she walks onto the stage. I see her acknowledge the cheers and applause from the audience, and then I see her trip over a microphone lead and tumble off the stage. The drop is only about three feet, but as she falls she lets out an ear-piercing AAAHHHRRRGGG! of shock and terror. She isn’t hurt, but she’s ferociously, agonizingly embarrassed. Her mother, First Lady Jocelyn Brennan, goes rushing up to her fallen child to help her. The appearance of her mother, who, it should be said, looks incredible, has the effect of making Jamie even more embarrassed. She shakes First Lady Brennan off, backs away from her, and falls over again, this time grazing her knee. Jocelyn gasps and goes running to her daughter. Jamie pulls herself to her feet, runs away, and falls over one more time! The clip ends with the choir bursting into song as Jamie lies on the ground, motionless and sobbing.
What would I do if something that horrific happened to me in a public setting? Leave town. Change my name. Get a new face. Never speak or make eye contact with anyone ever again. Jamie didn’t have that option. Her trilogy of falls inspired the unfortunate hashtag #tripletripper, a million YouTube parodies, even more millions of memes, and some cruel TV sketches. Even now that it’s almost four years later, I can see exactly why Jamie Brennan is no fan of appearing in public. Enduring something like that can scar a person for life. I’m still cringing about being kidnapped in an onion sack in the fridge of Parmesan Marmoset, and only two people saw that. So, even though I’ve been thrown into this mission, I feel a kind of kinship with Jamie Brennan. I want to do right by her. I want to remove the #tripletripper stigma from her name. I want to rehabilitate her public image and, in doing so, maybe give her the confidence to step back into the spotlight on her own, without falling over.
“Almost time to put your new face on,” I hear Irina’s voice murmur in my earpiece. “You ready?”
I get up from the toilet and approach the mirror. I lift the round piece of plastic to my face.
The nanomask was in my bedroom all last night. I held it in my hand. I lifted it up to my face. But I never put it on. Stupid, I know. I should have taken the time to get used to wearing it instead of leaving it to the very last minute, but I was afraid it would attach itself to my face and I’d never be able to remove it. Or that maybe it would burn my real face off and I’d be forced to wear it for life to hide the hideous scars underneath. But those are the fears of a scared little girl, not an experienced spy about to embark on the most important mission of her career.
“Don’t forget to take off your glasses,” says Irina.
“I hadn’t forgotten,” I reply. (I totally had.)
My glasses come off. A shiver rolls over me. The nanomask molds itself to my face. I don’t feel a thing. I also can’t see anything except a blurred outline of my reflection and then, magically, the nanomask adjusts my vision. My reflection comes into focus. I say my reflection, but what I mean is the pretty face of Jamie Brennan comes into focus. I stare at her perfect skin, dazzling white teeth, and dimpled cheeks. I can’t believe criminals invented this technology and kept it secret. The Forties could make billions selling this to people who are insecure about their looks.
“You’re staring at yourself, aren’t you?” says Irina.
“I’m not,” I lie. “I’m just . . . adjusting the wig.”
The wig goes on. It
’s a jet-black pixie cut. The final touch is a smart white blazer. That is one stylish, well-put-together young lady looking back at me in the mirror.
“Jamie Brennan, first daughter of the United States. Very pleased to make your acquaintance,” I tell my reflection. The words emerge from the mouth of the mask in Jamie’s soft Texan accent.
My phone emits a little digital whistle. The signal for me to emerge from the bathroom and become a whole new person. There’s that shiver again. This is the biggest job yet in my short spy career, and I’m suddenly very aware of the pressure on me.
“Showtime,” says Irina.
“Wish me luck,” I say.
“You don’t need it.”
I take a breath and then push open the bathroom door. Suddenly I’m thrust into a babble of loud raised voices. The staff and customers of Knudsen’s are yelling and shoving one another in order to show their support of the first lady. They bark her name and shove their phones in her direction. Jocelyn Brennan remains serene amid the chaos. She looks around and gives me that thousand-watt smile.
“Jamie,” she sings out. “At last. Come and say hello to everyone here at Knudsen’s.”
I freeze as every phone in the packed delicatessen is pointed at me.
“Look over here,” shouts a customer.
“Wave to my uncle in Monterey,” demands another.
First Lady Brennan makes a beckoning gesture, and I pick up my pace, anxious to launch into my role as the new, improved, reliable, relatable version of Jamie Brennan.
I concentrate on smiling and waving for the phones that are recording my every movement. I’m also trying to maintain eye contact with Jocelyn Brennan. I don’t immediately see the waitress backing away from the table to my left, carrying an armful of dishes.
Luckily, my birth mother is monitoring my movements.
“Bridget,” I hear Irina shout. “Veer right!”
My whip-fast reflexes enable me to sidestep out of her path inches before we collide. Unfortunately, I slam straight into a frazzled, breathless mother carrying a red-faced, shrieking baby.
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