Did Ur5ula help you locate the disguised satellite? I find myself thinking but do not say because I have my priorities straight.
“So be quick,” I tell him.
“I’ve been doing freelance security work for Strike, listening in on any calls that have anything to do with the Forties. I intercepted a call this morning that said there were twenty-five minutes of surveillance footage missing from your Los Angeles hotel room last night.”
I don’t understand. But of course I say, “Uh-huh, go on, I’m listening.”
The line crackles some more. Dale’s voice gets louder. “After Jamie had been gone for a couple of hours, the FBI were contacted. They sent a forensic team to the hotel. They went to your room. They found stuff.”
I feel the tips of my ears burning, which is a new, and not very nice, sensation.
“What sort of stuff?” I croak.
“Who is that?” Vanessa pipes up. “What’s going on?”
I wave her away.
“Is that Vanessa?” I hear Dale say.
Everyone knows everything but me. I hate spies.
“Put her on speaker,” he demands. “She can help.”
“Really?” I say. “How? You don’t buy that stuff about her trying to redeem herself.”
“Are you talking about me?” Vanessa asks.
I touch the speaker icon.
“Yeah, actually, I do,” says Dale’s suddenly clear voice.
“Dale Tookey?” chirps Vanessa. “Lovely to hear your voice. How’s Ur5ula?”
“Doing good,” says Dale cheerfully. “We should all hang out again.”
Okay, let’s make a list of all the awesome things that have just happened.
1.I apparently am implicated in the kidnapping of the president’s daughter.
2.My biological mother and father are being interrogated by the CIA and will more than likely become fugitives.
3.My nemesis, my ex-boyfriend, and his current girlfriend are besties.
“Sorry to interrupt,” I say, with as much dignity as I can summon up. “You were saying something about the FBI forensic team?”
Vanessa’s eyebrows shoot up.
“They found some of Jamie’s hairs on your bed,” he says.
“She slept over,” I reply. “We’re really good friends.”
I give Vanessa a look that says See, I have friends, too. Petty, I know, but consider my position.
“That’s not all,” Dale goes on. “They found traces of fingernails attached to carpet strands. Like she’d been dragged out of your room against her will.”
“That doesn’t sound right,” Vanessa breaks in. “Usually people can’t wait to get away from Bridget.”
Oh my God, I hate her so much!
“They found some dried blood,” Dale continues. “And some wax residue from a scented candle that contained sedative qualities. They took what they found and factored in the missing twenty-five minutes from your room . . .”
“And they figured that was the time Bridget used to drug and overpower the first daughter!” gasps Vanessa. She leans in close to me. “Did you do it, peanut? You can tell Auntie V.”
I push her away from me. “Of course I didn’t do it.”
“It doesn’t matter if she did it or not,” said Dale.
“I think it matters a little bit,” I say. “And thanks for your unwavering support.”
“The FBI found out the CIA was involved via the Forties, and then they found out the Forties had loaned you out to the Secret Service . . .”
Vanessa sticks her hand up in the air like she’s trying to attract a teacher’s attention. “Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! And now the CIA and the Secret Service look like fools for hiring some dopey thirteen-year-old girl from a department that no one even knows exists. . . .”
“And is filled with criminals,” Dale adds.
“So now that the FBI suspects Bridget Wilder is part of a conspiracy to kidnap the president’s daughter, the Secret Service and the CIA get a chance to make up for being so dumb by bringing you in,” says Vanessa, looking even more pleased with herself than usual. “You’re public enemy number one.”
She gives me an impressed thumbs-up. I hear the sound of loud knocking on the door.
“We need you to come out right now.” That Secret Service agent sounds a lot less friendly than the last time I heard his voice.
The door handle starts to turn.
Vanessa opens it. Two bodies slump to the ground.
“Bridget, what’s going on?” Dale shouts.
Vanessa turns back around to face me. She’s pointing the barrel of a gun at me.
Oh wait, it’s not a gun. It’s a small clear-plastic cylinder with a spray nozzle at the top. She hands it to me.
“Amends,” she says.
“You just killed two Secret Service agents,” I moan. “Not a great help in establishing my innocence.”
“It’s a perfume atomizer that sprays liquid amnesia,” says Vanessa. “It’s still in the test stages, as everything from the Forties tends to be.” She gives me a smirk and a shake of her head. “Did you think it was a gun, you funny little dunce?”
“NO,” I reply.
She gestures in the direction of the motionless Secret Service agents lying outside the bathroom door. “They’ll be fine, but the previous hour will be a blank. You’ve got approximately ten squirts. Use them wisely.”
“Thanks,” I find myself saying to Vanessa Dominion. “Now I need you to do something else for me.”
“Okay, but then you’ll owe me,” she says.
I pass her my nanomask. “Be me. Well, be me being Jamie.”
Vanessa’s mouth forms into an O shape.
“Bridget,” I hear Dale say. “Is this a good idea?”
“Bye, Dale,” trills Vanessa. “Give Ur5ula a kiss from me.” She reaches out and ends the call.
A scary smile spreads across her face. “I always imagined myself marrying into the royal family. President’s daughter is something of a step down, but I will embrace the challenge wholeheartedly.”
Vanessa snatches the nanomask from my hand and fits it over her face. She adjusts the wig and gazes raptly in the bathroom mirror as her features change.
“Hi, y’all,” she says in Jamie’s Texan accent.
“She never says y’all,” I inform her. “It’s best if you just smile and say nothing.”
“Whatever,” says Vanessa. She’s still caught up in her new reflection. I’ve probably made a gargantuan mistake, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
“Don’t get too used to that face,” I warn her as I head out of the bathroom. “I’m bringing the real one back.”
“Where are you going?” she asks. “Do you have a plan?”
“I have parts of a plan,” I admit. “I need to get my family out of here. If I’m a suspect, the people who suddenly showed up in the White House with me are also suspects. I’ve got to put them in a place where the FBI, the CIA, and the Secret Service can’t find them, and then I’ve got to figure out who set me up, find the real Jamie Brennan, bring her back, and clear my name.”
“Good luck, peanut,” says Vanessa.
As I open the bathroom door and step over the bodies of the two Secret Service agents, I hear Vanessa’s voice.
“I’m going to be president.”
The sound of her laughter echoing behind me is the scariest thing that’s happened all day.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Asylum
I do not like or trust Vanessa Dominion, and I certainly don’t believe that she is trying to redeem herself . . .
BUT.
In her first moments pretending to be Jamie Brennan, she marches to the top of the West Wing steps, looks out at the Rose Garden, and addresses the assembled guests thusly:
“What better way to celebrate America’s families than starting a conga line?”
I notice that she’s wearing my Forever 21 gingham dress and I’m wearing her much more s
tylish green outfit. We forgot to change clothes! But she makes my thing look like a million dollars, and I’m fairly certain I make her designer dress seem like an old sack of potatoes.
She shimmies her way down the steps, shaking her hips and kicking her feet. The Rose Garden is immediately filled with applause and smiling faces. The spontaneous Jamie Brennan with her happy dancing feet is back!
Vanessa gestures to the president to join her conga line. He almost trips over the tables to dance with his daughter. A mad scramble of guests jostles to join him. She’s too immersed in leading her followers around the Rose Garden for her to notice me giving her a grateful, admiring smile. That ice-hearted snob has just done two very clever things. She has made it impossible for the Secret Service to get anywhere near her, and she has given me the opportunity to slip away from the Rose Garden unnoticed, which I will do as soon as I have the rest of the Wilder family with me.
I see Ryan, now wearing a huge white Stetson hat, midway down the conga line. I charge toward him, grab him by the wrist, and drag him behind a tree.
“What’s going on?” are his first words to me. “Is it spy action?”
I am mortified that Ryan showed up to the White House in a Mexican wrestling T-shirt, but right now I could hug him. Having one member of my family I don’t have to lie to, who knows most of my secrets and never needs explanations, is an amazing luxury.
“I can confirm it’s spy action,” I tell him. “Want in?”
Ryan’s eyes widen. “You’re cutting me in on the spy action?”
“If you think you can handle it,” I say.
“What’s the mission?” he asks.
I’m about to tell him, but I’m suddenly overcome by curiosity. I don’t want to tell him that I’ve been impersonating Jamie or that she’s missing and I really don’t want to tell him that Vanessa wormed her way back into the Wilder family home, but there’s something I need to ask him. “Hey, Ryan, did I . . . act weird, or weirder than usual, when I came back from Secret Service camp, or when we were on the plane? Did I do or say anything . . . ?”
Ryan looks surprised. Then he thinks about it a little more. (That narrowing of eyes and scratching his nose: that’s the sign of Ryan in the act of thinking.) “Yeah. You were really weird, even for you.”
I knew it. I hate her.
“What was that?” Ryan asks. “When you got home? The stuff you were saying to me?” He does an inaccurate impression of my voice, doing the squeaky thing everyone thinks is so funny, but adding a verge-of-tears tremble to it.
“‘Thank you for giving me this second chance. I’m trying hard to redeem myself, and if I ever did anything to hurt you, I want you to know I’m sorry, that is not who I am now. I’m going to do my best to make it up to you.’” Ryan shakes his head at me. “Was that part of the mission? Were you undercover?”
I take a second to let that strange little picture sink in.
“Yeah, kind of,” I say mysteriously. I can see he’s hungry for more details. Instead, I poke a finger into his chest. “You know how you’ve devoted your whole life to pulling dumb, stupid, ridiculous pranks that bring shame and embarrassment on our family?”
Ryan nods.
I grin at him and say, “I want you to pull the dumbest, stupidest, most ridiculous prank ever!”
And right now, I could swear my brother has a little tear in his eye.
Ten minutes after I told Ryan exactly what I needed him to do, the conga line is still snaking its way around the length of the Rose Garden. Everyone is part of the dancing festivities. The first family, the guests, the press, the caterers. It’s another massive win for Jamie Brennan. I run up the line until I catch sight of the flying feet and waving hands of my mother, my father, and my sister.
“Mom, Dad,” I gasp. Dad tries to pull me in step with him. I evade his hands and act like I’m attempting to catch my breath.
“What have you done now?” says Natalie, who looks furious at the very sight of me.
“It’s Ryan,” I say.
“Oh God,” my mother says, shuddering.
“He ran off,” I tell them, hoping I look sufficiently terrified. “He . . . he said something about storming the Trezekhastan Embassy.”
Mom, Dad, and Natalie react to this bizarre statement as if they were just punched in the face.
“He wouldn’t,” says Natalie. “Not tonight.”
But she knows he would. And just to seal the deal, I add, “He said the best way to celebrate America’s families was to confront the enemies of our freedom.”
I grab Mom and Dad’s wrists. “We’ve got to stop him,” I yell at them. “Being arrested in Washington is a whole different deal than being arrested in Reindeer Crescent. We might never see him again.”
For a second, relief floats across the faces of my family members. Then reality kicks in. The Wilders make a hurried exit from the Rose Garden while, behind us, the conga line goes on.
And now my barely-thought-through, totally-improvised plan to keep my family out of danger begins!
As far as Mom, Dad, and Natalie know, an Uber car just happened to be waiting outside the White House to transport us the three miles to Wisconsin Avenue, the location of the Trezekhastan Embassy. As far as they are concerned, the Trezekhastan ambassador turned out to be a gracious, polite and accommodating host who not only welcomed them into the embassy but insisted in feeding them, giving them a tour of the building, and lecturing them on the history and culture of Trezekhastan. As far as they know, Ryan has barricaded himself in the ambassador’s office and is demanding to talk to the Trezekhastani prime minister.
But that’s not what happened.
Even before Vanessa began her epic conga line, I frantically pondered ways to keep my family out of harm’s way. Hiding them from the combined CIA, FBI, and Secret Service seemed like it was going to be a tall order, especially when I didn’t know anyone in Washington. But my brain comes into its own in times of crisis. Sometimes it helps to say your problems out loud.
“You’re right,” I told myself. “You don’t know anyone in Washington. But you know someone who owes you a big favor. You know the son of Trezekhastan’s secretary of state, the boy whose life you saved from the hands of Vanessa Dominion back when she was still completely evil.”
I kept up my one-sided conversation. “The Trezekhastan Embassy is here in Washington, and they grant asylum to refugees from countries that are enemies of Trezekhastan.”
This thinking-out-loud thing was going great! I thought some more. “The CIA, the FBI, and the Secret Service cannot remove those refugees without lengthy negotiations with the Trezekhastan government.”
I’m friends with the secretary’s son on Trezekh.chat. I DM’d him and got him to talk to his father. I had him tell the embassy to treat the Wilders like refugees and keep them cooped up in there until I discovered who was out to get me.
Great thinking! Especially with Ryan in the embassy finding new ways to make a bad situation worse.
Getting out of the embassy without Mom and Dad noticing I was gone would be a no-brainer. After Secret Service camp and the burrito incident, Mom, Dad, and Natalie are so ready to believe the worst of me. All I have to do is fake being sick, hole up in the embassy toilet, and they’ll leave me alone.
Was this really a good idea? It was about as good as not telling the president and first lady that their daughter had been kidnapped, but is it the best I can come up with.
The first few stages of my plan seemed to work without a hiccup. Mom and Dad are confused and upset, but they are safe inside the embassy. I am sitting in the building’s kitchen with Natalie, as one of the staff cooks us a Trezekhastani delicacy that looks like brown custard, and which will I imagine will give me a credible reason to spend a few hours in the bathroom.
Something that’s been nagging at me for the past few hours simmers to the surface. I take out my phone and look at the last video attachment Adam Pacific sent me, the one where his big fat head part
ially obscures L4E rehearsing behind him. Their tour schedule is tattooed on my heart. They should be in an arena in Brazil. But that clip makes me think they’re somewhere else.
“Oh my God. Seriously, Bridget,” says Natalie. “Ryan might be starting a war, and you’re drooling all over your silly boy band.”
“They’re not silly,” I start to say. But arguing is useless. You can’t make non-L4E people understand. I ignore my sister’s disdain and freeze the clip at a moment when there’s a little bit less Pacific head and a tiny bit more of the band.
When the Forties’ Research and Development weirdos gave me my phone, they told me of its incredible zooming capabilities. Now is the time to put their claims to the test. I zoom past Pacific, and I see two distinct colors. One is orange, and one is blue. If I am correct, the orange is a strip of hair on top of Cadzo’s head. The Zohawk is back!
What a coincidence that Jamie and I talked about the wildly divisive ’do a few days ago and now he’s sporting it again. I zoom some more. The blue is the bottom of a big F. The same big F I saw on the news report where independent candidate Morgan Font stood on the stage of his Font Foundation surrounded by kids and talked trash about my beloved dance routine.
My spy senses kick in. Or maybe it’s my L4E fan senses. Whatever it is, something has kicked in. The band is in Washington, DC. But why are they singing in front of the big F? And why is Cadzo wearing his hair in the style that tore social media apart?
I take a bite of the Trezekhastani delicacy. It’s actually quite delicious, but I have questions that need answering, so I dry-heave after my first spoonful, and tell Natalie I have to make a run for the toilet. She gives me an exasperated look. Lately, I do nothing but embarrass and disappoint her. I feel bad about that, and also guilty that I’m abandoning my family in unfamiliar surroundings, but I can live with guilt.
Somebody out there is messing with me. It’s time I messed back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Big F
The Uber driver who picked the Wilders up at the White House takes me down Constitution Avenue. The car passes the Federal Reserve, the Lincoln Memorial, the National Archives, the Environmental Protection Agency, and lots of equally impressive buildings I should probably recognize. Maybe when I’ve returned Jamie safe and sound to the White House, her parents will be so grateful, they’ll give me the keys to the city, and perhaps a parade in my honor. Or maybe they’ll discover the true identity of the possibly reformed assassin I enlisted to take my place as their fake daughter and have me deported to Trezekhastan. (And what if Vanessa is under deep cover? What if she’s still in league with her criminal mastermind father, the distinguished Edward Dominion? I’m the one who put her within killing distance of the president and the first lady. My head is pounding with increasingly horrific worst-case scenarios.)
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