Bridget Wilder #3

by Jonathan Bernstein

  “What’s happening here?” bawls the Secret Service agent as he runs into the studio. “How did I get here? What are you two doing on this bus?”

  I check out his face. No intense stare.

  I check his hands. No Font phone.

  Mind control clearly works better and longer on impressionable young volunteers than hardened Secret Service agents. I whip out my amnesia atomizer and squirt him in the face. The agent slumps to the floor.

  “Better shoot the FBI chick, too,” says Pacific.

  “Then who’s going to drive the bus?” I ask.

  Pacific squirms and shifts from foot to foot. “Remember when I said the band turned on me when . . .”

  “You pretended to be Beano’s brother to get free stuff,” I finish his sad sentence.

  “That’s not the only thing I did,” he says.

  I’m about to ask what else he could possibly have done, when I realize.

  “This isn’t the first time you stole the bus!”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Cut to the Chase

  Do I have misgivings about Pacific driving the L4E tour bus? My misgivings have misgivings.

  “You drive like a maniac,” I tell him.

  “I haven’t killed anyone yet.” He laughs. “That deer was just stunned.”

  He honks the horn to punctuate his horrible joke.

  “Slow down!” I yell at him. “You’re driving way too fast!”

  His reply is to yank the bus without warning across all three lanes of the Whitehurst Freeway.

  “It would be good if we could get there in one piece,” I shout at him.

  He honks the horn again.

  “Stop honking the horn!” I demand.

  This is a terrible mistake, but it was either let Pacific drive or let the cops catch us. The Secret Service agent is amnesia-snoozing in the recording studio where I tied him up with guitar leads. The FBI agent is sleeping off her amnesia in the bathroom. I left them nice little handwritten notes for when they wake up and wonder where they are.

  Right now, the police cars are surrounding us in a kind of U-shape, but Pacific’s erratic driving is preventing them from getting ahead of us and blocking our path.

  “I wish they would try to stop us,” whoops a way-too-excited Pacific. “I wish they’d put a wall of police cars in front of me.” He punches the dashboard and shouts, “BAM! I’ll knock that wall down.”

  “Keep your hands on the wheel,” I beg him.

  “Bam!” he repeats happily.

  The giant TV screen at the front of the bus shows the president’s motorcade heading into Georgetown University. The streets are lined with patriotic Americans, some cheering, others booing. The passenger window of the president’s limousine opens. Jamie—which is to say, Vanessa in her nanomask—leans out to wave at the people on the sidewalk and film them on their phone. This earns her loud shrieks of approval. I still don’t entirely trust her, but there’s no denying that she’s committed one hundred percent to the role.

  The news report shows film of Morgan Font’s limo driving up Canal Street, only a matter of minutes behind the president. The tinted windows don’t open. No one knows what’s in that car. No one knows Font has a ticking time bomb in the shape of the real Jamie Brennan waiting to blow up her father’s career. The time on the TV screen is five twenty. Georgetown U is less than ten minutes away, but the traffic is going to become increasingly dense the closer we get to the location of the debate. The police are going to be all over us, too. I can’t do anything about the traffic to come, but maybe I can do something about the cops.

  I hurry down the bus.

  “Where are you going?” Pacific calls after me.

  “Kitchen,” I respond.

  “Grab me something tasty,” he shouts.

  I rush into the mini-kitchen area of the coach, and switch on the big steel fryer. Hanging on a hook at the side of the fridge is an apron with a pair of rubber gloves shoved into the pocket. I put on the apron.

  The kitchen starts to heat up as the oil inside the fryer starts to hiss and spit. I pull on the rubber gloves and slide open the fridge door. I open a box of Scottish Mars Bars, throw them into the fryer, and retreat a few paces as the chocolate hits the hot oil. Welcome to Cooking with Bridget!

  The stench makes me cover my face with the bottom of the apron.

  “You read my mind!” yells Pacific. “A deep-fried Mars Bar is exactly what I need right now.”

  I don’t plan on there being any left over.

  I tiptoe toward the fryer and peek down into the boiling furnace. I pick up a steel ladle from the side of the fryer and plunge it into the fiery depths. I carefully transport my ladleful of deep-fried chocolate out of the kitchen and into the main body of the coach. I slide open the window and hurl the contents of the ladle at the nearest cop car. Direct hit! The brown bubbling mess splatters across the windshield of the cop car to the right-hand side of the bus. The car swerves crazily across lanes.

  I charge back into the kitchen, fill my ladle of doom, and repeat the process, engulfing the cop car on the other side of us with fried chocolate goo. The driver slams on his brakes. The police car behind rams straight into him.

  “Ha!” I hear Pacific yelp with laughter from the front of the bus. “Wilder, did you see what happened? I guess the cop cars got splashed with mud or something . . .”

  I walk back through the bus, carrying my chocolate-dripping ladle, until I’m certain he can see me in the rearview mirror.

  “Guess again,” I say. I don’t have a huge need for validation, but I want Pacific to be aware that I’m as deadly with a ladle as he is with a towel.

  A familiar face appears on the TV screen. Secret Service Director Adina Roots. She’s being interviewed outside Healy Hall, the building on the Georgetown campus where the debate is due to take place. The interviewer gets up in Roots’s face about the Secret Service repeatedly dropping the ball in terms of providing A-plus security for the first family. Roots flares her nostrils at the reporter and assures him the Secret Service will be all over the campus. No one’s getting anywhere close to this debate unless they have a good reason for being there.

  My first impulse is to ditch this big bus. My second impulse is to use this big bus to cause a distraction and get the Secret Service to drop the ball again.

  I go up to the driver’s seat and stand next to Pacific.

  “Back when you pretended to be Beano’s brother to get free stuff . . .”

  He sighs. “That again?”

  “No judgment,” I assure him. “Did you do the accent?”

  “Wha’ ye blethering aboot, hen?” he says in full-on Glaswegian. “I gied them the patter, so I did.”

  “What are you talking about, girl?” I translate. “You gave them your best lines.” I smile at him. “And you said you weren’t good at languages. Okay, I want you to be Beano again. Fire up the bus PA and start broadcasting to DC. Tell them there’s a free L4E show at Healy Hall in Georgetown U, happening right now!”

  Pacific looks confused. “But that’ll cause chaos. The streets will be filled with . . .” His confusion fades. “. . . screaming, demented kids, which is exactly what we need.”

  He holds up a hand to be high-fived. Our hands make contact with a loud smack. Just for the slightest second, our fingers intertwine, and then he puts both hands back on the wheel. Did I feel a little shiver there? If I did, it was probably just professional respect between two spies on a dangerous mission. I hurry back down to the sleeping section of the bus to put the next part of my plan in motion.

  In my long-dead days of being an L4E devotee, my life was spent waiting by my phone for the boys to grace me with little snippets from their exciting lives. Now that the veil of fandom has slipped from my worshiping eyes, I know L4E for what they are: a bunch of mean, sloppy, overindulged teenage boys. Which means they probably left their laptops lying around and, if that is indeed the case, I can send out invitations to the spontaneous G
eorgetown U show from their official accounts.

  “Hey, youse, it’s yer man Beano frae the L4E. Wur oan wur way tae play a free show at Healy Hall in Georgetown University,” bawls Pacific into the bus PA. “Aye, ye heard us right. Free! So whit are youse waiting for? Git doon there noo!”

  I stifle a laugh. He sounds just like the real thing. I wonder if he’d record my voice message in that accent. Wait . . . why do I care? I shake it off and go back to the mission at hand, which is searching the sleeping quarters of the band I now despise to find their laptops.

  I search two beds and find nothing except a mess of boxer shorts, old socks, chip bags, gum wrapper, and filthy T-shirts. Cadzo’s bed is next. My heart has hardened to him, but still I find I need to take a couple of seconds to steady my nerves before plunging my hand beneath his sheets. Nothing incriminating lurks down there, or under his pillows, or shoved down the side of . . . wait a minute . . .

  With trembling hands, I retrieve Cadzo’s laptop. Do I know him well enough to guess his password? I know that he’s the member most likely to quit the band and go solo. I try SoloCadzo. Nope. Solocareer. Wrong. Myownvoice. No.

  Think like the obsessive fan you once were. I type Nothingwithoutme. Bingo.

  I’m about to start spreading the word about the fictitious free show when I see file marked We Love Our Fans.

  Aww, I think. That’s sweet. I can’t stop myself clicking on the file. I see a bunch of video clips. Once again, I can’t stop myself. I see Lim hugging a fan. As he hugs her, he sticks a sign that reads I FARTED on her back. The rest of the band crack up. The image changes to a clip of Beano pushing a fan into a fountain. Each clip gets worse. My shrimp trauma was simply the latest in a pattern of outrages against fans that started a long time ago. The last clip is of the band sitting on the bus surrounded by screaming fans banging on the windows, begging for attention. The boys ignore them. A chant of “we love you” begins.

  “Aye,” say the members of the band in unison. “And we cannae stand youse.”

  I think I have a lump in my throat.

  I try to push the horrific image out of my mind and execute my mission. I begin filling L4E’s social media accounts with details of the Georgetown U show. And then I hear the sound.

  My first thought: The cops are back with reinforcements. But it’s not police sirens I’m hearing. It’s the sound of screaming. Loud, sustained, high-pitched screaming.

  “Wilder!” shouts Pacific. “Look out the windows.”

  We’re on Canal Street. But we might as well have been transported to a parallel universe, one populated exclusively by screaming girls. They’re jumping up and down on the sidewalks. They’re on the road, running out into traffic. They’re swarming out of office buildings and stores. I see schoolgirls. I see schoolteachers. And then I feel the thump.

  Hands and fists are thumping the bus. I feel it on both sides. I feel it from above.

  “Wilder, someone’s on the roof!” yells Pacific.

  “Great!” I call back. “Our plan is a huge success.”

  I see an entire basketball team. I see women abandon their cars in the middle of the street to join the pursuit of the L4E bus that’s headed to Georgetown University for a free show that doesn’t actually exist. There’s no way this clever plan can go horribly wrong, is there? I’ve taken on terrifying bad guys in the past and come out on top. But Morgan Font is a different breed of enemy, and the stakes are way higher than I’ve ever faced before. This time, the stakes are the whole country. Am I really a good enough spy to stop America falling into Font’s hands?

  Pacific honks the horn and lets out a whoop of excitement.

  At least one of us thinks we’re good enough . . .

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Simmer Down, Furious Moppets

  As Adam slowly maneuvers the bus down the street, I hear a bunch of thumps, and a smash. Did that smash come from inside the bus? I hear screaming, louder this time, and the sound of feet hitting the ground. Those sounds definitely came from inside the bus.

  “Cadzoooo!”

  Someone’s on the bus?

  “Wilder, what’s going on back there?” yells Pacific.

  “I got it,” I shout back.

  Of course, now that I’ve said I got it, I actually have to go and get it. I hurry through the bus, and there in the kitchen is our uninvited guest. She doesn’t look any older than eleven, the same age as my sister, Natalie. But unlike the always-composed Natalie, this little creature wearing a school uniform that’s a size too big for her is a red-faced, sweaty, gasping bundle of anxiety who is crazed enough to smash her way inside a slowly moving bus.

  “Where are they? Where’s Cadzo? Who are you? Is Lim here? I love Lim. Lim!”

  “You’ll see them all at the show,” I lie. “But I have to ask you to leave the bus now. This is private property.”

  “Shut up!” she screams. “Shut your fat ugly face. Liiim!”

  “Wilder!” Pacific shouts. “What’s going on back there?”

  “I got it!” I reply.

  The little girl runs at me with palms outstretched, ready to shove me out of the way. I grab my ladle and thrust it at her like a sword. Angry tears squirt from her eyes.

  “I love Lim, and you won’t let me see him, and it’s not fair. I hate you. I HAAATTTEEE YOUUU!”

  “Simmer down, furious moppet,” I say. “L4E may seem like the most important thing in the world right now, but . . .”

  My wise lecture dies in my mouth as another red-faced girl squeezes through the broken window and into the kitchen.

  “I can smell them” are her first words. She sniffs the air and then looks at me. I see her clench her little fists.

  “She’s trying to keep us from seeing the band,” whines the first intruder.

  A third L4E fanatic hauls herself through the window. This is getting out of hand. All three of them eye me with blistering hatred.

  “Get out of my way or I’m going to rip every hair out of your head and shove them all down your throat,” threatens the latest member of the group.

  “That’s not going to happen,” I tell her. (But imagine if it did? Yuck!)

  All three girls transform into hissing, spitting, feral cats. They fly at me. One of them grabs my ladle.

  First Red, now my ladle!

  “Wilder!” yells Pacific.

  “I got it!”

  I do not “got it.” I turn and run from these banshees. As I flee toward the front of the bus, I hear more feet landing in the kitchen, followed by more screaming voices. It’s like an infestation of ants.

  As I charge toward the tartan couches, the bathroom door opens. The FBI agent I shot with my amnesia atomizer staggers out. I jump past her and dive onto a couch.

  “Hey,” she starts to say. “How did I get here?”

  She doesn’t manage another word. The rampaging L4E fans are on her, shoving, kicking, biting, and scratching.

  “Watch out for the one with the ladle,” I advise her.

  Pacific cranes around in his seat, looking horrified. “The bus is filled with crazy fans.”

  “So the plan half-worked,” I say.

  The gates of Georgetown University’s main campus are in sight. A swarm of university cops, local police, and gray-suited guys whose dark glasses and earpieces identify them as Secret Service agents attempt to hold back the crush of shrieking girls trying to clamber over the locked gates.

  I grab the bus’s public address microphone. “Officer down, repeat, officer down,” I intone, my voice electric with urgency. “Request backup now.”

  I see the local cops pointing at the bus.

  “Pull over,” I tell Pacific.

  He brakes outside the main gates. We open the bus door and gesture frantically to the cops, who stop trying to hold back the kids and hurry toward us. They eye me and Pacific with suspicion, but the sight of a full-grown woman trying to calm a baying mob of shrieking teens, one of whom is pounding her on the knees with a la
dle, is their priority.

  As the cops board the bus and go to the FBI agent’s aid, we make our escape, hurrying off the bus and making our way toward the mob of girls.

  “It’s four fifty,” I say to Pacific. “We’ve got ten minutes. Let’s split up, melt into the crowd, and try to get into Healy Hall unnoticed. Then find Jamie and get her away from Font before our time runs out.”

  “That’s a lot,” he says.

  “Yeah, but there’s two of us,” I remind him. “Wilder and Pacific.”

  “Pacific and Wilder,” he replies, and holds out a fist to be bumped. I bump it. There’s that little shiver again. Professional respect. And then Pacific eases himself into the swelling crowd of weeping kids.

  I take a few steps back and watch the mob shaking the gates. I wonder if I’m agile enough to pull off a Cheerminators routine here. What if I jumped on the shoulders of a hysterical L4E fan and then tried to somersault over the gates and into the campus?

  “Don’t even think about it,” breathes a man’s voice. I feel a hand come down on my shoulder. I immediately stamp hard on his foot and shove my elbow into his belly.

  “Ow,” he yelps. “Take it easy with that elbow.”

  I whirl around to see a campus cop clutching his stomach. The guy’s face may be hidden behind dark glasses and a police cap, but I know that belly.

  Strike.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  School Visit

  “Can’t this thing go any faster?” I say to Strike, as he drives his official campus police department golf cart toward the looming gothic spires of Healy Hall at a mind-bending twenty miles per hour.

  “If we went any faster, someone might notice us,” he replies. “But right now, we’re just a campus cop and a random girl riding on a slow-moving golf cart. Why single us out for attention when there’s so much more going on?”

  Strike is correct. The cluster of emotional L4E fans are still gathered outside the front gates. Countless TV reporters on the lawn are talking to their camera crews about this evening’s debate, which is only minutes away. Secret Service agents, White House staffers, and Morgan Font campaign team members all mill about, chattering urgently into their headsets. Font Force volunteers hand out phones to debate attendees making their way to the venue. No one gives us a first, let alone a second, look.