Prettyboy Must Die

by Kimberly Reid

  “If Berg would just let me talk to—”

  “Be careful, Jake. Berg is gunning for me. He’s anti–Operation Early Bird in general, and anti-you in particular.”

  “Yeah, he made that pretty clear.”

  “Then you know you have to stand down.”

  “But—”

  The line goes dead.

  I stare out at the stand of Russian olive trees Berg and his team hid behind, feeling as abandoned as that old shed I’d seen from the roof.

  Then my phone vibrates in my pocket.

  The text is just a single sentence.

  If you want him to live, come to the sub-basement.

  CHAPTER 25

  So the hacker still has Bunker after all. It has to be her. Something felt off about that Morse-code message, but I was so happy to hear he was okay that I immediately dismissed it. And now I know what it was. The message said, Sorry, Peter. Even though he was worried about the bad guys using the same channel, in a stressful situation like that, I think Bunker would have called me Jake. Back in the library, he said from now on, I was going to be Jake Morrow to him.

  Berg stopped Katie before she could tell me why she’s really at Carlisle, then took my mission away. Rogers was so worried about her stupid career she wouldn’t even listen to what may be the biggest piece of intel she’ll ever receive. Well, they can both go straight to hell and take my job with them, because I don’t need to be a CIA employee to save my best friend.

  That’s exactly what I’m going to do, if I can just figure out how to get out of this police car.

  All I have in my pockets are a cigarette lighter and the Sharpie. Koval took the switchblade, and my Swiss Army knife was in my backpack. Even if Berg hadn’t confiscated my bag and I had all my tools with me, I don’t think the locks on police cars are pickable. At least my hands are free, not that they’re doing me any good. Next I try kicking the door open, but I can’t get enough leverage to build sufficient force. I consider kicking out the glass, but Berg would probably lose any patience he had left with me and have me taken into lockup, and then I would have zero chance of saving Bunker.

  Shouldn’t this have been on the syllabus at Langley? Freeing Yourself From a Locked Squad Car 101 would have been just as useful as those classes on dirty bombs and money laundering. I have been frustrated too many times to count today, but not being able to escape this stupid car seems to be the straw that will break my back.

  All I can do is sit on the wrong side of the squad-car window, freezing in the air conditioning thanks to the officer who left the engine running, watching my freed classmates stream past me. I hope they don’t think I’m some kind of criminal, that I was part of this whole thing. I raise my hands to the window, hoping they notice I’m not wearing cuffs. A few people smile at me even if they can’t do anything to help, but not everyone’s a fan. Through one of the windows the officer cracked open to keep me from dying of carbon monoxide poisoning, I hear one guy yell out, “Prettyboy sucks.”

  Oh, it’s that guy. The one from the library.

  Just when I’m about ready to give up, I notice Katie is part of the current line of people streaming past me. Rachel is walking ahead of her, and I see them whispering.

  Rachel yells, “No, you suck,” at the library dickhead before she hauls off and hits him. When he acts like he might hit her back, I see Duncan come to her defense. And as is the way of high schools everywhere, suddenly everyone is circling the two guys, chanting, “Fight! Fight!” which sends my guard over to break it up.

  No one even notices Katie sneak over toward my makeshift prison, slip around to the other side of the car, out of sight, and open the door.

  “Now that the civilians have been evacuated, they’re going to a hard lockdown so they can look for the remaining hostiles,” Katie says to me as though we’ve never been separated. I appreciate her not mentioning I’d basically been foiled by a child-safety lock.

  “The hacker texted me. She’s inside. She has Bunker,” I tell her.

  Katie stays in her crouched position outside the car and looks at me for a second. I expect her to say she was right to question Bunker sending a message in Morse code, but all she says is, “Do you think Koval is with them? I’m still worried he’ll get to my asset before I do.”

  I appreciate that, too.

  “There’s a good chance he is. So let’s stop him before he does,” I say, starting to feel the confidence I had on the roof now that Katie and I are together again.

  “It’ll be hard getting in. There will be a guard at every entrance.”

  “What are your feelings on air ducts?” I ask, crouching down beside her as we use the squad car for cover. “Carlisle’s are pretty nice. Heavier gauge steel, extra wide so they’re easier to crawl through.”

  “I’m sold. The place is crawling with police. But trying to access one of the air shafts from out here won’t be cake, either.”

  “The hacker has Bunk in the basement, so we just need to find a vent leading there and drop down.”

  Katie looks at me like she is no longer sold on the idea, but says, “At least it’s only one floor.”

  “Too bad Rachel’s not around. We’ll still need a distraction and she’s pretty good at creating them. I’m sure Berg’s team is keeping a close eye on all exit points.”

  Katie pulls the ponytail thing from her hair and shakes it out, like a girl in a shampoo commercial. “With some slight modifications to my uniform—hike up the skirt a few inches, undo a button or two—I could probably provide the distraction.”

  I cosign a hundred percent, but I don’t tell her that, or mention she could keep her uniform at dress code requirements and still cause a distraction if she does that hair thing again in front of the right cop.

  “We still need tools to open the vent cover,” I tell her. “This line of squad cars will provide enough cover to reach the groundskeeper’s shed. We can grab some tools and go from there.”

  We’re able to reach the shed undetected. The whole place smells of creosote.

  “Hey, you know you still owe me some intel, right?” I remind her.

  “I don’t owe you anything. I was going to offer you intel,” she says, sounding like she’s had a change of heart.

  “And now?”

  “We need to find our way into the building to see whether it even matters anymore. Maybe the pretend groundskeeper hid some weapons in here?” Katie says, looking around the shelves.

  I’m about to call her out on reneging on an agreement, but something else distracts me.

  “Or maybe he was planning to make some. There’s a lot of fertilizer stacked in this corner.”

  “The guy works for an arms terrorist. I’m pretty sure he didn’t need to resort to homemade bombs.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” I say, but I’m not convinced. I’ve seen a truck from one of those lawn fertilizer companies come out and spray the stuff in liquid form here. If these bags weren’t stacked with plans to make Carlisle’s grass as green as it is in the brochures, or to create bombs, then they were put here for some other purpose. “There’s so much, though. It’s like a wall of fertilizer. Maybe something’s behind it?”

  The top half of the last stack of bags has fallen over—or has been knocked over—allowing me just enough space to squeeze between the fertilizer wall and the real one.

  “You can stop fussing with those bags,” Katie says. “I found a screwdriver set. Perfect for opening vents. And for stopping bad guys from a distance if thrown with enough velocity and the right trajectory.”

  “I found something even better.”

  “Real weapons?”

  “No, a trap door,” I say.

  After she presses through the narrow space to join me, Katie asks, “Why would the school put a trap door in the groundskeeper’s shed?”

  “I don’t think they did. The door looks newer than the rest of the floor. This has to be the groundskeeper’s doing.”

  Like a Girl
Scout, Katie whips out a full-size Maglite and shines it down into the hole revealed by the opened trap door. It’s probably three feet in diameter, just wide enough to let a man who bench-presses railroad ties fit through.

  “It doesn’t look like he got the chance to finish it.” Katie gives me a look like she knows what I’m about to suggest, and is very afraid. “It’s just a hole in the ground.”

  “Depends on where it leads. You were right when you said he smelled like the outdoors. He had a way to move in and out, even during the lockdown. He didn’t need it to be pretty. He just needed to get from point A to point B undetected. Like we do.”

  Katie looks horrified, like I just asked her to jump into a pit of poisonous snakes.

  “I really want to help you find this hacker and your best friend, but you’re crazy if you think I’m going down there.”

  “And your asset. We’re looking for him, too.”

  Katie considers this and looks like she might go along with the program, but then says, “It isn’t even reinforced, and it’s probably unstable. The earth could shift, and next thing you know, we’re in our graves. Sorry, but no.”

  It’s the first time I’ve seen Katie afraid of anything. She usually plays it so cool, but right now, she sounds the complete opposite, her voice climbing higher with every word.

  “You’re claustrophobic?”

  “I am not.”

  “You have a fear of tunnels?”

  “No, I have a fear of dying,” Katie says, looking a little wild-eyed.

  “That’s a fear all field operatives learn to manage or we’d never go to work in the morning. How did you manage to get through the class on tunnel countermeasures?”

  Katie looks at me like she’s thinking of a lie to tell, but then decides on the truth. “The instructor was a young officer and I was—well—I flirted my way out of the class. Look, I’m not proud of it. And I’m also not going into that hole.”

  “It’s okay. Don’t worry—” I start, but stop myself because I know those are fighting words with Katie. “You stay here. I’ll see where it leads. If I’m not back in five minutes, you’ll know it led me inside Carlisle. If I’m not back in an hour, you’ll know I’m worm food.”

  Katie punches me in the upper arm. Hard.

  “Don’t even joke like that. You’d better be back in five minutes, or I’ll go to Berg. Take these,” she says, removing a couple of the screwdrivers from the set she found in the shed. “I hope your throwing skills are good. You may need them.”

  We stare at each other for a moment, and I remember our one date, our first kiss, and I want to kiss her again because maybe I’m not wrong about the tunnel and the worm-food thing. But that’s a distraction I don’t need right now.

  I step away because I can tell she’s distracted too, and before she can mount a protest, I let myself fall down into the hole.

  CHAPTER 26

  Now I understand the groundskeeper’s fascination with railroad ties. He wasn’t using them just for weightlifting or landscaping. He was using them to brace the dirt walls. But even knowing the tunnel is somewhat reinforced, I have to agree with Katie—this is not my favorite place. I try to think of it as no different than scrambling through an air shaft, but now I’ve got Katie’s words in my head about the whole thing collapsing and becoming my grave.

  Especially when I hear a sudden rumbling noise overhead. For a second, I’m certain it’s an earthquake and I’m about to die. Then I remember they generally don’t have earthquakes in Colorado. I must be underneath a road, which doesn’t make me feel better. Two-ton SUVs driving over a makeshift tunnel can’t be good for it. To keep from losing my nerve, I remind myself that I’m doing this for Bunker, and it isn’t that far of a distance between the tool shed and the main building—and that I refuse to lose face after talking smack to Katie about her tunnel phobia—and I just keep moving forward.

  Forty-five seconds later, I’m relieved to still be among the living when I find the tunnel ends at another trap door only a foot above my head. I have to hope that wherever I am, one of Berg’s rescue team isn’t. Or that I can even open the trap door at all. It might be covered with bags of fertilizer.

  I lift the door just far enough to see if the room is occupied. I’m hella relieved to find it isn’t.

  Once I open it completely and pull myself up into the room, I see that it’s—no surprise here—the janitor’s office. The door was hidden by a rug. The tunnel must have been some kind of escape route in case things went bad. From here, I just need to go a few steps to reach the stairwell to the sub-basement.

  I have no idea where the hacker will be down there. The only weapons I have are my hands, feet, and the screwdrivers Katie gave me. Any of them are deadly in hand-to-hand combat, but I’m hoping I don’t have to get that close. Even if the hacker’s been trained by the Russians and is the most skilled level-five Spetsnaz fighter ever, I have nearly a hundred pounds and more than a foot on her, and I ain’t too bad at the kickass myself. But if Koval is still on campus with her … I don’t ever want to go hand-to-hand with that guy again. The tools could be used as throwing weapons, but you need the right amount of distance to throw with enough velocity to make them lethal.

  At the door I hesitate, preparing myself just in case Koval is behind it, along with the hacker and Bunk.

  “What are you waiting for, Peter? The door is unlocked,” the hacker says from the other side of it.

  I look up to find a security camera mounted on the wall behind me. Right. She’s probably been watching me since I hit the stairwell. I’ve lost the element of surprise, but I’m glad I didn’t take out the screwdriver that’s hidden inside my sleeve, in preparation for an attack. At least she doesn’t know whether I’m armed.

  When I open the door, the first thing I see is Medusa standing behind my best friend, one hand waving her smartwatch at me, the other pointing a rifle at his back. She has him gagged so he can’t say anything, but I can tell from his eyes that he’s terrified.

  I have never hated anyone, even Duncan before he morphed into a human. But this girl? She ought to be glad I’m not armed or she would be so dead right now.

  “Aren’t these things the best?” she says. “I could monitor your approach even with my hands full. I’ll admit I was a little worried there for a minute.”

  “Like you’d ever worry about Bunker.”

  “Bunker? Oh, you mean him,” she says, jabbing the barrel of her rifle into his back, making his eyes widen beyond what you’d think humanly possible. “Of course not. I was worried about me. Or more specifically, I was worried about my plan. But you made it to the party. I didn’t think you would after that Berg person had you locked up.”

  “So you’re listening in on his every move, huh?”

  “He thinks I’m in London. What a moron. If that is what passes for leadership in your organization, then this whole thing should be so easy.”

  “What whole thing?”

  “Koval taking his rightful place. He’s been second-in-command for years. But then you found the list and exposed our clients. You ruined my reputation, and because he brought me into Marchuk’s organization, you ruined his, as well.”

  By the time she finishes the last sentence, her English accent is gone. Koval had said she could affect a number of accents, but it’s clear this was the one she grew up speaking.

  “So you’re Ukrainian, too, not some English hack-for-hire working for Marchuk?”

  She doesn’t answer, but I want to keep her calm and talking while I work out a plan.

  “You work for Koval now?”

  “I was always on his side. Vadim Koval is my brother. And this has always been my plan. Sveta works for no one but herself.”

  “What exactly is this plan of yours?” I take a small step back, hoping she’ll subconsciously respond to my movement by stepping forward. So far, all I can think to do is draw her near enough to me to disarm her, then take her out with hand-to-hand combat. But she doe
sn’t move, just stays there with that rifle muzzle pressed against Bunker’s back.

  “You are so smart, haven’t you figured it out? No, because I’m smarter. I suppose it doesn’t matter if I tell you now. Who are you going to tell, Prettyboy? No one, because you’ll soon be dead.” She smirks at that last part, which actually makes me hopeful. Her overconfidence is a weakness to exploit. “We would get your people to capture, hopefully kill Marchuk, since we all know the capturing didn’t go so well last time.”

  So they wanted the CIA to do their dirty work. I just hadn’t realized how far back the plan went. Sveta has played me for a fool for even longer than I believed.

  “So you’re saying even back in the Ukraine, you were manipulating us into taking out Marchuk for you?”

  “We wanted either the clients or the CIA to do it, as long as Vadim continued to look like the grieving, loyal sergeant. But both you and the clients failed. Well, you did get the old man.”

  “And here I thought Koval was just waiting for Marchuk Senior to retire so he could inherit the business. But y’all planned all along to take it from both Marchuks, except making their clients believe our people killed them.”

  “You let the stupid one get away,” Sveta continues, “but I lured him out of hiding—”

  “And I suppose it was with your help that I didn’t know anything about that?” I ask, still stalling for time, still hoping I can draw her close enough to kill her with my bare hands, or at least away from Bunker so I can throw a screwdriver into her heart. Fortunately, people love talking about themselves, especially sociopathic people who think they’re extra brilliant and underappreciated. I take a small step forward. Sveta is so into bragging about herself, she doesn’t notice.

  “Yes. I intercepted recent calls, voicemail, and texts from the CIA, just letting through what I wanted you to see,” Sveta boasts, clearly proud of her phreaking skills. If Bunker’s eyes weren’t starting to water out of fear that she’s about to kill him, I’d admit to her that I’m impressed. “Vadim has been working to get the operation up and running again while that coward Marchuk hid out, just waiting to surface and take over again. So I hurried things along.”