Book One

by K. C. Archer

  “Done what before?” Nick asked.

  A bell pinged and the elevator door slid open. Teddy stepped inside, her hand hovering at the number pad. “Gone on a tour of the FBI? Tried a relationship with someone I actually liked?”

  “So you like cops now, huh?” The left side of Nick’s mouth curved up again. He followed her into the elevator. “Sixth floor.”

  Luckily, she was saved from any further awkward conversation as two other people entered the elevator. When the doors opened on the sixth floor, she followed Nick down the hall. He ushered her inside his office, his hand barely grazing the small of her back. As soon as the door was closed, Teddy crossed the room to Nick’s desk. She casually set down her clutch. All she had to do was insert the flash drive in his computer and upload the malware.

  But now that she was actually in Nick’s office, Teddy understood that this would be harder than she had thought. She would have to convince Nick to leave her alone in the room—either by means of her own wiles or by mental influence.

  “So, you want to explain what this is all about?” he asked. He took his suit jacket off and hung it on a peg behind his door. He crossed his arms over his chest, causing his shirt to bunch over his biceps.

  Teddy’s stomach lurched. Carefully, she said, “What do you mean?”

  “They teach us stuff at Quantico, you know. But I don’t have to be an FBI agent to see that you’re scared.”

  Of course she was scared. She was scared this whole thing would backfire at any second, in the dozens of ways she had imagined and the millions of ways she could never anticipate. Teddy took a deep breath. If she was going to influence him, the time was now.

  “We moved too fast the other night,” Nick said. He uncrossed his arms, shifted again on the balls of his feet. “I take responsibility for that. What’s going on between you and me, and my position at school—”

  His words stopped her short. What was he saying? That he wanted to try to make this work? Or that it was a bad idea? For a split second, the what-ifs circling in her mind pivoted. What if we could be together?

  Of course, that option had quit being an option the night she hacked in to his laptop and copied his hard drive. Even less of an option now, with her friends staked out in a suite across the street and a purse full of malware.

  There was a knock, and the agent from the lobby peered around the door. “Hey, Nick, Lambert’s just out of an interrogation and picked up something. You have a minute?”

  Nick turned toward Teddy. “Sorry,” he said. “I won’t be too long.”

  Teddy should have been elated. Maybe not a bona fide miracle but close enough: Lambert had given her a window to hack Nick’s computer. And she’d avoided using mental influence to do it. So why did she feel so disappointed? “No problem,” Teddy assured him. “Take your time.”

  She practically dove for his computer the second the door closed. She shoved the flash drive into the USB port. Seconds later, her cell phone buzzed. Dara would confirm once Molly had downloaded the virus.

  Download complete.

  Check.

  They were back on track.

  She moved toward the window and scanned the street below. She spotted Pyro in a navy hoodie, smoking a cigarette outside a café. Overhead, she saw a seagull swoop in an irregular pattern. She wondered if it was a sign from Jillian.

  Her cell phone buzzed again. She opened her purse to check for the message from Dara: Position too low. Buy more time.

  Teddy looked out the window toward the Embassy Hotel where Dara and Molly waited. She imagined Molly bent over her laptop as Dara paced and talked and texted. Buy more time. How much more time? Ten minutes? An hour? Teddy began to respond when a movement at the edge of her vision caught her attention: two figures climbing the Embassy Hotel’s fire escape. Molly and Dara were headed to the roof.

  This was not a part of the plan. Teddy typed: What are you doing??? She hit send and glanced back out the window only to see Molly swing onto the hotel roof just as a figure in a navy hoodie launched up the fire escape after them.

  This was definitely not part of the plan. In the span of two minutes, three things had gone wrong. Her phone buzzed once more: Under control.

  Teddy glanced back out the window. Dara and Teddy hadn’t noticed the third figure, which must have been Pyro. But what if it wasn’t Pyro? Because whoever it was certainly didn’t move like Pyro. No. It had to be him. But just in case . . .

  Someone on the roof. Teddy stared at her phone. No response. She looked across the street.

  Two seconds later, her phone began to buzz. A call from Dara. Could she risk answering it? If Dara was calling, it had to be serious. Had she seen something else?

  Before she could pick up, the door opened and Nick reentered the room. “How did you get that past security?”

  “Wait a minute. I’m not supposed to have it in here? Sorry, I didn’t know. I mean, I know they’re not allowed at Whitfield, but I figured it was okay. So . . . no cell phones in your office? Is that a rule?”

  “Something like that, yeah. The security guard didn’t catch it?”

  “He didn’t say anything.” Teddy shrugged. “I guess the FBI isn’t any better than the TSA when it comes to scanning things.”

  Nick looked her up and down, eyes narrowed. But if his eyes were on her, they wouldn’t be on her USB drive. She had to stick to the plan as best she could. They’d extensively covered situations like this in Boyd’s class. If every member of a team reacted blindly as events unfolded, missions would dissolve into nothing but chaos. The first text she’d received from Dara had asked for more time: that was the directive.

  When Teddy had walked into the lobby, she’d never thought her last play would be to talk about her feelings. To take a leaf from Clint Corbett’s book. But that was exactly what she did. “You were right. I’m scared. I don’t know how to act around you. And it’s not because you’re my teacher.” She struggled to articulate what it was she felt. “I don’t date. I don’t do relationships. I don’t let people in, Nick. But I want to try with you, if—”

  A shrill overhead alarm cut her off. The noise and the sudden panic made Teddy think of Whitfield’s midyear exam. But this wasn’t an obstacle course. This was real life.

  “Stay right here. Don’t move.” Nick turned and left the room. The sound of loud voices filled the corridor.

  Teddy’s gaze returned to the roof—Dara and Molly, perched on the lip of the building, rope gathered around their waists. Why not just go down the fire escape? This so, so wasn’t a part of the plan. Molly hated heights.

  What if Dara’s vision . . .

  She couldn’t finish that thought.

  Teddy jerked the flash drive out of the port and tossed it in her clutch, absolutely certain she was about to be busted. Someone had caught Molly hacking the air-gapped computer and traced the breach back to Nick’s computer.

  She watched as her two friends scaled the side of the hotel into a quiet alley two stories down. They were about halfway down by now, Dara making better progress. Teddy watched as Molly stopped her descent.

  Teddy felt the snap of the rope as if it had lashed her entire body. One second Molly was hanging, and the next she was falling. In heist movies, this kind of thing happened in slow motion. The hero had time to do something. All Teddy could do was watch.

  Nick burst back into the room. “You’ve got to leave the building, Teddy. Now.”

  “Leave? What?” She couldn’t process what was happening. She couldn’t think. Molly. Molly had fallen. Dara had tried to warn her, and she had gone ahead anyway.

  “Teddy. You have to focus.” He grabbed her arm. “Someone called in a bomb threat. The building’s being evacuated.”

  A bomb threat? Teddy felt her heart drop into her stomach. Had Dara called and done that to buy time? A signal to get Teddy out of the building? They were so far off-plan that Teddy had no idea what to do next. She desperately needed to check her phone. Make contact. Get back
to the hotel room. Regroup.

  “There’s a bar in the hotel across the street,” Nick said. “Wait for me. We’re not finished talking.”

  Teddy’s heart dropped six stories to street level, where moments ago everything still seemed possible.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  TEDDY JOINED THE STREAM OF employees and visitors filing out of the FBI building. She blinked, trying to rid her mind of the image of Molly’s fall. When she opened her eyes, she surveyed the chaos. People running and shouting. Flashing lights and loudspeakers. Police officers warning everyone to stand back. In the midst of all this, Teddy saw two men wearing vests that said Bomb Squad, leading German shepherds toward the building. Teddy shook off her panic. She needed to focus if she didn’t want to call attention to herself.

  Who had phoned in the bomb threat? That wasn’t adding up. It was too much of a coincidence. She remembered what Nick had told the class when they started their casework: Never dismiss coincidences.

  They had almost secured the file when the alarm had gone off. She clung to the hope that Dara had been the one to create the diversion. She texted: All okay??? Molly???

  The second Teddy pressed send, her phone lit up with a call.

  “Teddy.” Dara’s voice was ragged. “I tried to stop her, but she insisted—”

  “I saw. Is she—?” Teddy couldn’t say the words.

  “She’s unconscious,” Dara said. “Pyro found a pulse. But we have to get her to a hospital.”

  “Where are you?”

  “The alley behind the hotel. We’re all here. Pyro, Jillian . . . and Molly. Jeremy, too. I don’t know how he found us, but I’m glad he did. He got us off the roof when the FBI closed the hotel. Fire escape and everything. He’s the one who had rappelling gear. But—”

  “I’m on my way.” Molly was alive. She was still alive.

  “Teddy, it’s bad. Really bad. There are agents everywhere. Cops, too.”

  “That’s what happens when you call in a bomb threat.”

  “I didn’t! God, why would I do that?”

  “I thought maybe to buy more time.” She hesitated a second before she asked Dara one last question. The question she didn’t want to ask, the one that would make the mission salvageable. What was the point of risking everything if they hadn’t gotten what they’d come for? “Dara—did Molly locate the video file?”

  Dara paused. “She did.”

  Teddy let out a sigh of relief. “I’ll be there soon.”

  “Teddy, there’s something I have to tell you—”

  “It can wait. We have the file, we have Molly—”

  “Molly dropped her laptop when she fell. The file . . . it’s gone.”

  *  *  *

  Teddy wove through the crowd, down Polk Street, and around the back of the Embassy Hotel. The file was gone. All that planning, all that work, had been for nothing. And the cost had been so great. Molly had survived the fall, but did Dara’s vision predict later complications? It was as if the wails of police sirens and fire trucks went silent. The only sound Teddy heard was her heart, thudding to the repeated question: What have I done?

  A pair of rough man’s hands grabbed her, shaking her out of her stupor. Teddy struggled against his hands and landed an elbow in his chest. He was yelling, but Teddy still couldn’t register individual words, couldn’t understand what he was saying. He released her. And suddenly, the world was back to full volume.

  “Teddy, relax. It’s me.”

  Pyro.

  Teddy looked and saw Dara standing nearby, fidgeting with her silver bracelets. Jeremy was sitting near a fire escape, his face blank. Then Teddy saw Jillian, face blotchy, stooped over Molly. Molly on the ground of the alley. Pyro’s navy hoodie, stuffed underneath her head as a pillow. Her head was bleeding, her wrist already swollen.

  Oh, God.

  Teddy bent down closer, reached out to touch Molly’s face.

  “We didn’t want to move her,” Dara said. “But Pyro checked. Broken wrist. And she hit her head, but—”

  “We have to get out of here now,” Pyro said. “The longer we wait, the harder it’s going to be.”

  Teddy’s gaze was on Molly. Her pale face, her broken body.

  “Teddy,” Pyro said.

  “What?”

  Teddy knew she should be focusing on next steps, but she still was struggling to understand what happened, how it had all gone wrong. “Did you call this in?” Teddy said.

  “Hell, no,” said Pyro. “You think we wanted this kind of shit storm? Cops everywhere? We were trying to keep a low profile.”

  “So someone called a bomb threat to both the hotel and the FBI building?”

  “Probably not some random asshole, though,” Pyro put in.

  Other than the Misfits, the only person who knew that Teddy had planned to retrieve the file was Yates. But he didn’t know when or how. And it was in his interest that the mission succeed.

  Teddy forced her thoughts back to the immediate crisis. They couldn’t sneak into the hotel room. Staying in the alley until the threat passed wasn’t an option, either. Eventually, someone—hotel security, a cop, or an FBI agent—would spot them. Each second they wasted put their safety and Molly’s life in danger. They needed to get out of the alley and onto the boat as quickly as possible.

  “There are a couple of police officers at the other end of the alley,” Pyro said. He turned to Teddy. “Do you think you can convince them nothing’s happening?”

  Teddy nodded. She’d never influenced two people at once before, but she could try. She had to.

  “See that Dumpster in the parking lot?” Pyro said. “How about making it fly with a little telekinesis? Provide a distraction?”

  She could move paper clips. But a four-thousand-pound trash heap on reserve psychic energy? Teddy shook her head. A fire, especially in the midst of a bomb threat, would be a distraction that would pull the cops’ attention. “I think I’ll defer to you on this one.”

  Pyro nodded. “Wanted to give you first dibs. I’ll light it up as soon as you’re in position.” He turned to Dara, Jeremy, and Jillian. “Car’s parked at the corner of Eddy and Larkin. Burgundy Hyundai sedan. Key’s over the visor. I’ll carry Molly. Dara, you drive. Then we get the hell out of here. Everybody got it?” His eyes shifted to Jeremy, who stood frozen. “Jeremy, you with us?”

  Jeremy’s eyes snapped to Pyro. “Yes, I—” he swallowed. “Yes.”

  “I can provide a distraction, too,” Jillian said, pointing to the sky. “Seagulls.”

  “Okay, then,” Pyro said. “Let’s move.”

  Teddy nodded. Her body was waking up. A shot of adrenaline coursed through her, the good kind, not the kind that had stopped her in her tracks when she’d exited the FBI building. They could do this—together. They had to. For Molly.

  Pyro turned his attention to the Dumpster. Within seconds, she heard the shouts: Fire! Explosives! Clear the area! Teddy’s gaze shot to the cops stationed at the other end of the alley. Their attention was fixed on the Dumpster, which had erupted in flames, but she couldn’t take a chance that their gazes might waver. She felt the bile at the back of her throat. Don’t turn around. Watch the fire.

  She imagined splitting herself in two: half of herself reaching toward one man, the other half toward the other. One of the cops was more acquiescent. She felt the mind of the man on the left go calm, while the mind of the man on the right thrashed against her will, the darkness of his mind cresting. She remembered how Clint had guided the guards and Sergei away from their hiding place all those months ago. She should have asked him how before she’d discovered she couldn’t trust him.

  Don’t turn around, she commanded. Watch the fire.

  She saw Pyro pick Molly up and begin to run out of the alley, Dara, Jeremy, and Jillian racing behind him. Teddy redoubled her efforts to direct the cops’ eyes away from her friends.

  The one cop’s mind wouldn’t settle. She was drenched in sweat, her slacks sticking to her t
highs. She wanted to fall to the ground, collapse, give up. She was drained.

  “Stop!” one of the cops shouted, turning toward her friends. “Police!”

  A flock of seagulls swooped down into the alley, cawing and beating their wings as though fighting over scraps of food. Jillian. The birds were shielding the Misfits from the police officer’s view.

  Teddy didn’t wait for another chance. She sprinted out of the alley and around the corner toward Eddy Street. Later, she couldn’t remember how she made it through the mass of people, cops, FBI agents, firemen. She couldn’t remember opening the door to the Hyundai, piling into the backseat, or Dara peeling away from the curb, racing toward the harbor. All she remembered was Molly’s bloody face in her lap.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  TEDDY BRUSHED MOLLY’S HAIR BACK from her forehead, watching Molly’s eyes flutter as if she were dreaming. Next to Teddy, Jeremy held Molly’s hand in his own. He ran his thumb over her fingers again and again. Before, when Teddy had screwed up, it had been her ass on the line; she’d been the one to take the risk. But today she’d walked into the FBI building, and Molly had been the one to get hurt.

  Teddy ran through the past hour in her mind, trying to find the precise moment their plan had fallen apart. How had they messed up the hotel reservation? Who had called in the bomb threat? Why had Jeremy left the boat? Especially after Teddy had explicitly told him to stay put.

  Teddy cast a glance at Jeremy. It was only then that she noticed he was wearing a navy hoodie similar to the one Pyro wore.

  “It was you on the roof, wasn’t it?”

  Jeremy shook his head as if coming out of a trance. “I’m sorry?”

  “Why didn’t you stay at the docks?”

  Jeremy swallowed. “I, I just—”

  “Teddy,” Jillian said. “Let it go, we’ve all been through a lot.”

  But Teddy couldn’t let it go. “Dara said you had rappelling gear, too. How did you know? Tell me.”

  Jeremy looked down at Molly’s unmoving form. “I just had this feeling. I couldn’t leave her alone, not when I could do something to help her.”