Spy-in-Training

by Jonathan Bernstein

  It reaches out of the broken windshield.

  “Bridget, get in,” says Natalie. I drag myself up one more time, reach for her hand and, with an effort, she pulls me in. I tumble onto the backseat, breathless and dizzy. Natalie’s eyes are wide and confused. “What are you doing at my audition?” she says.

  Now I’m confused. “What are you talking about? Why would you get in a car with a complete stranger?”

  “He’s a well-known producer. He’s had shows on Broadway. He knows talent when he sees it and that’s what he sees in me. I’m getting ready for my song. What are you doing here?”

  I’ve just kicked my way in through the back windshield of a Mercedes. The driver has fired a gun at me. My little sister is vexed by my presence, but not to the degree that it stops her from launching into her vocal warm-ups. I see Spool smirk in the rearview mirror.

  “What did you do to her?” I shout.

  “She’s in a safe, happy place,” he says. “She won’t suffer any trauma and she gets to live out her dream. I could snap her out of it, though. If that’s what you want. If you really believe she should know who you are.”

  “La la la la la la la,” sings Natalie.

  “Talented family,” says Spool.

  I want to shake Natalie, to make her see where she is and what’s happening to us. But I don’t want her to be scared.

  “I can do it to your whole family,” says Spool. “I can take you right out of the picture.”

  “Gosh, I’m nervous.” Natalie laughs. “But it’s the good kind of nervous. I hope he likes me.”

  Spool has one hand on the wheel. He keeps glancing back at me, a half smile on his face. “Wouldn’t it be better for your whole family if you were gone? Wouldn’t it be better for you?”

  I think of all the lies I’ve told since I became a spy, all the fights and arguments I’ve caused.

  “You were almost invisible before, Bridget. Go all the way now. Do it for them. Look at her face.”

  I look. The nervous, excited smile is still in place. But I see tears glistening at the corners of her eyes. Part of her knows something isn’t right here. Part of her is fighting. She was perfect and I’ve put her in this vulnerable situation. I made her a target. I hate Spool with every fiber of my being, but I can’t say he doesn’t have a point.

  “Let me help,” he says.

  “Yeah, like I want you poking around in my family’s heads,” I say.

  I put a hand over Natalie’s mouth and nose, then I pull out my lip balm and aim it at Spool.

  “See how you like being invisible.”

  I fire. The car doesn’t fill with smoke. A laser beam shoots out and burns a hole straight through the windshield. I scream in fright. So does Natalie. So does Spool. So it’s one twist for laser and two twists for smoke?

  Spool pulls out a gun. I fire again, burning his hand, causing him to drop the gun. Which is good but also bad because now he’s lost control of the car. The Mercedes skids wildly across lanes. Cars around us honk and tires screech as motorists swerve to avoid us. I tug a seat belt around Natalie.

  “Sing, Nat!” I yell. Anything to keep her safely in her fantasy world while the real one is falling apart around us. She begins to warble. A few weeks ago, I would have been annoyed and intimidated that she’s so good at everything she does. Now I’m enraged that she has a gift and a psychotic pink-faced monster exploited it to get me back in his clutches.

  Sirens start to wail. Two police motorcycles are chasing after us.

  Spool drags the Mercedes into the nearest lane, cutting right in front of a UPS van, missing it by inches.

  I lean forward. “Spool, do you get what’s happening here? You’re kidnapping minors. You’re being chased by police vehicles. There’s going to be reporters and helicopters. You’re going to be on TV. Your face is going to be out there. It’s over for you.”

  “I keep forgetting you’re just a child,” he says.

  “And you know how children love being talked down to,” I retort.

  “It’s never over for people like me. You think there aren’t agents all around the world who would willingly sell out their own countries—their own families—to align themselves with me? You think there aren’t a hundred other Carter Strikes out there? There are, and they may not want to admit it, but they need people like me. Because people like your father? They’re bullets. Deadly but useless. Me? I’m the gun.”

  Spool slams his foot down and tries to put as much distance as possible between the Mercedes and the cops. I’m thrown back in my seat. Natalie stops singing. “Was that okay?” she asks, her face hopeful. “I have other songs, if you’d like to . . .” She trails off, waiting for someone to respond.

  I look at my sister. Then I look at Spool, knuckles white on the wheel, muttering to himself.

  They’re both trapped in fantasies. Spool thinks he’s still the master manipulator, still two steps ahead of everyone else. He has plans unfolding in his head. New alliances to make, new enemies to crush, new agents to entrap. What a loser! He changes lanes again. This time, he smashes the headlight of a van he doesn’t quite manage to avoid. That’s when I know he’s going to get us killed, and he doesn’t care because he’s deep inside his own world where he’s still in charge.

  “I wish I’d never met you, Bridget,” he barks. “I wish I’d never found out you existed. You and your father have given me nothing but trouble.”

  “You, on the other hand, have been a complete joy, Spool,” I reply. “Nothing but good times.”

  “But I’m not letting you go,” he says. “We’re going to start a new Section 23 from scratch, you and me.”

  “No, thanks. I saw what you did with the last one.”

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  “I do,” I say. “And I choose to let you continue your journey without me or my sister.”

  I point my lip balm straight up at the roof of the car. One click. The laser slices through.

  “You might make it out,” Spool says. “But her as well?”

  “She’s not going anywhere. Neither am I.”

  I start to circle my arm clockwise. The laser cuts through the rest of the roof, through the window, through the door, through the floor, separating me and Natalie from Spool.

  He realizes what I’m doing. He lurches out of his seat and makes a grab at me. I kick up quickly and catch him under the chin. The force of my foot bangs Spool’s head against the roof. He flops back down in his seat. I finish blasting the lip balm across the car. It takes a few more seconds than I thought. There’s some ripping and tearing. Some buckling and bending of metal. And then . . .

  . . . the front half of the car, Spool’s half, wrenches itself away from the back half.

  I see Spool stare at me in anger, disbelief, and what I like to think of as a little drop of admiration, as he tries to control the two-wheeled vehicle he’s suddenly found himself driving.

  The Mer—and it really is a Mer, me and Natalie are in the Cedes—pinballs across lanes, battering off oncoming vehicles. I’m so fixated on the fate of Spool’s half car that I forget, briefly, that me and my sister, who is still marooned in an artificial alternate universe, are also in a two-wheeled vehicle, this one without any steering. We’re basically stuck in a mobile gas tank that is careening wildly out of control.

  “So should I go now?” says Natalie. “You’ve got my details?”

  I undo her seat belt. This is going to be tricky. There’s barely a roof to stand on and there are two of us. I really didn’t think this through. I glance out the broken windshield. Gas is leaking from the tank. If we don’t get out now, this thing is going up in a ball of fire. I grab Natalie’s hand.

  “I know you can hear me, Natalie. I know somewhere in there, you know I’m with you. Follow me. Don’t let go of my hand. Keep close to me. I’ll keep you safe. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she says.

  My plan is to leap onto the hood of the next vehicle that passes and pull
Natalie along with me. Again, not fully thought through. Am I strong enough to keep hold of her? What if I underestimate the jump and bounce off the car? What if Natalie lets go?

  “Stop wasting time and jump!” I hear my voice command.

  Except it’s not my voice. It’s the Smart Car.

  The little car has pulled up parallel to the Cedes. Dale hangs out the door, an arm open.

  “You can do this,” I tell Natalie.

  I push her toward the open door. “Reach out, Nat!” I yell.

  Whatever part of Natalie that isn’t submerged reaches out an arm. Dale takes it and pulls her into the Smart Car.

  I gasp in relief. Time to go. I look over at the car. There isn’t room for three people in there. Guess I’m headed up to the roof. I get ready to jump but a hand grabs my wrist and pulls me back.

  “I told you I wasn’t letting you go,” croaks Spool.

  I yelp in shock and glance behind me. Well, I can’t talk about his pink face anymore. What’s glaring at me is like a hunk of steak that’s been barbecued a few minutes past charred. He’s still alive, though. The tenacious little critter.

  He tries to clamp his burned and blackened hands around my throat. I bring my knee up to my chest and push him back. He’s strong, though, strong and determined. I don’t know if I can keep him at bay. The longer Spool’s hands grope at the air around my face, the more I smell burning flesh. I close my eyes so I don’t have to see his horrific face. Just as he’s about to overpower me, I feel a bump. The Smart Car bangs into the side of my half car. Dale is hanging out with his arm outstretched.

  I hear him shouting, “Bridget, jump!”

  I want to. I want to jump to Dale, to Natalie, even to the stupid car with my voice.

  But the position I’m in makes it impossible to move. Spool just seems to get stronger. And I smell the fuel leaking out of the tank. I think maybe I got more than my fair share of luck and it finally ran out.

  But at least I know who I am and I know what I can do. I know what matters to me. I know I’d do anything for my family. I know how to be a better friend. And I kissed somebody. And I met my real father. Something I didn’t even know I wanted. That’s pretty good.

  I feel my strength ebbing away. I feel my knees giving way under the strain of keeping Spool away from me. I feel his blackened hands touch my throat. I hear Dale scream my name. I hear Natalie scream my name. Then I hear Carter Strike scream my name.

  “Bridget!” he yells, his voice now louder than the others.

  I open my eyes.

  Strike is on a motorcycle reversing at high speed toward the half car. He jumps up on the seat of the cycle, spins around, leans forward, grabs me, and pulls me out of Spool’s clutches. Then he spins back around, deposits me behind him, pulls my arms around his waist, and turns the motorcycle around.

  “You’ve got amazing moves for a guy your size,” I say once again, because it may be a little insensitive but it’s true.

  There’s an enormous explosion behind us. The air turns hot. Fragments of jagged metal shower down.

  I turn to look back.

  “Don’t,” says Strike.

  So I don’t.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  We Are Family

  “Mr. and Mrs. Wilder, my name is Carter Strike. I’ve been looking forward so much to meeting you. Obviously, I envisaged the circumstances being a little different.”

  Strike smiles at my freaked-out parents. He also smiles at the small platoon of police who’d been staking out our house since the mysterious phone call from an Inspector Carr, of whose existence the Sacramento Police Department have no record.

  Strike gives me a reproachful look. The look we discussed when it was agreed he’d throw me under the bus.

  “This one. This troublemaker. I thought she had your permission. I had no idea, I promise you, that she sought me out without discussing it with you first.”

  His sincerity, his awkwardness, his chubby frame and the ill-fitting suit barely containing it all contribute to making Mom and Dad a little less horrified by the stranger who showed up at their door with the daughter they only now realize has been missing most of the day.

  “She’s a smart one, our Bridget,” continues Strike with a rueful headshake. “But thinking before she acts? Not one of her strongest attributes. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Not like Natalie here,” breaks in Dale, who is standing next to and sort of propping up my dazed sister. “If it wasn’t for her I’d probably still be in that rehearsal hall waiting for that so-called producer, if he even existed. But she was all, ‘This is a scam. We’re out of here.’ You raised a sensible, responsible young lady here.”

  “Scam” is about all Natalie is able to say. Once the selective memory injection Strike gave her makes its presence felt, she’ll be far more articulate and outraged about the fake producer who wasted her talent and her time.

  “Okay,” says the sergeant from the Sacramento Police Department. “You can confirm that these are your daughters?”

  “Yes,” Mom and Dad both say.

  “And you know the men who brought them home?”

  “No,” Mom and Dad both say.

  “Do you want to press charges?”

  Mom and Dad look at each other.

  “If I were in your situation, I’d have the exact same hesitation,” says Strike. “You don’t know me. You don’t know the kind of man I am, what kind of secrets I may be harboring. All I can tell you is a few days ago, I was a reasonably successful rug importer . . .”

  Strike passes Mom his phone. The screen has a picture of him standing proudly outside a rug warehouse.

  “. . . who lived an uncomplicated life. Then I got an email and a phone call from someone claiming to be my daughter. And suddenly my life got complicated.”

  Mom and Dad look at me, their eyes tearing up. “Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you come to us?” says Mom.

  “We always said we’d help you find your real parents if that’s what you wanted,” says Dad.

  The tears filling up my eyes aren’t fake. I rehearsed this with Strike but I never knew how awful it was going to feel.

  “I should have talked to you. I’m sorry,” I mumble.

  Dad gives the SPD sergeant a We’ll take it from here nod. The cops shuffle back to their cars. Dad pulls me in for a hug. Mom grabs us both. She reaches out and pulls Natalie in, too.

  “I know you girls are growing up. I know you need your own space. I get that you want to feel like you’re independent,” says Mom. “But when it’s important, when it’s something that really matters, don’t ever feel that you can’t come to us, that we won’t make time.”

  “I won’t,” I say, wiping my eyes.

  “Won’t either,” says Natalie.

  We start to walk back to the house. Dad turns around.

  “Mr. Strike. Would you like to come in?”

  Strike looks taken aback and unsure how to proceed. I don’t think he’s faking it. We didn’t plan a strategy beyond getting me home.

  Mom walks back to him. “You’re Bridget’s family. You’re going to be a part of our family, which, I know, is a scary prospect. Come in, Carter.”

  A very bashful-looking Strike allows my mom to walk him toward our house. I can hear her telling him about my flute. This is going to be nothing but embarrassing.

  I glance at the driveway. Dale is walking away. Alone.

  “I’ll be right back,” I tell Mom and Strike. “I just want to thank that kid for getting Nat home safe. That was super nice of him.”

  I run after Dale.

  “Really?” I say. “Just like that? Without a word? Am I going to see you in school?”

  He looks uncomfortable. “I’m an awesome hacker. Even if I’m not working for Strike, I’m getting offers.”

  “Remember that conversation we had about you walking away from the whole spying-slash-hacking thing?”

  “I wish I could,” he says.

 
“Then do it. There’s a buzz about you in school. You’re the guy who shoved Brendan Chew. You can build on that.”

  Dale smiles. “That may have been my finest hour.”

  I frown. “So that kiss wasn’t in any way memorable?”

  He glances back at my house. The front door is open. No parents or Strike in sight.

  “Other than worrying that you might die in a ball of fire, it’s been the only thing on my mind,” he says.

  And by the way he kisses me, I’m inclined to believe him.

  Then I hear a distant “Oooooh!” that gets louder as the stupid Smart Car rolls into view.

  Dale pulls away from me. He gets into the car.

  For a second, we look at each other from behind the windshield. Then the image changes. He fades away and there’s an anonymous guy behind the wheel.

  I watch the car drive away and wonder if I’ll ever see Dale Tookey again.

  I start to walk back to the house when I hear a car come to a halt.

  Dale.

  He came back.

  “Bridget Wilder?”

  He didn’t come back. It’s the sergeant from the Sacramento Police Department.

  “We have your brother, Ryan, in custody. He stole a Korean barbecue food truck.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Visible

  Last night ended with us going to get Ryan out of the holding cell. Again. But I don’t care, because this morning I’m having a normal family breakfast with my normal family. With one difference. I’m part of it.

  “Bridget, do you think Carter would like Lisa?” Lisa is Mom’s always-single, no-luck-with-men friend.

  “Don’t answer that, Bridget,” says Dad. “Carter still has a good opinion about us. We don’t want that to change just yet.”

  “Do you think he’d want to come to Raging Waters with us?” Mom asks.

  “Mom, he’s a busy guy.”

  “But we can still go, right? It’s not too soon since the last time?” says Dad.