Perfect Cover

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  Brooke returned Chloe’s smile. “Do you think you can?” she asked sweetly.

  Whoa. I might not have been cheerliterate, but I could read between the lines. Somewhere along the way, this Jack guy had dated both Brooke and Chloe. What a player. And, for that matter, what an idiot. You couldn’t pay me enough money to spend time alone with either one of them, and some guy had actually voluntarily dated them both? Clearly, this Jack character had emotional, if not mental, problems.

  “Guys, this is serious.” Tara’s voice was louder this time, and sharp enough to cut the silence between Chloe and Brooke. “We don’t have time for some infantile spitting contest.”

  Wow. Chalk another one up for the British girl.

  In one motion, Brooke and Chloe turned to glare at Tara.

  “You know as well as I do that Jack doesn’t like cheerleaders,” Tara said, her voice nice and calm again, despite the fact that I could still actually see the tension in her neck. “He won’t take either of you to Peyton.”

  “Classic operant conditioning,” Zee piped up. “He associates cheerleaders with pain and heartache and physical discomfort. He views us as an ontological kind and extends properties freely from one exemplar to another.”

  Hmmm. Maybe Jack wasn’t as dumb as I’d thought. We seemed to have the same kinds of beliefs about cheerleaders as a species.

  “In short, he hates all of us equally.” Zee diffused the tension between Chloe and Brooke with a single flip of her hair. “I don’t think he can even tell most of us apart.”

  I couldn’t help but wonder why exactly Zee kept glancing at me as she spoke.

  “If he hates us so much, why does he hang out with us?” Bubbles asked, knotting up her pretty little forehead in what appeared to be genuine and profound confusion.

  “Status quo,” Zee said. “Jack was born to rule. It’s been ingrained in him since childhood, and at Bayport, we, my friends, are the ruling class.”

  “So he’ll hang out with us, but he won’t date us?” one of the twins asked. “That is like so totally wrong.”

  “He has textbook Conditioned Cheerleader Aversion,” Zee said.

  He and I both.

  And that’s when I got why Zee kept looking at me. Feeling paranoid, I glanced around the room. Brooke and Chloe were looking at Zee looking at me. Tara had her eyes fixed on mine. One by one, the rest of the girls followed suit.

  “He likes you,” Zee said frankly. “He thinks you’re different.”

  “Yeah,” Brittany said, “if by different you mean bizarre and freakish.”

  “Zee’s right.” Brooke spoke slowly. “Jack’s been so anti lately, but today at lunch, he actually talked to Toby.”

  Today at lunch? I played the whole ordeal over in my head: Noah’s celebration, Hayley’s threats, Lucy saving me, Brooke instructing me to flirt with Chip, me resolving to get some blackmail material on the arrogant guy with dark hair…

  It occurred to me then that April had referred to Jack Peyton as Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Good-Looking. As much as I hated to admit it, Smirky Boy had been tall. He’d had dark hair. He’d known that he was good-looking.

  “That’s Jack Peyton?” I asked. I’d fully intended to cut smarmy smirk boy down to size and wipe the cocky expression off his perfectly symmetrical face. And now a bunch of cheerleaders were telling me I was supposed to suck up to the guy? Make him like me? Have him take me back to Daddy Dearest’s office so I could plant some kind of cheer bug there?

  “No way,” I said. “I hate that guy.”

  “That’s why you’re perfect,” Zee said, highly satisfied with her analysis of the situation. “Everyone else thinks he’s good-looking; you couldn’t care less. Everyone else would like their lips plastered to his; you’d just as soon kick him in the crotch.”

  I had to admit it—Miss PhD Zee was right on target, about the crotch-kicking, at least.

  “You are exactly what Jack is looking for. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

  I tried to imagine myself seducing Jack, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that I was genuinely concerned that the very thought might make me throw up in my own mouth.

  “Toby.” It was Tara, her eyes still on mine. “Please.”

  I’d wondered earlier in the day what the real Tara was like, who she was when the cheerleading cover went away and her guard came down. Now she was looking at me, and for the first time, she didn’t seem poised. She didn’t seem sophisticated.

  She seemed lost, and I had no idea why.

  “Okay,” I said. Tara was my partner. And yeah, she’d only been my partner for like a day, but that was enough. Black belt and “attitude problems” aside, I was turning into a verifiable softy.

  “If Jack’s going to be your mark,” Tiffany mused, “you’re probably going to need some new shoes.”

  That’s where I drew the line. If I was going to be putting the moves on one of those guys (you know, the guys who date those girls), I was damn well going to do it in combat boots.

  “Did you get her a gel bra today?” Brittany asked Tara, eyeing my boobs. I folded my arms over my chest and glared at her. Silently, Tara nodded.

  “Can we discuss something other than my chest?” I asked, my voice dangerously pleasant. “Like the other two parts of the Mission?”

  “Chloe, you’ll take lead on the Infotech hack,” Brooke said, and I wondered how much of that decision was based on the fact that Chloe was Brooke’s second-in-command and the most capable of running a large tech-based operation, and how much of it was basic cheer politics. “I’ll handle the Heath Shannon end of things. Chlo, you’ve got Toby. Let me know who else you need.”

  Wait a second. Had Brooke just given me to Chloe? Had she seriously just loaned me out like a tube of flavored lip gloss? And what about Tara? The two of us were supposed to be partners.

  Just as these thoughts were flying through my head, Lucy piped up with a suggestion of her own.

  “Let’s talk about who’s going to go through the files on the disk,” she said brightly. “Not it!”

  Not it? What was she, five?

  “Not it!” Seven other voices said in unison.

  Damn.

  April and I stared at each other, and then April spoke up. “Toby and I can’t do it alone,” she said. “We don’t know what to look for.”

  “I’ll do it.” Chloe’s offer surprised me. “We should start working on a game plan for hacking Infotech’s system anyway. We can listen to the audio files and strategize at the same time.”

  Who was this mysterious we she was speaking of?

  “I’ll stay, too,” Tara said.

  “No.” Brooke didn’t provide a reason, but her voice was strong and final.

  Tara opened her mouth and then closed it again. Then, after a moment’s deliberation, she spoke calmly and clearly. “Toby’s my partner. If she’s going to be here with Chloe making plans for the Infotech hack, I should be here.”

  “Tara,” Brooke said evenly. “Go home. Zee and I will tail Heath Shannon tonight, and by tomorrow, we’ll have a plan of attack on that front. Chloe and Toby can handle the Infotech strategizing on their own. And just for good measure, Bubbles and Lucy will case Infotech tonight, on the off chance that the Big Guys are wrong and Heath Shannon interacts directly with the source, rather than using Peyton as a middleman.”

  “I’ll go with you and Zee, or Bubbles and Lucy,” Tara said. “I can’t just do nothing.”

  “Yes,” Brooke said, “you can. And you will.”

  The only thing about that discussion that wasn’t slipping straight over my head was the fact that Brooke was even bossier than I’d previously thought, and that somehow, I’d been drafted not only to pick up Jack Peyton at April’s party the following night, but also to coordinate with Chloe on breaking into Infotech’s system while scanning the rest of the digi-disk for files that might shed some more light on our current situation.

  The way the Squad worked was becoming clearer to me by the m
oment. Apparently, the Big Guys Upstairs issued orders to Brooke, Brooke issued orders to the rest of us, Brittany and Tiffany did makeovers, all of the girls did halftime routines, some of them went on low-key stakeouts, and I did everything else. I glanced at my watch. It was five-thirty at night. I’d been a member of the Squad for exactly twelve hours, and in that time, I’d slapped a guy’s ass, bought a gel bra, successfully obtained a disk that contained classified information, learned that the lives of nameless foreign operatives were in the hands of fewer than a dozen high school cheerleaders, and quite possibly torn every muscle in my entire body doing bouncy little jumps with names like toe touch and spread eagle. And now…

  “You might want to call your parents, To-bee,” Chloe advised me, condescension dripping from her tone. “You’re not going to be home for dinner.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Code Word: Pizzazz

  Five minutes later, I added two additional firsts to my list of things I’d never done before (and desperately hoped never to do again). First, I became the owner of a limited-edition hot-pink cell phone identical to one owned by innumerable vacuous celebrities. Mine, of course, came equipped with a variety of special features, ranging from my very own electron wave accelerator to the world’s teeny-tiniest hard-core hard drive, but that didn’t make it any less pink. Secondly, for the first (and I hope only) time in my life, I did exactly what Chloe Larson had advised me to do. I picked up my nauseatingly pink cell phone and called home.

  “Noah’s Love Haven, Noah speaking.” My brother answered the phone.

  “Noah,” I said calmly, “I’m going to forget this ever happened. Please never answer our phone again. In fact, the whole talking thing? Not your forte, so…”

  “Toby!” Noah had never sounded so happy to hear from me. “Where are you? Did they take you to their secret lair in room 117? Are you doing secret cheerleader things? Did anyone mention me?” He lowered his voice. “Are they wearing those shorts that say CHEER on the butt?”

  I couldn’t help but glance down at the back of my own shorts.

  “Noah, put Mom on the phone.”

  “Answer the question,” Noah said, completely impervious to what should have been a very clear and demanding order. “Does it say CHEER? On their butts?”

  “Tell Mom I won’t be home for dinner,” I said. “We’re doing this…uhhhh…this initiation thing tonight.”

  That, apparently, was the wrong lie to tell Noah.

  “Initiation?” he asked. “Does it involve whipped cream? Please tell me it involves whipped cream….”

  “Noah.”

  “Yeah?” He stopped talking long enough for me to say a single word.

  “Goodbye.” I flipped the phone closed and shuddered again at its freakishly bright color. Still, I knew that I’d be facing something far, far worse as soon as I looked up from the pink.

  “Well, are you going to stand there, or are you going to help me?” Chloe had the amazing ability to somehow cram a different insulting undertone into every single word she spoke.

  “Hello?” Chloe said, hands on her hips.

  “Fine,” I grumbled. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  At Brooke’s orders, Tara had abandoned me, leaving me alone with Chloe as the others went on their merry way to do whatever mentally stimulating activities cheer-spies did in their off time. The only bright side was that Chloe had been forced to let me into her lab, and the tech geek in me was practically salivating over the wall-to-wall, floor-to-floor technohaven workshop.

  “Once I get the audio set up, we’ll talk hacking,” she said.

  Part of me wanted to tell her that I didn’t “talk hacking” with anyone. I just did it. Toby Klein worked alone. The other part of me was way too curious as to what exactly was involved with setting up the audio and whether or not the four computers set up in the lab had government access.

  Chloe popped the digi-disk into a player that looked surprisingly like an actual CD player. After getting a look at her powder puff decoder, I’d expected something with a bit more pizzazz.

  I stopped myself. Had I actually just thought the word pizzazz? Clearly I’d passed the point of no return a few handsprings back. My pizzazz instincts, as completely mortifying as they may have been, weren’t entirely wrong, because the next instant, Chloe picked up a couple of sparkly picture frames (glam shots of Chloe and Brooke inside both) and arranged them on either side of the player.

  I raised an eyebrow at her in question.

  “Filter,” she said. “Each frame has its own program, and they’re linked wirelessly to the player. The pink one filters out white noise. The purple one focuses in on human voices.”

  “How…” I stopped myself from asking the question the second it tried to leave my mouth, and Chloe immediately and without pause made me devoutly wish I’d stopped any of it from escaping in the first place.

  “My lab,” she said sharply. “My secrets.” She smiled Brooke’s patented no-teeth nonsmile. “Your job is hacking: codes, firewalls, security systems. That’s all you. Technology and equipment design? That’s me.”

  And the line was thus drawn in the sand.

  Daintily, Chloe pressed a button on the player, adjusted the volume, and then turned to face me again. “So,” she said. “Infotech.”

  In the background, I could hear a conversation on the disk, as clear as if the people were standing in the room with us. “Good morning, Mr. Hayes. Coffee, black.” The sound of a ceramic coffee cup set down on a wooden desk.

  “Most of the audio is garbage,” Chloe said. “If and when we hit something good, I’ll know it.”

  And you won’t, her tone taunted me.

  “So,” I said, forcing myself not to physically assault her; I had a feeling that would be frowned upon. “Infotech.”

  “I pulled up the basic file,” Chloe said, and she literally tossed a pile of papers at me. “They’ve got almost nothing uploaded to the internet. If you can get within their wireless range and access the company password, you can file share, but you probably won’t find anything of interest unless you dig around a little, and you probably won’t be able to dig around unseen. These guys secure websites for a living. They developed the beta version of the program the government uses to safeguard their databases.”

  I shrugged. “And look how well that’s turning out for the government,” I said. “Infotech’s system can’t be half as secure as the CIA’s—they can’t possibly have the funding. If these guys can find a way into the government’s files, I can find a way into theirs.”

  “Without them noticing?” Chloe was nothing if not skeptical.

  “I’ll ghost it,” I said, not caring if she knew what I meant by the term or not. I hadn’t learned computers by the books. I didn’t spend much time talking to other hackers. Every piece of terminology I used was my own, completely made up in the mind o’ Toby. “I’ll piggyback on a few of their usernames simultaneously and use their traffic to mask my own. Then I’ll set up a new username, and use its traffic to divert attention away from what I’m doing.”

  “And what will you be doing?”

  “Other than accessing their files and looking for the program they’re using to hack us?”

  Was it weird that I was suddenly referring to the U.S. government as “us”?

  “Finding the program won’t fix everything,” Chloe said.

  “Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll find the program. You worry about the rest. I do the hacking and break the codes. The technological innovations, those are yours, right?” I couldn’t help it—I tried a no-teeth smile of my own.

  Chloe opened her mouth to say something, and given the look on her freakishly symmetrical face, it probably would have been something I would have been forced to make her regret, but the audio track had picked up again, and we both stopped to listen.

  “Mr. Gray here to see you, sir.”

  Gray. As in Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray.

  “I understand you’re me
eting with one of our clients this afternoon,” the voice I identified as Gray said. “He’s concerned about the settlement we’ve drawn up. Most of his concerns with the settlement can be easily assuaged by putting him in contact with our claims department. The officer in charge is working out of his home today, but if you could tell the client that he can be reached at this number, that would be wonderful.”

  There was a faint sound then. Paper being handed from one man to the next? Immediately, I began practically salivating for that paper. I wanted to know what it said. Was it actually a phone number? Was it a message that Mr. Gray, as a partner in a nefarious law firm, had known better than to speak out loud? Which “client” were they talking about? Heath Shannon, perhaps?

  For a long moment, there was silence. Then the secretary-type person offered Gray a coffee, and as he declined, I could hear someone flip open a cell phone and type in a number—presumably the one Gray had just handed his cohort. So much for my secret message theory.

  For about fifteen seconds after the interaction ended and miscellaneous office noises filled the tape, Chloe and I just stared at each other.

  “Your pores are the size of land mines,” she said finally.

  “The twins must be slipping.”

  I gathered the papers she’d thrown at me. I could look at them just as well at home as here.

  “We aren’t done here,” she said. “There’s still more audio, and you have no idea where Infotech is, let alone how you’re going to get close enough to enter into their wireless system. You don’t even know what kind of program you’re looking for, and we’re going in first thing tomorrow.”

  I waved the papers in front of her face. “My pores and I will figure it out.” With all the dignity I could muster, I grabbed my pink cell phone, pulled down my cheer shorts (which had inched their way up my freshly waxed thighs), and asked Chloe one final question.

  “Which way’s the exit?”

  CHAPTER 17

  Code Word: Gossip

  The Quad was a frigging labyrinth. Even after Chloe haughtily pointed out the exit, I’d still somehow managed to get turned around. But I was not, repeat NOT, going to go back and ask for a clarification of her directions. I wasn’t an idiot, and I wasn’t about to risk feeding Chloe’s obvious superiority complex any more than I already had.