The Con Code

by Shana Silver

  * * *

  As I lie in bed, listening to the grating sound of Lakshmi’s CPAP machine next to me, it finally hits me with a gut punch so fierce, the wind flies from my lungs. I might never see my dad again.

  I can’t contact him. Not now. Not while running from the law. Maybe not ever again.

  If I find my mom, I’m going with her, wherever she’s been hiding, whatever she’s been doing. Which means I’ll be hiding, too.

  A lump lodges in my throat, and hot tears press against my eyes. I hadn’t meant to choose my mom over my dad when I started this mission, but that’s exactly what I’ve done. I always intended to choose both. The grief at the thought of never hearing his voice again is too much to bear.

  I let the tears slide out of my eyes and stain my white pillow and the awful bedspread I got stuck curling up in. I let my throat hitch and the panic rise until I’m gasping. I allow myself to plummet into this pit of despair because it’s the only chance I have to let it all out, let it overtake me. In one hour, when the clock hits 2:30 a.m., I have to pull my biggest con yet.

  I have to convince myself that I’m okay.

  After a while the tears slow and then cease, leaving only the faint evidence of my weakness stained across my cheeks. A swipe of concealer instantly erases my vulnerability, and a shaky breath morphs into normal ones.

  I grip the counter in the bathroom and stare at myself in the mirror. You can do this, I tell myself. You have to.

  I lift my mom’s necklace to my lips and kiss it. She’s my future now.

  With that thought echoing in my brain, I gently shake Natalie and Tig awake. The three of us slip out into the bright hallway. I squint against the fluorescent lights and readjust my pajamas over my string bikini (thanks, Natalie). We safely parade through the hallways, since Tig temporarily disabled the cameras before we snuck outside.

  The scent of chlorine coats the air when we reach the indoor pool. A RESTRICTED AFTER 9 P.M. sign just begs me to thwart it. Dark windows surround the basin, reflecting back the eerie, turquoise water. In the circular hot tub, Colin outstretches his arms along the tiled edge as bubbles pop around his torso.

  Heart pounding, I force myself to look away from his bare, tanned chest and focus on the piles of lounge chairs ringing the pool. The hot tub gurgles like frothy soup, steam billowing toward the high ceiling. Blue lights catch on the ripples.

  Despite my request that everyone wear bathing suits, Tig defies me by keeping her black hoodie and fedora on. She immediately starts unzipping her roller suitcase and setting up various electronics on the nearby vinyl lounge chairs. She stretches a long extension cord into an outlet for some juice.

  “Let me know if you need any help.” Natalie offers Tig a comforting smile, and Tig glances at her just long enough for her shoulders to relax ever so slightly. I nod encouragement at Natalie for her ace flirtation attempt.

  She carefully lifts her pajama T-shirt (conservative) over her frizzy wig. “Please, no splashing. I can’t get this precious face masterpiece wet. Not the best disguise choice now that I have a civilian roommate to get ready in front of.” She shrugs out of her shorts and gingerly steps into the water. Hopefully the steam doesn’t make her nose fall off.

  I groan and strip down to the sparkly gold bikini I’d rather burn than wear. At least my mom’s necklace provides some semblance of class. I plop into the water and try not to make it seem like Colin has won this round by suggesting this ridiculous location.

  His calf presses softly against mine under the water while the bubbles inflate his bathing suit like a balloon rising to the surface.

  Thanks to our stage 5 clinger back in the room, I haven’t gotten any updates yet from Natalie on what she and Tig accomplished while I was off turning my enemy into a cohort. (And an escaped convict.) So I start there. “What did you guys get done yesterday?”

  It takes Natalie a little extra time to drag her gaze away from admiring Tig, who’s fluttering around to the various electronics, plugging small devices into a variety of laptops, and typing away with the sophistication of a maestro leading an orchestra. “A little recon mostly. Here’s my mark.”

  Natalie reaches behind her to grab a phone and holds up a photo of a pretty, young security officer with a similar bone structure and dark olive skin tone to Natalie’s. “Amy Cleary. Twenty-five. Been working at the amusement park for two years. According to all the Facebook spamming she does, she’s on tomorrow from two p.m. to closing. Oh, and it’s her cat’s birthday today. She made him a cake out of cat food.” Natalie clicks to show another picture, this one of an elaborate cake that could pass for a chocolate wedding cake if it wasn’t made of ground-up fish guts.

  I give her a thumbs-up. “Good choice. How long will it take you to turn into her?”

  “Twenty minutes maybe?” She taps on her lip. “I mean, after I take some time to shadow her and learn her mannerisms.”

  “Wait.” Colin’s head turns back and forth between the two of us. “If she’s on the schedule tomorrow, how are you going to get rid of her?”

  I grin at him. “We’re not. You are.”

  He laughs to himself. “I should have guessed.”

  “You keep her distracted while I take over for her,” Natalie clarifies.

  Colin holds up his hands. “Whoa there. I don’t even know what we’re stealing. If I’m going to help, I need to know everything.”

  I shift. He’s right. About this heist, anyway. “The most popular ride is a mild water coaster with a pirate-and-sea-chantey theme. Back when the park first opened, they tried to be real authentic with their decorations and used actual human skeletons for props.”

  His brow shoots upward. “Morbid.”

  “Yep. Eventually the amusement park wised up that immortalizing dead people for shits and giggles was … not the best tourist draw. And so they replaced them with plastic replicas. Though some people think one original skull remains. Sort of.”

  Colin snaps his fingers. “Wait, I know this one.” He pauses for dramatic effect. “But not for long.”

  “Well, no, it’s technically already a forgery. Whether the skull in question is supposed to be real or not is meaningless because my mom already stole it. And now we need to steal her version since it contains a clue to her whereabouts.”

  “Okay, switching out a skull from the most popular ride at the most popular amusement park in the world.” He scratches his chin. “On second thought, maybe I was better off on house arrest.”

  I elbow him in the ribs under the bubbles. “Here’s how it’s going to work. This is a four-part heist. Part one: smuggle in the skull.”

  Natalie swirls her finger in the water. “You can’t exactly waltz through the security line holding up a skull prop like it’s Yorick in Hamlet.”

  “Points for the literary reference,” Colin says. “But I need more here. How exactly are we doing that?”

  I wave my hand dismissively. “That’s the easy part.”

  “Let’s just say I have more costume changes than a Hearts for Vandals concert,” Natalie adds.

  Across the way, Tig’s electronics zing to life, and her eyes grow fierce, her fingers tapping rapidly.

  I clear my throat and lower my voice. “Part two: identity theft.”

  Colin rolls his eyes. “I’m really liking your dramatic delivery. If your career as a criminal fails, you can always narrate audiobooks.”

  I stand up and cross my arms, water dripping down my bare stomach. “And that concludes all the info I’m willing to tell you.”

  He tugs on my elbow. “Hey, sorry. I was just kidding. Sit back down, okay?”

  I sit down, but only because I’m standing right in front of him in nothing but a potentially see-through bikini. “Part two involves you and me stealing two other random IDs and finagling our way through an underground tunnel system.” When I see his brows knit together, I clarify. “It’s used by employees to get around the park without being seen.”

  “And tra
nsport garbage in a noninvasive way for guests. I’ve heard it has quite a fantastic odor,” Natalie adds.

  “The tunnels are also where they house all the costumes and uniforms for the employees. Away from the garbage, I promise.”

  “Costumes which I assume we’ll be stealing?”

  “Not stealing. We’ll be scanning them out legitimately with the stolen IDs! We need a security officer uniform for Natalie and a maintenance worker uniform for me.”

  “Part three,” Natalie says in a voice that seems filled with awe, “is all Tig’s show. The last two days she’s been planting viruses on various control room employees’ computers.”

  Colin leans forward. “That doesn’t sound easy.”

  Tig glares as though to say it was a piece of cake for her.

  Natalie rushes in with details. “Well, my good friend Amy Cleary helped here. On her friend list, we found another park employee, Jamison Alameda. And on his friend list, Tig contacted a few folks via email until one of them took the bait and clicked.”

  “It’s always easier to fool someone who isn’t well versed in technology and security protocols than someone who is,” I add.

  “Right. So once his friend clicked on the email, it planted a virus on his computer that allowed Tig to gain control. She then sent an email to Jamison from the friend. Naturally, he clicked on it because it looked legit. I mean, it technically was. And voilà! Virus planted on his computer. From there, we sent out a few work emails to plant that same virus on the other employees’ computers. Long story short, she basically has control of the entire control room all remotely from her own laptop.”

  Colin’s jaw drops. “Yeah, like I said. That doesn’t sound easy.”

  Tig dons her first proud grin at this and bows.

  I just hope the script Tig wrote to gain access to the control room computers is as good as the one Johnny had written before he got hauled to jail.

  “And right now she’s simply setting up a coordinated attack on the computers that will go off at exactly four p.m. tomorrow. The ride will shut down. Everything will go black.”

  “And we go into action.”

  “Part four: action. Colin, you’ll distract poor Amy from her security post. Disguised as a security guard, Natalie will usher the riders off the ride. And I’ll step in disguised as a maintenance worker to assess the situation … By our estimation, I’ll have only a few minutes to pry my mom’s skull-prop forgery off the wall and replace it with mine.”

  Colin looks at each of us in turn. “Is now the time I say the obligatory line, ‘What could go wrong?’”

  I press my finger to his lips, and he clamps his mouth shut. “Shush, you. Nothing will go wrong. This is the plan my dad and I have been working on for months. It’s foolproof.”

  Except for the fact that I had to cut out the getaway driver from the scenario. He was also supposed to be acting as a distraction by causing a commotion in another area of the park while Natalie occupied the real security guard. And my dad was supposed to play the charismatic fake security guard.

  Our new version of the plan is better.

  It has to be.

  CHAPTER 14

  I’m in a bad joke where someone asks me, “Fiona Spangler, you’ve just broken your former worst enemy out of house arrest. What are the two of you going to do next?” And I reply, “I’m going to (steal from) an amusement park!”

  With a team of FBI experts on my tail, possibly. Or at least according to the police blotters Tig hacked into after Natalie batted her (false) eyelashes and begged. They’ve expanded their search to Southern Cali. Hence the horrible character-ear headband concealing my hair and the oversize sunglasses that cover my eyes and most of my cheeks. Every time someone swings their head in my direction, my blood turns to ice. Rule #10 of the con code: The best way to blend in is to dress like everyone else. But it takes a concerted effort not to dart my head squirrel fast after every step or speed up past the surveillance cams.

  Because our hotel has shuttles every fifteen minutes to the park, the counselors gave us free rein today to come and go as we please, though Hot Dave is stationed at the hotel lobby to track us leaving, and Ugly Dave’s waiting just inside the entrance to track us coming in. Thankfully, Lakshmi was too excited about all the funnel cakes and princesses to wait for our slow asses to get ready, so she took the first shuttle with Sydney and her friends, and we made plans (that I intend to break) to meet up later.

  Before we reach the entrance, Tig veers off toward the bathrooms just outside the park. With a backpack full of laptops and other hacking devices, she can’t actually enter. She just has to be near the park to latch on to the network, which means a fun-filled day holed up in a bathroom stall. The only place where there are no security cameras to capture her misdeeds. Colin thinks I’m super jealous. Rule #11: Criminal activities involve hiding out in a lot of gross bathrooms.

  Natalie waddles toward the line, rubbing her swollen belly and bracing one hand on the small of her back as though she can’t stand upright for too long. An auburn wig grazes her shoulders. Operation Sixteen and Pregnant is in full effect to smuggle a cloth-wrapped skull inside the park.

  The good thing about going through security with no tools or weapons is that I have nothing to hide. I’m going to have to steal all my tools once inside the park. The guard scrutinizes my brick phone charger and the two sets of wireless earbuds. But in order to preserve battery life on the earbuds, we’ll have to communicate the layman’s way until it’s go time: via text messages.

  With a tug of my bag’s zipper, the attendant waves me through the line, and tension eases from my shoulders. A tingle spreads through my stomach. The same feeling I always get before I pull a job. The hot sun beats down on me as I casually stop beside Colin to zip my bag.

  I glance up to check on Natalie’s progress through the gates when my eyes land on a guy standing alone by a cookie shop on the main path, checking his phone but lifting his eyes every few seconds. Twenty feet away, a woman sits on a bench with a paperback novel in front of her nose but not turning the pages. Farther down the street, the woman selling balloons keeps glancing around instead of trying to engage customers.

  Panic climbs my spine, and I grab Colin’s arm and squeeze. “Undercover agents are here, trying but failing to blend in.”

  Colin’s expression fills with pure alarm, as if I just whipped out a hand grenade and tossed it directly into his mouth. “How do you know?”

  Because my dad showed me how to spot them. “They generally stay in one location, try to appear busy, like they belong, but they’re really keeping their eyes on their surroundings.” And being a single adult at an amusement park without towing around a little kid would mean you’re either on the sex offender registry or the FBI agent roster.

  I cup my hand over his ear and whisper the locations of the three I spotted. His eyes flick to each one, his face growing paler.

  A hand braces on my shoulder, and I jump, letting out a yelp that sends several heads swiveling in my direction. I spin around, heart thrashing, and amp my legs to run, but it’s only Natalie, not an undercover cop.

  Her mouth opens in a wide O, which must be a moan. I bite my lip. Don’t oversell it, Nat. She braces her hand against me and starts panting. “I don’t know how preggos do it. I’ve only been with child for twenty minutes, and I desperately want to vomit everything I ate.”

  Calm. Stay calm and act normal. My pulse keeps amping. Through gritted teeth I say, “Bathroom, now.”

  I hike my backpack higher on my shoulder; it contains all the supplies to transform her into someone else. Actually, a few someone elses. It requires concentration to place one foot in front of the other and walk like a normal person instead of someone fleeing to safety. Once inside, I shove the backpack at her and collapse against the door in the handicapped stall Natalie and I squeezed into. My eyes adjust to the dull khaki walls and floor that remind me far too much of prison uniforms.

  “What’s going
on?” she asks.

  I lift a finger to my lips, then get out a sheet of paper and scribble the evidence away from eavesdroppers in adjacent stalls.

  “Shit.” Natalie purses her lips at me, then reaches into the makeup container and grabs the putty. A dollop elongates my chin, and two more give me hooded eyes. She readjusts my character ears to cover more of my forehead. “There.”

  But it doesn’t seem like enough.

  For a moment, I worry the FBI agents will spot Colin instead. I tell myself I only care because we’re in this together, whether we like it or not. I promised him a family, and I intend to keep that promise. But I’ve also gotten used to him being around … and working together so far hasn’t been as bad as I thought it was going to be.

  While Natalie transforms herself into the second of three different people today, this time reverting back to her Teen Tour disguise, I plop onto a chair right outside her stall door and try to calm myself down.

  A few minutes later, Natalie hands me the backpack with the forged skull prop and frowns at me. “We’re going to rock this. I promise. Don’t look so worried.”

  “What if we fail, Nat?” My voice comes out soft. “Then I’ll never find my mom and—”

  “Have we ever failed before?” She sounds so confident, but I hate to remind her that we have. Only once.

  Only when Colin beat me himself.

  “Have a little faith. And—what’s the phrase now? Don’t stray from the plan.”

  Her words coax a small smile to my face.

  “Speak to you at three thirty.” She jets off to stalk Amy Cleary and memorize her mannerisms so she can take over her life for five or so minutes. I try not to choke on the lump blocking my airway as she struts away, her new butt jiggling.

  I hope when I leave the restroom, I won’t be exiting straight into an FBI ambush.

  * * *

  Swarms of people surround us, some tugging screaming children covered in character ears (probably a doomsday cult—that I’ve apparently joined). Balloons float in the air, pulled on strings that cover the sky (pollution). Characters weave in and out of groups of tourists, each with a friendly wave and a frozen fabric smile. A beautiful castle looms in the distance, and the scent of baked cookies drifts from the pathway, making my stomach gurgle.