The Doublecross (6 page)

Like the SRS, The League occupied a relatively nondescript building, though theirs was big, made of metal and glass and stretching toward the sky. I suspected the height was more of a distraction—most of their facilities were surely underground, safely buried beneath the city. The letters EBP were on the side of the building in bright red block characters, but I was pretty certain they didn't stand for anything—they were just the sort of letters that a regular
person would nod at, assuming they belonged to some rich corporation. The building had wide stairs leading up to it, where people stopped to talk, eat lunch, or stare at the pigeons that hung out around a weird twisty statue.

This was where my plan ended. I'd never gotten close enough to The League's building to really study it before, so I couldn't plot how to break in till this exact moment. I pretended to be bored as I analyzed potential points of entry—my teacher from last year would be proud, I bet, since she did two months of classes on breaking into secure buildings.

The League had cameras by the front doors. Probably more inside. There were likely vents or windows on the lower levels, but slipping through those was for people six sizes smaller than I was. The roof was out, since I didn't have air support, as was burrowing underground. Basically, the only way into The League, for me, was through the front doors. Which meant I needed a way in—one that would not only get me through the front doors, but past the agents on the other side.

I rose and walked away from the building. I ducked into the grocery store and dared to spend a handful of quarters in the vending machines across from the bathroom doors—because I'd skipped breakfast, I was too hungry to think straight. The honey bun I bought was dry and mealy, but it was something. I shoved the laundry bag into the corner of the largest stall and leaned against the door as I ate.

Think. And think fast, because your parents are in that building, and you're all they have.

Except I had nothing at all. I closed my eyes and commanded myself to think.
Focus on the mission, Hale. Come on . . .

Wait. I didn't have nothing. I had two dollars in change and a bag of laundry.

Which meant I had a plan.

Mission: Break into The League
Step 1: Acquire necessities—knife, tape, and cookies

The knife and tape were easy—I wandered the aisles of the grocery store until I found a guy shelving cans of tuna fish. He seemed like a nice enough guy, really. So I felt bad about intentionally shattering one of those four-gallon glass jars of pickles one aisle over. I shuffled away quickly; the tuna stocker ran past me and groaned. Muttering something about floor wax, he stomped off to get a broom.

Meanwhile, I snuck back to the tuna fish, snatched his box cutter, and shoved it into my pocket.

Knife? Check.

Next I grabbed a bunch of the stickers from the bulk food section. They were supposed to seal the bags of self-serve grains.

Tape? Check.

Cookies were slightly trickier. I considered just stealing them, but I already felt pretty high profile after arriving with a laundry bag and breaking a pickle jar. I couldn't afford to get thrown out, or worse: reported to the police.

Instead I made my way to the bakery section. A glass case housed two dozen types of cupcakes and pies and éclairs and all sorts of desserts the SRS would never let us touch, much less eat. The woman behind the bakery counter smiled at me with overly glossed lips.

“Are these samples?” I asked her. A plastic plateful of tiny sugar cookies with sprinkles sat on top of the case.

She nodded, then smiled. “Help yourself!”

Her smile faded as I grabbed one of the nearby bakery boxes and shoveled almost the entire tray of cookies inside. I shrugged. She
had
told me to “help myself.”

Cookies? Check.

I yanked an OUT OF ORDER sign off one of the drink machines across the hall, and then I stuck it against the bathroom door to give myself a little privacy.

Step 2: Put together the perfect disguise

I dumped the laundry bag out on the floor and reached for a pair of Dad's khakis. I studied them for a moment and then folded them in half so the cuffs of the legs met each other. I pulled out the tuna guy's box cutter. Carefully, I drew the blade through the pants, right below the pockets.
It took a few cuts before I finally broke through the layers of fabric. Then I grabbed the bulk foods stickers and looped them so they were sticky on both sides. Folding the ends of the pant legs over, I ran the stickers along the edge, until they were flat and smooth, as clean a line as if the fabric had been sewn that way.

All right, the moment of truth. I ducked between the two pant legs, letting one end rest on my left shoulder and the other on my right hip so it became a khaki-colored sash. I picked up the box of cookies and looked at myself in the mirror.

Deep breaths, Hale
.

Half of being a spy is lying. What most people don't realize—and what SRS students learn in year one—is most of that means lying to yourself. It's easy to trick a stranger into believing a story. After all, they don't know you—why shouldn't they believe you? But fooling yourself is something else entirely because you have to bury the real you so far beneath the lie that it doesn't have a prayer of poking its head up. Once you've fooled yourself, though, that's when your cover is perfect.

So, even though I'd never been a Campfire Scout, even though I'd never even been camping, period, I walked toward The League with total confidence. After all, I was a Campfire Scout—I had the sash and cookies to prove it. This was the EBP office building, nothing more. I was just there to hand out cookie samples. What did I have to worry about?

Step 3: Walk through the front door

I reached forward, pushing through the revolving glass door . . .

I froze. The lobby ceiling soared all the way to the top of the building, with plants hanging off the elevator landings on each floor. Everything was marble, but the building wasn't quite as sleek as SRS's—it smelled more like oranges and leather shoes than cleaner. Behind a broad wooden desk with a bowl of mints in the corner was a skinny man wearing a vest and a dotted tie; other than him, the lobby was totally empty. He gave me a confused look.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” I said, grinning like the cheerleading animals plastered around Kennedy's bedroom—like this moment was the best moment, ever, ever, ever. I hustled over to him, dimming the smile when he seemed more concerned than charmed.

“I'm Walter Quaddlebaum from Campfire Scouts Troop three seventy-one, sir, and I'm here to offer samples of our new line of Campfire Scout cookies. Would you be interested in trying one?” I said all this exactly, like I was reciting it from a script a troop leader gave me.

“Oh!” The man's eyes lit up. “Oh, I shouldn't. I shouldn't . . . Sugar and all . . .”

He looked from side to side, like someone might pounce
on him if he said yes, then grinned at me and reached for a cookie.

“Thanks,” I said cheerily. “I'm supposed to give out the box to earn my Bakemaster Badge.”

“Of course! If you leave them here, I promise I'll—”

“Oh, no—I have to give them out myself to get the badge.”

The receptionist looked at me and blinked. “But can't you just tell your scout leader you gave them away yourself?”

I widened my eyes.

“You . . . you want me to lie?” I said this at nearly a whisper, like I'd never heard anything so horrific.

The receptionist hurriedly shook his head and held up his hands. “No, of course not, but I can't let—”

“I don't have
any
badges yet,” I said, lifting my pants-sash woefully. “And you want me to lie to get my first one?”

I sniffed and tensed my face until a few tears dropped from my eyes. My face always turned neon red when I cried, which usually was embarrassing—and part of the reason I never, ever let Walter and his minions make me cry—but right now that fearful color was coming in handy, along with the fact that I looked about as nonthreatening as a kitten. I mean, a crying kid bearing cookies? I let my lower lip quiver, just to complete the act.

“Don't, don't, don't cry,” the receptionist begged. “I don't want you to lie, of course not.”

He frowned and glanced down the hall directly behind
him. “How about you go down that hall, then curve around and come back up here? It shouldn't take long. Drop it in any of the open office doors.”

“What about the closed ones? Should I knock?”

“Oh, no one works in those—we're pretty short staffed these days,” the receptionist said, looking back down the hall warily. “All right, go on.”

I grinned, wiped my tears away with the back of my hand, and scurried down the hall. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw him look down at his watch—I had ten minutes, probably, before he'd become suspicious and come after me.

I could work with ten minutes.

Step 4: Find Mom and Dad

Let me explain something about SRS.

We had offices. Plenty of them—halls of them, in fact. But agents were normally using them to practice kickboxing or hack into a computer's mainframe or learn to speak Portuguese. Sure, there were the few odd people who sat quietly on computers all day gathering intel, but they were definitely in the minority, and they still looked impressive, typing away, then pausing to scribble down notes. I guess I expected to see something similar at The League.

Instead I saw . . . office people.

People lining up pencils on their desks. One guy playing golf, hitting a ball into a coffee cup. Another pretending to work busily, but actually looking at small, hairless dogs on a dodgy animal-rescue website. Everyone happily took cookies, and no one seemed terribly concerned about
my presence. Was this a trap? It had to be a trap—this was
The League
, after all.

I came to the corner where I was supposed to take a right and emerge back in the lobby. I glanced in an office and looked at a clock—I'd been gone for four minutes.

That meant I had six more minutes to get as deep into The League as I could. Which meant it was time to go beyond the open doors. Time to go beyond this single floor. There was a heavy metal door to my left, totally unlike the wooden office doors. I pushed it open—a stairwell. I leaned my head over the stair rail and took stock. I was about only five levels from the very bottom, which seemed the most practical place to hold prisoners. I took note of an emergency exit door, just in case I needed one later, then hurried down the steps.

Five flights of stairs later, my shins were burning. I stopped at the basement level; ahead of me was a long, musty-smelling hallway. Every door was labeled: WATER, ELECTRICAL, CUSTODIAN. Maybe they were mislabeled to throw intruders off.

I opened the custodian's closet. Brooms.

Electrical door. Fuse boxes.

Water. Water softeners.

At the end of the hall was a larger set of doors, not entirely different from the cafeteria doors back at SRS. It wasn't until I got a little closer that I could read the label—TRAINING AND CONDITIONING. I supposed it was as good a
door as any other I'd seen, so I pushed it open and walked into the room.

The gym back at SRS was full of sleek equipment. Chrome weight machines, black punching bags, treadmills, stationary bikes, and those weird stair-step machines that no one ever wanted to use. Otter always told us it was a room dedicated to our “personal best,” which maybe was true for some people. For me it was more of an ode to my misery. Everything there smelled like lemon cleaner, burning rubber, and sweat, though not always in that order.

The League gym was very, very different.

For starters, it smelled like old foam, spilled soda, and grease—in that order. The walls were painted a sort of creamy white, like the color of the good vanilla ice cream, and there were little bits of tape all over them from where posters or signs had been stuck up at some point. There were jump ropes hung haphazardly on hooks, some white and mauve weight machines in the far corner, and a rubber track that ran around the exterior of the whole thing.

There were also two people staring at me.

I remained calm.

That was what I'd been trained to do, after all, the thing that teacher after teacher had beat into my head as step one in any risky situation: remain calm.

Step two: assess the situation.

The people staring at me were kids—my age, probably, maybe a tiny bit younger. The boy was short with knobby joints and hair that stuck up like someone had just rubbed it with a balloon. He was arranging odds and ends from the gym—a three-pound weight here, an uninflated bike tube there, a few yoga balls at the end—into some sort of elaborate pattern, almost like a maze. The girl beside him had his black hair, but hers was neatly pulled into two short French braids. She also had glasses, the big kind that looked like they should belong to a history professor, and she was holding something that looked like several cell phones duct-taped together.

I dropped the box of cookies to the ground and braced myself. Hands to my face, fists ready—I could maybe take one of them out, but two? They had to be partners, if they were in here training together, which meant they knew exactly how to take out a target together. The girl looked particularly scrappy. I was never good with scrappy.

“Five-second rule!”

I frowned. It was the boy who yelled it—no,
screeched
it, really. He dived forward. I hunched down, prepared to fling myself on top of him and hold him down—I mean, hey, I've got extra body weight, I might as well use it, right? I took a step forward, ready to land on his legs . . .

He grabbed a cookie and crammed it into his mouth,
looking pleased with himself. The girl behind him crinkled her nose, making her big glasses rock on her face.