Keeping one hand on the wheel, Brooke tapped a command into the radio panel of her car, and a flat-screen popped out of the dashboard.
“Show bodyguards.”
The car responded to Brooke’s verbal order, and three pictures popped up on the screen, each depicting a man uglier and more massively enormous than the one before him.
“Larry, Moe, and Curly?” I guessed.
Brooke shrugged. “I was going to go with Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail, but whatever.”
Okay, I thought. Three gargantuan security guys, a paranoid (and perhaps rightly so) scientist, and in all likelihood, less than three or four minutes until they realized I was up to something.
“If you were eighteen, you would have two and a half years of training before you got a mission like this,” Brooke said, “but you’re not, so you haven’t. If you can’t cut it, tell me now, and I’ll put in a request for a non-Squad hacker with no breasts and an adrenaline addiction. Believe me when I say you’re replaceable.”
Believe me when I say that I didn’t believe her. She followed orders, and she’d been told to take me with her on this mission. If they’d given her a choice, Chloe would probably be sitting in this seat with some kind of breast-reduction bra on.
“I’ll be fine.” In that moment, I actually believed it. Insanity definitely has its perks.
CHAPTER 23
Code Word: Cookies
“Hi, I’m Misty,” Brooke said brightly.
“And I’m Fawn,” I added.
“And we’re selling Cheer Scout cookies,” we chorused together.
By the time we made our way into the foyer of Ross’s office, Brooke and I had the Cheer Scout routine down pat. The security guard who’d answered the door eyed us distrustfully.
“And spirit pins,” I said earnestly.
“And spirit sticks.”
“And we’re having a car wash next Saturday.”
“And we’re trying to get Krispy Kreme to sponsor us, so maybe if you buy something now, we can get you free donuts later.”
The security guard seemed taken aback, but he didn’t move at all.
“I can do the splits,” Brooke volunteered, sounding as air-headed as Bubbles at her worst.
“Ronald, what’s going on out there?” a voice called from further back, inside the office.
Ronald—who I’d decided looked like a Mopsy—turned around. “Some girls selling cookies,” he called. “They can do the splits.”
Moments later, Phillip Ross exited his lab and made his way to the reception area, where Ronald/Mopsy, who was eyeing us slightly more speculatively, had nevertheless kept us in the hall, instead of inviting us in. Looking past Mopsy’s shoulder, I could see Ross, who looked every bit as nerdy in person, flanked by another security guard—Flopsy. I could only infer that Cottontail was in the lab or the kitchen, safeguarding the loot.
“What school do you guys go to?” Ross asked, peering around Mopsy’s massively broad shoulder.
“Bayport,” Brooke said. Fake names, real school. It was a combination specifically designed to discredit Ross’s story if he happened to try to pass it on. After all, if we were parading around in our own school’s uniforms, oozing Bayport High spirit from our very pores, why would we bother with fake names? It made no sense, and that was exactly why we did it.
Ross appraised us through his thick, wire-rimmed glasses. “Maybe you’re from Bayport and maybe you’re not. Won’t you come in?”
The invitation sounded ominous. Apparently, inventing an incredibly dangerous little doodad had convinced Phillip Ross that he was a badass. I could only imagine that he wasinviting us in to determine if we were who we said we were, and if he didn’t buy it …
Well, then I’d get to really use this so-called spirit stick.
“Awesome,” Brooke said, and the two of us stepped into the office. The doors closed behind us.
