This time, Brooke was the one who swore—long, hard, and in ways that struck even me as disturbingly creative.
When the backup team arrived to clean up the mess and take Ross and his guards into custody, Brooke and I disappeared back into the building, which, because of the layout and thickness of the walls of these offices, remained blissfully unaware of the chaos in Ross’s lab.
As hard as it was for either of us to act even the least bit normal, Brooke and I did the only thing we could to maintain our cover and exculpate ourselves from any and all suspicion in the Ross affair.
“Hi! We’re members of the Bayport Varsity Spirit Squad, and we’re selling Cheer Scout cookies!”
“The Go, Fight, Cinnamon are to die for.”
CHAPTER 24
Code Word: Mommy Dearest
“That’s it,” Brooke said finally. It was the first thing one of us had said that wasn’t (a) something that would have had to be bleeped out on most major broadcasting networks, or (b) a pitch for our cookies.
Shortly after we’d returned to “selling” our cookies, the police had arrived and ushered out all of the occupants of the building. We told them we didn’t know anything, and either because they took one look at our faces and were apt to believe that we indeed knew nothing at all or because the Feds were secretly pulling their strings, we were quickly and quietly allowed to leave. Now the two of us were in Brooke’s car, presumably driving back to the school to lick our wounds and further obsess over our failure.
“That’s it.” I repeated Brooke’s words.
“We lost the one object we couldn’t afford to lose. We caused a huge disturbance. If you’d detonated your right sockinstead of your left one, we might have taken down part of the building.”
So now she tells me that one grenade had more firepower than the other.
Brooke, oblivious to my train of thought, continued emotionlessly recapping our experience. “Shots were fired, and we both could have been killed.”
I considered her words. “Yup. That about sums it up.”
“You don’t get it,” Brooke said, heat entering her tone for the first time. “We were supposed to try to avoid actual danger. The weapons were for the worst-case scenario, and that scenario happened. They sent us in to get a weapon without being noticed, and we almost blew up the buildingand lost the weapon to the one person we were trying to keep it away from.”
“That’s bad.”
“There are no words for how bad this is.”
“Okay, so we do damage control,” I said. “We find Amelia and take her down before she can give the weapon to the firm.”
Brooke actually laughed then, and it was a brittle, brutal sound. “You think they’re going to let us do that?” she snorted.
I’m not sure what gave her the impression that I intended on asking.
“This isn’t just an over-eighteen case now, Toby. This isn’t just a Do Not Engage. I can guarantee you that this is no longer a Squad operation. Now it’s up to the professionals, and we’ll be lucky to see action again before I graduate.”
“We could—” I started to say, but Brooke cut me off.
“We can’t do anything. They won’t let us. God, talk about disasters. I’m never going to hear the end of this.” Sensing thatI was going to interrupt her the way she’d interrupted me, Brooke plowed on, not giving me the chance. “They didn’t even want us on this case after the explosion. They had to be talked into it, but I told them I could handle it. I promised them I could handle it. I even told themyoucould handle it.”
“And you were going to share this with me when?”
“Puh-lease, Toby, no whining right now. I can’t deal with it. I really can’t. We have much bigger problems than this right now.”
Hey! I was not whining.
“What problems might these be?” I asked. “And where are you going?” I hadn’t noticed, because I’d been too busy trying to process Brooke’s rant, but she’d pulled off the highway, and now we were driving through a residential area.
“Home,” Brooke said tersely.
“Home as in your home?” I asked.
Brooke nodded.
