The Doublecross (14 page)

Step 2: Ben plants the flash drive in the bathroom

I grinned—there, floating in a sealed sandwich bag, was a chipped and ancient-looking purple flash drive. I fished it from the tank and pocketed the drive. It took me a few seconds more to fill the cup, and then I rejoined Otter in the hall. It was so seamless that I almost felt uneasy, like the bottom would fall out of the whole thing.

The nurse led Otter and me to a small exam room, the kind with paper bedding. Cartoon characters had been painted on the walls, and there, in the corner, was the computer, complete with fingerprint scanner. I took note that the USB ports were on the side of the monitor.

“Clifton!” a cheery voice said. A male doctor with red-and-gray speckled hair stepped in. He shook Otter's hand, then mine, and went through a dance of small talk while he pressed a stethoscope to my chest and asked me to take deep breaths. He looked in my eyes and my ears, listened while I told him I felt tired and my head hurt and how I hadn't missed any school yet, but worried I might, and I really couldn't because I wasn't getting a good grade in
language arts. Not that it really mattered, since I wanted to be a music producer anyway.

Clifton Harris was a complex creature.

“Well, your results should be finishing up shortly—but I wouldn't worry too much,” the doctor said, sliding onto a low stool and facing the computer. He pressed his finger against a reader; the computer obeyed, popping up a form for him to input new patient info. He typed up all my stats, and even made a note about how I wanted to be a music producer—for future doctor small talk times, I supposed. “Looks good! Give me just a moment, Clifton, to go grab your chart.” He rose. I saw Otter's hand move toward his pocket, where the flash drive with SRS's program was.

Footsteps in the hall—heels, running, clacking loudly on the tile floor. The doctor lifted his eyebrows, and then he was nearly smacked in the face as the door to the exam room flung open. A wide-eyed nurse stood on the other side, pointing emphatically at Otter.

“Your car!” she said, panting, out of breath. “It's in the road!”

Step 3: Clatterbuck forces Otter to leave the room

“Huh?” Otter said.

“It's in the road—it rolled. It's in the intersection!” she said, stepping back.

I gritted my teeth in excitement. Clatterbuck had come through and done his part.

“Oh!” Otter's jaw locked, his eyes panicked. He looked from me to the doctor and back again and again.

“Go!” the doctor said swiftly. “Hurry!”

“I can't—Clifton—”

“I'll be fine, Dad, go!” I said urgently, biting my tongue when I finished, punishing myself for calling Otter “Dad.” Otter gave me a mean look, but he didn't have a choice unless he wanted to totally blow our cover—what kind of man just lets his car sit in an intersection? He patted me on the shoulder swiftly and then took off down the hallway. I folded my arms over my chest nervously, catching the flash drive Otter had seamlessly tucked into my T-shirt collar before it fell all the way through to the floor. The doctor looked back at me.

“Wow! Well, let's hope everything goes fine with that. While he's saving the car, I'll go grab your results. Be back shortly!” He slipped out the door, closing it behind him.

Step 4: Install the programs

I leaped up and charged to the computer, nearly knocking the whole thing over as I slid onto the doctor's chair. I popped SRS's flash drive into the computer's USB port. I knew exactly how to install it—uploading spy software was something we'd learned in Kennedy's grade. I clicked
through, tapping my foot anxiously. A caterpillar-green progress bar inched along painfully slowly. It finally loaded, and I typed frantically, making sure the program was deeply hidden inside the operating system. The relief I felt when everything was complete was short-lived. I yanked out Beatrix's bright purple flash drive and fumbled to push it into the USB. Nerves were getting to me—I took a deep breath.

Beatrix's program popped up, a white wall of text. I typed what she instructed me to yesterday: “beatrix is cooler than ben.” The screen flashed for a moment, then it all went black and I felt the thick taste of panic rise in me. Something had gone wrong. We'd tripped a firewall, she'd accidentally wiped a system, the computer simply couldn't handle the program . . .

The screen returned. It looked normal—a chart with Clifton Harris's name on it.

“Huh,” I said aloud, marveling at Beatrix's work. I heard a rustle outside, a step, a hand on the doorknob. I yanked the flash drive from the computer and dived onto the bed.

“Clifton! Good news!” the doctor said brightly, sweeping back into the room a millisecond after my butt hit the bed. “I think odds are that you've just got a bug. I've written you a prescription.” The doctor paused to yank the top sheet off his pad. “Why don't you go back to the lobby to wait on your dad?”

When I got to the lobby, I fought the urge to laugh. No, wait, that was putting it too mildly—I fought the urge to
fall on the floor, laughing and pointing like a cartoon character. Otter was standing in the middle of an intersection beside his boxy-shaped car, surrounded by cars with smashed bumpers and shattered headlights. Other drivers were shouting at him, hands on their hips and faces stretched in anger. Otter was yelling back, which wasn't helping. I suspected one woman was three seconds away from taking a swing.

It was perfect.

The hospital was focused on new patients now, so I slunk out the front door and hurried over to help him. Beatrix's purple flash drive made a pleasant
plunk
as I tossed it into the teddy bear fountain on my way to the intersection.

“Forget it, man—we're not letting you drive off. It's illegal not to have insurance in this state, you know!” an angry old man howled at Otter. He looked like the center of a rage-and-car-shaped flower.

“You're the one who hit my car!” Otter snapped back, livid. He was hanging on to the open driver's-side door, like it was holding him back from charging everyone down.

“You're the idiot who forgot to pull his parking brake! You're lucky the car didn't hurt someone when it rolled through the intersection!”

Otter stared at the car and made a combination of vowel sounds that were supposed to be words but hadn't quite cooked long enough in his brain. I could tell he was trying to remember if he'd pulled the parking brake or not. I, of
course, knew he had—it was just that I'd left my door unlocked so that Clatterbuck could drop the brake and give the car a nice shove. I hadn't expected Clatterbuck to shove it quite
this
hard though. I figured the car would end up tapping the edge of the teddy bear fountain, or maybe denting a nearby car. Stopping traffic in the center of a major intersection? This was a little more than I'd bargained for when I set up the plan last night, and it was all starting to freak me out a little.

In the distance I heard the faint sound of police sirens. We had to get out of there before the cops came—because, from the twisted look on Otter's face, he didn't prepare false insurance or a false driver's license. Getting arrested wasn't rare for SRS members, but getting arrested for something like a traffic violation? That was just embarrassing. Plus, it would mean that no one would remember how successful our mission was—they'd just remember how big a mess had been made at the end of it. As much as the idea of Otter in handcuffs thrilled me, I had to get us out of here. I looked around, taking stock of what we could use, but there was nothing except a fallen bumper or two, some broken glass, and an ever-growing crowd of onlookers, staring like this was some sort of incredibly boring movie . . .

Movie
.

That'll work.

“Whoa, wait—is that gasoline?” I said, frantically pointing to a pool of liquid underneath Otter's car. It wasn't
gasoline—it was just windshield wiper fluid, if I was remembering Emergency Car Acquisition (or what we affectionately called Grand Theft Auto) class correctly. “It is! Dad, we've gotta get away! The whole thing might blow up!”

People's eyes widened, Otter's included. They looked at the gasoline and hurriedly backed up toward their cars like they weren't positive they believed me, but they'd seen plenty of car explosions in movies. And just like Ben back at The League, they all assumed that movies were correct. Otter suddenly realized what I was doing and ducked into the driver's seat and slammed the door. He unlocked the doors at the same moment he turned the key in the ignition; I'd barely shut my door before he peeled out of the intersection through the space the others had left when they slunk away from the potentially exploding car.

I was relieved. I expected Otter to be too, but he mostly looked shaken. I'd have felt bad for him, if I didn't dislike him so much.

“So, the program is installed. I had plenty of time. Everything should be good,” I said curtly. I pulled the gray SRS flash drive from my pocket and dropped it in the cup holder unceremoniously.

“I must have not pulled the parking brake.”

I didn't say anything.

He continued, voice blank, “It nearly messed up the whole mission. Do you know my mission success rate? It's perfect. Absolutely perfect.”

“What about the Acapulco incident my dad mentioned?”

“That wasn't my fault. I didn't know the parrot could talk!”
Otter finally exploded, sending spit all over the windshield. I shrunk back as he continued to mutter angrily to himself about parking brakes and parrots. It wasn't until we were well out of the city and nearly back to SRS headquarters that he calmed down. At a stoplight he turned to me.

“You're not to tell anyone about the incident with the parking brake.”

“What? Why not? It's going in your mission report anyway—”

“Hale Jordan,” he said, his voice dangerous. “You are not to tell anyone. Are we clear?”

I ran my tongue across my teeth. Otter was annoying, and he hated me, and he was entirely too sensitive about whatever happened in Acapulco, but he was still a dangerous man to cross. However, this was too perfect a chance to pass up. I shook my head.

“I'm not lying for you. You'd have told everyone at SRS if
I'd
been the one to screw up the whole thing.”

For a second I was actually afraid Otter was going to punch me. Instead he gripped the steering wheel tighter, ignoring the fact that the light had changed. “Fine. I'll tell everyone there was a problem, and you had to install the program. Make you out to be a real hero. But no one hears that I forgot to pull the brake.”

“Okay, that fixes half of it,” I said, nodding. “Because I
saved your butt by installing the program. But I saved your butt
again
by creating a diversion so we could escape the intersection before the cops showed up. You owe me for that too.”

Otter cursed—loudly. Several times, and in several languages. I could practically see the battle in his head: Which was worse? Admitting to everyone that Hale Jordan saved him? Or admitting to Hale Jordan that he owed him?

“Fine. What do you want for the second one?”

“I want to go on another mission.”

“You're not a junior agent,” he hissed. I shrugged, and he cursed several times in English. “Fine. I'll tell Director Fishburn that I think you should go on another mission. But that's the best I can do.”

“Perfect.”

Otter and I told Fishburn that he'd been called out of the room by the doctor to discuss something to do with my test results, which is why I had to install the program. It worked like a charm—Fishburn was delighted I'd come through. I guess everyone loves an underdog story.

“Kennedy!” I shouted as I walked into our apartment. I frowned when I saw the couch—Ms. Elma had been stabbing the upholstery again, then sewing it back together. Living with us wasn't very good for her head, which was worrisome. How much longer before they sent me and Kennedy to live in the SRS dorms? I shook off the concern. Once I got my parents back, living at SRS wasn't going to happen, period. Where would we live? A house somewhere? League headquarters?

My mind twisted—after everything that'd happened,
it was still hard to picture living anywhere but apartment 300. I headed toward my room to change into clothes that didn't smell like a hospital, reminding myself that when my parents came home, they'd sort out where we would live. “Kennedy, where are you? Want to hear about my mission?” I called for her again.

I walked to my bedroom and frowned. It sounded like my clock radio was on, turned up full blast. I creaked open my bedroom door. When it was just a few inches open, someone crashed into me. Kennedy—I could tell from the flash of red hair. She weighed so little that she didn't so much knock me to the ground as drag me there slowly.

“Hey, what—what are you doing?” I said, half laughing. I found her face in the sea of hair and neon green shorts. Her eyes were wide, and she was holding a finger to her lips frantically. I let her finish dragging me to the carpet and then leaned in so she could whisper in my ear.

“Someone bugged our apartment.”

My heart sank deep into my stomach, dissolving among the bile that immediately twisted around in my gut. The apartment was bugged. Someone at SRS heard the conversation I'd had with The League last night. I was caught. There was no point in running—it was all over.

Kennedy jerked a finger toward my bed, and together we slowly, silently lifted the comforter up. On the bed, among my ruffled blankets, was the bug she'd discovered. A ruby earring and bracelet set.

“I turned on the radio real loud, so I don't think they can hear us now, but who knows how long they've been here? They're old—I don't think they're SRS, Hale. I think . . . I think . . .” She dropped her voice even lower so that I almost couldn't hear her at all. “I think The League planted them.”