The Inside Job (18 page)

He could have gotten us caught.

He could have gotten us killed.

“Hale?” Walter said quietly after a moment. I took a breath, prepared what I'd say after he apologized, and prepared in my head to forgive him. Walter continued once I was looking at him. “Do you think my mom was glad to see me, even if it was like this?”

I stared. Walter looked away.

And we rode on in silence.

CHAPTER TWENTY

When we got back to the farmhouse, Clatterbuck and the twins swarmed us. Their faces made that phrase “worried sick” seem like more than just a saying. Even Annabelle was riled up. She met us in the front yard with the others, leaping on each of us—and knocking us to the ground—in turn.

“All right, all right,” Otter said, pushing Annabelle's paws off his shoulders. “We'll explain everything. Let's just get inside.” Kennedy was already halfway through telling the whole story, and by the time we sat down, she'd made it up to the part about the crawl space. I hadn't said a word. Neither had Walter.

Here's the thing: I didn't necessarily blame Walter, my friend, for freezing when his mom called his name.

But I did sort of blame Walter, my
partner
, for freezing when his mom called his name. I blamed him for being so unable to function when he realized his mom was near that we ended up trapped in that closet to begin with.

Walter was trained better than that.
SRS
trained him better than that. Those sorts of mistakes were the things that cost people their lives.

How was I supposed to trust Walter in the field now? I was able to make up for his mistakes, sure, but would Kennedy have been able to? Would Otter, would the twins or Clatterbuck?

“How did you know the tune code, anyway?” Kennedy asked Otter, her face glowing with excitement.

Otter shrugged, unimpressed with himself. “I just whistled Pachelbel's Canon. It sounds like everything.” Clatterbuck's eyes widened with delight, and then he punched at Otter's shoulder like a proud brother. Otter scowled. Clatterbuck punched his shoulder again. Clatterbuck and Annabelle really had a lot in common, I decided.

“Anyway, so, Hale—tell us what happened after we got out,” Kennedy said.

“I tripped the circuit to the house using the oven. Then we jumped onto a bus,” I said absently.

“The oven? Wow, Hale. That was really bright,” Clatterbuck said warmly, though he still looked a little panicked.

“Really bright, and it didn't have to happen,” Otter said shortly. He drummed his fingers on the table. “We should never have gone in there like that. We needed time to plan, to really put a mission together—”

“It was supposed to be simple—” I interrupted.

“That's how agents fail, and you know it,” Otter answered.

I didn't have a response. Because he was right.

I really, really hate it when Otter is right. First about my parents, now about the mission . . . I shook my head.
Think of the mission, Hale
. I crushed all my feelings back into my chest—I could deal with those another day. “Fine. Fine—the bank, then. Let's plan it out. Really plan it, like we should've planned this one.”

“We can't rob a bank now! Not only is SRS in Geneva, we've already been spotted!” Otter said, like I'd lost my mind entirely.

“We can't just
leave
, though,” Kennedy said. “What about the books? Hastings? Annabelle?” She grabbed Annabelle's head and hauled it into her lap. “We can't just leave her with Hastings!”

“She's not our dog, Kennedy,” I reminded her.

“She doesn't even
like
Hastings. All she did there was lie on the floor. At least she has fun with us,” Kennedy said. Annabelle snaked her head over the tabletop and licked up a few crumbs in response.

“Here's the plan,” Otter said, folding his arms. “We give the dog back—don't make that face, Kennedy; we have to—we resell the books, and we use the money to fund The League and stop SRS.”

Mouths opened. Mine wasn't one of them.

“That's stealing—the books belong to Hastings. And that's what SRS does—what they
did
,” Walter said.

“We can't be like them!” Kennedy said at the same time, and then she added, “But if we're going to steal from him, can't we take Annabelle instead of the books?”

She had a point. Beatrix and Ben were mostly quiet, but Clatterbuck stammered something about never wanting to be part of SRS, having been a League agent from the start.

Then they all looked at me. I kept my face calm, my eyes steady. “We see if it's possible to rob the bank, like we planned. But if it
isn't
. . . well. We have to have something to live off, guys. We can't keep going up against SRS with homemade inventions and three kid agents.”

“What's wrong with my inventions?” Ben asked, hurt.

“Nothing! Nothing's wrong with them. I'm just saying, SRS is powerful. Money makes them powerful. If we can't take their power away, we have to find a way to build some of our own.”

“But we're not like SRS,” Kennedy said, crossing her arms.

“We
are
, though. We can't help it. They trained us, Kennedy. Everything we are is because of them. And they're
good
at what they do, evil as it may be. Maybe functioning a little more like they are will get us closer to stopping them.”

“Speak for yourself,” Walter said shortly. “They've still got my mom. I don't want to be anything like them.”

“They don't
have
your mom, Walter. She chose them!” I said, my voice sharp. Walter looked liked I'd struck him; he stepped back, his eyebrows knitted together, his mouth parted. I was instantly sorry and not sorry—sorry to have hurt him, not sorry because of how badly I wanted Walter to realize this for himself. His mom chose SRS.

Just like my parents chose to be art thieves.

Like they chose to leave us.

It wasn't something I wanted to think about, and it definitely wasn't something I could say out loud, but there it was: my parents chose to leave me and Kennedy behind. I'm not saying it was easy, but that was still the choice they made. Maybe sometimes you just have to be like SRS and think of the mission. Maybe sometimes, you have to put aside what feels right or wrong or good or bad and just do what has to be done.

Maybe sometimes, you act like SRS because otherwise, they win again, and you are just so, so, so tired of them winning.

“I don't want to keep the books,” I said, trying not to let all the mean thoughts in my head leak into my voice.
“But I also don't want SRS to crush us, and if we don't get a leg up on them, eventually they will. Let's put together a bank plan. See what we can do. We'll get everything perfect, all scenarios covered, and go from there.”

Except, I knew that what I was
actually
saying was,
We'll see
, which is what your parents say when they mean,
You're not getting what you want, but I don't want to say no
. Everyone else knew it too.

But no one left, because at SRS, we were taught to never walk away from mission planning.

“I . . . um. I have the bank blueprints?” Beatrix said meekly. She tapped at her Right Hand; a nearby printer buzzed to life and spit out page after page of material. Basic blueprints. Vault information. Alarm systems.

It was overwhelming, especially seeing as how we were all still steaming silently. We passed the papers around the table, staring at them, while Annabelle began to snore in the corner.

Have you ever been stuck? Like, writer's block or painter's block or just one of those times where you read part of a book five times but still don't really know what it says? That was what planning the bank job felt like. Usually, we all clicked into place to form the perfect mission, everyone with their own little roles to play, their own parts in the bigger picture. But tonight? Tonight it was like we were seven strangers, and none of us spoke the same language.

Otter finally sighed heavily. “All right—go to sleep. That's an order, everyone. We'll work on the mission tomorrow. Ben, get the books out of the car, will you, and bring them to my room. Kennedy, sweep the perimeter to make sure we weren't followed. Beatrix, double-check that your uncle's rental cars don't trace to us, just in case SRS is looking.”

“What about us?” Walter asked, motioning to me and himself.

“You two, don't talk. Just go to sleep,” Otter said.

Which was fine by me. Walter went straight to our room, but I didn't want to have to lie in there, wondering if he was awake. I could feel all sorts of words on the tip of my tongue—
Walter, I can't trust you anymore. Walter, you were useless today, and you're supposed to be my partner. Walter, you have to let your mom go.
It was definitely for the best that we weren't alone, where I might crack and say them. I opted to join Kennedy on the perimeter sweep. I think she knew why I wanted to get out of the house for a little while; she didn't say much as we walked down the drive, along the edge of the pasture. Annabelle came with us, running ahead and bringing back sticks, which instead of giving us to throw, she gnawed into pieces and then abandoned.

We could see the owners' house up ahead, looking warmer and brighter and more lived-in than the farmhouse. The
poneys
were in a barn nearby for the evening, and when
the wind blew just right, you could hear them chomping on hay or stamping their feet or generally being ponies. When we got a little closer, we could see the owners inside, sitting in front of their television on a couch so soft, it looked like it was swallowing them. They were old and wrinkly people who looked like they would give good hugs.

“I think what you said to Walter was mean,” Kennedy said softly. I turned, realizing she'd fallen a few steps behind me. She had her head down and was kicking a rock along the path. Kennedy argued with me occasionally, but over stupid things—like what time to wake up, or how many unicorn temporary tattoos she could feasibly fit on her arms. This, however, was very different, and so it threw me. I stopped on the path, trying to drum up the arguments I'd shove at Otter or Walter or even Beatrix, but they didn't come.

“He could've cost us our freedom today. He could have cost us our lives, even. If he can't focus in the field, then . . .”

“He just misses his mom.”

“Still,” I said, stopping and leaning against one of the wooden pasture fences. There were no clouds in the sky, and even with the glow of downtown Geneva's lights a few miles away, you could see a billion stars.

Kennedy kicked her rock again, hard enough that it vanished down the trail. Annabelle took off after it. “I miss Mom and Dad too.”

I turned to her. “Of course you do. So do I. I'm not mad at Walter for missing his mom, Kennedy.”

“What happens if Mom and Dad appear, and I freeze?” she asked quietly. “Or you? What would you do if you suddenly saw them again?”

I exhaled a deep chesty breath. Behind us, the lights in the farmhouse clicked out as the owners went to bed. It made the already brilliant stars even more so, and the moonlight made the entire world look dark blue. I picked a few splinters from the fence, letting them drop to the ground, and finally said, “All right, that's fair. I might freeze too. And I wouldn't blame you if you did.” I smiled a little and stepped down from the fence. “I guess sometimes I just get angry, like today with Walter. Lately it's hard for me to be a regular person instead of an SRS agent. And sometimes it's hard to be an SRS agent instead of a regular person. I don't know why it's hard for me right now. I never had trouble with that when we were actually at SRS.”

“That's because there we didn't get to be regular people very often,” Kennedy reminded me. “Remember how long it took for me to convince them to let me start a cheerleading squad? And how we couldn't eat what we wanted, and how they wouldn't let you become a junior agent even though you were the best one in your class? They wanted us to be agents, but they didn't much want us to be people.”

“Yeah, but . . . I think . . .” I looked at Kennedy for a long time before continuing—did I really want to admit this? “I
think the person I am might
be
an SRS agent. I try to be a regular person, but all I can do is think about how SRS would do something, how they'd plan the mission, how they'd question the witnesses . . .”

Kennedy lifted her eyebrows at me. “So you're a spy, Hale. Isn't that what you always wanted to be anyway?”

“Well, yeah, but . . . I don't want to be an
SRS
spy.”

Kennedy shook her head. “Stop being dumb. You're not an SRS spy. Like, you couldn't possibly be
less
of an SRS spy. You're working with their enemy, remember?” We rounded the corner; Kennedy did a neat cartwheel and, without missing a beat, added, “And you
love
being a spy, so who cares where you got your start, so long as you're on the good side now? Stuff like taking Annabelle—yeah, Walter and I didn't really like that, but it was something
The League
needed to do to make the mission work, right? Right. You think of the mission, and that's a good thing, even if SRS taught you that.”