The Inside Job (6 page)

“Just call her Annabelle. The long name is just for show,” Hastings said. Annabelle, apparently satisfied by the smell of Kennedy's hand, rolled over slightly, begging in the laziest way possible for her stomach to be rubbed.

“They're threatening your
dog
? That's evil, even for SRS,” I said, shaking my head.

“No, no. They know the truth about my dog,” Hastings said. He took a deep breath and then said, “I make my living off Annabelle. The bank doesn't pay much, but Annabelle's puppies bring in a half million per.”

My jaw dropped. “A half million dollars for a puppy?”

“For a Tibetan mastiff puppy!” Hastings said indignantly. “It's the rarest dog in the world!”

“You have all this,” Otter said, gesturing to the grandiose house, “from breeding
that
dog? The one that literally hasn't moved since we got here. That dog.”

“She moved! She rolled over!” Kennedy said defensively.

Hastings went on quickly, “Well, no—I inherited the house—and Annabelle—from my grandmother when she passed. The old lady wouldn't leave me a dime of actual
money
. So I got a whole bunch of
stuff
—this house, some art that I sold, Annabelle . . . I was supposed to get more.
There was a set of jewel-encrusted books that I could've sold for millions and millions and lived off for the rest of my life, but those were stolen just before she died. So I live off Annabelle now. Without her, I'd lose everything. But SRS knows . . . Well . . . They know . . .” Hastings turned deep red and stared at the ground. His face contorted a bit, like he might cry. He then whispered something under his breath.

“What'd he say?” Walter asked me. I shrugged.

Hastings whispered again, a bit louder, “Theynosheeznodapoorbed.”

“What?” Ben asked.

Hastings threw his arms in the air. “They know she's not a purebred! My Annabelle is a lie! Her great-great-great-great-grandfather wasn't a Tibetan mastiff—he was a golden retriever!”

Then Hastings slumped down into a patio chair and buried his head in his hands. Otter regarded him like he was something old from the back of the refrigerator. Walter looked confused. Kennedy and Clatterbuck, who was now also patting Annabelle, didn't seem to think her scandalous grandfather dog did anything to lessen her charm.

“So . . . they're threatening to tell the world that Annabelle isn't a purebred. That's how they're making you handle their money for them,” I said slowly.

Hastings nodded from behind his hands. “You see? There's nothing I can do. I have to help them. They'll ruin me,” he mumbled into his fingers. “This is all my grandmother's
fault, you know.
Make your way in the world,
she said.
Don't plan on living off my inheritance,
she said.
Get a job, you deadbeat,
she said. Then she gave all the money away and left me with
heirlooms
, and now there's nothing left to
sell
, and so all I've got is this
dog
, and now my house is full of
spies
.”

“Well, give us a chance to figure out how to get you out of all
this
,” Kennedy said, matching his tone. “We're good at
this
. We're professional spies, after all.”

Otter snorted. I didn't say anything, but I sort of agreed with Otter.

Beatrix piped up, “She's right! They got me out of SRS headquarters, along with about a dozen other kids SRS kidnapped. So they can definitely figure out a way to get you out of being blackmailed.”

“You can't make her a purebred, though. I have the papers forged, but if SRS even started a
rumor
, everyone would want a genetic test done. They'd see the golden retriever in her past.” Hastings sniffed hopelessly.

“We'll think of something,” I said, though he had a point. “And if we do this for you, Mr. Hastings, will you tell
us
which accounts SRS's money is in?”

Hastings nodded. “Sure. But there's no point. There's nothing you can do.”

“Give us a chance. Like my sister said”—I took a breath, like saying it aloud might make it more true—“we're professionals.”

CHAPTER SIX

“I'm just saying, the man has a job and a fancy house. Doesn't seem very noble to help a rich man
stay rich
,” Ben said. Beatrix nodded in agreement.

He had a point—Hastings wasn't the most sympathetic of SRS victims. Still, I said, “Think big picture. We're not helping Markus Hastings—we're helping The League. We're helping everyone SRS hurts with that money.”

We were spread out around the kitchen table again, brainstorming ways we could keep Annabelle's secret a secret. So far we had:

1. Fake a DNA test for Annabelle

(We could fake
her
test, but a decent lab would likely run an independent control
before
Annabelle's, and we couldn't fake that one so easily.)

2. Switch Annabelle out with a
real
red-gold Tibetan mastiff

(Nope—Annabelle was the only one in the world. In fact, the gold was probably “rare” because it was coming from her golden retriever roots.)

3. Clatterbuck goes in disguise as a dog-show judge

(There was no point to the costume, really; I think Clatterbuck just wanted to go somewhere in disguise, so he suggested this.)

“Maybe . . . maybe we're thinking about this the wrong way,” Ben said. We looked to him. “See, sometimes when I'm inventing something, I get too fixated on what I want the end machine to
be
instead of what I want it to
do
. Like, wanting a woodcutting machine to
be
an ax-robot rather than
do
woodcutting.”

“Is
that
what that is in the cafeteria closet? The thing with the ax?” Otter asked, horrified. “It can
move
?”

“It's fine, it's fine—I removed the motion-activation sensor,” Ben said, waving Otter off. He continued, “So maybe, instead of trying to fix Annabelle, we need to think about fixing Hastings. The
real
problem is that he'll be ruined if Annabelle is outed. So we actually just need to find another way for him to make money.”

“What about the books?” Clatterbuck suggested. “Didn't he say some fancy books were stolen? Gold or something?”

“Jewel-encrusted,” Otter said. “We could find the books. He could sell them, live off
that
. He wouldn't need Annabelle anymore.”

“Poor Annabelle!” Kennedy cried. Clatterbuck nodded and patted her shoulder.

“All right. So. We find the jeweled books. We get them back to Hastings. He gets us SRS's funding. We go home,” I said, ticking the tasks off on my fingers.

Otter looked skeptical. “Jeweled books—there are a thousand different people who might want those. Book collectors. Jewel thieves. Art lovers. Everyone from the high-end criminal to some small-time thief looking to make a quick buck. SRS themselves might have taken them, actually, as leverage.”

“So you're saying it's impossible?” Beatrix asked, crestfallen.

“I'm saying this is
not
a long-term mission. We can't stay in Switzerland for ages. Not only would SRS figure us out, but we can't afford it. We need a backup plan.”

“Maybe Annabelle could do something else to earn Hastings some money,” Kennedy suggested. “You know, like be one of those Saint Bernards that carries hot chocolate to lost hikers.”

“That's just a myth. They never did that,” I said, shaking my head.

“Well, then she could be the first,” Kennedy said, and stuck her tongue out at me. “Just because she wasn't born some fancy-pants perfect Tibetan mastiff doesn't mean she can't still be a good dog.”

I sighed, but I sort of understood what Kennedy meant. I wasn't born the perfect spy, after all. It wasn't Annabelle's fault her great-great-whatever was a golden retriever any more than it was my fault that I somehow inherited my great-aunt's arm flab.

“All right, all right—you teach Annabelle to do something useful,” I said.

“I'll help! I once trained a dog to growl on command!” Clatterbuck said, nodding at Kennedy.

“Really?” Otter asked.

“Well, he growled whenever he saw me. Does that count?” Clatterbuck said. Now we
all
sighed. Unbelievably, this trip seemed a lot simpler when we were just breaking into a few hypersecure bank vaults.

“It can't hurt to
ask
Hastings when the books were stolen. Maybe we can figure it out. If we can't, we'll find another way,” I said, shaking my head.

Otter glanced at me so fast, the others missed it. I knew what he was thinking though:
we
could threaten to out Annabelle's true heritage if Hastings didn't give us the account numbers. Obviously, it was a persuasive
threat, since it worked for SRS. It would be quick. Tidy. Simple.

I shook my head at him almost imperceptibly. No, we couldn't—we couldn't do things like SRS. We were the good guys, after all. Still, years and years of SRS schooling made that solution so very tempting. How was SRS still in my head, even though I knew what they really were? Even though they'd lied to me for my entire life?

Sometimes, no matter how far I got from SRS, it felt like they were always right behind me.

Just in case we ever
did
get around to robbing the bank, we'd still need a way to get everything out from the vaults. Ben began drafting that evening, after we described the thickness of the bank carpet and the number of doorjambs in the lobby to him in detail. Beatrix was helping while Otter explained exactly how many steps it was from the front door to the wall of bankers' desks. There were twenty-three; I knew not because he'd told me, but because I'd counted them out as well. It's a spy thing.

Meanwhile, Clatterbuck was looking up helicopter tours of Geneva. (“Come on, when else will we all be in Geneva? It'll be fun!”) Walter had gone for a walk, I guessed to see the ponies, since the last time I saw him he was walking toward the barn. I found Kennedy sitting in the bedroom she was sharing with Beatrix, flipping through a newspaper.

“Are you reading that?” I asked, surprised. She'd already taken German at SRS, but the paper was written in French, which she wouldn't learn till she was eleven.

“I'm trying,” she said, sighing. She dropped the paper and slumped back on her bed, her red hair fanning out around her. Her side of the room was already ransacked—her suitcase was spilling pink and purple clothes onto the floor, and her sheets were in knots. Kennedy kicked the newspaper to the ground, where I suspected it would stay until we left.

I walked over and picked up the top piece of paper. “What did you want to read? I can translate it for you, maybe.”

Kennedy gave me a hesitant look. “The classifieds.”

I stopped and looked at her, then nodded. “I already checked this morning. But I'll go through them again, just in case.”

I found the classifieds and scanned through them. Houses, cars, babysitters needed, weird personals from guys I definitely wouldn't call if I were a Swiss lady. Jobs. Apartments.

But I didn't see anything like what Kennedy was looking for—what we were
both
looking for every day: a secret message from our parents.

Kennedy and I hadn't seen Mom and Dad for months, since they left one morning to go on a mission for SRS and never returned. Last we'd heard from them was via a message hidden in the Castlebury classifieds, a message that
led to a voice mail that explained how they couldn't come back just yet, because it wasn't safe. But that was it. No phone calls. No mail. No secret notes.

“There's nothing,” I told Kennedy, setting the paper down. Kennedy nodded, pulling her feet up under her in a show of flexibility that made my knees hurt, but that she didn't even notice. She rocked back and forth for a second and then exhaled.

“You think they're okay, don't you, Hale?”

“Of course!” I said, furrowing my brow. “Of course I do. It's just not safe, like they said in the last message. But I bet they're keeping tabs on us. I bet they know we're in Switzerland.”

“You think they'll send you something for your birthday?” Kennedy asked, her eyes lighting up.

I forced a smile. To be honest, I was trying really, really hard not to think about the fact that my parents wouldn't be around for my birthday. I hadn't reminded anyone that it was coming up in a few weeks, even.

“Maybe they will,” I said, but I tried not to sound excited—I didn't want to get Kennedy's hopes up. It was just a birthday, anyway. I was going to be thirteen—that's too old to make a big deal out of the day you were born, right? And it's not like they could make me confetti pancakes like they used to back at SRS or sneak me out of Basic Parkour early to go to the little movie theater in Castlebury. My parents were too busy being heroes to
worry about stuff like that these days. They were probably too busy to even
remember
my birthday, really.