Two Lies and a Spy (19 page)

A few moments later he returns through the gate on the other side of the yard, and gives us a thumbs-up while talking to someone on his phone.

Sophie cuts the engine and we go inside. Evan stays in the yard.

We sit down on the couch in front of the fireplace and there’s an awkward silence. Sophie glances up at the family portrait and then looks away. Is it my imagination, or does a fleeting sneer cross her face?

I decide it’s my imagination, because she breaks the silence by saying, “Kari, this must be really hard on you. I’m so sorry.”

I shrug. “It’s not like it’s your fault.”

“Well, of course not, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t feel for you, honey. I—” She breaks off and shakes her head.

“What?” I ask anxiously.

“Well, I always did question why Cal and Irene would stay in a profession with such risks when they had two beautiful children who depended on them.”

“It’s what they do,” I say quietly. “They do it for the country, just like anyone in the military. They protect our
freedoms, our way of life.”

Sophie pats my knee. “Of course. Of course. You must be proud of them.”

“I am. But I don’t know how to clear their names. I need your help, Soph. You’re an international journalist. You have contacts, right?”

“I am a photographer,” she corrects me.

“But you sell to big magazines—”

She raises her eyebrows. “So?”

“Well, surely one of them would publish an article, or—” I break off, because her expression is not encouraging.

“Kari, honey,
National Geographic
isn’t going to run an ad or an exposé for you on the Agency.”

“But—”

“I can’t help you that way. I can only help you in terms of . . . ,” she seemed to struggle, “moral support.”

“I don’t need moral support! I need an action plan!”

She shakes her head. “All you can do is wait.”

I want to scream. Wait? For what? For everything
else
to go wrong? I jump up and begin to pace, while another long pause stretches between me and Sophie, until finally, she changes the subject, probably hoping to distract me and calm me down.

“You’ve got your charm bracelet on, I see.”

“Always.”

“So, show me the new charm,” she says. “What is it? Where’s it from?”

“It’s Bran Castle, Dracula’s home. From Romania.”

“Ooooh,” Sophie says, with a delicious shiver. “Can I
see it?”

Sophie always wants to examine the little details on the new charms my parents send to me. “Sure.” I slip off the bracelet, undo the clasp on the Bran’s Castle charm, and hand it to her.

She oohs and ahs over the tiny etched windows and doors, the proud little crenellated tower.

I notice that her lips aren’t pale pink like they always have been since I can remember. “Hey, Soph? Did you change your lip color? It seems darker.”

She looks up at me. “Oh!” She laughs airily. “Do you like it? I wanted to try something new. I’ve been wearing the same old thing for the last five years and got sick of it.”

My nose starts to itch. Badly. “Yeah, it’s nice,” I tell her.

“I lost my last tube of the other one when I was on assignment in Milan a few months ago, and since Lancôme’s discontinued the shade, I bought a different one.”

“Looks good.” I smile at her. “It’s a really natural-looking color.”

“The other one was more glam,” she says. “But ‘natural’ is in style.” She looks me over. “But not
that
natural, honey.”

“I’m disguised as a boy!” I remind her.

She sighs. “Okay. Today you get a pass, but, Kari, how are you ever going to catch a guy if you don’t wear some makeup and work at being feminine?”

I stick out my tongue at her. “Catch a guy? Like with a net? That’s so 1950s.”

I hate to admit it, but Soph occasionally makes me feel like Lacey does. Not that she means to.

“Case in point—your Evan, out there.”

I make a face. “He’s so not
my
Evan.”

“Well, a little eyeliner and mascara could make him yours.”

“Oh, very true,” he says, winking from the doorway.

Startled, Sophie drops the charm.

I spring two feet off the sofa, in absolute horror. How is it,
why
is it, that this guy is witness to my
every
humiliation? Or the cause of it?

“But without eyeliner and mascara?” He shakes his head. “Not a chance. Not a chance in hell. Simply revolting.”

Revolting?
I think he’s teasing, but I’m not sure.

Sophie laughs like a loon.

All I can think to do is stick my head under the cocktail table to retrieve the charm she dropped.

I guess Sophie reaches for it at the same time, because our heads bang together. “Ow!” I sit up and rub my head. Then I bend down and stretch my hand out for the little charm, but Sophie pounces on it and scrabbles it away from me. I sit up and stare at her, and she shrugs.

“Sorry. Guess I’ve had too much coffee today!” She takes my bracelet, reattaches the charm to it, and then hands it over to me.

“So,” says Evan, with a polite smile. “Should I run out for mascara then, Kari? Would you like black or brown?”

I hate him.

Hate. Hate. Hate.

Where is Luke? Why can’t I be with him, instead?

God is cruel.

I notice that Sophie keeps looking at her watch. “Do you have a hot date?” I ask. Maybe it’s petty, but I’m a little hurt that here I am, in the biggest trouble of my life, and she’s acting pressed for time.

“No, no,” she says, standing up. “But I should probably get going. I have a deadline.”

I stare at her. “You have a deadline,” I repeat.

“Well. Yes. Not that it’s more important than your, um, situation here. I just don’t see quite how I can help. . . .” Her voice trails off at my expression.

It’s almost dinnertime, and my stomach growls audibly.

“Oh, poor Kari,” Soph says, checking her watch again. “
That’s
how I can help. Why don’t I run and pick up some takeout for supper?”

Sophie is dying to leave the house for some reason.

“No,” Evan says decisively. “We all need to stick
together. For safety’s sake.”

I cast a puzzled frown in his direction. Why would Soph be in any danger?

“You never know—Sophie could be a target because of her close association with the family.”

It’s definitely not my imagination that she goes pale. And shifts her weight from one foot to the other. And swallows.

“Soph? You okay?” I ask.

“Of course. Don’t be silly. And I think you’re worrying unnecessarily, Evan. Just because I’m a friend of the family doesn’t mean I have
anything
to do with Cal and Irene’s work. Nothing at all.”

Weirdly enough, my nose starts to itch again.

Evan tilts his head and evaluates her. He opens his mouth to say something, but his phone rings again, and he walks into another room to take the call.

“
What?
You’re kidding,” we hear him say. “He’s gone? She is too?”

Immediately my mind jumps to Charlie, and the blood in my veins turns to ice. Oh my God. Has someone kidnapped him? I shouldn’t have left him at the hotel!

Evan says, “Yes, ma’am. I understand. Yes.” He hangs up and walks in, just as I get up to run into the dining room, where he’s been talking.

“Kari, you may want to sit down for this.” His face is deadly serious.

“Oh, Jesus.” My knees become rubber and I collapse onto the sofa, right in the exact spot I was in before.
“What is it? Please tell me it’s not Charlie. . . .”

“He’s missing.” Evan’s voice breaks. Weird—is it possible that he’s gotten so attached to my little brother in such a short amount of time? “They think that your parents took him though. Your mom’s cell is also empty, and the agents who were guarding her, as well as the ones who were with Charlie, have been knocked out and tied up.”

I’m half-elated—my mom’s escaped—and half-horrified.
When all else fails, resort to violence
. If it is my parents, then this makes them fugitives from the law. Everyone will be looking—

My train of thought is broken as Sophie jumps over the coffee table and hurtles for the front door. What the hell?

Evan goes flying after her and tackles her two feet short of it. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asks.

“Get off me!” she yells.

I can barely register what I’m seeing as Sophie bucks and flails to get out from under him, unsuccessfully. Then she twists so that she’s facing him and tries to drive her thumbs up into his eye sockets. Evan attempts to grab her wrists, but she tears one out of his grasp and drives a knee up into his gut.

I’m in shock.
What
is going on?

Something tiny and silver streaks through the air and falls onto the hardwood floor near the sofa with a bounce. I look down at it and see my Bran Castle charm. But that’s impossible, because the one on my bracelet is
still attached. I turn it to make sure.

I reach down to pick up the extra charm and freeze.
This
is my charm. I can tell because there’s a little fleck of green paint just below the crenellated tower. The green paint from my art class a couple of days ago.

“Kari, what is it?” Evan calls.

I turn to tell him, just as Sophie reaches up to grab one of the heavy brass candlesticks on the foyer table by the front door. I scream a warning too late as she brings the base of it down on his temple.

Evan crumples under her.

Oh, God. I hope Evan’s okay. Please let him be okay . . .

Sophie launches herself at me, a diamond-studded ninja. “Give me that!”

My martial arts training and my adrenaline kick in at the same time, and when she goes to punch me, I clamp down hard on her fist and use it to twist her arm backward unnaturally. Then I knee her in the stomach. She shrieks and doubles over.

“Why do you want the charm?” I demand.

She drives her head forward, aiming for my gut, but I sidestep, and she plows her skull right into the wall. Not so smart.

“Give it to me!” she screams, when she can stand upright again.

“No. What’s it to you?”

“Give me the damn charm!” she bellows, and comes for me again.

But she’s not trained as well as I am, and she’s already
tired from fighting with Evan. I clamp onto her left wrist and elbow this time and flip her. She lands on her back on the hardwood floor, the wind knocked out of her.

I hold the charm up to my mouth. “Tell me why you want it, Sophie, or I’ll swallow it. Then you’ll have to wait a day or two, and you’ll have a nasty time locating it.”

“No! No!” She manages, after gasping for air. “Don’t do that.”

I hear a noise outside. A car door? Crap! The Agency’s found us.

Sophie takes instant advantage of my distraction. She rolls over, onto Evan, and snatches something from the back of his pants. Then she vaults into a squat and smiles triumphantly, because the “something” is Gary’s gun, and she’s aiming it right at me.

Sophie laughs at the expression on my face. “Men. So useless, unless you want some eye candy, maybe a fat wallet, a little sausage. Or, in special circumstances like these, a weapon.”

I can’t even compute this. My aunt Soph, waving a gun in my face. Over a silver charm!

“Why do you want the charm, Sophie?” I ask. “Why?”

“Just hand it over, Kari. Now!”

My mind races. I think back to the lipstick in her shade, the one that Mr. Carson told me is capable of copying microchips. What else is small enough to encase a microchip?

“There’s a microchip inside of that little castle,” I say. “Isn’t there?”

“One plus one is two,” Sophie says.

“And somehow you’ve been copying them . . . with the tube of lip color that you ‘lost’ in Milan?”

“Two plus two is four,” Sophie says, in the most patronizing tone imaginable. She produces a nasty little laugh. “For God’s sake, Kari. You never were very bright, but in this case, it took you long enough to do the math!”

I stare at her as if I’ve never seen her before. I stare at her until her features blur, and I realize that this is because tears have formed in my eyes. Tears, this time, of hurt and shock and betrayal. “How
could
you?”

She tosses her hair. “The money is fantastic, kid. Photography equipment is expensive. So are diamonds. So is world travel. I have a lifestyle to maintain.”

“But . . . Sophie, you’re screwing over the U.S.! You’re hurting the country. Don’t you care?”

“Four plus four is eight, stupid girl. I wasn’t born here! I come from just outside Saint Petersburg, Russia. Why would I care about the security of the United States?”

An icy dread is growing within me, burning and freezing at the same time.

“Give me the charm,” she orders again.

“Eight plus eight is sixteen,” I say, my voice very quiet. “I’m doing the math now, Sophie. So you were never my friend. Never ‘practically family.’ You’ve just cultivated us and used us all of these years.”

“Well, hallelujah,” she mock exults. “There’s some hope for you yet, girl. Why else would I hang around with a woman I despise and her malleable dolt of a husband and
two snot-nosed children?”

My whole body is trembling. I’m not proud of that, but I can’t help it.

I’ve never met this woman, the one holding a gun on me. The one now cocking the hammer. The one with the coldest, darkest, shark-gray eyes I’ve ever seen.

“For the last time, Karina. Give me the charm.”

I throw it at her, deliberately wide, so that she’ll have to take her eyes off me to locate it and pick it up. While she does that, while she’s distracted, I’m going to jump her, and it will be a fight until disorientation or death.

But instead of falling for my ploy, Sophie sights down the gun, taking careful aim at my forehead. And I know with finality that I’m going to die.

“It won’t hurt, Kari. You won’t feel any pain,” she promises.

Thanks, bitch. Thanks a lot.

And then there’s an explosion of sound.

Our front door implodes just as Sophie squeezes the trigger. It’s my dad, who’s kicked it right off the hinges, and my mom, who plows into Sophie like a rocket-propelled missile, with just as much fire and fury. I’ve never been so glad to see them. Ever.