Two Lies and a Spy (21 page)

I’m not sure where I am, but the air smells familiar . . . like wood and old rugs and espresso and cinnamon. Oh, that’s it. I’m home. It smells like home.

Except there’s something wrong.

I don’t want to be here.

Home is now a bad place, for some reason. Can’t remember why . . .

“For the love of God, Karina, I’m begging you,” Evan says. “Insult me!”

Ha. That one’s easy.

“Asshole,” I mumble.

“Yes! Brilliant! Charlie, she’s awake!”

“You said a bad word,” Charlie’s voice says.

I try to nod, but my head won’t move. I think it’s nailed to the floor.

“Worse,” Evan prompts. “Come on, Kari. Call me something worse. Stay with us.”

I really wish my head wasn’t nailed to the floor, because it would work better if I could move it. What’s worse than “asshole”? Hmmm.

Charlie evidently doesn’t approve. “Potty-mouth!”

“Charlie, little man. Give us a bit of a break here. I’m trying to keep your sister conscious, understand?”

“Oh.”

“Bloody hell!” Evan’s voice sounds agonized. “I was assigned to protect her, and I’ve let this happen—
damn it!
”

Huh? “Wh-what do you mean?” I manage to ask.

“Kari, I wasn’t spying on you—or your parents—all this time. I was supposed to protect you, look out for you—” His voice actually breaks.

I absorb this for a few moments. Wow. “Ha,” I say. “What if you’d . . . messed up . . . your hair?”

He chuckles weakly.

I’m falling asleep again, which feels really good, when chaos erupts all around us. I hear heavy trucks or vans squeal up outside, then shouts of “Agency! Hands up!” and dozens of boots hit the hardwood floors and thunder around.

“Man down!” yells Evan. “Woman, I should say.”

“911 en route,” Charlie announces.

“What happened?” This is a deep voice, a man.

“Shot. She’s been shot. Right shoulder. Major blood
loss.”

At this point I hear sirens and another big van or truck. More boots.

People poking, prodding me, placing an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth. Sliding a stretcher under me. I levitate next. That part’s cool . . . I’ve always wanted to be able to do that.

Evan’s in my face again. “Insult me one more time, just so I know you’re going to make it.”

I try to come up with another bad word, but my brain doesn’t cooperate. And then it sort of does—because I realize that for the first time ever, I want to say something
nice
to Evan Kincaid. This is totally shocking, but true.

“Let me have it, Kari.”

I’m grinning under the oxygen mask.

“I can take it. C’mon.”

With a superhuman effort, because they’re so heavy, I manage to lift my left arm and hand and knock away the oxygen mask. “F-f—”

“Oooh. Now you’re playing hardball,” he says.

“
Friend
,” I announce.

For a moment there’s dead silence.

Then Evan laughs, long and hard. “I think I’m going to faint.”

One of the paramedics pushes the oxygen mask into place before I can say “Me too.” And darkness closes in around me once again.

•  •  •

When I wake up, I’m in a hospital bed under clean sheets and blankets. There’s an IV running into my hand and a weird clip on one of my fingers. My shoulder is killing me. And as I open my eyes, I see Evan and Charlie sprawled in blue vinyl chairs next to me. They’ve dozed off.

“Hey, guys,” I whisper. “How’re you doing?”

They bolt upright.

“Kari!” Charlie shouts. “You woke up! How are you feeling?”

“Like new,” I lie.

“Does it hurt a lot?”

“Nah.”

He jumps up and wriggles onto the bed with me.

“Easy,” Evan warns him. “No matter what she says, she’s in pain, and she’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Did you know that the human body contains about ten pints of blood?” Charlie asks. “And has
sixty-thousand miles
of arteries and veins? And two hundred and six bones?”

I shake my head.

“Know the difference between an artery and a vein?”

“Nope.”

“An artery flows
from
the heart, and a vein flows
to
the heart.”

“That’s pretty cool, kiddo.”

Charlie then explains to me, in proper medical jargon, how the surgeon removed the bullet from my shoulder and exactly what ligaments and tissues were damaged.

I catch Evan’s amused gaze over Charlie’s earnest,
cowlicked head.
You gotta love this kid.

“So, are you going to go to medical school?” Evan asks him.

I start to say that Mom and Dad would like that and almost bite my tongue off when I remember what’s happened.

“Maybe,” Charlie muses. “After I go to marine biology school and nuclear physicist school and maybe artificial intelligence school . . .”

Evan seems to note the darkening of my mood. “Hey, Brain Man, why don’t we go get a soda? Your sister’s still quite knackered—”

Charlie frowns. “What’s that mean?”

“Tired.”

“Oh.”

“So we should let her rest.”

“But I was going to explain how the process of anesthesiology works—you know, what it does to the brain and all—”

“Later,” Evan says firmly.

I smile my thanks to him.

He nods and takes Charlie by the hand and out the door. That’s when I notice that there are two agents outside, flanking it to keep an eye on us.

When Evan returns, I’m alarmed to see that he’s alone.

“Charlie?” I croak.

“Your irrepressibly precocious little brother has suited up and scrubbed in as a guest in the OR,” Evan informs me. “The surgeon who worked on you has allowed him
to ‘supervise’ a similar procedure, though there’s no bullet involved in this one, thank God.”

I start laughing, which hurts, so I stop immediately. I take a deep breath. “My parents?”

“Must have made their getaway clean. They took along Sophie and the microchip as well. While she’s no big loss, the chip is a devastating one for the Agency.”

“What was on it?” I’m almost afraid to ask.

He sighs. “Evidently it contained a complete list of all the KGB2 agents. It would have been utterly indispensable to the Agency, allowing them to roll up the entire network.”

“KGB2?”
Please don’t let this be what it sounds like.

“It’s a sort of neo-KGB, formed by a faction of the old one that never died.” Evan yawns hugely, accentuating the air of exhaustion that hangs around him. His eyes are bloodshot, with huge purple circles underneath them. I wonder how long it’s been since he truly slept.

“Kari,” he says, “I’m not going to lie to you. The KGB2 is a particularly nasty bunch. And your parents have been mixed up with them from the get-go.”

I avert my gaze from his. “I don’t want to know this.”

“I wouldn’t either. But you can’t hide from the truth.”

Can too.
I want very badly to do just that. But unfortunately, Evan is right.

“So what else is on the chip?” All this time I had a tiny bomb hanging from my wrist. Placed there by my own mom and dad. I could have been kidnapped for it or killed for it. In fact both things almost occurred. And
they didn’t give a damn that they put my life in danger.

“That chip also would have fully incriminated your parents,” Evan says. “So they were desperate to get it.”

“And now they’ve disappeared. Leaving me and Charlie to fend for ourselves.”

Evan clears his throat and looks down at the floor. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

I’m still trying to come to terms with it all. That my parents have lied to us, used us, betrayed us, and now abandoned us. It’s beyond comprehension.

But there’s more.

“So,” I say, cutting my gaze toward the agents posted outside the door. “Will they let Charlie and me go home? Can we continue to live in our house and go to our schools?”

As soon as the words are out of my mouth, though, I know the answer.

There’s real pain, real sympathy in Evan’s eyes as he shakes his head.

“But I’m fully capable of taking care of Charlie!” My voice has risen at least two octaves, and my battered body begins to shake.

Evan takes my hand. “Kari, you’re only sixteen.”

“So? What’s that got to do with anything?” I struggle to a sitting position, in spite of my shrieking shoulder. “I can cook. I can do laundry. I can go to his parent-teacher conferences. It will be
fine
.”

“I don’t know how to tell you this, but—”

“No. No! Not going to happen!” I shout at Evan.

“You and Charlie will have to go into foster care.”

“Over my dead body. Absolutely not! I won’t allow it.” I’m starting to really freak out now. Charlie is not going into some strange household with people who might abuse him or assault him or worse.

“Calm down, Kari.”

“I won’t calm down!” I scream. “This isn’t negotiable, Evan.” I throw my legs over the side of the hospital bed and physically fight him when he tries to hold me flat on the mattress.

“Nurse!” he yells.

I rage, kick, and flail, even though I don’t have an iota of my usual energy.

Evan finally lies flat on top of me, pinning me everywhere.

“Get off! Let me go!” I burst into tears that I shouldn’t have the energy to produce. Still, I struggle. And I’m starting to hyperventilate.

“Nurse!” he shouts again. “Kari, please calm down. There’s another option—”

But I barely hear him.

It’s all too much: first my parents disappearing, then me being worried sick about them. Then trying to find them. Learning that Sophie is a psycho. Getting shot. Discovering that my own flesh and blood spies for Russia and has been lying to us, using us. Now they want to take Charlie away from me?

A nurse comes barreling in to the room, sees Evan on top of me, and probably jumps to the worst conclusion.
“What is going on here? Get off her!”

“She needs sedation,” Evan says.

“Off!”

He reluctantly complies.

I come screaming off the bed, jump to my feet, and promptly collapse. Blood loss and lack of oxygen and emotional trauma will do that to you. But I fight them as best I can as they pick me up and lay me back on the bed.

“You’re not taking him! Not taking him! Not taking him!”

“Jesus, Joseph, and Mary,” says the nurse. She calls for reinforcements.

Someone comes running in with a syringe full of something.

“No!” I yell. “No, no, no—”

But they plunge the needle into me anyway.

I will never forgive Evan for this.

Friend? Did I really call him
friend
?

Out of the corner of my eye I see him slam his fist into the wall and swear.

Within seconds my eyes roll back in my head, and I drop into unconsciousness once again.

When I return to the land of the living, the first thing I hear is Evan’s voice—of course. He is my scourge. My nemesis.

“I made a complete hash out of it,” he says into the cell phone at his ear. “I never even got to tell her the other part. She went ape-shit. Bonkers. Stark, staring mad.”

There’s a pause.

“Because of the concept of foster care for Charlie. Yes, she’s sleeping now, but they had to sedate her. I’ll tell her about the program when she wakes up.”

“What program?” I ask coldly.

Evan whirls. “Gotta go,” he says into the phone. “She’s conscious. I’ll ring you back.” And he ends the call. “Kari!”

“You are scum,” I say distinctly. “Where’s my brother? Or have you already booked him into the foster-care system?”

“Kari, it isn’t as if
I
, personally, decided your fates. It’s U.S. law. So stop blaming me. Be quiet and
listen
to me this time. What I was trying to tell you—”

“I can’t believe you pinned me down. I can’t believe you let them sedate me. I can’t believe—”

“Shut up!” Evan roars. “Or I’ll do it again.”

I stare at him disdainfully, resenting every lousy molecule of Kincaid permeating the room.

“What I was
trying
to tell you, before you went
mad
, is that you and Charlie don’t have to go into foster care!”

I narrow my eyes at him. “What do you mean?”

“There’s a program. It’s the group that I’m a part of, actually. Called G.I.”

I curl my lip. “Like G.I. Joe?”

“Something like that,” Evan says. “It stands for Generation Interpol. Anyway, if you join, then you and Charlie can stay together and avoid foster care. But you have to decide now.”

“Right now?”

“Yes, immediately.”

“This is the special program you joined when you were thirteen?”

He nods. “And that was Agent Morrow I was just talking to on the phone.”

“Are you happy in it?”

“I am. And let’s be honest—I’d be in some reform school, if not for G.I. So what do you say?”

I frown. “Why do you have to have an answer this
minute?”

“I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,” he jokes.

“Ha, ha.” I glare moodily at him.

While I don’t understand the time crunch, it’s really not a hard decision, is it? Have Charlie taken away from me and be placed with strangers in foster care, or keep him with me and get trained as a junior Interpol agent.

“I’m in,” I tell Evan. “On two conditions.”

“Which are?”

“One: My friends, the ones who helped me break into Langley, are not charged or penalized by the government.”

Evan nods. “I can’t do anything about their parents’ punishments, but I should be able to get the feds off their backs.”

“Two: Charlie and I will have the right to take leave and hunt down our parents if we ever decide to do that—with the full support and resources of this G.I. program.”

Evan gives me a long, hard stare. “That could be very dangerous.”

“I don’t care.”

He shrugs. “All right then. Deal.”

We shake on it. Then Evan calls Agent Morrow and says, “They’re in.” He ends the call and turns back to me. “Now, I suggest that you get some more sleep, little shrew.”

“Yeah? Well I have a suggestion for you, too.”