Two Lies and a Spy (3 page)

My knees are shaking and I’ve got to lose this shirt, like, yesterday. But we’re almost to our destination, which is Dupont Circle, so I mop at my face with my shirtsleeve, twist my messy hair into a knot, and take off my backpack, holding it in front of me as we walk. I look at my watch. We’re half an hour early to this checkpoint. I really hope Mom and Dad make it this time. But the Mitch-and-Gary show back there puts a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

What’s going on? How would they have known about our meeting points in case of a Code Black? That’s family-only knowledge. So did they get the information from Mom and Dad? And if so, then why did they try to force us to go with them? Have they
done
something to our parents?

“Why do you think Mom and Dad didn’t come?” Charlie asks.

“They probably just got held up somewhere,” I say breezily.

As we get on the Metro and head southeast across town, I really, really hope that’s true.

Union Station is a huge, classical white building—really more than one building. It’s not only a train station, it’s also a mall with tons of shops and restaurants and access to the Metro. I’ve loved it ever since I was a kid. It’s been around forever, but in the eighties they did a massive renovation and gave the grand old lady a lot of cosmetic surgery. She really struts her stuff now.

Before we duck inside, I do a quick scan of the crowd around us. I know Mitch and Gary weren’t on our Metro train, but it bothers me that they knew where to meet us at the Georgetown Playground. Do they know that my parents have a locker here, too? Are they aware of the entire Andrews family backup plan?

The lockers at Union Station are near Gate A on the Amtrak Concourse, so we head over there. I know the combination by heart and have since before I was
Charlie’s age—I just never seriously thought we’d have to do more than a drill.

I have the door open with a few twists of the lock—31-61-91—but this time my hands do shake. The encounter with Mitch and Gary has upset me more than I’d like to admit.

Inside are four backpacks for emergencies. I hand Charlie his, which contains three different sets of fake passports for him and fake student IDs for different schools. There’s also five hundred dollars cash, the equivalence of five hundred dollars in various other currencies, two prepaid phones, some tiny comm units, a secure laptop, two changes of clothes, some energy bars, and a bottle of water.

Mine holds the same basics, but no computer. I have a medical kit, too. I leave Mom’s and Dad’s where they are. Their packs have ammo and guns in them—in my mom’s case, a Sig Sauer and a Beretta, and in my dad’s case, a Ruger and a sniper rifle. While this is all standard gear for Agency employees of my parents’ classification, these are not items I want to carry around Union Station. They’re the spies. I’m just a kid.

Charlie and I zoom off to a ladies’ room, where I force him in with me despite his protests.

“I’m not going into the girls’ bathroom!” he insists.

“Yes, you are. We don’t know if Mitch followed us.”

He gets a mulish expression on his face, but I give him the stink eye. “C’mon,
Charlotte
. Inside.” Charlie’s disguise is not exactly to his liking.

He heaves a sigh, makes a face, and follows me in. With a silent apology, I do the politically incorrect thing, and we take over the stall reserved for handicapped visitors. I figure that if a person in a wheelchair rolls in, we can vacate it immediately—but for right now, we need the room that it offers.

The zippers of the packs sound really loud in the metal-enclosed space. I hear the door to the hallway open and two sets of female feet clip-clop inside.

“So I told him,” a woman’s voice says, “that his behavior was totally unacceptable. I mean, who does that!”

“What a loser,” the other woman says.

“No kidding . . .”

They continue to bash the unknown guy while they pee.

In the meantime, I put on a black T-shirt with holes in it, a black miniskirt, torn black tights, and combat boots. To complete the look, I slap very pale powder all over my face, ring my eyes with thick, funeral-black liner, and apply a vampy lipstick so dark that it looks black too. Because I suck at putting on makeup, I actually have to fix the smears I make with the eraser of my math pencil. I can imagine Aunt Sophie laughing her gorgeous blond butt off.

Once Soph tried to teach me how to use lip liner.

Only once. Let’s leave it at that.

Next comes the wig in—you guessed it—Goth black. It’s chin length with bangs, and I have to tuck my real hair up into a cap that feels sort of like a nylon
stocking. I tug the wig into place and make sure it’s on my head evenly.

I wrap two black-leather, studded cuffs around my wrists, and loop a thick silver chain around my neck, then double it before fastening. The icing on top is the nose ring, which doesn’t go all the way through my skin but is pretty gross to insert. And does it ever feel weird.

Poor Charlie has put on a plaid miniskirt and a white top with a navy sweater over it. He sits on the floor and pulls on white knee socks and penny loafers. I add the blond, curly wig to his head, and he sticks his tongue out at me.

“You look like a vampire,” he says.

“Yeah? Well you look like Little Bo Peep.”

“Do not. Where are my sheep?”

“They’ll meet up with us later.” I wink at him.

Charlie rolls his eyes.

We stuff our old clothes into the backpacks and rezip them. Then we empty and ditch our school bags, take the escalator up to the street level, and get a taxi.

“Where to?” The driver looks bored as he meets my eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Providence Street. Taking the kid to her aunt’s.”

He uses the mirror to look from one of us to the other. I know we make a pretty odd pair—Little Miss Sunshine and the gloomy, glowering Goth chick. But he says nothing. DC is a big city—people usually mind their own business. We drive for what seems like
forever, the meter running the whole way. We crawl through traffic, dodging limousines, tourist buses, and government vehicles with diplomatic plates. Finally we get to Providence Street, which is on the outskirts of town.

“What’s the address?” our driver inquires.

“Just up here, that white house with the blue shutters on the right.”

Taxi man pulls up to the curb, and I look at the eye-popping total on the meter. It would take me hours of babysitting to come up with that. But I dig into the backpack and pull out the amount I need, plus a 10 percent tip. I hand over the bills, and little “Charlotte” and I climb out of the cab.

“Thanks,” I say.

He nods.

Charlie and I start up the front walkway of a house we’ve never seen before. I pause about halfway up and pretend to look in my backpack for a nonexistent key.

Once the taxi is out of sight, we hoof it to the sidewalk and walk the few blocks to the Comfort Inn & Suites, which is our real, pre-arranged rendezvous point with our parents.

The clerk is a prim young Asian woman who eyes my Goth getup with barely repressed disapproval. Given the opportunity, I am positive that she would vault over the reception desk with a wet wipe and clean all the black off my face before checking us in. She demands to see some sort of identification.

I dig out one of my fake IDs and its matching credit card and push them across the counter to her. The photo on it makes me look like a stone-cold killer, so I do my best to adopt the same expression. She looks from me to Charlie and back again, much as the cabdriver did. “You’re . . . together?”

“Yup.” I sneer at her, curling my lip. “Charlotte’s my cousin. She’s the flower girl in my dad’s wedding tomorrow. I’m a freakin’ bridesmaid.” I produce a disgusted snort. “Me. Of all people. And the new stepmonster is making me wear
pink
.”

The clerk—her name tag says Serena—blinks and has the grace to look a little sorry for me. “Pink? It’s not tulle, is it?”

I poke my tongue into my cheek. “Worse. Shiny polyester satin.”

“Dear God.” Serena clicks around on her computer keyboard and purses her lips. “You know, I think I can upgrade you. . . .”

“And the shoes? Dyed to match, with these unbelievably ugly white roses clipped to the toes.”

At this Serena actually shudders. “Yes—I can give you a junior suite for the price of a single. How’s that?”

“Awesome,” I say, grinning. Then I realize that this sounds out of character. I disappear the grin and substitute a scowl. “That’ll work.”

“I’ll throw in a coupon to the restaurant next door too. Buy one dinner, get one free.”

“Thank you.” I realize I’m starving, and Charlie probably is too. We can get big, juicy burgers to go while
we’re waiting for Mom and Dad. I keep trying to go vegetarian, but it doesn’t work. I guess I’m a die-hard carnivore.

She gives us our key cards, and after going next door to get the burgers, we find our way to room 308. We dump our backpacks on the sofa in the little sitting area and collapse on the two double beds. I’m so tired. That’s the flip side of adrenaline—when it wears off, you’re exhausted. And, of course, I’ve never fought off two big guys who were trying to kidnap me. Sure, I’ve beat my friend Kale a few times in karate matches, but that’s different. It’s all in the name of practice and/or fun.

Going up against Mitch and Gary? Not fun. Not even a little.

I look at my watch. It’s been a full three and a half hours since Dad sent those texts to me and Charlie.

My brother yanks off his Charlotte wig but leaves on the weird hairnet/cap that holds it on his head. He looks like a small, bald scientist—until you get to the skirt.

I can tell that he’s tired too. At least his anxiety seems to have faded. He slides his legs off the bed and goes to his backpack to get the computer, which he takes back to the bed with him and opens. Within two minutes he’s surfing the Internet, looking for God knows what. I hope Mom and Dad put parental controls on the thing.

Charlie’s lips begin to move. He’s repeating words, but I’m not sure what language they’re in. German?

Mom wants him to learn it for some reason, and so
he’s been studying it after he finishes all his other homework. I have no idea why it’s important for a seven-year-old to learn German.

Mom was desperate for me to learn Russian, because she speaks it herself and she wanted us to be able to “chat.” But the Cyrillic alphabet defies understanding. I stare at Charlie as he studies, wondering what planet he came from and how we’re related. Sometimes I wish I could be a brother to him, instead of a sister. My brother badly needs a normal male role model.

Where are our parents? It’s been four hours now. What could be holding them up? This is the third and last rendezvous point. What if they were caught by a foreign government and are being held and interrogated? Oh, my God—what if they were executed?

Calm down, Kari. Don’t jump to conclusions.

But what am I supposed to think? I pinch the Bran Castle charm between my finger and thumb. The charm indicates that they may have been in Romania at some point, but I have no idea for how long—not to mention that it could be a decoy, picked up on a previous trip. For security reasons, they can’t really tell me and Charlie where they go.

What if their plane went down? What if someone shot them? Or held them at gunpoint and kidnapped them?

Another piece of Mom’s advice comes to me:
Quiet your mind by taking it somewhere else.

So I lie on the bed and pretend that I’m floating on
a raft in the deep blue ocean, maybe off the coast of Barbados. I’ve never been there, but it sounds exotic and peaceful. I concentrate on feeling the sun warm my body, and the gentle rocking of the waves. Charlie’s low muttering becomes the breeze, and the cycling AC becomes the sound of the tide cresting and lapping at the shore.

I’m almost asleep when Luke shows up. He’s swum all the way out to my raft from the shore, and he has no shirt on. He’s tanned and muscular and so freakin’ hot that I’m really afraid I might—accidentally—lick him. I push myself up onto my elbows and greet him with a huge smile. . . .

And then someone says, in a hateful British accent, “Seen a dentist lately, love?”

Aaargh!
My eyes fly open. Evan has no right to show up in my daydream!

But since he has, I take the opportunity to check on my brother. No need, really—he’s still studying on the bed next to mine—but it makes me feel better.

I close my eyes again to see if I can go back to the coast of Barbados, to Luke with his shirt off. There . . . okay, I have the sun on my skin again, and the blue water surrounds me, and I relax. Someone is swimming toward me, doing a beautiful crawl through the waves. It’s Luke, but when he takes a breath, his face is turned away from me.

I check my swimsuit—a two-piece with a rainbow-striped bandeau top and black bottom—to make sure nothing
inappropriate is hanging out. Then I look up and smile at Luke, except he’s not there.

Next I hear the badly hummed theme to
Jaws
and my raft overturns with a splash, courtesy of Evan. I capsize into the ocean, and my mouth fills with salt water as he mocks me and laughs.

My eyes fly open, and I’m back on the pastel commercial bedspread that the Comfort Inn must order by the hundreds. Charlie is still muttering in German. The AC unit clangs as it cycles off.

But I swear I can taste salt in my mouth. And if I ever get to return to that daydream, I’m going to push Evan’s head underwater and drown him.

Two more hours have gone torturously by. It’s like waiting for frozen molasses to drip through an hourglass . . . and all the while horrible images blink through my head. Dad, with scarlet blooming over his jacket as he’s shot while riding a motorbike on the streets of Prague. Mom, writhing on the floor of a Sardinian café, poisoned horribly by a pill dropped into her espresso. Both of them, blown to unrecognizable pieces by a car bomb in Tel Aviv.

The sick movie reel in my mind is bad enough, but I can’t even acknowledge my fear aloud—I have to stay strong and upbeat for Charlie.