Perfect Cover (The Squad 1)

When Zee put it that way, it all made sense: what Tara had said about me reminding Chloe of who she used to be, the cheer-coup vibes I’d caught Chloe shooting in Brooke’s direction, the way Brooke was Captain with a capital C.

“You can go now,” Zee said. “If you want to. I just thought you should know. Chloe can be a bitch, but she’s not a bad person. The twins may be shallow, but they’re not idiots. And Brooke’s bossiness personified, but she really can’t help it.” Zee paused. “And whether you believe it or not, they’d all risk their lives for you. You’re part of the Squad now, Toby, and that means something.” She gestured at the first folder she’d handed me. “One of the traits we look for is a sense of loyalty, an ability to put the good of the Squad before your own interest. All of us have it, and whether you know it yet or not, I’d be willing to bet a lot of money that you’d risk your life for them, too.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but Zee stopped me.

“If someone made Lucy cry,” she said, “what would you do?”

My answer? Odd, but probably the same thing I did when someone threatened Noah.

“When Tara asked you to seduce Jack, what did you say?”

I’d said yes.

“And if you heard gunshots in Chloe’s lab right now, what would you do?”

I looked away. “Point taken.”

Zee stood up. “Come on. I’ll walk you out. And ooohhh, by the way, did you hear that Mary Pierce and Bronson Lenning were caught all horizontal in the girls’ bathroom?”

From zero to gossipmonger in point-two seconds.

And yet, thinking of Zee, the eight-year-old prodigy with bad bangs and a mom-chosen outfit, I couldn’t hold it against her.

“As in…completely horizontal?”

CHAPTER 18

Code Word: Bee-yotch

By the time I got home, all I wanted to do was inhale fifteen pounds of edible matter while submerging myself in steaming hot water. My mind was full of Zee’s psychobabble and gossip and thoughts about stakeouts and evil law firms and plans of action so complex that there was a distinct chance that my eyeballs were going to explode from the sheer number of unanswered questions in my mind. Plus my shoulders were killing me. My back was killing me. My legs were pretty much already dead, and there was a distinct chance that I’d dislocated my crotch.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to make good on my gorge-myself-and-shower plan, because the second I stepped into my house, three freshman-shaped blobs popped out of nowhere and screamed, “Surprise!”

I’ll hand it to Noah—I was surprised. And, I might add, not amused. I counted slowly backward from ten in my mind and tried to appraise the situation without losing my temper. There was a handwritten banner hung across the sofa that screamed “Congratulations, Toby!” in bright pink letters. Bubblegum pop blared from the living room speakers, and someone had baked a cake and decorated it with what appeared to be a stick figure doing a high kick.

About a microsecond before I destroyed my brother, his partners in crime, and what was left of their manhood, Noah thrust a gift sack into my hand.

“We got you something,” he said, giving me his most adorable puppy-dog smile.

I looked down at the gift sack and then back up at the boys. They were wearing party hats. As I stared humorlessly at the three of them, Noah’s friend Brad actually threw confetti into the air.

“Where’s Mom?” I demanded.

“What? You don’t like? The boys and I wanted to do something to mark the occasion….”

“C-c-congrats, Toby.” Chuck Percy was sweating and stuttering, and let me tell you, it was a winning combination. He’d been that way in my precheerleading days. It was a miracle the poor kid had managed to say anything without spontaneously combusting given my current postmakeover state.

“Wow.” Noah appraised my appearance. “You’re wearing the shorts!”

I smacked him in the side with the gift bag, sat it calmly on the ground, and walked up the stairs toward my room, literally growling under my breath. It figured—I made the cheerleading squad, and the freshman goof brigade threw a party celebrating their own good fortune. From the sound the bag had made as it connected lightly with Noah’s body, I was going to go out on a limb and guess it was a can of whipped cream.

I didn’t even want to know what Noah expected the God Squad to do with a can of whipped cream.

I couldn’t decide which part of this experience was more mortifying: the fact that Noah had accepted this cheerleading thing no questions asked, or the fact that my butt said CHEER on it in big blue letters.

“Toby. You’re home.” My mom gave me the once-over: mahogany hair with honeysuckle highlights, perfectly tanned skin, plucked eyebrows, cheer shorts. “Did you have a good day at school?”

Nothing fazed my mom. Nothing.

I stomped toward my room. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I closed the door behind me, walked over to my bed, and screamed into my pillow for approximately thirty-seven seconds. I threw down the ginormous purse I had carried home under protest. While I’d been having fun one-on-one time with Chloe, one of the twins had swiped my backpack and upgraded it to some kind of designer purse big enough to carry a small country in the side pouch. I took out the papers Chloe had given me, glared at them, and threw them on my floor. I then ripped off the cheer shorts, and they joined the papers.

Two minutes later, I was standing there in nothing but my underwear (no sequins—thank God). I wrapped a towel around my body and headed for the shower, where I turned the water on and let the entire room steam up.

Malibu Toby watched me from the mirror, her hair miraculously perfect even after the hissy fit I’d just thrown in my room.

Looking at the stranger in the mirror, I had to remind myself—this was me now. I was a perfect-bodied, perfect-haired, perfectly tanned cheerleader. I carried a designer bag, wore designer clothes, and had a limited-edition designer phone. And somewhere, on the other side of the globe, nameless, faceless government operatives were counting on me to hack into a system I didn’t know the first thing about. There was only one thing to do at a time like this.

I climbed into the shower and curled into a small ball on the floor, letting the water hit my perfect hair. Droplets dripped down my face and into my eyes, but I just sat there, my body aching and my skin rebelling against the heat of the water.

I breathed in and out, thinking back on my day, watching as scenes flashed one after another in my mind and things I’d heard repeated themselves on a loop. More often than not, showering brought me answers. In fact, had water heaters of today’s caliber been invented way back when, I would have placed a large amount of money on a wager that Einstein’s theory of relativity had first come to him while he was doing what I was now. But today, the steam wasn’t giving me any answers, and I just kept coming back to the same questions, over and over again.