Perfect Cover (The Squad 1)

Brittany stuck her lower lip out slightly. “Leave? But I haven’t gone to the bathroom yet.” She leaned forward and grabbed a piece of candy out of a bowl on their desk. She unwrapped it and put it slowly in her mouth. “Can’t you two help me?”

The first guard dissolved into a puddle of testosterone on the floor.

The second guard trembled noticeably, but held firm. “There’s a bathroom on the first floor, Miss…”

“Bunny,” Brittany said. “My name is Bunny.”

I rolled my eyes. She was already practically oozing sexuality out of her pores. The name Bunny was probably overkill.

“Miss Bunny.” Apparently, the guards didn’t share my reservations about the name.

With security suitably distracted, Tiffany snuck out of the stairwell and positioned herself out of sight, behind a pillar.

“First-floor bathrooms are always so icky,” Brittany said. She let a single finger trail along her chest and down toward her cleavage. “And I’ve got such sensitive skin.”

“Bud, she’s got sensitive skin,” the puddle on the floor begged. “Just let me show her to the bathroom.”

“Please, Bud?” Brittany wheedled.

Poor Bud caved. “Fine,” he grumbled. “But, Jimmy, you wait for her right outside that door, and if anyone sees you, tell them she’s somebody’s niece.”

Jimmy, thanking his lucky stars, hit a button behind the security desk, unlocking the main entrance to the secured wing. Trying desperately to look debonair, he escorted Brittany inside.

Chloe watched carefully, and the second Brittany was in the bathroom, she cued Tiffany. “Go for it,” she said. “Guard at the desk is named Bud.”

“Bud?” Tiffany approached the desk.

He looked at her. “What are you doing back so soon?” he asked. “And where’s Jimmy?”

Tiffany stuck out her bottom lip. “Jimmy left me,” she said. “And I never found the bathroom.” She batted her eyelashes at him. “I thought maybe you could show me.”

Bud stood straight up, and I got the sense that when he escorted Tiffany toward the bathroom, it was more to ream out Jimmy than because of Tiff’s feminine wiles.

“Lose something?” Bud asked Jimmy darkly.

Jimmy did a double take. “But you’re in there,” he said.

Tiffany subtly pulled her shirt down and her skirt up. “I got lost,” she said, and poor Jimmy melted into another puddle on the floor.

“I’ll take it from here, Jimmy,” Bud said.

Jimmy looked from Tiffany back to the bathroom door.

“But…but…”

“Now, Jimmy.”

Jimmy, looking strikingly like a heartbroken puppy in a security guard uniform, started walking back toward the front desk. Bud gestured toward the bathroom door.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” Tiffany said. “I didn’t get lost. I just thought you were cuter.”

And then, while Bud, who was easily forty years old and forty pounds overweight, stared at her, she popped into the bathroom.

After straightening each other’s hair and reapplying lip gloss, the twins flushed one of the toilets, and then Brittany exited the bathroom, leaving Tiffany inside, undetected. From the feeds, I could see a newly confident and swaggering Bud escorting Brittany out of the secured area, and once both guards were back at the desk, Tiffany exited the bathroom.

“Doublemint complete,” she said under her breath.

“Good job, Tiff. Now go into the corner office and place the magnifier under the desk.” Chloe checked the satellite feed from the infrared scanner. Either that, or she was reading her text messages. From the backseat, it was kind of hard to tell. “One of the guards is in the kitchenette. The other is making his loop. He just passed the southmost corner office. Give it five seconds, and then head in. You should have about two minutes before he loops back by.”

Tiffany headed for the office. It was predictably locked, but another piece of gum (cherry this time) fixed that little problem, and Tiffany slipped the magnifier out of her bra and placed it on the bottom of the desk with the stealth of someone well used to sticking (nonexplosive) bubble gum to the bottom of the tables in chemistry lab.

With a murmur to Chloe indicating her success, Tiff slipped back out of the office, closed the door behind her, and practically skipped back down the hallway.

“Hey!”

I heard the voice from the audio feed, but didn’t see its owner until Tiffany turned around.

“You’re not supposed to be in here,” the guard said.

“Cohoon,” Chloe hissed. I had no idea what she was talking about, but luckily, Tiffany spoke fluent Chloe.

“Mr. Cohoon told me to meet him here,” she said. “I’m Jill. I temp downstairs, and Mr. Cohoon wanted to…” Tiffany gave the guard a look. “Go over some briefs.”

The guard apologized, and Tiff managed to sneak out without Bud or Jimmy noticing, because Brittany was showing them how she could “totally do a back bend.”

“Britt, Tiff is clear. Move out.”

With no warning, Brittany popped up from the back bend, blew kisses to the security guys, and breezed out the door.

I didn’t need Chloe to tell me that this stage of the operation was officially complete. The twins, who had spent a good twenty minutes impressing upon me the Ten Commandments of Cuticle Management the day before, had just managed to infiltrate a secured site and plant a high-tech device on an executive’s computer with no one the wiser. Maybe there was more to Zee’s statistical tests and profiles than even I’d thought possible.

“Who’s Cohoon?” I asked, not even bothering to sound unimpressed.

“One of their executives,” Chloe said. “He often conducts ‘special meetings’ with interns. It seemed like a plausible excuse.” She rolled her eyes at the way my jaw dropped open. “And, hello! Shouldn’t you be doing the hacker spaz thing right about now? Because there’s no telling what they’ll do when they discover the lock on the office was blown. Wasting time? Not a luxury we have right now, To-bee.”

I opened my Squad-issued laptop (which was, by the way, somewhat glittery—complete technology sacrilege), booted up, accessed the now-magnified wireless signal, and set about showing nose-in-the-air, pain-in-the-ass Chloe that when it came to hacking, I was anything but a spaz.

CHAPTER 24

Code Word: Evil