Perfect Cover (The Squad 1)

And then I punched him in the stomach, turned, and ran. It wasn’t until I got far enough out of the office and away from Jack that my mind started working again and I realized why the voice on the answering machine had sounded so familiar. I’d heard it before. It was a voice that had told us to infiltrate and bug the building I was standing in now.

Jack’s uncle was our Charlie.

CHAPTER 33

Code Word: Fire

Despite my postrealization, postkiss stupor, I made it out the big glass doors and into the elevator before Jack realized what (or rather, who) had hit him. Thanks to my nimble fingers pressing the “close” button with great fervor, the elevator doors closed just as Jack started to come after me, and I made it out of the building and into the parking garage before I realized that I was completely and utterly screwed.

I hadn’t driven here. Jack had. Jack, whose father was the head of the evil law firm. Jack, whose uncle was apparently the voice behind our orders. I shook my head to clear it. What was with me and forgetting about Jack driving? And I called myself a secret agent. I ran out of the garage, knowing that Jack wouldn’t be more than a couple of minutes behind me.

Jack, who was quite possibly the best kisser known to womankind.

“Need a ride?”

If you’d told me that I would ever, ever, under any circumstances be glad to see Chloe Larson’s little red car, complete with an eye-rolling Chloe in the driver’s seat, I would have suggested you get your head checked. But there she was, and I wasn’t about to look a gift cheerleader in the mouth. I ran to the car like a madwoman, flung open the door, and jumped in.

“Go,” I said. “Go, go, go!”

Thrill Driver that she was, Chloe needed no more encouragement, and seconds later, we were flying down the street. Fearing for my life, I grabbed for the seat belt.

“How’d you know?” I asked. Forget what I said about the whole looking the gift cheerleader in the mouth thing. My mind was doing some quick mental additions, and the fact that Chloe was Cheerleader Ex Number Two on the Jack front had me more than a little suspicious. Had she been planning on crashing our nondate? Or had she heard what I’d heard on the answering machine and thought to get me out of there fast? “And what were you doing so close to Peyton?”

Chloe was silent for a moment, and then she fessed up. “When your video feed went dead, I got a little worried.”

Back up there, Cheer-Girl, I thought. Chloe? Worried about me? Was this supposed to be one of those “what’s wrong with this picture?” quizzes I used to do in the waiting room at the dentist’s office? What had happened to Chloe Your-Mere-Presence-Offends-Me Larson? What had happened to all of her issues?

“And besides,” Chloe continued. “You alone at Peyton with Jack?” She rolled her eyes. “You couldn’t even handle standing next to him at the party. In case you haven’t noticed, you’re kind of new to the whole boy thing, and I thought someone needed to be here to do damage control when you had the big meltdown.”

I read between the lines: ninety percent of Chloe had been here for the Toby-Makes-a-Fool-Out-of-Herself show (and possibly to pick up the Jack pieces after it all went down), and ten percent of her had been vaguely concerned that I might be dead or something because I’d turned off my necklace cam.

At this point, a ninety-ten split with Chloe was about as much as I could possibly ask for.

“I did not have a meltdown,” I grumbled.

Chloe didn’t say anything.

“I didn’t!” I insisted. Sharing an incredibly impassioned kiss with someone and then belting them in the stomach and pulling a runaway bride (minus the bride part) was not a meltdown.

“Did he kiss you?” Chloe’s voice was matter-of-fact, but her eyes were just a little bit lethal.

“Ummm…no.” Technically, I had kissed him.

Chloe let out a breath. “Maybe the twins are slipping,” she said. “They were positive that he was going in for the kiss before the feed died.”

I stuck as close to the truth as possible. “I sort of…errr…” I took a deep breath of my own. “I punched him in the stomach.”

“Are you demented?”

I took stock of the situation. I’d just kissed my mark, who happened to be the most eligible bachelor at my high school, the son of an evil lawyer whose name was constantly on the top of CIA watch lists, the nephew of the voice behind our operation, and the ex-boyfriend of not one, but two blood-thirsty varsity cheerleaders. And then I’d punched him in the stomach and run.

I had to face the facts. For once, Chloe’s insult was right on target: I was obviously completely demented.

To distract her from that oh-so-apparent fact, I turned to the portion of this twisted equation that didn’t have me still going disgustedly weak at the knees.

“Jack’s uncle.” That was all I got out, all I was able to say.

“What about him?”

If Chloe knew something, she wasn’t telling, but that didn’t enlighten me at all as to whether or not she knew, because even if she did, Chloe would make me dig for it.

“His voice.” Why was it I could only manage two-word sentences? Was this some kind of postkiss affliction?

“What about it?” Chloe wasn’t giving an inch.

This time, I tried for three words. “I recognized it.”

I half expected her to say “what about it?” but she didn’t. Instead, without even looking at me, she said, “No, you didn’t.”

The way she said it made me even more convinced that I had.

“Yes, I did.”

“No.” Chloe’s voice was sharper this time. “You didn’t.”

Sure, I thought. I didn’t recognize the voice, just like I didn’t kiss Jack. A lie for a lie. When Chloe turned off the highway a second later, I realized that we weren’t headed back to the party, or toward my house. I couldn’t quite imagine her being all gung ho on girl bonding time given the mounting tension in the car, so I was pretty sure we weren’t going back to her house for a sleepover. That didn’t leave too many options.

“Where are we going?”

Chloe didn’t answer. Now that I’d told her that Jack hadn’t kissed me, and she’d refused to offer me any real answers to the questions I wanted to ask about Jack’s uncle, I had ceased to matter and was more or less invisible.

“Chloe!”

“Where do you think we’re going?” Chloe asked. “While you were flirting—badly, I might add—with Jack Peyton, I was at the party, monitoring your mission and tying up ends on the Infotech case.”