CHAPTER 34
After a debriefing with three different agencies—local police, FBI, and CIA—nothing about my story has changed. Not the part where I, with a lot of help from a few friends, keep a building full of people and our national security safe.
Or the part where I’m basically out of the spy business.
As happy as I am about the first half, especially considering it was supposed to end with me on a slab in the morgue if Marchuk had his way, I’m totally bummed about the second. I love being an operative, and just when I figure out I’m pretty damn good at it after all, they take the job away from me. That doesn’t mean I won’t keep fighting for it.
“But boss, I was never supposed to be in the field anyway,” I plead with Rogers, who got on a Company plane the moment she knew Berg had found me safe in that stairwell. So now I get to make my case in person. “Why not put me back on the desk and let me continue hacking?”
“And you’d be happy just hacking?” Rogers asks.
She leans back against the same squad car I was locked inside of three hours ago. I can tell from her expression that she won’t believe me, no matter how hard I try to convince her I’ll be happy just hacking. I guess that’s why she’s the boss spy. And she’d be right, because I’d be lying.
“After all this Prettyboy stuff dies down, maybe I could—”
“Exactly what I thought,” Rogers interrupts. “I’ve never met an officer who got a taste of working in the field and wanted to come back to the office. Look, we’ll keep you on the payroll long enough to finish the school year and graduate with your friend—what’s his name again?”
I laugh when Bunk’s real name pops into my head. “We call him Bunker.”
“Well, you deserve at least that, a normal senior year, after the great work you’ve done here.” Rogers smiles, but only for a second. “Though you should have told Berg about the hacker, what she looked like. She walked right out of here, free and clear.”
It’s true. I spotted her on Carlisle’s surveillance video during my debriefing with Berg. The time stamp showed that she already had a couple hours’ jump on us by then.
“I tried to tell Berg about the hacker,” I argue.
“You should have tried harder,” Rogers says in a tone that suggests she’s about done hearing my case. “Just take my offer to finish school and be happy about it.”
“Okay, I accept,” I say, as though I have a choice. “But I want normal only for the next seven months. People have the attention span of a gnat. By the time I graduate, people will have forgotten—”
“Sorry, Peter, we can’t take that risk for you or other operatives,” Rogers says, and I know she’s right. “Your face is just too recognizable for covert ops in the intelligence business. But you’re the best hacker I’ve ever worked with. I’ll find you something in another agency. They’re always looking for people at the IRS.”
I laugh until I realize she’s serious. “You mean the tax people? I’m a hacker, not a number cruncher.”
“Don’t mock them. Their criminal investigations unit took down Al Capone when no one else could.”
I let it go, mostly because Rogers isn’t hearing any of it, but also because there are worse places to be a suspended CIA operative. For a down-and-out hacker trying to prove his way back into the Company, Colorado is paradise with all the federal agencies here I can crack. Or spy on, for the team. NORAD is just down the road, and there’s nearby New Mexico and all the labs down there working on serious top-secret stuff. Which reminds me.
“What about the hacker? Sveta Koval isn’t the type to retire just because her brother and old boss are in prison. She’ll resurface. I could track her down just like I did before and—”
“And nothing, Smith, unless you want me to fire you today,” Rogers threatens before leaving me so she can help Berg and Jones deal with the throng of media that has gathered in front of Carlisle.
The Internal Revenue Service. Despite what Rogers said about Al Capone, I imagine a life filled with tax returns and paper shuffling. It’s depressing.
“Don’t look so down,” says a voice from behind me. “You’re a hero, Prettyboy.”
It’s a good thing Katie is the one who says it, because I have vowed to knock out the next person to call me that.
“Better get used to it if you plan on staying at Carlisle. Or even in this country. Look,” she says, pointing to the crowd outside the line of parked police cars that Berg is using to create a Maginot Line for the media. “Those girls should be at home in the arms of their parents, or at least having a Netflix binge, after the day they’ve had, but they came back to cheer for you.”
“A few hours ago, a couple of them were part of the library posse trying to give me up to Koval.”
“Well, people do crazy things when they’re under duress.”
I wonder if she’s talking about what she said to me when we both thought we were about to die, about being my girlfriend. But instead of asking, I just follow her as she starts walking down the long driveway away from the crowd. We’re quiet for a few minutes as we climb the ridge and start heading down again toward Carlisle’s gated entrance and the main road.
“They love me for now. I only have to wait until a prettier boy goes viral.”
“A prettier boy? There can be no other,” Katie says, trying to sound like Hollywood Voice-over Guy. “Not that I think you’re pretty.”
“Way to make me feel better.”
“No. I mean that isn’t how I’d describe you.”
She looks over at me like she’s just seeing me for the first time. And I know she isn’t seeing a CIA operative, or even Peter Smith. Katie sees only me—Jake Morrow. The guy who is crazy about her.
“I think ruggedly handsome is more appropriate,” she continues, and I wonder if she can tell I’m grinning inside. “Pretty boys have never been my thing. I like to be the only pretty one in the relationship and I’m not ashamed to say it.”
I think Katie just said what I’ve wanted to hear since I first met her at new student orientation. So I want to make sure I heard right.
“Is that what we are—in a relationship?”
“I don’t know.” She looks off toward the mountains, like she’s really thinking it through. “It’ll be hard with you staying here and me being shipped off to … well, you know…”
“I know. That’s classified.”
Katie stops on the side of the drive, near the oddly placed shed. Seeing it sends a shiver of dread through me, but it goes away the minute Katie takes my hand and asks, “But we’re in something, wouldn’t you say?”
I remember the question I asked her earlier, and how she never gave me a direct answer.
“Are you sure you didn’t know who I was when I asked you out? Because the way you kissed me … I mean, after the movie, in your car—”
For a moment, I think she’s about to kiss me again, right now. Maybe I’m projecting, because I’ve been waiting weeks to put my arms around her again, but her expression says that’s all she wants to do. But she only holds her hand to my cheek for a second, like we’re in some movie. Why do girls do that? Don’t they know a kiss would be so much more effective at getting the guy? I mean, I’ve already been got, but still.
“I told you. I don’t lie. At least, I won’t lie to you ever again. I knew you were a guy who—for the three hours we were on the date, at least—made me forget I was on a mission. Made me forget I am a covert operative, forget all the bad I’ve seen. With you, Petah Smith, I was just a girl who really liked a boy.”
“Yeah?”
“I mean really liked,” Katie says, moving closer to me.
I move in closer, too. “Then you should probably call me Jake Morrow.”
I’m just about to kiss her when a voice stops me cold.
“She should probably call you dead.”