“We contacted the Big Guys, and they tracked down outgoing and incoming calls from each of the pay phones and compared the phone log with the times Hassan was there.” Brooke paused, letting the tension build in the air.

“Two of the three calls were received from untraceable phones, but the third…”

Okay, enough with the dramatic pauses.

“The third was an outgoing call to an individual who’s much, much higher than Hassan on the Watch List.”

In other words, Hassan wasn’t just a Terrorist-Connected Individual. He was an individual who’d spoken with his terrorist connection the night before.

“Have you passed this information on to the Big Guys?” I asked.

Brooke flipped her hair over her shoulders and rolled her eyes, a gesture I took to mean “why, yes, Toby, yes I did.”

“Any word back yet?” This time, the question came from Chloe, and Brooke offered a real answer.

“I’m expecting the call any minute.”

“What about the data I got from Kann’s laptop?” I asked, risking Brooke’s wrath for messing with her dramatic timing again.

To my surprise, Brooke smiled, and I realized that even though two of the other teams had managed to bug their marks’ cell phones, the information Tara and I had retrieved might just prove itself to be even more useful.

Take that, Chloe!

“Chloe, you want to debrief everyone?” Brooke spoiled my moment of victory by turning the floor over to Chloe, thus reminding me that while I’d been “resting,” Chloe had been enjoying the spoils of my hacking prowess.

“Most of the data on Kann’s hard drive was useless,” Chloe said, sitting up straighter in her chair, her eyes lingering on me as she delivered the last word. “But I did manage to analyze his inbox and sent mail for patterns consistent with the timing of the TCI influx, and it looks like our boy was definitely here to purchase something. We’ve got the alias of the seller, but haven’t managed to ID him yet.”

“What kind of purchase are we talking about here?” Tiffany asked. Of all of us, the twins probably spent the most time making purchases themselves, so the question seemed oddly natural coming from Tiff.

Chloe had an answer ready, and it was clear that she was thrilled to have been asked. “That’s the other thing we managed to pull off the disk. We don’t have specifics, but we do have reason to believe that Kann was here to purchase…”

Chloe mimicked one of Brooke’s dramatic pauses, and I couldn’t help but add theme music to the situation. “Dum dum DUM!”

Everyone at the table glared at me in one synchronized motion. Like I was the only one thinking it.

When Chloe spoke again, her voice was soft. And deadly. “Kann was here to purchase some kind of biological weapon,” she said. “And then he was going to turn right around and sell it.”

Based on the meaning of the TCI acronym, I was going to go out on a limb and guess that Kann probably wasn’t planning on selling it to the good guys. For the millionth time since the day before, the explosion replayed itself in my mind’s eye, but this time, part of me couldn’t help but see it differently. Murder was bad, but so was equipping terrorists to commit more of the same, and that was what Kann was planning to do before he died in that blast. I couldn’t decide what to think about that, or if I even wanted to think about it at all, and a moment later, the air of solemnity around us was suddenly and completely shattered by the sound of pop music blaring from Brooke’s cell phone.

“Please tell me that wasn’t who I think it was singing,” I said as Brooke excused herself from the table and went to answer the phone. “Celebutantes should not be allowed to pretend they’re pop stars.”

“What?” Lucy said. “It’s catchy.”

Oh, dear God.

“I’ll pass on any information that you…you’d like to what? Oh. Okay. Sure. No problem.” Brooke’s voice started out sharp, crisp, and professional, and morphed into forced and perky. She shut her phone and then turned back to the rest of us.

“There have been some developments,” she said.

“And they are…,” Chloe prompted, a twinge of attitude in her voice.

“They want to talk to all of us,” Brooke said. “You can hear about the developments for yourself.”

At those words, I actually stopped breathing. During my first mission, we’d gotten our instructions straight from our superiors. Since then, everything they’d communicated to us had been communicated through Brooke. Normally, I might have played at being Zee and attempted to analyze Brooke’s reaction to the fact that the Big Guys wanted to talk to all of us, but even once I started breathing again, analyzing was out of the picture.

I didn’t know much about the Big Guys. I knew there were several of them. I knew they were somehow part of the CIA. And I knew that one of them was Jack’s uncle.

“Good morning, girls.” The screen flipped on, and a neutral, male voice greeted us.

John. It’s Alan. I need to talk to you. It’s about Jack.

I never had figured out what Uncle Alan had wanted with Jack. For all I knew, he’d been calling about wanting to take his nephew to a baseball game or something. Still, the sound of the Voice, which I hadn’t heard in weeks, but hadn’t been able to forget, either, had me wondering all over again. How was it that Jack’s father was the head of what basically amounted to a terrorist cell, but Jack’s uncle was part of the CIA?

And, perhaps more importantly, what did this say about Jack?

The Voice continued laying down the facts in a cool, calm manner, oblivious to my line of thought, and I forced myself to pay attention to the case at hand, tucking all questions and objections concerning good old Uncle Alan neatly away for the time being.

“The data you sent us yesterday has proved invaluable, Brooke. Hector Hassan has been taken into custody, officially as a suspect in Jacob Kann’s death.”

And unofficially, I filled in, because of the calls he’d exchanged with terrorists the night before.

“What about the email address we sent you?” Brooke asked, slightly appeased by the fact that despite demanding to talk to all of us, the Voice had still made a deliberate effort at recognizing her as our leader.

“We’re still tracking down the alias,” the voice answered. “Whoever this guy is, he knows how to cover his tracks.”

Somehow, it escaped everyone’s attention but mine that uncovering tracks like those was more or less my forte.

“In the meantime, you girls don’t need to worry about uncovering the identity of the seller, or the details of the biological weaponry for sale. We’ve got people on that here.”

I could actually see the effort Brooke was putting in to not frowning at that little announcement.

“What we need you girls to do is stay on the remaining TCIs. With Kann dead and Hassan in custody, Amelia and Anthony are our only remaining links to this case. We’ve got agents in the area, but starting at 1500 hours today, I want two of your teams on each of them. You girls can get closer than we can, and we can’t take any risks. These people could be dangerous, and until we can identify the threat and neutralize it, tracking the buyers is our only option.

“I want a fifth team staking out the firm and keeping a complete log of who’s coming and who’s going. If someone’s selling a biological weapon in Bayport and Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray doesn’t have a hand in it yet, I think it’s safe to assume that they will soon.”

And here I’d been hoping that my homecoming date’s father wasn’t involved in the national security risk du jour.

“Understood, sir.” Brooke’s tone bordered on sounding military. “We’ll handle it. Have the results come back yet on yesterday’s explosion?”

“We’re expecting the labs back this afternoon, and that leads me to the point of this conference call.” The voice paused. I was starting to see where Brooke and Co. got it from. “This case is sensitive, girls. It’s dangerous. And we’ve officially designated it a Do Not Engage. Under no circumstances are any of you to engage your marks. If you see something suspicious, call it in, and one of our teams will take care of it. Your mission is strictly observational. Have I made myself clear?”