On second thought, if I were the CIA, I’d tell us everything.

Someone tapped on my car window, and it took me a second to realize that I’d parked it. Grabbing my coffee and my bag, I turned the car off and slipped out.

“Good morning.” Tara’s voice was just slightly hoarse.

“Long night?” I asked her.

She inclined her head slightly. “I couldn’t sleep.”

I thought back on my naked dreams. “That makes two of us.”

“You didn’t lose a tail yesterday.” Tara’s words surprised me. She almost never talked about spy stuff so plainly, especially outside of the Quad.

“Yeah, well, I’ve been naked in every dream I’ve had for the past forty-eight hours.”

That got the slightest hint of a smile out of Tara. “You win.”

I waited until we reached the safety of the locker room before I voiced a more sensitive question. “What do you think they’ll tell us?”

“Whatever they want us to know.”

Those weren’t exactly the kind of words that inspired confidence.

It’s amazing how quickly even the most extraordinary things can become routine. I barely even registered our journey from the locker room to the conference table, but soon, I was drinking my coffee, and Brooke was giving us the rundown on Amelia Juarez in anticipation of the Big Guys’ call.

“She shouldn’t have been able to lose any of you.”

Brooke’s words didn’t have a visible effect on anyone in the room, but I somehow doubted that Zee had gotten any more sleep last night than Tara had. As for the twins, they weren’t polishing each other’s nails, which put them toward the more solemn end of the Britt-Tiff spectrum.

“But she did lose you, and that tells us something. It tells us that there’s a lot we don’t know about Amelia Juarez, because the four of you are good. And if she lost you, then she’s much, much better than we gave her credit for. Zee?”

Zee nibbled on her bottom lip, and for a split second, I could see the awkward little kid she must have been her first time through high school. “I did some more digging. The profiles the Big Guys gave us were explicit, but far from complete. We knew that Amelia had a need to prove herself to her family. She’s the youngest of five and the only girl. Her family is known for being brutal, merciless. They control everything from prostitution to the drug trade in at least three states. From what I’ve been able to tell, Amelia hasn’t been allowed to take much of a leadership role in the business.”

“What does that tell us?” Beside me, Tara cut quickly, but smoothly to the point.

“Her family is smart, but they rely more on strength, intimidation, and power to get things done.” Zee paused. “I dug up some old aptitude tests from Amelia’s elementary school. They’re outdated, but they tell us one thing for sure. Her family is smart. Amelia is smarter.”

If Zee was impressed with Amelia’s scores, that meant the TCI gave new meaning to the word genius.

“This wasn’t entirely our fault.” Brooke was sure of that.

“We weren’t given any reason to believe that Amelia had ties to Peyton. If our superiors had suspicions, they didn’t share them, and they underestimated Amelia, too.”

“She found the tracker on her car,” Chloe offered suddenly. “But she didn’t get rid of it. She reprogrammed it. That’s how we lost her. We followed the signal, and the signal lied.”

A supersmart TCI who was deeply involved in the world of organized crime, working for Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray. This could not possibly be a good thing.

At that exact moment, an all-too-familiar pop song started blaring from Brooke’s cell phone, and in response, she tapped the access code into the keypad on her chair’s arm, and the flat-screen television clicked on.

“Good morning, girls.”

Good morning, Uncle Alan.

“As you know, yesterday, Amelia Juarez met with associates at Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray. Unfortunately, they did not conduct this meeting within the typical range of our audio surveillance. We were, however, able to go back over the audio feed and match a recorded sample of Amelia’s voice to trace sounds recorded in the background. As a result, we managed to reconstruct a very small portion of the conversation. While this provided very little new pertinent information, it did allow us to confirm our previous assessment of the situation.

“Amelia has been in contact with an individual who has dangerous technology that the firm considers rightfully theirs. While this individual believes Amelia came to Bayport representing her own interests, she was in fact recruited by the associates at Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray to do two things: acquire the technology and take out the seller.”

Take out? The way Jacob Kann had been “taken out”? We’d suspected Hector Hassan was behind the bombing, because all signs indicated that he’d been the one to plant the bugs we’d discovered on each of the other TCIs. But if Amelia was brought here to take out the seller, what would stop her from taking out other potential buyers?

While I was pondering this question, a picture appeared on the screen: a middle-aged man who practically had the word nerd emblazoned on his forehead.

“Phillip Ross,” the voice informed us. “Ross holds a triple PhD, one each from Harvard, Oxford, and Bayport University.”

Let’s see, I thought, which one of these things does not belong?

“What are his degrees in?” As the resident PhD herself, Zee quickly zeroed in on this question.

“Biomedical engineering, nanotechnology, and genetics.”

I took this entire conversation to mean that Phillip Ross was smart. Smart enough to develop a new kind of biological weapon. The image on the screen changed, and this time, words appeared.

Nanotechnological Advances in the Field of Gene Targeting: A Study of Technobiological Viruses in the Common Mouse (Mus musculus).

“This is the title of Ross’s most recent dissertation, from the University of Bayport—where, incidentally enough, his research and schooling were supported by the prestigious Kaufman Grant for Advances in Science.”

Kaufman. As in Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray.

“So the firm was bankrolling his research,” Brooke concluded.

“Correct,” our contact confirmed.

“And then his research started going really well, and Ross realized that he might get a better offer elsewhere.” That was from Chloe.

“So he starts making subtle inquiries.” Tara.

“Invites the interested parties, or their emissaries, to Bayport.” Brooke again.

“And he figures that if he keeps a low enough profile by only negotiating with people who aren’t normally considered true players in their own right, Peyton won’t find out about it.” Zee provided that bit.

“Except they did find out about it.” Now it was my turn, teamwork at its best. “So they made Amelia an offer, and now they’re counting on her to get the weapon for them.”

There was a brief pause, and then April added in the last piece of the puzzle. “And to make sure that Ross never backstabs them again.”

Even given the seriousness of the situation, some petty part of my mind couldn’t help but think that growing up with Hayley Hoffman as a best friend, April probably knew a lot about backstabbing and retaliation.

“So what do we know about this weapon?” Chloe asked. Our contact wasn’t immediately forthcoming with information, so Chloe started musing on her own. “Whatever he was testing on mice for his dissertation, he must have found a way to apply it to humans. Nanotechnology means we’re dealing with something so small it can’t be seen by the naked eye, but so technologically advanced that it has some sort of computational ability. Gene targeting means we’re talking about DNA. And the fact that the words virus and weapon are used suggests that whatever the nanotechnology does to genes, it ain’t pretty.”

“Very good, Chloe. In generic terms, you’ve hit the nail on the head. I’m afraid we can’t share specifics at this time, but rest assured that the resulting technology is incredibly dangerous. We cannot allow it to fall into enemy hands.”