“I continued distracting the second hostile and the mark while Toby disabled the third hostile and began searching for the security panel. She located the panel, deactivated the security, and found the target, but unfortunately, the third hostile woke up just as the other two realized that she was not, in fact, in the bathroom. I disabled the mark first as instructed, and engaged in hand-to-hand with the other two until one of them managed to pull a gun. He fired a single shot. I succeeded in diving out of the way, but the second hostile caught me and held me at gunpoint. At that point in time, Toby came into the room, providing enough of a distraction that I was able to disarm the hostiles and render them unconscious. Toby returned to the kitchen while I secured the hostiles and the mark, but the target we were sent to retrieve was gone, presumably taken by an unidentified intruder whose arrival had coincided with the third hostile’s awakening and the others’ discovery that we were not who and what we claimed to be.”

If by unidentified, she meant “almost certainly Amelia Juarez.”

“An unidentified entity, an ‘intruder’ as you so blithely put it, has the weapon you were sent to retrieve?” Mrs. Camden asked, her voice still sickly sweet.

“Yes.” Brooke’s answer was short, and her voice was neutral, but I could feel the tension beneath the surface of her tone.

I expected Mrs. Camden to yell, or to lash out physically, or to do something drastic, but instead, she just sighed.

“Oh, Brookie. What are we going to do with you?”

“It wasn’t her fault,” I surprised myself by saying. “It’s mine. If I’d taken Amel—errr—the intruder out the first time I’d seen her, this wouldn’t have happened.”

That was true enough.

Mrs. Camden considered me, her face the epitome of polish and homemakerly grace. “You’re green,” she said. “And you’ll learn.”

I got the feeling that from her, this was high praise. Beside me, Brooke stiffened.

“Don’t wrinkle your forehead, dear,” Mrs. Camden chided. She must have had incredible eyesight, because as hard as I looked, I couldn’t make out a single wrinkle. “You’ll have worry lines before you’re thirty.” Then, without sparing Brooke so much as another look, she turned her attention back to me. “Why didn’t you disable the intruder?”

I hedged around the question. “When I first noticed her, I mean, when I first noticed another person in the room, I was engaged in combat with the…uhhhh…third hostile.”

“And then?” Mrs. Camden prodded. She was sharp. Nothing got past this woman, and there was no way around telling her the truth.

“I went to help Brooke.”

“And why did you need help?” Mrs. Camden asked her daughter, like someone talking to a very young child who’s been quite naughty.

“I didn’t disarm them fast enough.”

“Which,” Mrs. Camden said, “wouldn’t have been a problem if you’d been properly armed.”

Brooke looked away.

“Tell me, Brooke, if they’d had knives instead of guns, do you think you would have been able to disarm them quicker? Or what if you’d had a gun as well?”

I didn’t see where this line of questioning was going, but Brooke apparently did.

“I’m not sure.”

“Yes,” her mother said, “you are. One of these days, Brookie, you’re going to have to get over this thing you have with guns. You’ll have to use one eventually, and you can’t freeze up every time you see one, not even for a second.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Brooke said, her calm exterior cracking just a bit.

“Don’t get worked up, dear,” her mom said. “And don’t talk back. Right now, I don’t want you to even worry about the operations end of things. I’ll smooth things over, and you’ll have a new case before you know it. I’ll make everything all right. You just worry about homecoming.”

I read the look in Mrs. Camden’s eyes and the expression on Brooke’s face and translated them into words, even though neither Brooke nor her mother actually said a thing.

Mrs. Camden: Try not to screw that one up, too, Brooke.

Brooke: I won’t. I’m not a screwup. Screw you. Don’t be mad.

And before I knew it, Brooke was walking me to the door.

“Do drop by again, Toby,” Mrs. Camden called. “We expect great things from you.”

Sure, I’d drop by again. WHEN HELL FROZE OVER.

On the way out, we passed a bookshelf full of pictures. All of them were of Brooke, and in each and every one of them, she was cheering. In the earliest picture, she was probably about five or six. Trophies sat on the top shelf, and I squinted, making out the names of several individual cheerleading competitions.

1ST PLACE.

1ST PLACE.

1ST PLACE.

Why did I get the feeling that first place was the only place that Brooke or her mother understood?

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Brooke said evenly. “We should practice before school. Big game on Friday.”

Her voice sounded the same as it always did, but I felt like there was something missing, something dead.

“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my own voice sufficiently subdued.

I didn’t realize until I stepped out of her house and onto the front porch that I didn’t have a way home. I pulled out my Squad-issued phone and dialed the other girls one by one.

Tara didn’t answer.

Neither did Zee.

I got Bubbles on voice mail, which was somewhat amusing, because she’d had technical difficulties programming her phone, and the whole prerecorded message was just her going, “Is this thing on? Is it working? If I like say something, will…oooh, what’s that beep?”

I had no desire to call Chloe, and I wasn’t exactly looking my best postmission, so I decided to avoid calling the twins as well. I tried Lucy—who, after all, deserved some major kudos for the bobby-sock bomb, even if it hadn’t saved our mission. When Lucy didn’t answer, either, I dialed the last number on my list.

April.

She answered on the third ring.

“Toby?”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling more than a little awkward. Of all the girls, April was the only one my age, and the one I’d interacted with the least. We didn’t really know each other, and once upon a time, she’d been Hayley Hoffman’s second-in-command, which meant that the few times I’d registered on her social radar pre-Squad, she hadn’t exactly been friendly. “Listen, I’m at Brooke’s house, and I kind of need a ride. Do you have your license yet?”

“No, but I have a car,” April replied. “Actually, I have two, so it’s no big if I wreck one. I’ll be there in a few minutes—it’s on Calloway Street, right?”

I wasn’t sure, but that sounded good to me. “I think so.”

“Okay. Just hang tight and give me five. Later!”

I hung up my phone, and as I stepped off Brooke’s front porch and walked down her driveway, I hoped that April would hurry.

The sooner I could get away from this place, the better.

CHAPTER 25

Code Word: Kisses

While I was waiting for April, my phone rang. It was Zee.

“Sorry I missed your call,” she said. “I was doing yogalates.”

I wasn’t exactly sure how to respond to that.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me,” Zee said, and I realized that was exactly what I had been doing. “There’s nothing wrong with yogalates. You can’t honestly expect me to spend all of my spare time working on my latest criminology dissertation.”

“I didn’t even know you were writing one,” I said. “And honestly, I thought you didn’t answer because you were either still selling Cheer Scout cookies, or because you were on the line.”

Gossip queens and phones sort of went hand in hand.

“What do you need?” Zee asked. She seemed to know that I wouldn’t have called unless I really needed something, and that even though I’d accepted my position on the Squad, I was loath to ask for help.