“Yeah, I get that, but who is he?”

Bubbles was one-hundred-percent solemnity when she answered. “Nobody knows.” I almost expected eerie mood music to start playing in the background as she continued, but her next sentence entirely ruined the effect. “I call him Bob.”

“Bob?”

“Yup.” If Bubbles found it at all ridiculous that she called the mysterious voice, the head of our operations, Bob, she didn’t show any signs of it. Instead, she shifted her weight and tilted her head to one side. “Hey, Toby? Can I go now?”

I nodded, and just as she was about to descend from my window, the door to my bedroom flew open.

“I knew I heard girls in here,” Noah said triumphantly.

Bubbles flashed him a grin, and a second later, maneuvered down the side of the house and out of sight.

Noah stared at me, a tortured look on his face.

I turned back to my computer and put my headphones on, but he just came to stand closer, his expression almost comically anguished.

I sighed. “What is it?” I asked, leaving the headphones in place.

“You had Bubbles Lane in your room and you didn’t even tell me,” he said.

Woe is Noah, I thought, but I knew from experience that talking could do no good at a time like this.

“If you loved me, you would have told me,” Noah said.

“And you would have loaned her your whipped cream.”

I searched my desk for projectiles. I was way too tired to get up and chase after him, but I had a hell of an arm, and as soon as I found something worthy of throwing…

Noah read the look on my face perfectly and made quick work of ducking out of range, but on his way out the door, he turned back to play the Hormone Martyr one more time. “Life is so not fair,” he said. “If either of us is going to have cheerleaders sneaking in the window, it should be me.”

CHAPTER 20

Code Word: Bayport

Thanks to Chloe’s audio-editing skills, it only took me three hours to listen to all of the phone sequences and decode the tones into numbers. We’d caught thirteen other dialing instances on tape, which was impressive considering the secretary’s cubicle was outside the range of the bug. Of the thirteen, one was the tone from my head, exactly as I’d remembered it. Just to be safe, I compared the number I’d ended up with and the sound of the number on the tape.

“024106,” I sang the number in tune with the tones, and it matched up exactly. I paused the audio just long enough to type the number into my pink phone again, checking and double-checking that I’d recorded it right.

Of the other twelve phone tone sequences on the CD, eleven had either seven digits (local number), ten digits (long distance), or eleven digits (given the fact that Mr. Hayes sounded somewhat sexually frustrated, probably a 1-900 number). The single remaining number had six digits.

“Hmmm hmmm hem hmm hmmm hem.”

I could tell from the sound that it was a different number than before, and this time, my fingers flew across the phone pad at warp speed as I sounded out the number. 023243.

I listened to the entire CD again. And again. And two hours later, I still had nothing except two six-digit numbers: 024106 and 023243. They both started with zero and contained a four and at least one two. They both had more even than odd digits. Neither of them was prime.

I tried translating the numbers to letters. Using the phone keys as a guide, 2 was either A, B, or C. 4 was G, H, or I. 1 and 0 didn’t have corresponding letters, and 6 was either M, N, or O. I closed my eyes and let the different combinations play over the backs of my eyelids. ABC/GHI/ MNO. Bin. Ago. Bio. Cho.

Cho. That was a name, wasn’t it?

I tried the other number. ABC/DEF/ABC/GHI/DEF. More letters this time meant more combinations, and more nonsense. Ceche. Adaif. Beaid.

In other words, a whole lot of nothing.

I scrambled the letters in the second word set, looking for new combinations and still came up absolutely blank.

023243. 024106.

I sat there until my eyes watered. My foot fell asleep beneath me. My butt was as numb as the endless strings of possible decodes had made my mind. I was tempted to take another shower, thinking the steam might loosen up something inside my brain, but when I looked at my watch, it was already two in the morning.

Just another half hour, I promised myself. If I don’t get it in another half hour, I’ll sleep on it. Sleeping was almost as good as steam for unlocking an answer dormant in my own mind. As I sat there, staring straight ahead and willing the answer to come to me, I reached absentmindedly for the iPod Bubbles had given me. I traded my computer headphones for the iPod ones, and the iPod in question immediately began playing a preselected playlist, and I couldn’t get it to go back to the main menu.

“Ready, OKAY! B to the A to the Y to the Port, Bayport Lions take the court! L to the I to the O-N-S; when we leave, you’ll be a mess. Go, fight, win. You’ll see us again. BAYPORT!”

Oh no.

“Bay-port Li-ons! (clap clap, clap-clap-clap) Bay-port Lions! (clap clap, clap-clap-clap)…”

Please, for the love of all things good and right in this world, I thought, please don’t let them have made MP3s of their cheers.

“B to the A to the Y to the Port…”

No wonder Bubbles had instructed me to listen to this while I slept. I’d be cheering in my sleep—literally. As the very thought of this made my skin crawl, I turned the iPod off. I couldn’t think about numbers and cheers at the same time. It was scientifically impossible.

My phone picked that moment to ring (not anything from American Idol, thank God), and for a moment, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Did the others have me under constant surveillance? Did they know I’d turned the iPod off? I picked up the phone, but when I flipped it open, it turned out to be a text message, which was (all things considered) both a good thing and a bad thing.

It was a good thing because it meant that I didn’t have to talk to anyone whose voice I’d just heard on the “Best of Bayport Spirit Squad” mix.

It was a bad thing because it meant that my regular ring (and not just the text message sound) might still be one of any number of pop songs I abhorred. It was also a bad thing because although the text message did not in any way suggest that I was under constant Squad surveillance, it did inform me of a rather unfortunate circumstance.

Practice gym. 5:30. Tomorrow morning.

It didn’t take me long to do the quick mental math. If I crawled into bed this second, and if I actually managed to fall asleep and not, for instance, spend the next three hours trying to get the chorus of “Bay-port Li-ons” out of my head, then I’d get a full three hours of sleep before my whole torturous existence began again the next morning. And that was assuming that I could actually tear myself away from the code long enough to concentrate on the whole going-to-sleep thing.

As it turned out, after I made it to my bed (minor miracle #1), I didn’t fall straight to sleep, but I didn’t lie there staring up at the ceiling and thinking about numbers or cheers, either (minor miracle #2). Instead, I thought about Tara and the foreign operatives who probably weren’t Tara’s parents. Even if they weren’t, the operatives weren’t nearly as anonymous and unreal as they’d been before I’d found out that in my partner’s case, a tendency toward espionage was as hereditary as good skin.

Superslowly, my body still aching with the day’s cheer-capades, I fell asleep.

024106. 02-41-06. 0-24-10-6. 0-23-24-3.

I stand in front of my locker, turning the dial. Left, then right, then left again. My body turns sideways, and I turn the dial up and down, then down and up. 0-24-10-6. 0-23-24-3.

The lock opens, and with sweaty palms, I rip it off the locker. This is it. This is the answer. Somewhere in the background, a dark-haired boy floats by. And then a giant slice of cheese.

But I’m concentrating on the locker. My hands are so sweaty, and the latch keeps slipping. I don’t have time. I have to open it. My fingernails are growing as I’m groping at the locker door. The nails grow longer and longer, until even my sweaty fingertips aren’t touching the locker latch. I fumble with it again, my long nails (hot pink, of course) doing the dirty work, and finally, it pops open.