If Looks Could Kill (10 page)

The phone was toast.

Caylin smiled. “That way no one is tempted. Right?”

Jenny returned the smile. “Maybe you'll fit in here after all. Come on. You need your rest. Tomorrow's a big day.”

Caylin nodded and followed. But the blissful smile on her face was false as a cosmetic eyelash. The lump in her throat was real. For now she had absolutely no way of contacting the Spy Girls!

•  •  •

“What do we do?” Jo asked, fear gripping her heart. “Caylin could be busted!”

“There's nothing we can do, Jo.” Theresa shook her head. “And you know it. Cay's on her own. If she blows her cover, then she has to handle it. Our mission parameters are clear. Read your manual.”

“You know what you can do with your manual, O Goddess
of the Geeks,” Jo said, eyes flashing. “We're talking about Caylin here!”

Theresa frowned. “I know. Don't think for a second that I don't. But you know there is nothing we can do. We don't know if she was busted or not.”

Jo slumped down into the mountain of pillows. She sighed in futility. “I know. But it makes me crazy sometimes.”

“Me too. But all we can do is head to the warehouse as scheduled. If she can, she'll make contact with us soon enough.”

Jo looked up at Theresa with worried eyes. “And if she can't?”

Theresa smiled lamely. “I didn't hear that, Jo. Let's roll.”

•  •  •

The night air was chilly, but Theresa and Jo were dressed for it: scalp-to-toe black. Even T. had to admit that they looked pretty hot—true superspies if there ever were any. As they passed from the thin late-night crowds of the tourist district to the deserted alleys of the waterfront, no one paid them any mind. Just two more wandering souls trying to find the best place to hole up for the night, right?

They passed by the site where the truck ran over their motorcycle. The whole mess had been cleaned up. Not a speck of broken glass remained.

“Wow,” Theresa marveled. “In my hometown they can't even fix potholes.”

“It's pretty amazing when a city keeps the streets clean even in the neighborhoods that smell like dead fish,” Jo agreed.

•  •  •

They arrived at the warehouse just before 1 a.m.

Theresa paused. “Someone's been here.”

“How do you know?” Jo asked.

“Check it out.” A shiny new padlock hung from the main door.

“Should we burn it off again?” Jo asked.

Theresa shook her head. “They might be watching. Or waiting inside. Let's go around the other side and see if there's another way in.”

They crept around to the side facing the docks. A massive cargo ship was moored a few hundred feet down the pier. And a large panel truck was backed up against the
warehouse's loading platform. One of the garage doors was open.

Uh-oh, Theresa thought. Someone's home.

Suddenly a lighter flickered in the darkness.

Jo and Theresa flattened themselves against the wall of the warehouse.

Theresa made out the silhouette of a large, bald man. He lit a cigarette and puffed away. He didn't see them.

Theresa fished out a tiny pair of binoculars and flipped them open. They were equipped with green night vision, which allowed her to see just about everything in the dark.

“I still think you get the coolest gear,” Jo whispered.

“If you'd show up at your surveillance training classes, they might actually trust you with some of this stuff,” Theresa replied.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, Lucy Lecture,” Jo muttered. “What do you see?”

Theresa squinted through the lens, her heart pounding. “Three guys. They're unloading something from the truck into the warehouse.”

“Are they duffel bags?” Jo asked, remembering what Caylin had seen.

“No,” Theresa said, trying to focus better. It didn't help that her hands were shaking. She forced herself to concentrate. “These look like heavy-duty suitcases. Metal. There's some writing on the side. I can't really make it out. It's not English, though.”

“Asian lettering?”

Theresa shook her head. “Maybe Russian.”

One of the men on the loading dock tripped. His suitcase clanked to the ground, and he went flying. The big man tossed his cigarette aside angrily and let out a string of curses in some foreign language. At least, it sounded foreign. And they sounded like curses.

The clumsy man stood up, grabbed the big suitcase, and continued on his way.

“They're all going inside,” Theresa said, following them with her night vision.

“Let's go,” Jo replied, tugging T.'s sleeve.

Theresa yanked loose. “Okay, okay. But
quietly
.”

“No duh,” Jo grumbled.

“They have guns, Jo,” Theresa warned. “Aren't you the least bit nervous?”

Jo grinned in the moonlight. “
Nervous
is not in my vocabulary.”

“I'll take that as a big yes,” Theresa muttered. “Come on.”

They slipped onto the loading dock and cautiously peeked inside the truck. It was empty.

Whatever they're delivering is inside already, Theresa thought. Which means we have to go inside, too. Great.

Theresa made fists to keep her hands from trembling. She jerked her head toward the door, motioning for Jo to go. Slowly the girls tiptoed into the warehouse. Both of them wore special soft-soled, Tower-issued shoes that masked most sound. But even they couldn't prevent the occasional creaking of the ancient warehouse floor—which sent rivers of ice up Theresa's spine every time.

“Shhh,” Jo warned.

“We should've brought wings and flown in,” Theresa remarked.

They waited until the last man disappeared around a corner, then advanced. The men paid no attention to
anything around them, shooting comments back and forth and laughing occasionally. When the big cigarette guy cursed at them again, they shut up.

The men eventually stopped in front of a wall on the main floor of the empty warehouse. Theresa noticed that it wasn't far from where they had picked up the silk sleeve. Two more men waited for them. Five in all. With three suitcases.

What are they doing? Theresa wondered, her pulse pounding in her ears. And what's in the Samsonite?

The big man stepped forward and clicked something on the wall—and a whole section swung inward!

“Secret door,” Jo whispered, grabbing Theresa's arm like a vise. “
That's
why we couldn't find a basement. It's hidden.”

Theresa nodded excitedly. They crept closer, pausing behind a pile of splintered wood next to a cement pillar. Theresa felt the grit grinding beneath her feet, but the special shoes kept it silent. Thank God.

The men bobbed and sank into the floor as they went through the door—as if they were going down a flight of
steps. Finally the last man slipped through the door, and it swung shut with a clunk.

The girls hurried over to it.

“Give them a second to move on,” Theresa warned, holding Jo's arm. “We don't want to run up their backs.”

“We still don't know where the switch is,” Jo reminded her, running her fingers along the smooth wall. Bits of soot fell through her fingers to the floor. She found nothing.

“It has to be here somewhere,” Theresa said, picking at every little imperfection in the paint. She probed the specific section of wall that she saw the man touch. “The big guy touched right here. Or close to here.”

“Better hurry, or we'll lose them,” Jo said.

“Yeah, they might take those steps all the way down to China,” Theresa replied. “Or Toledo. Or whatever's currently on the opposite side of the planet.”

“You're not nice,” Jo quipped.

“Aw, you just don't know me,” Theresa answered.

Adrenaline shot through her veins when her fingers brushed over a small imperfection in the wall. She
frantically dug in her fingernails and pulled down a small lever made of the same plaster as the wall.

“Got it!” she said triumphantly, instantly regretting how loud she was.

But it was too late for that—the wall swung inward.

Beyond was a pitch-black staircase. All Theresa could see were a few steps leading down. Then nothing. The men ahead must have moved on—there wasn't a sound to be heard.

Theresa peeked through her night vision binocs.

“It's blurry because we're so close,” she whispered. “But the stairs go down.”

Jo rolled her eyes. “I'm blind, and I can see that. How far?”

“About twenty feet. I can't tell for sure, but it looks like a dead end.”

They started down. The steps and walls were made of interlocking stone. It smelled damp and ancient. They ran their hands along the side for support.

“I don't hear them,” Theresa said, bumping Jo's shoulder.

“All I hear is you,” Jo replied, shoving her back.

“Watch it, Spy Girl,” T. warned. “It's a long way down.”

Jo chuckled nervously. “How do you know that?”

“Gut feeling,” Theresa said with a shrug no one could see.

Finally they reached the bottom. There was a square yard's worth of landing, but no way out. They were surrounded by stone walls.

“There has to be another secret door,” Theresa said.

“You think?” Jo joked.

They searched, but in the dark all they could do was feel. Crumbs of old mortar fell away from the joints. They did everything—they pulled, they pushed, they felt for something other than stone. Jo even checked for a good old doorknob. But nothing.

“You know what would be a cool gadget?” Jo asked.

“What?” Theresa replied, feeling along the top of the wall.

“A secret door detector.”

Theresa chuckled. “Good point. Make a note of it.”

“T., we checked every inch of these walls,” Jo said, crossing her arms across her chest. “It's just not here.”

“It has to be,” Theresa grumbled. “Five steroid thugs
with Russian Samsonites can't just evaporate. We have to check again. We must have missed—”

Theresa paused.

“What?” Jo asked.

“We didn't check the floor.”

“Grrr,” Jo growled. She sank to her knees. “Now I'm reduced to feeling around on my hands and knees?”

“No, no, stand up,” Theresa told her. “It's probably just a little pressure plate. Something quick and simple that you could find in the dark.”

She began tapping every little stone she could feel.

“Hey—I have a loose one over here!” Jo said excitedly. She hopped up and down on it, but nothing happened. “No fair.”

“Keep hopping. It just might be—”

Theresa's toe tapped a stone, and she heard a click.

The wall to their left popped outward several inches. A crack of light seeped through.

“That's it!” Theresa said. “Open sesame seed buns.”

“What do you mean ‘that's it'? My rock opened the door.”

“No way,” Theresa argued. “I felt a distinct click when I stepped on this rock right here.”

She tapped her toe for emphasis.

“I don't hear any click,” Jo said.

Theresa rolled her eyes. “The door's not going to click when it's
open,
brain cell. Can we move on, please?”

“Glory hog.” Jo shoved past her and slowly pushed on the open door.

“Return to stealth mode,” Theresa whispered.

The stone door swung easily on greased hinges. The light ahead was dim, but sunlike compared to the dungeon they just came from.

The secret door clicked shut behind them.

When their eyes adjusted, they found themselves on a rusty steel balcony at the top of a long metal staircase, like a fire escape. But they weren't on the side of a building—they were deep inside the subbasement of the warehouse. The floor was two stories below. So far down that it might as well have been two miles.

Jo and Theresa stared at the scene below, mouths gaping.

“Oh my gosh . . . ,” Theresa whispered.

Twenty feet below Jo and Theresa lay a massive chamber full of Kinh-Sanhians. Two hundred. Maybe three. And each was chained to a grimy sewing machine. Men, women, children even—they all hunched over their machines, churning out piece after piece of flashy clothing. Grime coated the workers. The scraps they wore looked like they were made from unusable bits of the cloth they worked on.

Armed guards—all of them with shaved heads—walked among the rows of machines. They barked occasional orders but mostly just hung back, made jokes, and smoked cigarettes.

The place sounded like a demented barnyard. One machine ran for a few seconds, then another one across the room answered it. The air smelled like stale cigarette
smoke, machine oil, and sweat. Bad sweat. The kind of sweat that was tinged with fear.

“Look at them all,” Jo whispered. “They're like zombies.”

Her eyes fell on one worker in particular, a skin-and-bones child who mindlessly fed cloth into her machine. A combination of anger and pity rose in Jo. Her mouth filled with the taste of copper. The taste of pure adrenaline.

“Underfed zombies,” Theresa replied angrily. “This is a sweatshop, Jo. A real, live sweatshop.”

“So that's Lucien's secret,” Jo reasoned. “But those people . . . they look like they're right off the street.”

“They probably are,” Theresa replied. “Think about it. The city streets seemed so nice and clean. Especially in the tourist district. I bet Lucien and his thugs kidnap homeless people and throw them down here to make his designer knockoffs.”

“And he pockets the cash,” Jo finished.

“Exactly.” Theresa scowled. “Courtesy of my mother's good name and label. This guy makes me want to barf. He deserves to die for what he's doing to these people.”

“T., how PG-13 of you,” Jo replied. “I think we'll just
have to settle with destroying his operation, unmasking him as a sham, and sending him to prison for the rest of his life.”