In Deep with the FBI Agent

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My family, who ate a lot of takeout while I wrote this book.

Shanna Daniels—FBI special agent.

Erin A.—FBI special agent.

Katrina Seideman—Nutritionist.

Nanci B.—School board expert.

Megha Parekh.

Caroline Acebo.

Jessica Alvarez.

Kerri Carpenter, Carlene Flores, Allison Aimes—Beta readers and critique partners.

The teachers and administrators at Ransom Everglades for giving me a great setup.

THE Eric Lawrence, who's not a real life hacker, but plays one on Twitter.

Montgomery Preparatory School, 2001

W
elcome, new freshmen, to Montgomery Prep. Thank you for giving up your last day of summer break to come get oriented.” A tall, austere woman stood in front of the classroom addressing the thirty or so fourteen-year-olds who were sitting as far back in the room as they could. The front row remained empty. Sam had arrived slightly early, and, not quite understanding the social dynamics his peers seemed to intuit, had sat in the second row, center desk, then watched in dismay as all the other kids shuffled in and found seats in the back rows.

“
Don't get too comfortable,” the woman continued. They'd been told that she was Ms. Reamer, their freshman coach, but not like a PE coach. Sam had never heard of a coach who didn't do sports. Already, things were weirdly different than his public middle school. “I'm going to ask you all to stand up, and we're going to get started on the first activity to help us all get to know one another.”

Uneasily, the kids looked around at one another, no one wanting to be the first to stand. Ms. Reamer approached the front corner desk and said loudly, “Don't all stand at once.” She smiled as if she were the school's version of Chris Rock. “To get to know one another, you're
going to arrange yourselves in alphabetical order by first name and reseat yourselves starting at this front desk. You have four minutes. Go.”

There was a mad scramble and a cacophony of blurted names as the kids raced, eager to accomplish their first task at their new school and prove they were worthy of being students at what was considered the best private college preparatory school in the Metro D.C. region.

They bumped into each other and shouted their names trying to figure out which desk would be their own. Sam hated stuff like this and hoped this wasn't a precursor to the next four years. There were at least six different better ways to approach this task, yet they all insisted on acting like imbeciles. Why wasn't someone taking charge? Why wasn't
he
?

“
Two minutes,” Ms. Reamer called, and a moment of panicked silence fell before the chaos rose again. They spent the next two minutes trying to get themselves seated properly until, “Time!” The final two kids standing made a mad dash for seats.

A hush fell over the now slightly sweaty occupants of the room, but they were fourteen; BO was one of those sorry facts of life.

“
Not bad,” Ms. Reamer said, standing at the front. “But not great, either. Let's check your work.” She pointed to the front corner desk. “Name.”

“
Alex.”

“
Amanda.”

They continued down the rows until a red-faced Erica and Eric had to swap seats.

Holy crap, how was that Eric kid only in ninth grade? He looked like a senior. Junior at the minimum.

Sam tried to memorize as many names and faces as he could, but being in the last row now had its disadvantages.

When the last kid had said his name, Ms. Reamer said, “You will learn teamwork and leadership during your years at Montgomery Prep. I didn't see either of those things happening during that exercise. What was something you could've done to expedite the process?”

Sam raised his hand while a lot of his new classmates were visibly trying to define “expedite.” But he didn't get called on. Instead, Eric called out, “Name tags,” hoping to get a laugh. Sam inwardly groaned. The guy was big and thought he was a comedian.

“
That's an idea,” Ms. Reamer answered diplomatically. “Any other ideas?”

Sam raised his hand again, but a girl with long, straight, reddish-blond hair seated near the front answered, “We could've divided the room into three sections.
A
through
H
up front,
I
through
O
in the middle, and
P
through
Z
in back. Then from there, if we'd said our names one at a time in the group, it would've gone faster.”

“
Excellent idea, Casey. So good, I think we'll try it. But this time, we'll alphabetize by last name and the Zs will start us off in front and work toward the As in the back.”

Ms. Reamer barely had the words “Ready, go” off her tongue before the new freshmen were out of their seats and scrambling to get themselves in the right seats.

Sam stayed where he was and was pleased when the take-charge girl, Casey, headed toward him. About seven kids huddled in the last row, and when Casey pointed at them, they said their last names and stood on either the left or right of the person who'd gone before, depending on their last names. It was much faster and less chaotic than the first go-round, but still tricky because last name spellings were more complicated than first names.

“
Cooper,” Sam said, and Casey, whom he now noticed was extremely pretty, grinned.

“
Me too,” she said.

“
Ooh, you'll have to sit on his lap,” Eric, whose last name was Cohen, said.

“
You'll never work in a library,” Casey informed him. “First name?” she asked Sam.

“
Sam, Sam Cooper. So you'll be on my left.” He shifted over to make room for the redhead, or maybe her hair was blond. He couldn't exactly pick one color, as every time the light hit it or she turned, the strands of her hair looked blonder or redder.

“
I like the lap option,” Eric, who was on Casey's left, said. He patted his own lap. “You could sit on mine.”

Casey ignored him and turned to Sam, who couldn't take his gaze off her. She was so much prettier than any girl in his old school. He wracked his brain trying to think of something clever to say, but was interrupted.

“
Done,” Ms. Reamer announced. “Two minutes, seven seconds. Excellent work.” They all sat a little straighter, decidedly pleased with themselves. “Enjoy these seats. You'll be here for the rest of the day.”

They spent the rest of the day playing games and going over school rules. For most of the activities, they had to pair up with the person sitting next to them, and for Sam it was Casey Cooper. She was nice. Way nicer than he expected a girl with her looks to be. By the end of the day, they were exchanging jokes and sly sideways smiles whenever Eric made a boneheaded comment.

There were a lot of smiles.

Sam went home from orientation psyched for the first day of school in a new place where he already had a friend. He came home on the second day of school friendless.

Montgomery Prep, Present Day

Casey Cooper hung up her handset on her pristine desk. She knew her frown was going to cause a headache if she couldn't relax her facial muscles. Or maybe it was that she'd neglected to put on the glasses that the doctor claimed she needed if she was going to be staring at computer screens and small-print documents every day, all day.

Whatever. Doctors didn't know everything. If they did, her mother's antidepressants would've worked on the first go-round, and she wouldn't be battling the same demons thirty-two prescriptions later.

As cute as her glasses were, they didn't project the image she wanted, and, therefore, they disappeared into a drawer whenever she had an in-person meeting with a potential big donor to Montgomery Prep. She'd given a newly elected congresswoman and her children a tour of the school this morning, along with the director of admissions. Not the usual protocol, but here in the nation's capital, certain things needed a little finessing. The type of finesse at which she was an expert.

After the tour, she'd returned to her office to check on the RSVPs for the various reunion invitations that had gone out three weeks prior. She'd been pleased to see a handful had trickled in for the class celebrating their twenty-year reunion and one or two positive responses for the ten-year reunion, her own class reunion.

Annie, Casey's assistant, poked her head through the doorway. “What do you think? Are they going to write the check?” Annie had only been under her employ for six months, but Casey knew it was going to work and had plans to groom Annie to blossom under her tutelage. Lucky girl.

“I think so.” She crossed her fingers and held them up in one of the girlish moves she was so good at faking. Back when she'd been a student, she was queen bee of this school; she hadn't earned that position haphazardly. It had taken study; it had taken work. One of the things she'd learned was that people responded to girlish confidence and playfulness. People wanted to be around the fun girl. And so, dammit, Casey was fun.

“Any new RSVPs?” Annie asked.

“One. Did the decorator call back yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Give her three more hours, then we're on to the next one.”

Annie looked at her, wide-eyed.

“What?” She couldn't afford to lose yet another assistant, she mentally reminded herself, or the school would start to look at her as if she were difficult. She wasn't difficult; she had high standards and required anyone who worked with her meet those standards.

“We only sent out the request for proposal this morning. Maybe we should give at least twenty-four hours?” Annie asked.

“We give a lot of business to them. The least they could do is return our calls in a timely manner.”

Annie stared at her a beat, then released a breath and glued a smile back on her face. “All right. I'll send another email and queue up the next potential vendor.”

As soon as Annie's back was turned, Casey released her own breath. Annie had a point. A quality event decorator would be working and couldn't immediately return her call with a proposal. She didn't want to deal with a decorator who had hours to sit around waiting for a job, and she also didn't want to deal with a bigger corporate company who had admin after admin on staff answering phones. She wanted—no, needed—the personal touch for the upcoming reunion.

She'd been back at her high school as an employee for a year and a half since moving from another, less prestigious, private school in Atlanta. In her short tenure, she'd pulled in some big donations, but she wanted to lay a foundation for big donors and huge participation from the alumni. Montgomery Prep only had a thirty percent donation rate from its alumni. Thirty percent! That was unacceptable to Casey. She'd heard of some private schools in the area that had ninety percent. Which meant that Casey was going for one hundred percent.

And it all started at the reunion. Bring them back to their high school days, give them a good meal and alcohol, and hit them up while they were feeling sentimental, not to mention competitive. Nothing brought out the sharks like a high school reunion. Everyone attending was there because they wanted to show off how successful they were. Successful enough to write big, fat checks to her development office, she hoped.

That's what she kept telling herself. The fact that this ten-year reunion was her own class reunion was irrelevant. Oh, who the hell was she kidding? Casey Cooper had been head bitch in charge of her senior year; boys had fought to date her, and girls had copied her style. Ten years later, she wanted to prove she still had it. If she requested donations, her former classmates better pony up.

It was too bad Arianna Rose no longer had her trust fund at her disposal. One check from her could've easily hit Casey's yearly target in one swoop. Last year, Arianna had been the first call Casey had made upon taking the director of development job at Montgomery Prep. Casey had actually felt a twinge of guilt calling on the girl she'd teased for being too artsy in high school, just like she'd felt guilty every time she'd taunted Arianna in school.

With Ari's gorgeous red hair and loaded bank account, she easily could've knocked Casey off the most popular shelf if she'd chosen, so Casey had had to act. Casey had swallowed her self-loathing and teased a girl with whom, in all honesty, she could've been friends.

Best defense was a good offense and all that sports metaphor junk.

More than ten years later, Casey extended an olive branch, called Arianna to apologize, and took her for lunch. They'd shared a fun hour, reminiscing and circling the touchy subject of Casey being a bitch back in high school.

“Hell, you're still a bitch.” Arianna had laughed. “But at least now I understand how to hold my own, and I respect the bitchiness to a degree. Sometimes, it's the only way to succeed.”

Yep, Casey had thought she'd found the mother lode: a friend who was rich enough to donate six figures to the school without blinking. And then Ari's life had imploded and Casey was left scrambling to make her yearly quota the old-fashioned way: by calling donors to suck up. Damn Stanley Rose. She'd sent a hasty email to Ari to check in that her life was okay, but she hadn't offered her assistance, and, truthfully, she felt guilty that she hadn't acted the part of a good friend. A good friend would have shown up at Ari's house with meals and a bottle of wine.

Casey had rationalized it, telling herself that Arianna wasn't
truly
a good friend, more of an acquaintance, really. Still…she didn't like feeling guilty, so she'd sent flowers when she heard through the alumni grapevine that Ari was engaged.

Ten minutes later, there was a beep on her phone, which was Annie's code that
The Mothers
were coming. The Mothers were an interchangeable group of parents, mostly moms of current students, who volunteered a lot at the school. Casey had come up with the nickname a week after she'd started at Montgomery Prep. Their hours of commitment were commendable, but the women seemed to think it also extended into having a say in the running and daily operations of the school.