Killer Spirit

For my biggest cheerleader, who’s been there through every step of everything I’ve ever done, and who would have loved me just as much if I’d never done any of it at all. A girl couldn’t ask for a better friend or a better mom, and I hope I grow up to have a daughter half as lucky as I’ve been to be yours.

CHAPTER 1

Code Word: Body Glitter

Once upon a time, I thought that the cheerleaders at my high school were no more capable of intelligent thought or true athleticism than the average dachshund. Suffice to say that unless the wiener dogs of the world have been holding out on me—big-time—I was very, very wrong.

“Amelia Juarez. Jacob Kann. Anthony Connors-Wright. Hector Hassan.” Brooke set the files down one by one, careful to avoid any undue wear and tear on her French manicure. “That’s four TCIs arriving in Bayport in the past two days. The question is why.”

Personally, I could think of a few other questions, starting with “What’s a TCI and why are cheerleading spies so fond of acronyms?” and running straight through to “Do you have any idea how incredibly uncomfortable this godforsaken polyester uniform is?”

To my credit, though, I somehow managed to remain remarkably quiet. Experience had taught me that if I waited long enough, someone would answer at least one of my unasked questions. Experience had also taught me that the fashionistas among us got, for lack of a better word,
cranky
when you criticized their fabric choices.

“What level threat are we talking about here?” Tara asked from my right. It wasn’t exactly one of my questions, but close enough.

“Nothing higher than third or fourth tier,” Brooke said. She arched an eyebrow at Zee in silent command, and our resident profiler obligingly picked up where Brooke had left off.

“According to our data, their connections to known terrorists and/or terrorist organizations are weak, but the links
are
there, and in each case, there have been enough person-to-person interactions with suspected terrorists to warrant full profiling and a place on the watch list.” Zee tucked a strand of jet-black hair behind her ear, a gesture I associated more with her ability to dispense gossip than her skills as a profiler. “All four are ambitious, and they all feel that they have something to prove. Amelia Juarez and Jacob Kann are terrorist-connected through their parents—lots of money, lots of power, long, drawn-out history of high-level crimes in both families. Hector Hassan is a businessman—again, young, smooth, very ambitious. And Anthony’s father is an independent operative working primarily for the U.S. and U.K. governments.”

Tara rolled her eyes. “Teenage rebellion?” she inferred, as if the children of operatives often rebelled by going over to the dark side and becoming wannabe evil masterminds.

“Try midtwenties rebellion,” Zee said, “but, yeah, more or less. Anthony’s driven by his father’s career choices as much as Amelia and Jacob are by theirs, but in a different direction.”

So far, we had a crime prince, a crime princess, an intelligence brat, and a young businessman, all with some kind of vague-ish connections to terrorist groups. The part of my brain that’s tuned in to patterns and codes played back everything that had been said in the debriefing so far, and zeroed in on the combination of words most likely to fit the acronym.

“Terrorist-Connected Individuals,” I guessed out loud. “TCIs.”

At the head of the table, Brooke rolled her eyes. “Very good, Toby,” she said, her voice syrupy sweet. “Do you want a cookie?”

As a matter of fact, I would have loved one, but somehow, I didn’t think Brooke’s offer was anywhere near the ballpark of sincere. She was our Squad captain. In operative terms, that meant she was technically my commanding officer. In cheerleading terms, it meant she was a bitch.

Either way, I wasn’t getting a cookie.

“No offense, Brooke, but it doesn’t seem that complicated to me.” I was completely unwilling to back down from the challenge in Brooke’s eyes or the condescension in her voice. “An influx of TCIs to Bayport can’t be a good thing, even if they’re only fourth tier. We need to know why they’re here.”

Before Brooke could roll her eyes again, I plowed on.

“It sounds like we’re looking at some pretty basic surveillance maneuvers—minimal interaction, bugs in their hotel rooms…”

“Trackers on their rental cars,” Tara volunteered.

Brooke didn’t acknowledge the fact that I’d actually come up with a decent (albeit obvious) plan. Instead, she turned to Chloe, the original “gadget girl in Gucci.” “Can you get the necessaries by this afternoon?”

Chloe nodded. “I’ll have the bugs and tracking chips in the guidepost by the time the pep rally’s over this afternoon.”

Tracking chips and pep rallies—par for the course.

Without a word, Brooke picked the folders up off the table, and began handing them out. “Chloe, you and April take Amelia Juarez, Zee and I will tail Connors-Wright, Lucy and Bubbles, you’ve got Hassan.”

There was only one folder left and two teams. In the split second before Brooke made her decision, I swore to myself that if she put the twins on active duty and left Tara and me at the school to clean up after the pep rally, someone was going to die. Painfully, and without so much as a single “Go Lions!”

“Jacob Kann is all yours, Tare.” Brooke handed the last folder to Tara, and by the transitive property, she handed it to me.

“We’ll tag the TCIs tonight and report back here afterward to debrief,” Brooke said. “No matter what, with the bugs up and running, we should have some major intel by this time tomorrow afternoon.” She smiled then, a tight, broad smile that took up most of her face, and with that relatively small change, el capitan went from Squad mode to squad mode, from agent to cheerleader. “Next order of business: What color body glitter should we wear today? Blue or gold? Thoughts?”

From TCIs to body glitter in less than three seconds. Confused? Join the club.

I’d been a member of the Squad for less than a month, and I still woke up most mornings thinking it was all just some crazy Twinkie-induced dream. Then I looked in the mirror, noted my perfectly sculpted eyebrows and artificially tanned face, and the truth sank in.

This wasn’t a dream. I, Toby “Antisocial” Klein, had really been recruited to the varsity cheerleading squad, only to discover that said squad was actually a cover for an elite team of government operatives. The most popular girls at my high school were actually secret agents affiliated with a top-secret branch of the government somehow related to the CIA.

Yeah. Try to wrap your mind around
that
one.

I’d joined the Squad as a computer hacker with a third-degree black belt, and they’d turned me into a cheerleader. After a series of more-than-intense makeovers, fashion interventions, and instructions on the finer points of the toe touch, I looked like a cheerleader, cheered like a cheerleader, sat at the popular table for lunch, and spent my afternoons training for and going on missions that would blow most people’s minds. That last part, I loved. The rest of it was pretty much Toby torture.

I checked my watch. It was only seven-thirty in the morning, and between the Great Body Glitter Debate of 2008 and Brooke’s refusal to give me any actual cookies, I was already up to two woe-is-me moments today. Considering there was a pep rally in my near future, I could only conclude that things were going to get much, much worse.

“Blue’s got better contrast.”

“But gold accents our tans!”

Apparently, the debate was getting pretty intense. How messed up was it that we could unanimously agree on how to handle potential terrorists, but nearly came to blows over body glitter? After a few more minutes, Brooke decided to put the “issue” to a vote, and as the others weighed in, I looked at each girl in turn. I had to actively remind myself that, sparkly cosmetics aside, these girls were a force to be reckoned with, and pretty much no one knew it but me.

Zee Kim, in addition to being a first-class gossipmonger/ party queen, was a former child prodigy. She’d gotten her PhD in forensic psychology at the age of fifteen, and soon thereafter transferred to Bayport High for the sole purpose of joining the Squad. The fact that she got a second chance at living the high school high life was just an added bonus—one that Zee took full advantage of, one A-list affair at a time.

Brooke I-Am-Captain-Hear-Me-Roar Camden was the very definition of A-list. She decided who or what was in, and behind closed doors, she was the one who ran our decisions by the Big Guys Upstairs, our vague and anonymous contacts in Washington. Brooke was a legacy, raised by a mother who’d been part of the Squad pilot program back in the day. As a result, Brooke had been taught from the cradle to do two things: to cheer and to lead our team like the little diva/dictator she was. Of all the girls, Brooke was the only one who could match me in hand-to-hand, which meant that when it came to combat, she was (as much as I hated to admit it) darn near amazing.

To Brooke’s left, the twins were adamantly voting for their body glitter of choice—gold. Brittany and Tiffany were absolutely identical and shared matching aptitudes for fashion and the manipulation of the so-called stronger sex. All things male melted into a pile of XY chromosomal goo in the twins’ presence. When they weren’t playing the seduction card, the twins designed our outfits for missions. They’d also appointed themselves the masters of my personal wardrobe, which was why I now owned more pairs of shoes than most of Young Hollywood combined.

Tara Leery—the most down-to-earth and therefore least Hollywoodesque of the girls—was a British exchange student whose parents were operatives overseas. She’d moved to Bayport to become part of the Squad, and as far as I’d been able to tell, she lived with an “aunt” who may or may not have been CIA. Tara spoke somewhere in the neighborhood of eight zillion languages, and could read and write more than that. She was my Squad partner, and from the beginning, she was the one I counted on to have my back.

Since I’d joined the Squad, my back had needed a lot of covering, due in part to the great deal of enmity that Brooke’s second in command, Chloe Larson, seemed to have for computer geeks in general and me in specific. A former child inventor, Chloe was now one hundred percent high school power player, and despite the amount of brain cells she reserved for playing the popularity game, Chloe’s grasp of microtechnology put mine to shame. Needless to say, she could also without question outsnob, outsnark, and outcheer me any day of the week.

That just left our peppy-to-a-fault weapons expert, Lucy Wheeler; our contortionist and resident space cadet (figuratively speaking), Bubbles (yes,
Bubbles
) Lane; and April Manning—the only other new recruit this season besides yours truly.

Looking at the girls, split 5–4 on the body glitter issue, I thought about everything that I knew they were capable of doing. They were smart. They were athletic. They were beautiful, and they were continually and severely underestimated.

They were, in other words, perfect spies.

“Toby? Earth to Toby?”

I registered Brooke’s tone and sent her a look that some people might have described as surly. “What?”

“Blue or gold?”

Apparently, they were still waiting for my vote. Let’s see, I thought, what color body glitter do I want to wear?

“Neither.”

Brooke smiled. “Blue it is.”

Damn.