Perfect Cover (14 page)

CHAPTER 23

Code Word: Footsie

Less than an hour after I’d actually agreed to go on a date with our school’s most eligible and broody bachelor, I was in Chloe’s car, along with Bubbles, the twins, Chloe, and Lucy. Tara and April had agreed to stay behind to prepare for our mission that afternoon, and equally importantly, for our party that night.

“So when you kick them, do you like kick them hard, or do you just sort of play footsie with their shins?”

Brittany and Tiffany were very interested in what they had termed my FT (flirting technique). I got the distinct feeling that it wasn’t so much that they had trouble garnering male attention on their own as it was that they considered themselves to be connoisseurs of the art of flirtation. That there was any FT in existence that they had yet to master was a matter of grave concern.

“Toby.” Brittany said my name again. “Hello, focus! Footsie?”

“Do I look like I play footsie to you?”

Tiffany nibbled on her bottom lip in concentration.

“Well, you didn’t before the Stage Six, but…”

I considered introducing Tiff to the concept of the rhetorical question, but ultimately decided that there were better uses for my time. The twins and I were sitting in the backseat of Chloe’s car, a chic little red number that totally wasn’t big enough for six people. Luckily, Bubbles and Lucy were so tiny that they only counted as two-thirds of a person each, and neither of them seemed to be the least bit put out that they were sharing the shotgun seat. Bubbles was equally unbothered by the freakishly bizarre angle at which her upper body was twisted and the fact that her positioning relative to the stick shift had to have been giving her a horrible wedgie.

“Do you kick them like this?” Brittany asked, and the toe of her foot made contact with my shin.

“No,” I said. “More like this.”

“Ow!”

In the front seat, Lucy started laughing, and Bubbles, always up for a good giggle, joined in. In a momentous lack of twin solidarity, Tiffany commenced giggling, and even Chloe Thrill-Driver Larson let out a short laugh. Was it possible? Was this a bona fide bonding moment? As I was pondering that question, Chloe took a sharp right, and my head banged against the window. As the resounding thunk filled the car, Lucy broke into another bout of high-pitched tee-hees.

I was about to tell Chloe in somewhat unpleasant terms to slow down when she whipped the car into a parking space and twisted around. “You ready?” she asked the twins.

Brittany and Tiffany immediately turned to each other. Britt smoothed her sister’s hair, and in return, Tiffany touched up her twin’s lip gloss.

“Ready,” they said, speaking in unison. It was strangely unnerving—I’d never seen them dressed identically before, and postsmooth/postgloss, they were more than identical. They were like the same person, which was, all things considered, more or less the point.

“You memorized the maps?” Chloe prodded. “You know your way to the executive wing? You’ve got a cover for each stage of security?”

The twins nodded.

Chloe took a deep breath. It was enough to make me wonder if she was actually nervous. Just how much did Chloe feel like she had to prove here?

“Here’s the magnifier,” Chloe said, handing them a small, wood-colored square. “Don’t lose it.”

As Chloe continued to rattle off directives, Tiffany slipped the magnifier into her bra like it was the most natural thing in the world. She was like a kangaroo with a freaking pouch.

“Activate your minicams, and you’re good to go.”

The twins, still moving in synchrony, fiddled expertly with their identical necklaces. Chloe adjusted one of the car’s cup holders, pulled out a keyboard, and typed some form of command in. Instantly, a large screen came down from the ceiling, and with some more nimble finger aerobics on Chloe’s part, the feed from the twins’ necklaces showed up on the screen.

“Audio.” I was unsure at first whether Chloe was giving an audio command to the car, or issuing an order to the twins.

“It should be on,” Britt said, ever the spokesperson for her twin. “We’ll do a quick check on our way to the building.”

Since we’d parked a good two blocks away, that seemed safe.

Chloe nodded. “Proceed as planned,” she said. “If any alterations need to be made in this initiative, I’ll make them from here.”

Alterations in the initiative…It wasn’t that I’d expected gadget guru Chloe to have a ditz-sized vocabulary, but still, it was an incredible jump from “Beat the Bobcats!”

“Ready?” Chloe asked.

“Ready,” the twins answered.

“Ready,” Bubbles and Lucy chorused from the front seat, where Bubbles, for some unfathomable reason, had placed her feet behind her head.

Chloe cleared her throat and turned around to give me a pointed look.

“Oh,” I said, my brain still dedicated to wondering how a person would go about contorting themselves into a pretzel shape and why exactly they might feel compelled to do so.

“Ready.”

“Ready,” all of the others said again, and I recognized the cheer-tone in their voices. “Okay!”

Unfortunately, my mind took that as a cue to launch into a mental rendition of our halftime routine as Tiffany and Brittany slipped out of the car and Bubbles (feet now a safe distance from her head) wiggled her way into the backseat.

A few minutes later, the twins’ audio clicked on. “Bangs.”

“Out.”

“Pointy-toed boots.”

“Depends on the color.”

“Designers whose last names are hard to spell.”

“In.”

“Heiresses.”

“Out.”

“Celebrity children.”

“In. When Angelina Jolie’s little boy grows up, he’s going to be a total babe.”

“Guys, we have audio.” Chloe took that moment to cut in on their game of “In or Out,” for which I was grateful.

“When you get within a quarter-block of the building, hold back, Tiff. Give Brittany a ninety-second head start.”

“Uh-huh,” Tiffany said.

“Awesome,” her twin agreed.

I watched the plasma screen as the two visual feeds split. From the one on the left, I could see the back of Brittany’s head as Tiffany fell back, giving her sister a lead. On the right side of the screen, the other feed showed us a clear image of the building as Brittany approached.

As Chloe’s surveillance reports had predicted, security on the bottom level was relatively lax. There was a single guard, and if it hadn’t been for the length (or lack thereof) of Brittany’s skirt, he probably wouldn’t have looked up from his computer, which I was about eighty percent certain he was using to look at a website whose name I totally didn’t want to know.

When a flash of real, live cheerleader leg caught his eye, he turned his full attention to Brittany. “Can I help you?” he asked, the question coming out noticeably too fast.

Brittany leaned forward. “I’m looking for a bathroom,” she said.

“Tiffany, move to flank position,” Chloe said. “Brittany, you’re a go.”

Tiffany approached the building and held her position just outside the double-door entrance.

After the security guard stuttered out directions to the nearest bathroom, Brittany flounced off. Two minutes later, Tiffany made her way to the desk. “Which way did you say that bathroom was?” she asked. “I get lost really easily.”

This time, the guard just pointed.

They hit the stairs then, Brittany taking the lead. If I hadn’t been forced to endure the Cheerleading Practice from Hell the day before, I would have been surprised at their stamina, but now I knew better. To someone who could do two hours of kicking, jumping, and shouting out annoying rhymes without ever losing her larger-than-life cheer-smile, eight flights of stairs was nothing.

The door at the top of the stairs was locked, and for the first time, it occurred to me that April, who’d stayed back with Tara to party plan, might have actually come in handy. After all, her “special skill” was lock-picking.

As it turned out, though, the twins didn’t need April.

“Tell them to use the grape-flavored one,” Lucy said brightly. Chloe nodded.

“Guys? Use the grape-flavored one.”

From Brittany’s video feed, I could see Tiffany reach into her bra and pull out what appeared to be a single piece of bubble gum. All business, Tiff unwrapped it and folded it in two. Then she bent down and smushed it between the door and the wall, even with the doorknob.

“Stand clear,” Chloe said, and the twins backed up a few steps.

The next thing I saw from the video feeds was a small spark of light, a single tendril of smoke, and an open door.

“Bubble-gum bombs?” I asked.

Lucy nodded. “Coolies, huh?”

Coolies
wasn’t the word I would have chosen to describe that particular explosive, but if I had one soft spot on the Squad outside of my partner, it was Lucy, so I let it slide. Without so much as a single sarcastic comment, I turned my attention back to the screen. The twins were no longer together, and Brittany was approaching a second security desk. There were two guards at the desk, and a quick infrared scan of the building, courtesy of Chloe’s cell phone, showed two more around the perimeter of the offices Chloe had identified as our primary target.

I expected Chloe to dish out some more directions, but instead, she just let Brittany do her thing.

Britt slinked toward the security desk. To their credit, these security guys weren’t looking at porn on their computers, but they were just as fascinated with Brittany as the guy on the first floor had been.

“Hi,” Brittany said, shooting them a slow, sultry smile.

“This isn’t the bathroom.”

“Hell-lo,” one of the guards said. The other one gave her a stern look.

“No, miss,” he said. “This isn’t the bathroom. This is a secured wing, and I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Brittany stuck her lower lip out slightly. “Leave? But I haven’t gone to the bathroom yet.” She leaned forward and grabbed a piece of candy out of a bowl on their desk. She unwrapped it and put it slowly in her mouth. “Can’t you two help me?”

The first guard dissolved into a puddle of testosterone on the floor.

The second guard trembled noticeably, but held firm. “There’s a bathroom on the first floor, Miss…”

“Bunny,” Brittany said. “My name is Bunny.”

I rolled my eyes. She was already practically oozing sexuality out of her pores. The name Bunny was probably overkill.

“Miss Bunny.” Apparently, the guards didn’t share my reservations about the name.

With security suitably distracted, Tiffany snuck out of the stairwell and positioned herself out of sight, behind a pillar.

“First-floor bathrooms are always so icky,” Brittany said. She let a single finger trail along her chest and down toward her cleavage. “And I’ve got such sensitive skin.”

“Bud, she’s got sensitive skin,” the puddle on the floor begged. “Just let me show her to the bathroom.”

“Please, Bud?” Brittany wheedled.

Poor Bud caved. “Fine,” he grumbled. “But, Jimmy, you wait for her right outside that door, and if anyone sees you, tell them she’s somebody’s niece.”

Jimmy, thanking his lucky stars, hit a button behind the security desk, unlocking the main entrance to the secured wing. Trying desperately to look debonair, he escorted Brittany inside.

Chloe watched carefully, and the second Brittany was in the bathroom, she cued Tiffany. “Go for it,” she said. “Guard at the desk is named Bud.”

“Bud?” Tiffany approached the desk.

He looked at her. “What are you doing back so soon?” he asked. “And where’s Jimmy?”

Tiffany stuck out her bottom lip. “Jimmy left me,” she said. “And I never found the bathroom.” She batted her eyelashes at him. “I thought maybe you could show me.”

Bud stood straight up, and I got the sense that when he escorted Tiffany toward the bathroom, it was more to ream out Jimmy than because of Tiff’s feminine wiles.

“Lose something?” Bud asked Jimmy darkly.

Jimmy did a double take. “But you’re in there,” he said.

Tiffany subtly pulled her shirt down and her skirt up. “I got lost,” she said, and poor Jimmy melted into another puddle on the floor.

“I’ll take it from here, Jimmy,” Bud said.

Jimmy looked from Tiffany back to the bathroom door.

“But…but…”

“Now, Jimmy.”

Jimmy, looking strikingly like a heartbroken puppy in a security guard uniform, started walking back toward the front desk. Bud gestured toward the bathroom door.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” Tiffany said. “I didn’t get lost. I just thought you were cuter.”

And then, while Bud, who was easily forty years old and forty pounds overweight, stared at her, she popped into the bathroom.

After straightening each other’s hair and reapplying lip gloss, the twins flushed one of the toilets, and then Brittany exited the bathroom, leaving Tiffany inside, undetected. From the feeds, I could see a newly confident and swaggering Bud escorting Brittany out of the secured area, and once both guards were back at the desk, Tiffany exited the bathroom.

“Doublemint complete,” she said under her breath.

“Good job, Tiff. Now go into the corner office and place the magnifier under the desk.” Chloe checked the satellite feed from the infrared scanner. Either that, or she was reading her text messages. From the backseat, it was kind of hard to tell. “One of the guards is in the kitchenette. The other is making his loop. He just passed the southmost corner office. Give it five seconds, and then head in. You should have about two minutes before he loops back by.”

Tiffany headed for the office. It was predictably locked, but another piece of gum (cherry this time) fixed that little problem, and Tiffany slipped the magnifier out of her bra and placed it on the bottom of the desk with the stealth of someone well used to sticking (nonexplosive) bubble gum to the bottom of the tables in chemistry lab.

With a murmur to Chloe indicating her success, Tiff slipped back out of the office, closed the door behind her, and practically skipped back down the hallway.

“Hey!”

I heard the voice from the audio feed, but didn’t see its owner until Tiffany turned around.