Spy Ski School (21 page)

“I know.” Jessica sighed. “He can be a huge pill sometimes. But I swear, he's not a criminal.”

“So he's really going helicopter skiing every day?” I teased. “Not plotting some sort of world domination?”

Jessica giggled. “Well, he did spend yesterday in a secret underground lair with a bunch of evil world leaders.”

I laughed along with her, definitely getting the vibe that her jokes were merely jokes. Either she truly believed her father was an honest businessman—or she was one heck of an actress.

Dane and his fellow goons didn't seem to think any of
this was funny at all, though. They were growing more and more on edge by the second.

“Okay, Romeo,” Erica said over the radio. “Shang's caravan is pulling up right now. T minus three minutes until he's up there.”

I wanted to stick the fourth bug under the coffee table, but Jessica and all three guards were staring right at me. So for the moment, I held back and gave my best acting a shot. I asked, nice and innocent, as though it had just occurred to me, “Who
is
your father skiing with?”

Jessica stopped laughing. “What do you mean?”

“You guys didn't come here with any friends, right? Because they'd be staying in the hotel. So who's your father skiing with every day?”

Jessica pursed her lips thoughtfully. “You know, I'm not sure.”

“Is he just going by himself?”

Jessica considered this some more. “No. He must have some friends here. The other day, right before he left, I heard him say he was going to see someone named Molly.”

The moment she said this, the three guards in the room grew even more alert than they already were.

I pretended not to notice.

“Molly who?” Erica pressed.

“Molly who?” I repeated.

Jessica looked at me suspiciously, as though I had just asked one question too many. So did the three guards.

“I have an aunt named Molly who lives near here,” I said quickly, trying to cover. “It'd be really weird if your dad knew her.”

Jessica's suspicions seemed to fade. “You're right, that would,” she agreed. “I think he said her name was Molly Denham. Or something like that. Is that your aunt?”

“No,” I said.

Dane was suddenly at our side, doing his best to look like he was being a gracious host, rather than a guard trying to divert us from what we'd been discussing again. “Hey, kids, I just got word that your hot chocolate is on the way up, along with your s'more fixings. Maybe we should get the fireplace ready.”

“Okay!” Jessica agreed enthusiastically, completely diverted. She leapt to her feet and went to move the grating from in front of the fireplace.

“Obviously, you struck a nerve there,” Erica told me. “The big guy's doing damage control. And Shang's coming in hot. Making a beeline from the car to the elevators. Not looking happy.”

I got to my feet as well, acting like I was trying to help Jessica, though I really took the opportunity to finally stick the fourth bug underneath the coffee table. One to go.

“I
love
s'mores,” Jessica said to me. “Don't you love s'mores?”

“I do,” I said, even though I didn't like them all that much. I was doing my best to be agreeable, trying to figure out how to get her back onto the subject of her father's business before he showed up again. “S'mores are awesome.”

Jessica picked up an enormous fireplace poker. “Think we could roast the marshmallows on
this
?”

“If the marshmallows were each ten pounds,” I said.

Jessica laughed once more, and then a thought struck her. “Hey, remember when I told you my father would take me heli-skiing at the end of the week if I got good enough?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, maybe you could come with us too!”

“Really?” I asked, genuinely surprised. “Are you sure your dad would be okay with that?”

“Sure. He's not
always
a jerk. I know he seems scary at first, but he's a big old teddy bear when you get to know him.” Jessica's eyes were alive with excitement now, the firelight dancing in them. “So what do you say? It'd be soooo much fun.”

“Sure,” I said. “I'd love to go with you.”

“All right!” Jessica exclaimed happily. “This is gonna be great!” And then, to my surprise, she gave me a hug.

It wasn't a big, meaningful, “I've fallen in love with you”
hug. It was a more of a quick, friendly, “hooray, we're going to go heli-skiing” hug. But Jessica was still a beautiful girl, and she smelled like rose petals, and it would have been really nice . . .

If her father hadn't walked in at that very moment.

The elevator doors pinged open and Leo Shang stormed out. He was probably already angry that I was there in the suite, but now, having seen his daughter hugging me by the fireplace, his face contorted in rage. “What is going on here?” he demanded.

Jessica sprang away from me, startled. “Oh, hi, Daddy!” she said. “Ben and I were just about to make s'mores!”

“That didn't look like making s'mores,” Leo growled. “I want him out of here. Now.”

The guards quickly sprang into action, swarming toward me.

“Daddy!” Jessica protested. “It was only a hug!”

Leo shifted into Chinese to speak to his daughter. Although I couldn't understand it, I definitely got the gist. It seemed to be along the lines of “First you brought this boy up here when you knew you weren't supposed to, and now
this
.” Jessica tried to plead her case, but it only made Leo angrier, which made Jessica angry right back at him.

Meanwhile, the two Chinese guards took me by the arms, lifted me off the ground, and carried me to the door.
Like I was a piece of furniture, rather than a human being. With my arms constrained, I didn't have a chance to place the fifth bug.

Jessica's argument with her father was growing even more heated. She was screaming at him now, livid at the way he was dealing with me. And he was just as livid at her.

Dane met me at the elevator with my ski parka. The other two guards allowed me to use my arms just long enough to put it on, then picked me up again.

The elevator pinged open again. The waiter stepped off with the hot cocoa and s'more fixings, saw the two guards holding me while Leo and Jessica argued volcanically, and stepped right back into the elevator, figuring this probably wasn't the best time to intrude.

The guards threw me inside the elevator as well.

Jessica stormed away from Leo Shang, heading for her room. She yelled one last thing to him as she went, shifting into English, probably for my benefit. “I just spent half an hour trying to convince Ben that you were actually a nice person! And then you show up and act like the worst father in the whole world! I hate you!”

The elevator doors slid shut.

As they did, I caught a final glimpse of Leo Shang. He no longer looked angry at Jessica or me. Instead, he looked devastated by what Jessica had said to him.

“Whoa,” said the room service waiter as we descended to the lobby. “What was that about?”

“I don't know,” I lied.

“Looked like he wanted
you
out of there in a big way,” the waiter said, then held up the tray. “Want a s'more?”

I took a single graham cracker. I was so shaken from the stress of my visit to the Shangs', I didn't think my stomach could handle anything more. “Thanks.”

The elevator opened at the lobby. Two more menacing guards were waiting for me there.

The waiter immediately pointed at me. “That's the guy you want. I had nothing to do with any of this.”

The guards brusquely escorted me out of the hotel, though at least this pair let me walk under my own power, rather than carrying me. They shoved me out the front door, then formed a human blockade there.

I set off down the street.

“Well,” Erica said in my ear, “that was intense.”

I waited until I was well out of earshot from any other people, then asked, “What set her off so much at the end there?”

“Leo told her she was grounded. No ski school for her tomorrow. Or the rest of the week. Looks like you just lost your contact.” Erica didn't sound upset with me about it, like this was a failure on my part. She simply said it like it was a fact.

I
still felt like I'd failed, though. “Are they leaving town?”

“Doesn't sound that way. Whatever Leo's plotting, it's still in the works.”

“I only placed four bugs. I didn't have time to get the fifth down.”

“Four's better than none. And you didn't have much time. I knew Shang wasn't going to be pleased to see you, but he ran you out of there a lot faster than I expected. What got him so angry at you?”

“Jessica hugged me.”

Erica didn't say anything in response. I looked around for her, figuring she had to be somewhere close, where she could keep an eye on the hotel—and me. But I couldn't see her anywhere.

“Erica . . . ,” I began.

“Grandpa wants you to return to base, ASAP. Going to radio silence now.” With that, my earpiece went dead.

I was caught off guard by how abruptly this happened. It wasn't unusual for Erica to be blunt, but she'd been even more blunt than usual. As though she was angry at me.

I suddenly got the sense that someone was watching me. I turned back toward the Arabelle.

Leo Shang stood at a window on the top floor, looking down at me. Even though he was quite far away, I could still make out his gaze. There was total and complete hatred
in it, all focused directly on me. I had no idea if he was so angry simply because his daughter had hugged me—or if he suspected I was up to something more—but it was terrifying either way. I shivered, then hurried toward the Ski Haüs, fearing what Leo Shang had in store for me.

The Ski Haüs

Vail, Colorado

December 29

1830 hours

That night, my motel room
became mission control. Everyone crowded into it, grabbed what space they could, and hunched over their computers. There was no time to go out for food. We ordered pizza and everyone scarfed it down while they worked.

Hank, Jawa, Zoe, and Warren, who were all learning Chinese, were put on bug duty. They sat on the beds, each eavesdropping on a different one of the bugs I'd placed, transcribing everything they heard to English on their
laptops, alerting us if anything of interest came up. Erica had commandeered the tiny bureau, where she was using her computer to try to figure out who Molly Denham was. Alexander was pacing about, on the phone with various people at the CIA, updating them on our progress and discussing how to proceed. And Cyrus was debriefing me by the bathroom, going over everything that had happened in the Shangs' suite.

Only Chip wasn't there. He'd been dispatched to the Arabelle to keep watch over it, just in case Leo Shang made a move. (Chip had been selected for this assignment because he was the only member of the team who didn't realize it wasn't as glamorous as it sounded. He'd been thrilled to get out of eavesdropping duty—only to discover that keeping tabs on the enemy at night in a ski town in winter was extremely dull and exceptionally cold.)

“I want you to really
think
about everything you saw in Leo Shang's room,” Cyrus told me, taking a bite of pepperoni, meatball, ham, and sausage pizza. “Then tell me all about it.”

I sighed. Cyrus had already been grilling me for an hour and he kept coming back to the master suite. “Like I said, I barely got a glimpse of it. I've already told you everything I saw. . . .”

“No,” Cyrus corrected. “You've only told me everything
you
remember
seeing. Which isn't much. After all that memory training we gave you, that's the best you can do?”

“I'm doing my best.”

“Well, do better. Remember
more
.”

I started to protest that this was ridiculous: How could I possibly force myself to remember something that I obviously couldn't remember? But I was sure that would only annoy Cyrus, and he seemed annoyed enough with me as it was. He had already described the results of my foray into the Shangs' suite as “borderline pathetic.”

So I tried to recall the tiny bit of the room I'd seen. But I could still think of only one thing. “The silver case—” I began.

“You've already mentioned that,” Cyrus interrupted.

“Because it's important, isn't it? It looked a lot like the cases SPYDER used to move nuclear missiles around in, only a bit smaller.”

“So your theory is, what? That Leo Shang has a small nuclear missile in his bedroom?”

“Er . . . maybe.”

Alexander walked past, on the phone. “We have credible intelligence that Shang has been doing some sort of aerial reconnaissance,” he was saying. “No, I don't know what he was reconnaissancing. But we believe his activities are suspicious.” He listened a bit, then cupped his hand over the
phone and looked to his father. “They say we need more evidence than that to authorize further action.”