Perfect Cover (The Squad #1)(51)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Bubbles bit her bottom lip.

“Bubbles?” Tara prodded. “What’s going on?”

“We were working on some stuff for the party,” Bubbles said, “and our line of communication with Brooke and Zee went dead.”

Tara took off then, running toward the Quad.

I turned my attention back to Bubbles, to grill her for more specifics, but she was gone. That girl was stealth incarnate.

When Tara came back five minutes later, I was more than ready for some answers. Whether or not I wanted to be, I was part of this now. This was my squad, my team. Something was going on, and someone was going to tell me what it was, or things were going to get ugly.

“Tara?” I didn’t say anything more than her name.

“The line of communication with Brooke and Zee went dead shortly after they arrived in Al Jawf,” Tara said. “Approximately half an hour ago.”

“And that’s bad?” I guessed.

Tara sat down to put on her athletic shoes. “It wouldn’t be horrible,” she said, her voice eerily devoid of emotion.

“Sometimes the satellite signal fails; sometimes if you end up underground, the signal doesn’t reach.”

“Okay,” I said. Tara stared down at her shoes, her face perfectly calm. It was that look that made me ask more. I was noticing more and more that when Tara was perfectly anything, it was a surefire sign that she was hiding something. Perfection was tricky that way.

“It wouldn’t be horrible,” I said, repeating her words.

“But?”

“It wouldn’t be horrible, but right before we lost the signal, April and Bubbles heard gunfire.”

“Gunfire?”

“Shots were exchanged.” Tara finished lacing up her shoes. “You’d better put yours on,” she said, handing me an identical pair.

“Shots were exchanged?” I asked. “SHOTS were EXCHANGED?”

Tara moved quickly, and before I could prepare myself, she had me pressed up against the locker banks, her face close to mine. “Keep your voice down,” she said.

I hadn’t realized that my posh partner could sound quite like that. I could have fought her, and I almost did, but after the past forty-eight hours, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Yet.

“Shots were exchanged?” I whispered.

She nodded, eased the pressure off my body, and gestured with her head to the shoes. “You’d better put your shoes on,” she said for a second time.

I looked down at the shoes, but didn’t move to put them on. “Brooke and Zee were shot at, and we haven’t heard from them since?”

Tara nodded.

“And you want me to put on my shoes so that we can go practice our halftime routine?”

Tara nodded again.

Around me, all of the others were suiting up, preparing themselves to Go, Fight, Win!

“We’re not going to send in backup?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

Tara shook her head. “Our original orders were really specific. This is a two-person mission. No backup under any circumstances.”

“And if the Guys Upstairs said it, it must be done,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Forget the fact that they might not actually know everything. Forget the fact that Brooke and Zee might be in danger.” I gave Tara a look that should have pinned her to the wall the way her arms had pinned me.

“You can’t just leave them there. We’re supposed to be a team.”

Tara didn’t respond, but I wouldn’t let it go.

“We can’t just do nothing. What if they’re injured? What if the operative they went to rescue is injured?”

“I alerted Central when I called in about the disk.” Chloe spoke softly, appearing next to me. “They haven’t heard from Brooke either, but they’ve got tracers on their agent, and he’s on the move. Their statisticians think that, based on movement patterns, it’s likely that Brooke and Zee are with him.”

“And ‘likely’ is good enough for you?”

Personally, I was ready to take a little visit to Libya myself. It was totally and completely bizarre, but the feeling bubbling up inside of me was eerily similar to the one that made me bail Noah out of trouble again and again. Ginormous football players, international terrorists…what was the difference? Somebody was messing with something that was mine. That “loyalty” thing Zee had made such a big deal of was forcing me into action. Zee and Brooke were on my Squad. They were my… okay, maybe we weren’t exactly friends, but maybe we could have been. Or maybe we would be, but right now, that didn’t matter. I was ready to kick some butt.

“If Central hasn’t heard from them by tonight, they’ll send in some agents from the surrounding areas.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but Tara lifted a hand to touch my arm.

“They’d be able to reach them before we could,” she said.

“And if something happened to Brooke and Zee, our cover’s pretty much blown there. If they’ve captured two teenage operatives, none of us are going to be any less suspicious than Average Joe Spy.”

“So we just stay here and do nothing?” I asked. I hated doing nothing.

“No,” Tara said. “We cheer.”

Whether or not cheering was preferable to doing nothing was a matter of some debate. On the one hand, practice would distract me from my insane urge to hijack a helicopter and fly it to Libya. On the other, I hated our halftime routine with the passion of a thousand fiery burning suns. It was a toss-up, really.

“B to the A to the Y to the Port, Bayport Lions take the court! L to the I to the O-N-S; when we leave you’ll be a mess!”

My voice was loud and clear—and distinctly pissed off, but at least this time, I was getting the words right.

“Bay-port Li-ons.” I clapped my hands five times like a good little cheerleading newbie. “Bay-port Li-ons.” Clap, clap, clap-clap-clap.

By the time we got to the end of the routine the first time, my hands had gone numb from all the clapping, and they were turning a nice shade of borderline purple.

“It’s called cheerleading,” Chloe told me, rolling her eyes. “Not ‘angry punks with self-mutilating tendencies.’”

“Don’t clap so hard,” Lucy translated. “Cup your hands like this.” Clap, clap, clap-clap-clap. She demonstrated.

“See?”

“And smile,” Bubbles said. “Then you won’t sound so angry.”