Bridget Wilder #3 Read online

  So you can perhaps understand how loud my heart is pounding and how hard it is for me to keep a lid on my simmering emotions as I climb into the back of the jeep. I lean forward so my mouth is level with Strike’s ear and whisper, “What L4E job is he talking about?”

  “I’m going on tour with them, Gimmick,” Adam Pacific says, turning to look back at me as if I’m a cockroach that crawled into the vehicle. “Their manager heard rumors that some of their security crew are planning to abduct the stupid band and hold them for ransom. They need someone undercover who can weed out the bad seeds. Kind of a waste of my talents, but I get to go to Madrid, Berlin, Bangkok . . .”

  “Stockholm, Antwerp, London, Manchester,” I breathe. I’ve memorized their tour dates.

  “And I get to fly on a private jet and stay in five-star hotels, and I probably get a huge allowance. . . .”

  I tune out his annoying voice and try to form words of my own.

  “What . . . but . . . no . . . wait . . . I . . . Cadzo” are the best I can do.

  “That’s the most sense you’ve made since I met you,” cackles Pacific.

  Strike shoots me a worried glance in the rearview. “Are you okay? Were you grazed by particles of the nano-snowball?”

  I let out a gasp of outrage. “How can you be so oblivious?”

  “I—” Strike starts to say.

  “Don’t you think I should have been the first and only choice for this job? Don’t you know how much I love L4E? Don’t you know the idea of this jerk going on tour with them is killing me?”

  Pacific hoots with laughter. “Congratulations, Strike,” he gurgles. “She’s an amazing spy. Totally professional. Perfect for any job.”

  Strike looks uncomfortable. “I didn’t know you liked them.”

  “Take a knife and stick it in my heart!” I yell.

  “Can I volunteer for that job, too?” says Adam.

  “How can you not know?” I’m getting louder, and I can tell even from the back of Strike’s head that he doesn’t know how to cope with me when I’m like this but I can’t stop. “Look at my arm!”

  I roll up my sleeve and shove my wrist under Strike’s nose so he can see the words Cadzo Army written in thick black Magic Marker.

  “Does that wash off?” he asks.

  I’m never doing another job for you ever!

  “Does Irina know I’m being treated like this?” I shout in his ear. Irina! Why didn’t I think of her sooner? She always takes my side over Strike’s. I let out a sigh of relief. The situation is about to turn in my favor. I snap a finger at Strike.

  “Phone!” I demand.

  He passes me his phone. I find my biological mother listed simply as Chechnya. I touch the call button. Be cool, I tell myself. Make your case calmly and rationally. Convince her you’re the best person for the job.

  I hear Irina inhale. Before she even has time to utter a syllable, I start speaking.

  “Strike’s giving the L4E job to that jerkface Pacific, and it’s not fair because I love them and I know all their songs and what their favorite food is and where they like to go on vacation and when all their birthdays are and I’d do an amazing job and I’d totally save them and I want it so much and I can’t believe Strike didn’t even think of me but you always have my back and you’re the best ever and we’re such good friends so can I?”

  “I should have left her in the sack,” I hear the jerkface Pacific say from the front seat.

  “She’s not always like this,” I hear Strike reply.

  “Bridget?” says Irina.

  “Yes,” I gasp. “Sorry. Hi.”

  “What’s wrong? Why are you calling on Strike’s phone? Did a war break out? You sound hysterical.”

  I manage to restrain myself from telling her that this is much more important than a war—though it absolutely is—and I repeat what I previously said, but at a slower pace and with a few sentence breaks.

  “Well,” says Irina. “I certainly understand why this is means so much to you. When I was a little girl growing up in Chechnya, there was a folk group whose name translates as We Ask Only for Crumbs of Bread, Yet You Feed Us Flies, and their songs made my gray world burst with color.”

  “They sound great!” I exclaim.

  “But I don’t think your other mother would approve of you going on tour with a boy band, and your other mother has so much more experience in raising a child than I do.”

  My heart shatters into a thousand pieces. When my actual mom, Nancy Wilder of Reindeer Crescent, Sacramento, met Carter Strike for the first time, she was all smiles, warm welcomes, and dinner invitations. He’s a chubby, affable guy who knows how to make people believe they’ve known him all their life. Strike fits easily into a family situation. Irina Ouspenskaya, with her black leather ensemble, mascara-smudged eyes, and faint hint of an East European accent, does not.

  Mom continually brings up how interesting Irina is, and what a free spirit she seems. For her part, Irina keeps talking about what an effective authority figure Mom must be and how important it is for me to have someone in my life who’s not afraid to seem boring. I get the feeling neither of them are saying what they really mean.

  “She raised you, she put in the years,” says Irina. “I will not be accused of disrespecting her.”

  I don’t have an ally in this miscarriage of justice.

  “Are you still there?” I hear her ask.

  I end the call. And my dreams.

  CHAPTER SIX

  One of Our Fun Mother/Daughter Talks

  “This is going to get so many likes,” laughs Carter Strike. He’s standing in my hallway, taking a selfie with my mom. They’re pretending to be fighting over who gets to keep the Businesswoman of the Year figurine.

  After we deposited the awful Pacific at a private airfield so he could go off and suck at the job that I was born to do, Strike and I came up with this plan to charm the pants off the Wilders—especially Mom—so my disappearance from the awards show doesn’t evolve into a national emergency.

  I didn’t say a word when he brought me back home, I just hung back and watched as Strike reminded my dad of the hike the two of them were supposed to go on. “You’re my fitness guru,” he told Jeff Wilder, who rarely leaves his comfortable chair. “I’m relying on you to get me buff and cut like you.” I watched as he congratulated Natalie on her success as head choreographer of the Reindeer Crescent Cheerminators and gave Ryan a link to a site that features bootlegs of the underground Mexican wrestling pay-per-views to which he’s now addicted. I watched as he admired Mom’s award and took the blame for my absence from the rest of the presentation.

  This is the story he tells her: “By an incredible coincidence, I was at a meeting in the Three Trees Hotel, and I bumped into Bridget as I was leaving for my next appointment. Being the well-brought-up girl she is, she insisted on walking me to my car. When we got to the parking garage, I found out I’d locked my keys inside the car . . .” The saga continues with incredible twists and turns—malfunctioning phones, stray dogs, open manhole covers—that make him look like a chump and me seem like a smart, kind, and resourceful young person. He ends by pointing a finger at me and saying, “You did a good job with this one.”

  “I guess I did,” Mom agrees, glancing in my direction. I strike a half-flattered, half-embarrassed pose. Mom makes Strike produce his car keys before she lets him leave, and extracts a promise that he and Irina will show up for a family dinner in the near future.

  Mom and I wave to Strike as he heads down our driveway. I let out a sigh of relief. All in all, not a bad day for young spy Bridget Wilder. An attempt to bring down a fast-food chain foiled by my sharp eye and quick thinking. My mother’s suspicions put to rest by a clever mixture of outright lies, self-deprecation, and making my family feel important.

  I head upstairs.

  “Bridget,” Mom calls out. “Can you help me with something in the office?”

  Haven’t I done enough? I feel like moaning “Do I
have to?” but after the incredible portrait Strike painted of me as everybody’s dream daughter, I have a lot to live up to. I shuffle into the small room Mom and Dad both use for their files and paperwork. Mom comes in after me and closes the door. I look at the pictures pinned to the wall. There’s the portrait of the stick-figure Wilder family as rendered by five-year-old me. There’s my drawing of our house with the windows made to look like eyes and a smiley face. There are some of Natalie’s vivid, colorful illustrations of rainbows and mermaids. (Ryan was also a prolific drawer. Mom and Dad paid him to stop.)

  Mom goes over to her desk, sits down, and looks at me.

  “Did you and Carter rehearse that?” she says.

  I wasn’t expecting this.

  “What?” is my quick reply.

  “Did you tell him what to say to us? Nice, personal, complimentary things to take our minds off where you went after you left the conference room?”

  Mom takes a pencil from the desk and taps it off her knee.

  “Do you think I didn’t know you were bored?” she asks me. “I know you thought the ceremony was stupid. The speeches went on too long, there were too many awards. Do you think I wasn’t aware of that?”

  “If you knew that, why did you make us sit through it?” I demand.

  “Because it was important to me,” Mom says, staring at me. “I started a business, and it’s regarded as enough of a success that I got an award for it. That means something to me, and I hoped it would mean something to you. I hoped you’d be a little bit proud . . .”

  “I was,” I protest. “I am.”

  Mom leans forward in her chair, her face flushed. The pencil tapping becomes more rapid.

  “Instead, I get lies,” she says. “If you’d come out and told me, ‘I was bored so I went to hang out with my cooler parent,’ I’d . . . I wouldn’t have been happy, but it would have been less insulting than what I got. Coincidence. Lost keys. Really, Bridget?”

  I feel my face redden. I don’t know how to dig myself out of this.

  “I get it.” Mom sighs. “Carter’s like a big, goofy kid. And Irina”—Mom draws her name out for maximum effect—“wears a lot of leather and looks like a vampire. They’re fun. They’re cool. I’m the boring, strict mom. But they’re not here. They only see snapshots of your life. They get to dip in and out and act like they’re your grown-up friends.”

  Keeping my mouth shut is physically painful. I want to tell Mom what I told Adam Pacific: that I’ve brought down criminal organizations, that I’m an in-demand spy, that Strike and Irina think of me as an equal. But I can’t say any of these things. I lean against the wooden bookcase with my hands shoved into my pockets and my right heel balanced on my left toe. If it sounds awkward and uncomfortable, that’s exactly how I’m feeling right now.

  “The Bridget that Carter Strike describes?” Mom goes on. “The one who’s so amazing? I wish I knew that girl. But I don’t anymore.” Mom squeezes her pencil tight. “The Bridget I know is thoughtless, selfish, and irresponsible.”

  “I’m not,” I protest. “Things just got away from me today. I shouldn’t have . . .” I trail off. What am I going to say?

  “And lying comes so easily to you.” She shudders. Mom closes her eyes for a second and then she stands up.

  “Believe it or not, I don’t enjoy having these kinds of conversations, Bridget. I want to trust you. I want to think the best of you. I want to know the Bridget that Carter Strike knows . . .”

  You really don’t, I think.

  “But we’re not going to have another day like today,” she says. “You’re grounded until further notice. If Joanna wants to see you, she can come here. If Carter and Irina want to spend time with you, they can come and do it here under my supervision.”

  Mom approaches me. She reaches out and takes my face in her hands.

  “I know it feels extreme and unfair, but what you did to me today was extreme and unfair.”

  I blink back a tear. Mom does, too.

  I hear a voice in my head. Tell her everything. Put it all out in the open. Tell her you’re a spy.

  It would make life so much easier.

  I hear another voice in my head. You can never, ever tell her. Ever. She could not handle it. Not for a moment.

  “I’ll be better,” I promise her. For the first time today, I’m not lying.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  NJ

  “I like T-shirt,” Joanna suddenly says in the middle of me pouring out my woes about Adam Pacific and Strike and Irina and L4E and being grounded.

  Up until a few months ago, the only time I expected to hear the words I like emerging from the mouth of my friend Joanna Conquest were in sentences that would end “. . . to see posters of missing pets” or “. . . the sound people make when they choke on sunflower seeds.” But then she lived in Brooklyn with relatives for a few months while her grandmother, Big Log, was in the hospital, and she evolved into a happy, friendly, caring, positive person. I’d even say fun. Big Log’s health took an unexpected turn for the better, which obviously was a huge relief to all of us. But it meant Joanna had to leave the family she had grown to love and return to Reindeer Crescent.

  Our friendship resumed as before. We walk to school every morning. Most evenings, Joanna comes over to my house after Big Log has settled in to watch her nightly diet of blood-spattered true crime TV shows. I share secrets from my spy life (only Joanna and my older brother, Ryan, are aware of my double existence). She grumbles about our fellow students at Reindeer Crescent Middle School. But that’s where the problem lies. I don’t think she really means it anymore.

  Joanna—or the version of her I now think of as Old Joanna, OJ for short—used to wholeheartedly hate every kid in school, every teacher, and every parent. Since she’s been back, her hatred feels halfhearted. It’s like she’s marooned in limbo where she goes through the motions of being OJ, but she’s really NJ—New Joanna!—a happy, fun, caring person, or she would be but she’s too scared to fully evolve. Do I say any of this to her? I do not. Instigating any kind of discussion about my theories regarding OJ or NJ would culminate in her regarding me as an untrustworthy enemy.

  “I like T-shirt” might be a sign that she’s aware of her own predicament.

  I give Joanna my full attention. She’s sitting on the end of my bed, painting her toenails yellow with Magic Marker. I stretch out from the top of the bed and poke in her in the back with my big toe.

  “You like a T-shirt?”

  “T-shirt,” she repeats. “You know, Marlon Moats?”

  It takes me a second. I do know Marlon Moats. Popular guy. Eighth grader. Plays soccer. Greets friends by shouting, “Yup, yup!” Wears a white T-shirt every day. Presumably a fresh one.

  “Hence, T-shirt,” I say out loud.

  “He’s nice, and he’s got these long arms. I have conversations with him in my head.”

  “About what?”

  “That’s private,” she mutters.

  NJ! A total New Joanna transformation right before my eyes.

  I wait to see if there are going to be further stunning revelations. NJ says nothing else. Opening up that much must have been agony for her. I poke her in the back again. “Turn around,” I say. She does. Her face is as red as her toes are yellow.

  “How are you planning to proceed?” I ask. “Are you going to tell him? Are you going to tell someone who knows him? Are you going to send him an intriguing message? Or are you just going to obsess over him? That can be better than an actual face-to-face meeting.” I hold up the customized L4E case of my new Forties phone as evidence.

  “Do your spy thing,” says NJ, almost shyly. “Find out about him for me.”

  “We can do that right now!” I exclaim. “We’ll go on his Instagram and his Twitter, we’ll . . .”

  She shakes her head no. “Too easy,” she says. “I don’t want to know what everyone else knows. I need an advantage.” Joanna is nodding excitedly and clapping her hands at me like I’m
a puppy ready to perform tricks for her amusement. “I need intel no one except someone who really understands T-shirt would know. Find out the stuff he keeps secret. Get inside his computer. Get inside his house. That kind of thing is like breathing to you.”

  Um. I get what she’s asking me to do. But honestly? It feels creepy and invasive.

  NJ senses my hesitation. She is not pleased. Again, in front of my eyes, I see her revert to OJ. That angry face. Those blotchy cheeks and tiny, accusing eyes I’ve missed so much.

  “I never ask you for anything,” she shouts. “And this one time I do, you slam the door in my face.”

  “There was no door slamming,” I protest.

  She climbs off my bed and stomps furiously around the room.

  “It’s because Dale Tookey broke up with you,” she says, glaring at me. “You don’t think I should have a boyfriend because then you’d feel abandoned.”

  Sigh. Dale Tookey, the hacker-slash-double-agent who accompanied me during the action-packed climaxes of my two biggest spy missions. The boy I kissed three times and danced with once. The boy who was always on super-secret assignments. The boy who emailed me out of the blue to let me know he was seeing a hacker who referred to herself as Ur5ula. (Replacing letters of the alphabet with numbers. Nothing pre10tious about that, Ur5ula.) The boy I try not to think about because when I do there’s a small ache that won’t go away.

  “But it’s not like someone else won’t catch the Bridget cold,” says Joanna.

  “The what?”

  “The sun always shines in Reindeer Crescent,” she explains. “It never rains. The temperature never falls below sixty. And yet people wake up with scratchy throats. They can’t breathe. They’re hot and sweaty and their heads are sore. There’s no reason for it. Just like there was no reason for Dale Tookey or my cousin in Brooklyn to like you. But they did. They caught . . .”