“He didn’t catch us.” I backed Tara up, even though there was a distinct chance that she would have preferred that I keep my mouth closed.
“He could have,” Brooke countered tersely.
“He’s dead,” I told her.
Even Brooke couldn’t argue with that.
“And besides,” I added, reaching back to unclasp my necklace. “If we’d gotten in and out more quickly, I wouldn’t have been able to get this.” I slipped the charm off the chain and threw it to her. Moving on reflex, Brooke caught it.
“The contents of his hard drive.” I smiled brightly, looking every inch the cheerleader. “And his email.”
Brooke became very still, her eyes locked on mine. “Seriously?”
I nodded.
She smiled. “Sweet.” And then, without a word, she tossed the data stick to Chloe, who caught it just as easily as Brooke had a moment before.
“Think you can have the data sorted by morning?” Brooke asked her.
Chloe grinned. “Natch.”
A few seconds later, I came to the realization that Brooke had put Chloe in charge of looking for meaningful data on my disk, and I actually managed to stop gloating long enough to protest.
“I can do it.”
Brooke didn’t pause a beat. “You can go home,” she corrected. “And rest. Right after you talk to Zee and convince her that you’re not traumatized for life.” Even though Brooke clearly considered this an order, there was something almost gentle in her voice. In fact, of all the words she’d ever spoken to me, these were the only ones that didn’t sound like some variation of You are a retarded cheerleader. You are a cheertard.
While I was still processing her tone, she turned to the others. “We’ve got intel coming in on the other three TCIs. We’ll split up and sort through the audio feed and GPS data on their movements since we planted the chips. If Chloe can pull something meaningful off of Kann’s hard drive, we can backtrack and download any info the Big Guys have on phone records to cross-reference any common contacts here in Bayport. With any luck, we may be able to identify the threat before the Big Guys do, in which case, we may actually be able to keep this case a Squad operation.”
I didn’t need Zee’s PhD to read the look in Brooke’s eyes. She didn’t want to hand this case over. For that matter, neither did I. Somebody had made me bleed, and that same somebody had killed my mark. That made this personal, and Brooke seemed to regard it as the same. This was officially one of those times when Her Royal Highness, the cheerleading captain, was a person I almost liked and borderline understood.
“Go home,” Brooke repeated her earlier order to me. I didn’t like it any more this time than I had before. I’d earned the right to be here. There was data to be processed, feeds to listen to, and she expected me to go home? Forget what I said about understanding her. She was clearly wacky.
“There is no way I’m—”
“Home,” Brooke said, and the bossy, I-Rule-the-World tone was back in her voice. “We’ll debrief you tomorrow.”
I looked at Tara, hoping she’d back me up, but she rolled her eyes. “You were nearly concussed,” she said. “One night off won’t kill you, and rest would probably be a good idea.”
Traitor.
“What do you expect me to do at home? Sit around and wonder what you guys are doing here?”
“What did you do before you joined the Squad?” Tara asked in what I hated to admit was a completely reasonable manner.
“Yeah,” Tiffany piped up. “We always sort of wondered that. Because, I mean, you like didn’t really have any friends, and you didn’t really seem like you did anything, and…”
Her twin elbowed her, and Tiffany, amazingly enough, shut her mouth. I was temporarily grateful to Brittany, until she came up with a suggestion for how I should spend my newfound downtime. “Do that deep moisturizing conditioner treatment we gave you.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Besides the fact that explosions dry out your hair, we’ve totally been meaning to talk to you about volume and bounce.”
Needless to say, that was a conversation that I would willingly have right after I volunteered to dance in the Nutcracker and legally change my name to Buttercup Posy-Pants.
“If you want,” Tiffany offered brightly. “We could come over and help you.”
Translation: We can come over and torture you. And then they’d follow the hair treatment by faux flirting with Noah, and I’d end up actually concussing myself by banging my head repeatedly against the closest wall.
“You stay,” I told the twins, shooting Brooke an aggrieved look. She smiled smugly back, and I realized I was being manipulated by the master. And her minions.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll go, but if anything needs decoding—anything—you call me. Deal?”
Brooke inclined her head slightly, and I got the feeling that that was as much of an answer as I was going to get.
“I’ll walk you out,” Zee volunteered. Tara opened her mouth and then closed it again. She’d probably been on the verge of making the same offer, but Brooke shook her head slightly, and Tara remained silent. With one last nod at all of the others, Zee and I made our exit, and for a little while, we walked in silence.
“Chip asked Brooke to homecoming,” Zee volunteered finally. She was always the first one to know school gossip.
“And Marty Bregman asked Chloe, but she turned him down, of course.”
I didn’t even know who Marty Bregman was.
“That’s the point,” Zee said, lifting the thought from my head. “You don’t know who Marty is. If he mattered, you would, hence Chloe politely declining.”
Somehow, I seriously doubted that Chloe’s decline was anywhere near polite. She had a chip on her shoulder, and the fact that Brooke had an A-list date couldn’t have been sitting well with her.
“Who are you going with?” I wasn’t exactly an expert at girl talk, but I was pretty sure that according to Girl Law, this was the question I was supposed to ask the Gossip Queen next.
“Aaron Lykeman,” Zee said.
That name I knew—vaguely. He was a football player and one of the Chiplings.
“Any other gossip?” I asked. To me, rumor was still a four-letter word, but as long as Zee was talking about other people, I didn’t have to worry about her going all Freud on me.