“But how could Jeffrey have known the location of the president’s safe unless his father told him?” Jonathan wondered aloud.
“Apparently, Harold Foster is a real chatterbox in his sleep,” Hammett answered. “And once Jeffrey got his hands on the second code, he contacted his father’s old friend Alan Feith, having realized that he would pay almost anything to access and then erase the Department of Justice’s files on him.”
“So no one wanted the nuclear codes,” Felix confirmed.
“Not this time,” Hammett said. “This time it was just about a greedy little kid and a greedy old man.”
“So what happens now?” Shelley inquired. “Vera and Felix head back to old foggy-bottom England and you put us on another case?”
“No one calls it foggy-bottom England,” Vera remarked.
“Well, they should,” Jonathan mumbled.
“Normally, I’d put you through a proper course of training and then get you back out in the field as soon as possible,” Hammett explained.
Shelley paused and then narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean by normally? What’s abnormal about the situation? Did you finally realize that I’m exceptional?”
“Doll, you’re an exceptional unexceptional, but an unexceptional nonetheless,” Hammett replied, pushed back his chair, and then looked straight at Jonathan and Shelley. “Prime Minister Falcon spoke to President Arons this evening. He asked that both of you return to London with Vera and Felix. MI5 needs your help with a case.”
“I’m sorry,” Vera said, “but could you repeat that?”
“Hammett said we’re going home with you,” Shelley answered, and then broke into a massive smile. “Shells and Johno are about to shake up MI5.”
OCTOBER 22, 9:32 A.M. 10 DOWNING STREET. LONDON, ENGLAND
The man was thin and wiry. He wore a pristinely tailored navy suit and an expensive yet understated wristwatch. Stuck in a perpetual state of scowling, he was not exactly what Jonathan and Shelley expected of a prime minister, but then again they didn’t have much of a frame of reference.
“President Arons informs me that you are the team responsible for stopping the sale of classified information, as well as bringing the vice president’s kidnapper to justice,” Prime Minister Falcon said in a stiff and formal manner befitting a conversation with the queen.
“To you he may be the vice president, but to me he’s just Carl, a close personal friend,” Shelley stated proudly while seated before the prime minister’s desk.
“In the spirit of full disclosure, sir, I feel you should know that Shelley has an incredibly low bar for what constitutes a friend,” Jonathan chimed in. “If you so much as wave at her, she’ll consider you a bestie.”
“But am I correct in assuming that you two were responsible for the success of the aforementioned mission?” Prime Minister Falcon pressed on.
“You are, sir,” Jonathan confirmed.
“Good,” the prime minister responded with a nod. “I do not ask for foreign aid easily. Only the most grave and dangerous of situations has brought me to do so today.”
“PM, may I call you PM?”
“Please don’t,” Jonathan whispered to Shelley.
“You needn’t worry because while my middle name isn’t ‘Grave and Dangerous,’ it would be if it weren’t illegal for minors to change their names without parental permission.”
Prime Minister Falcon’s stiff expression suddenly grew strained as he looked from Shelley to Jonathan expectantly.
“Oh, me?” Jonathan said. “I don’t have a middle name, which is actually a good thing when you hear the ones my parents were considering… Flash, Boon, River… I mean, what were they thinking? I could never pull off any of those names.”
“Yeah, no way. Frank or Larry maybe,” Shelley added.
“I do not wish to offend you two, but—”
“Oh, it takes a lot to offend us, right, Johno?”
“Right. It’s actually one of our strongest assets.”
“You two seem terribly inept, rather shockingly so,” Prime Minister Falcon declared unapologetically.
“Inept? You mean like we don’t know what we’re doing?” Shelley asked.
“Exactly,” the prime minister answered.
“That’s because we don’t know what we’re doing. And we’re pretty much not good at anything,” Jonathan explained.
“I hate to disagree with my partner, but I actually have quite a few hidden talents.”
“She doesn’t,” Jonathan stated emphatically. “But what we do have is an ability to blend in, to go through life without showing up on anyone’s radar. Why? Because we’re average, forgettable, normal. In the words of Hammett Humphries, we live in the world’s blind spot.”
“And that blind spot gives us access to just about everything,” Shelley said as she removed her glasses and looked the prime minister straight in the eye. “You may not believe it now, but in the end, you’ll wish all your spies were as unexceptional as we are.…”
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Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE
WELCOME
DEDICATION
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
EPILOGUE
COPYRIGHT
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Cat On A Leash, Inc.
Cover and interior art © 2015 by James Lancett
Cover design by Marcie Lawrence
Cover © 2015 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permission
[email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
First ebook edition: October 2015
ISBN 978-0-316-40571-3
E3
Gitty Daneshvari, The League of Unexceptional Children
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