“Let’s put that to the test, shall we?” Joshua flicked the lights on, illuminating the entire firing range. Hanging at the far end, instead of the standard silhouette of a human body, was a full-size photograph of Erica Hale. Joshua then plucked the gun from his holster and placed it in my hand. “Show me what you’d do to her.”
I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. I had never liked guns much—and I liked the idea of aiming them at people even less. (Although this was infinitely preferable to having people aim guns at me.) So the idea of aiming at someone I cared about—even if it was only a photograph of them—was nauseating.
But I knew I couldn’t reveal this. I ignored my queasiness, spun toward the target, and pulled the trigger repeatedly, emptying the clip.
I missed with every shot. The closest I got was a bullet hole six inches from Erica’s knee—and that shot had actually ricocheted off the floor.
Mr. Seabrook rolled his eyes in exasperation.
“Your marksmanship could use some work,” Joshua observed dryly. “However, the intent was still impressive.” A tiny smile flickered across his face, as though he was actually pleased with me.
A tinny beeping suddenly echoed in the firing range.
Mr. Seabrook snapped to his feet, eyes wild with fear. “Is that a bomb?”
“Don’t have a heart attack,” Murray chided. “It’s just my watch alarm. Class time’s over.” He turned to Joshua. “Are we done here? Because we’ve got a beach to go to.”
“Really?” Ashley asked, surprised. “We’re going today?”
“Right now.” Murray grinned. “Unless you’d all rather continue this lecture.”
“No way!” Ashley exclaimed, then seemed to think better of it and turned to Joshua. “No offense.”
“It’s okay. I understand,” Joshua said, though he looked quite annoyed. Whether he was annoyed at Ashley or Murray was hard to guess.
“Go pack your bathing suits,” Murray ordered us. “I’ve already got everything else in the car. Towels, snacks, sunblock, you name it.”
“All right!” Ashley bolted out of the firing range, so excited that she executed two handspring flips en route.
Nefarious shuffled out after her. It seemed he might have been excited too. He looked the same as he always did, but he seemed to be shuffling faster than usual.
I followed them, although by the time I was out the door, both had already disappeared down the hall.
So I paused there, out of sight of Murray and Joshua, and listened, wondering what I might hear.
Back inside the firing range, Joshua said, “Your orders were to do a surveillance run, not lead a field trip.”
“I am doing the surveillance run,” Murray shot back. “But I made a judgment call. I’ll blend in better with everyone else than I will alone.”
“You didn’t make this call. You allowed Ben to manipulate you into it.”
“No. I had to go to the beach anyhow, and I let him think it was his idea.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Well, your boss approved it, so it doesn’t matter if you like it or not.”
There was an uncomfortable pause. Then Joshua said, “Murray, I know you like to pretend that you’re at the same level I am, but you’re not. I’m a full-fledged member of SPYDER, while you still have a great deal to learn. Humility, for one thing. In addition to your surveillance, you’d better keep a very close eye on Ben Ripley.”
Murray sighed. “I know you’ve got issues with Ben because he turned you into half the man you used to be, but I know him. And I promise you, we can trust him. He’s on our side now.”
“You can’t trust anybody.”
“Whatever the case, he doesn’t know what we’re planning and he doesn’t know what today’s really about. He and Ashley and the Video Freak were all just champing at the bit to get out of here for a little while. They’ve been working hard, seven days a week. If you don’t give them a little time off, they’ll go psycho.”
“That’s a bad thing?” Joshua asked. “We could use a few more psychos at this place.”
“They deserve some fun. It’s good for morale to let them have it. And besides, I have to check out fifty-six anyhow. So why not kill two birds with one stone? I know how much you like killing things.”
I didn’t get to hear Joshua’s reply. Instead, I heard footsteps coming my way. Given the heavy, plodding nature of them, it sounded like Mr. Seabrook was on his way out of the firing range.
I slipped away before he could catch me eavesdropping and raced home to get dressed for the beach. I had no idea what “fifty-six” was, but I was determined to find out.
I finally had my first lead.
RECREATION
Sandy Hook National Seashore
September 15
1600 hours
It turned out that SPYDER’s gated community—the headquarters for the most malicious, dangerous, subversive enemy organization in the world—was in New Jersey.
There was no way Murray could keep me in the dark about this once we’d driven out the gates. There were too many signs: signs for highways, signs for turnpikes, signs indicating how far it was to New York City and Philadelphia. Even a master of obfuscation like Murray couldn’t keep me from noticing at least a few of them.
However, he did try very hard to keep me from figuring out exactly where in New Jersey Hidden Forest was. Murray had procured a sedan from the SPYDER motor pool for us and was driving himself even though he was only fourteen. (Given that Murray had once been part of a plot to assassinate multiple world leaders, driving without a proper license probably didn’t seem like much of a crime to him.) In order to keep an eye on me, he’d assigned me the shotgun seat—over the protests of Ashley, who claimed she had seniority—and he spent the entire drive trying to distract me from paying attention to my surroundings. He insisted I work the radio, asked me to dig through his beach bag in search of his sunglasses (which turned out to have been in his pocket all along), and repeatedly dropped his gun between the seats, which I then had to recover before it discharged and wounded someone. By the time we hit the New Jersey Turnpike, I’d deduced that we were somewhere around Plainfield, but I had no idea how to get back to Hidden Forest from there. Adding to my confusion was the fact that SPYDER had been brilliant in choosing to disguise their compound as a gated community. There were gated communities everywhere in suburban New Jersey—and most of them looked exactly like Hidden Forest.
Murray probably could have dispensed with all the tricks; his horrible driving was more than enough to distract me. He was constantly getting distracted himself, veering out of his lane, blowing through stop signs, and nearly plowing into other cars, until Ashley, Nefarious, or I—and often all three—screamed at him to watch what he was doing before he killed us. By the time we reached the beach, I’d clenched the armrest in fear so many times that I’d dug furrows into it with my fingernails. Ashley was so thrilled that we’d survived the trip, she kissed the ground when she got out of the car.
Murray had brought us to a national seashore called Sandy Hook, which was the northernmost beach on the Jersey Shore, a thin peninsula that jabbed northward into Lower New York Bay. I’d never even heard of Sandy Hook before. It was beautifully pristine, especially compared to the other Jersey beaches we’d passed, where homes were crowded up right onto the sand. New York City was surprisingly close across the bay. Coney Island in Brooklyn was only six miles across the water, and to the west of it, I could see the towers and bridges of Manhattan peeking up from behind Staten Island.
As it was mid-September, summer was still lingering, providing perfect beach weather. It was also a Tuesday, so the beach wasn’t horribly crowded, although there were still a good number of adults who had slipped away from work for the afternoon and students who had come down after school. Murray had apparently selected our parking place, in part, due to the large concentration of teenage girls in bikinis in the area. He seemed particularly taken with a group of b
londes who were tanning close by and chatting about shoes in classic Jersey accents.
Ashley quickly snapped off her T-shirt and shorts, revealing she was in a bikini herself. Nefarious opted for significantly more sun protection, pulling on a long-sleeved rash guard. It was probably a good idea, as his flesh was pale and white as the belly of a flounder.
The Jersey girls noticed him and snickered cruelly.
Nefarious stared at the sand, trying to hide his wounded expression. I still saw it, though, and got the sense this was an all-too-familiar experience for Nefarious.
I wondered if this had played into his decision to join SPYDER. A kid who’d spent his life being teased and tormented might have a pretty big grudge against the world.
Ashley didn’t notice. In fact, she teased Nefarious as well. “See that big bright thing up there?” she asked, pointing at the sky. “It’s called the sun. Apparently, you’ve never been out in it before.”
“You’re hilarious,” Nefarious muttered.
I peeled off my shirt, pried off my sneakers, and dropped everything in the sand.
Ashley bolted for the water. “Last one in is a federal agent!”
Nefarious and I took off after her, but with her muscular legs, Ashley beat us soundly. She plunged directly into the surf, then came up whooping with delight.
I came in second with Nefarious far behind. He entered the water tentatively, as though afraid it might be poisonous. It was perfect, though, just the right temperature, refreshingly cool without being cold. I caught up to Ashley where it was knee deep.
“Losers!” Ashley taunted. “You guys are slame! Slow plus lame!”
“You gave yourself a head start,” I pointed out. “That’s cheating.”
“Last time I checked, we were training to be bad guys, not Girl Scouts,” Ashley replied. “And I wasn’t even running my fastest. Maybe you guys should spend a little less time doing math problems or gaming and a little more time at the gym.”
Nefarious finally caught up to us. He looked extremely uncomfortable in the water. I guessed that, if the Jersey girls hadn’t been there to laugh at him, he probably would have stayed back on the sand. “You know there’s a reason for all my gaming,” he mumbled.
I started to ask what this was, but before I could, Ashley asked, “Want to play Sneak Attack?”
“Sure,” I said gamely. “How do you . . . ?”
Ashley suddenly lashed a foot out and knocked my legs out from under me. “Sneak attack!”
I toppled into the ocean, but rather than give Ashley the pleasure of seeing me come up sputtering, I stayed below the surface. I fumbled around in the silty water until I found Ashley’s ankle, grabbed on tight, and yanked her off her feet. Then I surfaced, crowing triumphantly. “Sneak attack back at you!”
“Not quite,” Ashley said behind me.
I spun around, startled. I had barely a moment to register that I’d actually dunked Nefarious, rather than Ashley, before she took me down again.
This time, I did come up spluttering. Nefarious did the same thing right beside me. He glared in my direction.
“She did it,” I said, pointing at Ashley.
Nefarious bought it. “Not cool,” he said, then lunged at her.
While they chased each other around in the surf, I looked back to the beach to see what Murray was up to. Instead of coming into the water with us, he’d parked himself in a beach chair beneath an umbrella, a cooler full of sodas by his side. There was a book in his lap, but with his sunglasses on, there was no way to tell if he was actually reading it—or merely using it as a prop while he spied on something else nearby.
I looked up and down the beach, wondering what the “fifty-six” was that Murray had orders to survey. Beyond the road we’d come in on, a scrub-covered hill rose from the sand. There were a few low buildings behind it. I couldn’t tell what they were, but they didn’t appear to be residential.
I returned my attention to Murray. He was looking around now, not even pretending to read his book. He polished off a soda and tossed the can aside, then got to his feet and picked up a camera.
It was a big camera with a long lens. The kind serious photographers used. Not the kind you brought to the beach to snap a few pictures with your friends.
My feet were suddenly yanked out from under me. It happened from behind this time, so I face-planted directly into the ocean, catching a noseful of salt water.
I came up, gagging, to find Ashley grinning impishly. “Sneak attack!” she cried.
Nefarious staggered up behind her, looking like he’d been dunked several times himself. “I hate this stupid game,” he muttered.
I tried to snort the salt water back out of my sinuses. “Any idea what Murray’s taking pictures of?”
The others glanced toward the beach quickly, as though afraid this was a ruse I was using to distract them from a sneak attack. When they realized Murray was really taking pictures, they dropped their guard and watched him a bit longer.
“Looks like he’s photographing those girls,” Nefarious mumbled.
Indeed, the bikini-clad blondes were now up and about, slathering on more tanning lotion.
Ashley made a face. “Ick. That’s pretty greevy. Gross plus skeevy.”
“You think that’s why he suggested coming here?” I asked. “To scope out girls?”
Ashley looked to me, slightly suspicious. “What are you getting at?”
“Nothing,” I said innocently. “I’m only asking. I mean, if he just wanted to see girls, there are probably girls at the mall. And it would’ve been a lot closer.”
“These girls are wearing bikinis,” Nefarious pointed out. Despite the fact that they’d laughed at him, he seemed pretty interested in them himself.
I looked back to the beach. Murray wasn’t aiming his camera at the girls anymore. He was aiming the opposite way, toward the scrubby hills. “What’s he shooting now?” I asked.
“He’s probably only pretending like he’s not taking pictures of the girls anymore,” Ashley said. “So they don’t realize that he is taking pictures of them and think he’s a pervert.”
“Maybe he’s not taking pictures of girls at all,” I said. “Maybe he’s taking pictures of those buildings over there.”
“What buildings?” Ashley asked.
“The ones behind that little hill,” I said.
Ashley and Nefarious looked that way, seeming to notice the low-slung buildings for the first time.
“Why would Murray want to take pictures of buildings?” Ashley asked.
I shrugged. “Beats me. It just looks like he’s doing it is all.”
“Why are you so interested in what Murray’s doing?” Ashley demanded.
“Shouldn’t we all be?” I shot back. “You guys went through a lot of trouble to spring him. And the first thing he does is bring us all to the beach?”
“That’s not the first thing he did,” Nefarious grumbled. “The first thing he did was eat all our bacon.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, will you forget about the bacon?” Ashley asked.
“Okay, so not the first thing,” I corrected. “But you know what I mean. He’s a wanted man. And you’re the ones who freed him. You all ought to be lying low. And then he brings us to the beach?”
“Maybe he’s hiding in plain sight,” Ashley said. “The beach is probably the last place the Feds would ever expect an escaped criminal to go.”
“It’s still not as safe as just staying at Hidden Forest,” I pointed out.
“I thought the beach was your idea,” Ashley replied. “Weren’t you the one who pressed Murray to get us out of the compound?”
“Yeah,” I admitted, “but I didn’t say I wanted to come here. This was Murray’s suggestion. I didn’t even know what country we were in until an hour ago.”
“He’s taking pictures of the girls again,” Nefarious reported.
I returned my attention to the beach. Murray’s camera was pointed back toward the blon
des, who were now playing Frisbee. Or, at least, they were trying to play Frisbee. They weren’t very good at it. As we watched, one accidentally pegged another in the face with the Frisbee from five feet away. Murray kept the camera aimed at them the whole time.
“Yeah. Girls,” Ashley said. “That’s definitely why he picked this beach.”
I frowned. Either my fellow students didn’t know Murray’s real intentions for bringing us to Sandy Hook—or they were doing a fantastic job of keeping me in the dark.
Whatever the case, I was quite sure Murray hadn’t chosen that beach randomly. While he certainly liked girls, if he’d merely wanted to take photos of them in bikinis, we had passed other beaches on the way there.
One of the blondes now misfired a Frisbee terribly, nearly nailing Murray in the head. He didn’t even seem to notice it as it flew past.
“See that?” I asked. “If he was really watching the girls, how come he didn’t see the Frisbee coming at him?”
“Because he’s watching the girls, not their Frisbee,” Ashley replied.
A blonde in sunglasses ran over to our section of beach to grab the Frisbee. Now Murray noticed her. He lowered the camera, flashed a grin, and said something I was too far away to hear, but it was probably supposed to sound suave. The blonde wasn’t impressed. She ran right back to her friends without so much as a glance at him.
“Why do we even care what Murray’s doing?” Ashley asked. “We’re at the beach. Let’s have some fun!”
“I’m not playing Sneak Attack anymore,” I told her.
“All right,” Ashley said. “Let’s play Deception instead.”
“How do we play that?” I asked.
“It’s simple. All you do is . . .” Ashley suddenly turned back toward the beach. “Whoa. What’s Murray doing now?”
I turned back that way. The moment I took my eyes off Ashley, she swept my legs out from under me again, plunging me back into the water. “Deception!” she crowed.