Prettyboy Must Die Read online

  After I fight with my always-stuck locker door and grab my backup glasses from the shelf, I see Bunker passing by and nod at him. Katie also goes by but I do nothing, mostly because she hasn’t even looked in my direction. She knows exactly where my locker is, so she has to be working hard not to notice me. Again, not that I blame her.

  Then, I see the scary blond freshman coming down the hall and there’s no question whether she notices me. She slows her pace as she nears my locker. If she comes over, I’m going out of nerd-boy character long enough to tell her I’m not interested and to back the hell off. In fact, I’ll tell her exactly what I think about her whole Twitter game. But she continues past me, calling out, “Hey there, prettyboy,” as she lowers her eyeglasses a little, winking at me over them. “Your picture in the student directory didn’t do you justice, so I did.”

  Wait—aren’t those my glasses?

  I’m about to chase her down when Mr. Velasquez, my chem teacher, ushers me into his classroom, saying, “Don’t want to be late, do we, Mr. Smith?” forcing me to deal with my number-one fan later.

  When I walk into the room, I see Carlisle’s resident douche—and my fifth possible suspect—at the lab table in back of the class. I always sit in the last row, and I always sit at that table.

  “Excuse me, but would you mind going to your own table now?” I ask him as pleasantly as possible. “Class is about to start.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do mind. Think I’ll sit here today.”

  Being able to seriously jack up a dude doesn’t quite go with the nerdy persona I’ve created, but if anyone ever makes me go out of character in the name of a justified ass-kicking, it will be Duke Duncan. Nice gets you nowhere with this guy.

  “Outta my seat,” I tell him, hoping a stern voice will be enough.

  Duncan looks incredulous, as though I’ve asked him to do something impossible, like be a decent human being. “Make me.”

  Oh, don’t tempt me. But I make like Gandhi and try the peaceful approach. “Will this do it?” I hand him the bill Jonesy just refused.

  “That’ll do just fine,” he says, grabbing the fiver. Finally, someone who doesn’t turn down my money, even mad-rich Duncan. “But I would have done it for free. Watching your expression when you see this would have been payment enough, considering your hate of any and all social interaction.”

  Duncan’s a douche in English Lit and German, too, where I’m also his favorite target despite my efforts to avoid him. He’s right about me keeping a low profile, but in his case, my aversion is to him specifically.

  “See what?” I ask, not able to help myself.

  Duncan gets out of my seat as he hands me his phone, where I see the same photo Bunker showed me this morning.

  “Yeah, I already know about that,” I say, handing it back to him.

  “No, take a closer look,” Duncan instructs. “Scroll down some.”

  I do, and see that the photo is now tagged #Prettyboy. I scroll down some more and see a bunch of comments like:

  Oooh, he really is a #Prettyboy. Grabby hands!

  Yum, #Prettyboy. Want.

  Does anyone have #Prettyboy’s number?

  Forget his number. I need #Prettyboy’s address.

  But wait, there’s more. There are now 5,083 retweets. How is that even possible since first period? I scroll up the page, terrified to look but knowing I have to. And yes, it gets worse. Much worse.

  “Now that’s the look I would have given up your seat for, no charge,” Duncan says, grabbing his phone before I can drop it as I nearly go into shock. Maybe I should have reported this to Rogers after all. Maybe now it’s time to panic.

  #Prettyboy is trending in Denver.

  CHAPTER 6

  No matter how trivial his boss thinks the mission, or how exclusive the boarding school he’s enrolled in, or how bucolic the campus, having his cover blown is the absolute worst thing that can happen to a covert operative.

  The only thing keeping me from a complete and total meltdown right now is the fact that the hacker doesn’t know who I am, what I look like, or that I’m at Carlisle. I’m hoping whoever he works for doesn’t either, and that if they do, they’re too busy selling weapons to terrorists or laundering cyber-stolen money through the Cayman Islands to check their Twitter timelines, even if I can’t stop checking the rapidly rising number of #Prettyboy tweets.

  Unless the hacker really is Duncan, and he’s known all along who I am, and he got that girl to take the photo and he’s behind my picture going viral so quickly and … Okay, time to slow my roll. None of that makes sense. Even if Duncan is the hacker, he obviously knows who I am, and doesn’t need to out me or start a Twitter campaign to reveal my identity to his employers. I’m just getting way paranoid, even for a spy.

  Still, I need to get rid of that photo ASAP. I won’t be able to do that while sitting in a chem lab for the next fifty minutes, pretending I care about the properties of matter while each retweet further compromises my search, not to mention my safety. I decide to skip out before the second bell rings and head for the door, but Mr. Velasquez closes off my escape route.

  “Going somewhere, Mr. Smith?”

  “No, sir,” I say, slipping my phone into my pocket. Don’t need to give him a reason to take it from me. I’ll need it during class to clandestinely hack Twitter and take down Blondie’s tweet and the thousands of retweets it has generated. It won’t fix the problem, but it’ll buy me time while I come up with a better solution. That’s one of many reasons I prefer a back-row seat. Stealth operations.

  But Mr. Velasquez has other plans.

  “Good, because you won’t want to miss the spectacular treat I have in store today, and you’re going to be my assistant since you’re already up here.”

  “Um, but Mr. Velasquez, I really need—”

  “—to find out what you get when you combine red phosphorus, sulfur, and potassium chlorate? Unless you already know the answer, Mr. Smith, you’ll remain right here with me.”

  “You get fire, sir. Those are the three main elements that make up the head on a matchstick,” I say, before heading to my lab table.

  “Not so fast, Mr. Smith.”

  “But I knew the answer. You said—”

  “I didn’t think you actually would, but it’s clear I’ve chosen the right person to help me demonstrate today’s experiment. But first, erase that whiteboard for me while I explain the hypothesis and experiment to your not-as-chemically-gifted classmates.”

  While Velasquez drones on about physical versus chemical properties, I realize why the abstract design on that piece of paper is so familiar. Erasing the board, I quickly take the paper from my pocket and sniff. Sulfur. It’s the cover from a matchbook, the kind you rarely find outside restaurants and hotels, and hardly even there anymore, at least not in this country. But in parts of Europe where smoking is still like a religion, matchbooks are everywhere. Now I remember where I’ve seen that design. Even though it went by me at ninety kilometers per hour, I’m pretty sure it was the logo of a hotel I passed on my ride from the airport through Kiev.

  Ukraine.

  One of the first things you learn in spy school: there are no coincidences.

  The realization that someone from that operation might be inside Carlisle just about knocks me on my ass. I drop the eraser and brace myself against Velasquez’s lab table as a sudden wave of dizziness and nausea hits me.

  “Mr. Smith, you don’t look so great. Are you well?”

  “I … think … so.”

  “If you’re to be my assistant, you need to know so. I can’t have you blowing up my sixth period,” Velasquez says, getting a couple of laughs from the class, along with a Yeah, don’t ruin that Prettyboy face from some girl. I can’t tell which one because right now, I can barely talk.

  “I’m fine, sir,” I lie, hoping this will play out the way I expect.

  Velasquez looks skeptical, but hands me a slip of paper. “Fetch these items from the supply
room.”

  Just what I hoped he would say. I’ve bought myself a couple of minutes to do something I should have done an hour ago.

  I check the classroom on the other side of the supply room, which is really more like a big closet, and find it empty. That’s right; Ms. Flagler was supposed to take both her biology classes on a field trip to the museum today. Perfect. I won’t be interrupted by someone sent to fetch supplies for a bio experiment.

  I never linked the hacker to Marchuk until now, because we were able to shut down his operation despite my screwup. And with his former boss in a shallow grave somewhere, I just figured the hacker had moved on to the next illegal arms supplier with a job opening. But it’s possible the hacker is still tied to someone in the Marchuk operation. How else does a hotel matchbook get halfway around the world from Ukraine to Colorado? There is a single Ukrainian student on campus, but she cleared my suspect list because she’s a junior in her third year at Carlisle. We’re in the same English Lit class.

  As I close the adjacent supply-room door behind me, I tell myself she’s behind the propped-open door, but still I begin placing the phone call that has become a whole lot more important than just reporting how I’m all over the internet. Like I said, the matchbook can’t be a coincidence. My intel says neither the girl nor her family have returned to Ukraine since they arrived here three years ago. And I know from cyberstalking him that the hacker left Ukraine the same day I did. So who carries a hotel matchbook around in his pocket for seven months? No one.

  Who would have a matchbook from that hotel? Someone who only recently arrived from Ukraine, that’s who.

  Weird. My phone is showing zero bars, even though there’s a cell tower an eighth of a mile up the road. Luckily, there’s a landline hanging on the wall of the supply room. I punch in Rogers’s number, but just as my call begins to ring, the line goes dead. Pressing the receiver button a couple of times doesn’t make it come back to life.

  I check my phone again. Still no bars. All the metal storage cabinets could be blocking electromagnetic radio waves from the cell tower, like when you can’t make a call from an elevator. Since Carlisle went all out on their security, maybe that includes securing a supply room full of combustible chemicals. Maybe the room is one big safety cabinet and the walls are lined with eighteen-gauge steel. It’s a stretch, but I’d rather that be the case than the other theory I’m trying not to come up with, which has to do with the hacker’s specialty—communications. He’s a modern-day phreak—a genius at all things telephony.

  I try Ms. Flagler’s room. No cell reception in here, either. Okay, this ain’t good. And soon, Mr. Velasquez is going to send someone to see what’s taking me so long. It’s a wonder he hasn’t done it already. But he’s going to have to wait a bit longer.

  I head for the hallway in search of a working phone, and just as I turn the doorknob, I hear what sounds like a scream—piercing at first, then muffled—come from my chem class.

  The screamer was quieted quickly, but I heard enough to know someone in my class is terrified. It stops me in my tracks. Do I head for the hall and a phone, or go back to chem and help? Before I can really think through my decision, I’m walking quickly through the bio lab and back into the supply room. I open the door just a crack. What I see makes my blood run cold.

  There are two masked men in front of the classroom, both wearing the uniform of black-ops soldiers everywhere: cargo pants, t-shirt, boots, tactical belt. The first bad guy has one hand covering the mouth of the girl who must have screamed, and I’m guessing the heavy-looking bag in his other hand isn’t holding a picnic lunch.

  “Look, I don’t want any more of that screaming nonsense because there’s no reason for it,” the other bad guy explains in a thick New York accent. He obviously doesn’t understand how two guys dropping through the ceiling might worry most people. “I can promise no one will get hurt if you only cooperate. We’re thieves, not killers.”

  My classmates are probably hoping that story is true, but I’m not buying it.

  Mr. Velasquez isn’t convinced, either. As Bad Guy #2 reaches into the back of his waistband, probably for a weapon, my teacher tries to tackle him. Heroic, but a very bad move. These thieves are probably professionals to have gotten this far past Carlisle’s security measures. And Velasquez is a chem teacher.

  Oh no. Now he’s a chem teacher in an expertly applied choke hold. Before I can even process what’s happening, the bad guy is already done with Mr. Velasquez, who he lets slump to the floor, unconscious. Or worse.

  I try not to completely lose my lunch as I move through the biology classroom and head for the nearest exit.

  CHAPTER 7

  Out in the hallway, everything is quiet, as though there aren’t two very scary men in sixth-period chemistry holding seventeen people hostage. But you learn in the spy trade to assume nothing is as it seems, so I move quietly toward the main door. If this is happening anywhere else in the building, and all the phone lines are down, our only chance is for me to get out and find help. I stay close to the wall of lockers in case I need to suddenly take cover by running into the restroom, a janitor’s supply closet, or worst case, one of the classrooms.

  Truth? I’m tempted to duck into one of those places and hide out until these people get what they want and leave. Right now I’d much rather be just a kid who is having the worst day of his senior year than a highly trained CIA operative—with a potentially blown cover, thanks to that stupid photo—who has a duty to do something.

  I know what they said about being thieves, but a guy who can take high-school kids as hostages—and take out a teacher who was only trying to protect them—cannot be trusted to tell the truth. And like I said, that Ukrainian matchbook can’t be random. It’s safer to work from multiple assumptions. Considering their obvious infiltration skills and the weight and size of that tactical gear bag they were carrying, this is what I’m thinking so far:

  1.  They’re truly thieves and have come to steal something really valuable.

  2.  They’re lost thieves and have somehow mistaken Carlisle for the Denver Mint.

  3.  They’re hostiles here to kill me.

  Yeah, putting it all in a mental list like that makes me feel sooo much better. If I get out of this alive, I’ll be sure to tell my Threat Assessment 101 instructor at Langley how great that worked to help me stay focused and in control.

  As I move down the hall, I peek through the small glass window on the doors of the two nearest classrooms and find that everything is normal: the teachers are in command of the rooms, and the only thing students are fighting off is post-lunch sleepiness. That means no one else heard the scream. It might also mean the men really are thieves—possibly combat-armed thieves—but nothing more. No other classrooms are being taken over by force.

  I hold on to that idea as I make my way to the main entrance. I consider going to the office, but what good would that do? The thieves—or more likely the hacker who must be working with them—have already cut the landlines and blocked our cell phone signals, which means I need to get out of the building. No one in the office can help us now.

  Then I remember the undercover security guards who pretend to be part of the maintenance and grounds crew. They’re probably outside somewhere, clueless to the breach. We need the police, but until I can somehow get word to them, those guards can be a first line of defense. Despite their best efforts to look like the kind of employees no one notices, I’m certain the school hired both men because they’re ex-military. They are recent additions to the security system that is so appealing to the type of parents who send their kids to Carlisle. I need to find those guys.

  As I reach Corridor A, my heart rate begins to slow to a pace that might not kill me. I’m in the homestretch. My way out is in view, and just beyond the main entrance is the school office. I’m glad to see there are no teachers or students freaking out at Jonesy’s window. I quickly cover the fifteen yards between me and the entrance, but as soon
as I turn down the short corridor leading to the front door, the same one that had been propped open by the matchbook cover, I see that I’m too late.

  The bulletproof, double-thick windows are already obscured. Instead of sunshine, blue sky, and the Boulder foothills, I only see cold, gray metal.

  The gunmen must have hacked the security system and lowered the steel shutters over the front doors. Probably over the rear and side entrances, too. And except for the people in my chem class, no one even knows they’re in trouble yet.

  I stand there a second, still trying to hold on to the idea that these guys really are thieves. And it isn’t just wishful thinking. Most everyone at Carlisle comes from families who are rich, powerful, connected, or all of the above. It’s possible these guys are here to steal—not something, but someone. This might be a kidnapping. They might be here for Joel Easter, ransoming him for the encryption technology his father is working on at NIST. Or they’ve come for the fourth new student, that girl whose mother literally owns a gold mine in the foothills outside of town.

  But that’s only a guess. Since I’m not sure what their true goal is, I need to assume it’s bad. And now that I’m trapped inside with everyone else, I need to be as prepared as possible to fight them. First stop is my locker for a few emergency supplies. Only problem? It’s back in Corridor B, just outside my chem class. I retrace my steps, moving more quickly than before, since this time I may not get as lucky going undetected. At some point, if the men really are thieves, they’ll have to leave my chemistry class to steal whatever it is they’re here for—unless there are more than two of them.

  That thought nearly stops me in my tracks. I have to push myself to keep moving.

  As I turn the tumbler to the last number on my combination lock, I seriously regret not oiling my locker, because of course it jams up on me. No choice, I need those supplies. I bang my fist against the locker door, grab the pack the second it pops open, shut the door, and run like hell twenty feet to the alcove leading to the boys’ bathroom.