Page 3 of The Society (Spy Girl 3)
"I had a bad dream, Lorenzo. You got shot. I'll fill you in when I see you, but until I can get there and protect you, please be careful. I'm worried that you could be the third hit."
"If it means I get to hold you in my arms again, rest assured, I will be a very careful man."
"It's my birthday," I whisper.
"Well, happy birthday," he whispers back. "Is your birthday a secret?"
"No, I just--I guess I'll see you soon."
"Not soon enough," he says.
I get up and shower. Then I text Ellis, asking for hair and makeup to be sent up to my room in an hour along with a breakfast smoothie.
I pop on my computer and search for information about the Cartier Queen's Cup that we will be attending today. I find that the club where it is held was founded in 1955 and that Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, has been their president since that time. I also discover that our host, Malcolm Prescott, is on the board of directors.
Polo teams have been competing for the last three weeks, and it all culminates in the championship game today, which will be played by some of the sport's greatest players. The queen of England herself historically attends and presents the cup to the winning patron.
Polo is not a game I'm familiar with. I consider watching a few videos, so I can understand the rules but decide not to. After all, this world is new to both me and Huntley Von Allister.
Huntley. Lee.
I can't help but wonder if my mother called me that because it was short for my real name. I close my eyes for a moment and try to remember the days leading up to her death, but it just won't come, so I grab a suitcase and stand in my closet, wondering what I should pack. I look at the tags on all the clothes, choosing a few basics--dresses for dinners and formal gowns--that quickly fill one suitcase. As I open another suitcase, I glance at my tattered backpack. It's funny that I used to be able to travel at a moment's notice with just it. Huntley, not so much.
I grab my phone and call Dr. Kate.
"I was just getting ready to call you," she says. "I understand you're traveling to London and attending the Cartier Queen's Cup. It's a highly photographed event. Have you chosen something to wear?"
"No, I was just packing."
"Where will you and Ari be staying?"
"At Prescott Manor."
"Very nice. What else will you be doing?"
"Depending on when we start our next mission, I might also be attending a tennis championship and some big horse race."
"I will email you a packing list in a few moments. Each of your outfit tags has a number on it, so you can match it to the email. I'll also have a messenger get a few additional pieces to you. Designers are dying to dress you," she says before saying goodbye and ending the call.
I turn my arm over to check the time, but the watch that has been a fixture on my wrist for the last six years is gone. I grab my phone and glance at it instead. I have just enough time to run down to the vault.
When I get there, I find Terrance hunched over his computer, the area around him littered with empty energy drinks.
"Have you slept at all?" I ask.
"No," he says, "I was just going to wake you up. I found something. Um, you might want to sit down."
"What did you find?"
"Kelley Bond." A photo pops up on his computer screen. "I tracked down where she went to high school from a reunion post she was tagged in on social media. Then I found out the school has all their yearbooks online. This is her senior photo. Is this the mother you knew? Are Kelley and Charlotte the same person?"
I give it a cursory glance and shake my head. "It doesn't look like her. My mom had a perfect nose. Kelley's is large and slightly hooked. It's hard to get past the big permed hair, but Kelley is blonde. My mom was a brunette."
"I have a few more photos," he says.
He quickly scrolls through them, but nothing I see changes my mind. But then a detail catches my eye.
"Wait, stop!" I yell out.
"What?"
"Go back to that prom photo."
Terrance clicks back. The photo is of Kelley with four other girls in long pastel dresses.
I tilt my head, studying it. Then I trace my finger down the screen, stopping at her hands. "See how all the girls have their hands crossed in front of them? Look at hers. Notice how she has her middle finger tucked under one hand? My mom did that. She didn't talk about it much, but her stepfather was physically abusive. He was compulsive and always telling her to act like a lady--which, to him, meant standing up straight and crossing your hands in front of your body, just like she's doing. Understandably, she hated him. One way she got back at him, in her mind, was by complying but secretly flipping him off. It became a habit. Go back to the senior picture. Show me just her eyes."
Terrance does as I requested, and it's then when I know for sure. Charlotte and Kelley are one in the same.
But I'm worried my own desire might be unjustly influencing me. I need concrete proof. "Did you run a photo of them both through facial recognition?"
"Yes," he says. "A seventy-nine percent match on a very advanced program. It doesn't just measure the features; it measures the pixels forming the features. A simple rhinoplasty would affect the accuracy, but I would expect the percentage to be higher because it's just one feature. But her cheekbones don't match either."
"Retinal scans?" I ask.
"Tried that. The photos in the yearbook are not high resolution and are too grainy to tell." He turns to look at me directly. "Regardless of what this data tells us, you knew her the best. Is it her?"
"Yeah," I admit, "I believe it is."
His taps his fist on my thigh and smiles. "Guess what else I discovered in this yearbook? Ares Von Allister and your mother were classmates."
I take a moment to let that sink in. "He really could be my father."
"Yes. That's good, right?"
"I guess. I'm not really sure how I feel about it. My mom and dad took me to Ares Von Allister's lab. I met his dog but not him. How could she do that? Lie to me all that time? Take me to where my biological father worked and not at least introduce me to the man? And who the hell was the man I thought was my father?"
"Spies live a different life; you know that. It's all about the lies. It's what keeps them alive."
"Or gets them killed," I mutter. "Want to know what's weird? I thought that I was living a lie. But I think my past is the lie. It also makes much more sense as to why they would be willing to blow my cover for one mission."
"Because it's the truth, not a cover?"
"Exactly." I glance up at the clock. "Crap. Hair and makeup should be here shortly. I'd better get going. Are you staying here? Do you have a new mission?"
"I don't really get missions like you do. I'm just told what to work on. Olivia is trying to track down the money man while I am going through Clarice's belongings, which is something I don't exactly understand
."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, why didn't they have me look into Ophelia after she kidnapped Lorenzo and Ari? Why wait until Clarice was killed and all the clues were gone?"
"Because maybe, like me," I suggest, "they stupidly assumed that, once she was dead, the threat was gone. It wasn't until Clarice was killed that we could assume there was more to it. Or that she knew something she shouldn't have."
"The last words Clarice spoke to Ari were, 'Ophelia's money,'" Terrance says. "It's driving me nuts, trying to figure it out. I've spent hours scouring their financial history, and I can't find anything noteworthy."
"Maybe Ophelia's money isn't in an account. You know, my mom used to keep different currencies of cash stashed in an empty shoebox. Some people keep money under their mattress. In the freezer. Inside books. All sorts of crazy places."
Terrance's eyes get huge. "Wait. Go back. What did you just say?"
"Uh, crazy places."
He holds up his hand, thinking. Then he gets up and rushes over to the table with the items Ari took from Clarice's home. "Shoebox."
I take off the lid. "Except there's no money in it."
"There are numbers on this sticker here. Maybe it's an account number."
"I don't think so. It looks like a normal shoe sticker with the manufacturer's style number along with the name of the shoe. And it doesn't appear to have been altered in any way." I pick at the sticker, carefully pulling it off the box. "Nothing underneath either." I look at Terrance. "May I?"
He shrugs. "Have at it. I've already photographed it from every single angle."
"Look here. There's glue on this seam."
"Probably someone messy made the box."
"Or someone hid something inside," I counter as I carefully undo the flap wrapped inside the box. When I do, a note pops out.
"What is that?"
"Money," I say, taking in what appears to be a one-hundred-dollar bill in a new currency.
Ophelia's photo is featured in an oval on the upper right. She's wearing a jeweled crown, which I'm pretty sure is the same one put on Lorenzo's head at his coronation.
"What the hell is this?" Terrance asks, pulling the bill out of my hand and studying it. "This looks very real. And I thought, in the Terra Project, they bartered and didn't have currency."
"That's what Clarice said, but maybe Ophelia was in it for the power."
