2 PREPARATION

Armistead Dormitory

Academy of Espionage

May 15

1600 hours

“I can’t go on this mission,” I told Mike.

“Come on,” he insisted. “It’s going to be great. Look! The ship has a roller rink!” He held up the brochure to show me.

He was seated on my bed in my dorm room, eagerly leafing through the brochure, having spent an entire ninety seconds packing for the mission. (He had simply crammed all his bathing suits, shorts, and T-shirts in a duffel bag.) I was taking a bit longer to get packed, as I was busy panicking.

“You and I screwed up big-time,” I reminded him. “And when Erica finds out, she’s gonna kill us.”

A few weeks earlier, we had accidentally let Erica’s younger sister, Trixie, know that everyone else in her immediate family was a secret agent. And her grandfather, too. Up until then, the family had kept Trixie in the dark about this, believing that it was safer for her not to know their secrets. Trixie had been shocked and dismayed. (A connoisseur of spy movies, she had always imagined that she had great potential to become a secret agent, so it was upsetting to discover that her skills were massively inferior to her sister’s.) Still, she had handled it well, promising not to tell her family that we had spilled the beans—and insisting that Mike owed her dinner. This last part wasn’t really a punishment; she and Mike were obviously attracted to each other. The date had gone well; Trixie and Mike had been texting relentlessly ever since. Which was another thing I knew Erica would be upset to learn.

“Erica’s not going to kill us,” Mike said dismissively, then thought to add, “Although she might maim us a little bit.”

“She’s definitely going to be angry.” I nervously paced across my room, which didn’t take long, as my room was extremely small. “Really, really, really angry. I mean, I’ve made mistakes before, and she wasn’t happy then. But this mistake involves her sister.”

Erica was extremely protective of Trixie—so protective, in fact, that she hadn’t even let me know she had a sister until our last mission, and that was only because Trixie’s life had been in jeopardy.

Now we had potentially put Trixie at risk again. And possibly Erica and her family as well. Because information was dangerous. If Trixie accidentally let the truth about her family slip and the wrong people got wind of it, that would cause serious trouble. Bad guys might try to harm Trixie to get more information—or use her as leverage to manipulate the Hales.

“There’s an easy solution to this problem,” Mike assured me. “Lie. All we have to do is be completely dishonest with Erica about what happened for the rest of our lives, and everything will work out just fine.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “It’s not that simple. Erica is like a human lie detector. She always finds out the truth. The only reason she hasn’t learned about Trixie yet is because I’ve been avoiding her. But if we go on that ship, I won’t be able to keep that up.”

“I’m not so sure about that. This ship is freaking enormous.” Mike unfolded a map of the Emperor that had been contained in the brochure. It was so long, he had to fully extend both his arms to hold it up. “There’s over three thousand guest rooms, plus all the restaurants and pools and everything else. It’ll be like vacationing in a floating city.”

“I still won’t be able to avoid Erica the entire time! We’re supposed to be siblings!”

“A lot of siblings never talk to each other. Especially teenage ones. My brother barely said anything to me the whole year he was fourteen—and he spoke to my parents even less. We’re supposed to be posing as a normal family, right? Well, nothing’s more normal than acting like you don’t want to be around your sister or your parents.”

“We’re going to be sharing a suite,” I reminded Mike. “How can I avoid Erica in one of those?”

“Some of these suites are awfully big.” Mike pointed to another page of the brochure. “Look at this one! It has six rooms, two balconies, four bathrooms, and a private hot tub.”

I stopped pacing to look at the photo. The suite was bigger than my parents’ house. It was spacious and beautifully furnished and had an incredible view of a tropical island.

Despite my concerns about the mission, I had to admit that the ship did look amazing.

“Still…,” I began.

Mike cut me off before I could say another word. “I know you won’t be able to avoid Erica the whole time. But you’d have the same problem here, right? You’re at the same school as her. Your plan isn’t to avoid her for the next five years, is it?”

“Of course not,” I said, although it wasn’t that convincing. Because I had actually considered that plan. “I know Erica will find out sooner or later. I was just hoping it would be later. Much later.”

“It’s possible that her finding out what we’ve done won’t be nearly as bad as you think. Maybe she won’t be mad at all.”

“I highly doubt that.…”

“Or maybe she won’t find out what we’ve done. Not right away, at least. I mean, we’re going on a mission. Which means Erica and her family will be laser focused on that.” Mike paused to consider his own words. “Well, Erica and her mother will be laser focused. Her father will probably fall overboard within the first hour.”

He tossed me the brochure. I leafed through the pages. The Emperor of the Seas was so opulent, it almost didn’t seem possible. It had an aquarium, a laser tag arena, a Broadway-size theater, and even a park with actual trees growing in it. Everyone in the photos looked like they were having a wonderful time. Of course, I was well aware that everyone in the photos was a model who was being paid to look like they were having a wonderful time, but still… it was all very convincing.

“It’ll be fun,” Mike said. “And you know it.”

“Fun? We’re supposed to be figuring out what Murray Hill is up to.…”

“On the world’s coolest cruise ship! Most spies get sent on missions to crummy places like Afghanistan and Siberia. We get to go on a tropical cruise!”

“Remember what happened the last time we went to the tropics on a mission? We ended up nearly dying in a plane crash. And then nearly dying in a lake filled with crocodiles—and in a cave—and some Mayan ruins—and…”

“This will be different. We’re more experienced now. And we’ll have Catherine there to protect us.”

“Catherine was with us in Europe, and we almost died several times on that mission too!”

“But we didn’t. Not only did we stay alive, but we also saved the day and thwarted the bad guys. Face it, Ben, we’re pretty good at this spy thing. That’s why they’re sending us.…”

There was a knock at my door. “Ben?” Zoe Zibbell called from the hallway. “Are you in there?”

I was sure Zoe knew I was. She was a talented spy-in-training. So pretending like I wasn’t there would make her suspicious.

“Hold on!” I quickly shoved my suitcase—which I had failed to pack anything in yet—back under my bed while Mike hid our classified dossiers beneath the pillows. Then I opened the door and welcomed Zoe in, doing my best to act like nothing unusual was going on.

“Hey, guys!” Zoe swept into the room, looking like her typical nice-and-friendly self. She was in my year at spy school and had been my first friend there, although we had hit a slight rocky patch a few weeks before when Zoe had suspected Erica of being a double agent and teamed up with DADD—the Double Agent Detection Division—to try to capture her. In Zoe’s defense, Erica did look guilty, having attacked CIA headquarters with a rocket-propelled grenade, but she had been forced into it by the Croatoan, which was threatening Trixie. (Which was why it was so important to Erica to keep Trixie’s identity a secret.)

Zoe was only two steps into my room before she froze in her tracks. “Is the CIA sending you on a cruise ship to track down Murray Hill?”

“Who told you that?” Mike asked, surprised.

“You just did.” Zoe gave him a proud smile. “I only suspected it up until now.”

Mike immediately grew annoyed at himself. “How? We just found out about the mission ourselves.”

“I heard that the school notified all professors that you would be missing class for a few days but that your absence has been sanctioned. The only school-sanctioned absences are for missions. There’s a brochure for the Emperor of the Seas on Ben’s desk, and since neither of you has the money to even think about that sort of vacation, that means you’re being sent aboard. Given that Murray Hill is still at large and Ben knows more about him than anyone else, it makes sense that’s the reason they’re sending you.”

“You put all that together in two seconds?” Mike asked, startled.

“I’m a good spy,” Zoe said proudly.

“Or, you were leaning against my door, eavesdropping on our conversation,” I said accusingly. “You still have some flakes of paint from my door stuck to your ear.”

Zoe reflexively lifted her hand to her ear to brush the paint away.

There wasn’t any paint, though. I had just lied about it.

“Aha!” I exclaimed. “I knew it! You were spying on us!”

“It is a spy school,” Zoe said, sounding disappointed in herself.

“We’re your friends,” Mike said disapprovingly. “It’s not cool to spy on your friends.”

“I know, but… I was worried you wouldn’t tell me the truth.” Zoe flopped on my bed beside Mike. “The part about your professors being notified is true. Everyone’s talking about it.…”

I rolled my eyes at this. The communications with the professors were supposed to be top secret, but secrets never stayed secret for long at a spy school.

“And I wanted to know what was going on,” Zoe continued. “This stinks. Why aren’t they sending me on this mission too? I’ve been a student here way longer than Mike has. And I contributed just as much to our missions as Mike did in Mexico and London.”

“You also agreed to be a junior agent at DADD,” I reminded her. “Which means you’re now supposed to be rooting out double agents instead of going after crooks like Murray.”

Zoe frowned. “Double Agent Detection isn’t as much fun as I thought it would be. We’ve only found two moles since I joined, and both of them gave up right away when we caught them. You’d think that at least one of them would have made a run for it. Or tried to fend us off with martial arts. But instead, they both just started crying. It was pathetic.”

“Still, you busted two double agents,” I said supportively. “And I know there’s lots more to come. SPYDER corrupted a lot of spies. I’m sure some of them will try to escape.…”

“Or maybe even try to kill you in self-defense,” Mike added.

“You’re only saying that to make me feel better.” Zoe sighed. “DADD is a dud. I spend all my time going through phone call transcripts in the basement of CIA headquarters. Meanwhile, you’re going to face off against Murray Hill on a cruise ship. He’ll probably have his henchmen try to kill you in some exotic location,” she said jealously. “And then you’ll get to have action sequences on speedboats or Jet Skis or something cool like that.”

“Actually,” I said, “I was kind of hoping that we’d just find Murray and arrest him and that would be it.”

Zoe shook her head. “Nothing’s ever that easy with Murray. There’s definitely going to be a double cross and some attempts on your life. And then, knowing you, you’ll end up defusing a bomb with only seconds to spare. You have all the luck.”

“Most people probably wouldn’t consider that lucky,” I remarked.

“We’re training to be spies here,” Zoe said. “Most of our fellow students only dream about getting to do the kind of stuff you get to do. You’re lucky, whether you realize it or not.”

I understood her point, but it still didn’t make me feel lucky. In fact, our conversation had given me a growing sense of dread about the mission. Zoe was right: Nothing was ever easy where Murray Hill was concerned. So I had that to worry about—along with whether or not Erica would find out about Trixie.

I desperately wanted to believe that everything would work out, that we’d catch Murray quickly and even score a few relaxing days of vacation aboard the cruise ship. But I had a nagging feeling that the mission wouldn’t go the way I hoped.

As it turned out, things went worse than I could have ever imagined.