Robert pulled me out into the hall and didn’t let go of my hand until we’d left the building and were heading down a gravel path. I didn’t ask where he was taking me because he obviously had a plan. Plus, I was totally freaked out and had to trust that he knew what he was doing.
He was moving fast and I had to jog to keep up, but asking him to slow down wasn’t an option.
But then I thought about what he’d shown me. “Shouldn’t we go to the bunker?” I asked looking over my shoulder toward the other side of campus.
He turned and glanced at me for a fraction of a second before he said, “Not yet. We need to find out where this came from.” He held up my phone.
We got to the staff living quarters and I followed him into the building and down a very plainly decorated hallway that looked markedly different than the rich wood paneled halls of my dorm. He stopped at a door and did a quick sweep of the hallway before he slid his key card into the lock and opened the door, gesturing me inside ahead of him.
He closed and locked the door, shrouding us in complete darkness for a second, my ears picking up the hum from electronic devices.
Then he turned on the light.
I expected something that resembled a locker room in both decoration and smell, since that had been what his room had been like when we’d lived together, but no. What faced me now looked like a war room right out of some spy movie: I counted five monitors and two laptops and a desk covered with wires and other indeterminable electronic devices that I guessed were surveillance devices of some kind. Or used to be. In the closet, on hangers like they were knitted cardigans, hung two bulletproof vests.
I looked at Robert, wide-eyed.
“I’m not at Yale.”
I gave him a duh look.
“No, B,” he said. “I’ve never been at Yale.”
“Huh?”
“It was a cover.”
“Obviously. How long?” I asked, stunned. I mean, I shouldn’t have been surprised, since so much of our lives had been falsified, but I never expected my brother to keep me in the dark. Friends, girlfriends, teachers? Of course, but not me. Not family.
“Mom doesn’t even know.”
Ah, that made more sense. But wait, “Doesn’t know what, exactly?” I asked, not sure if he would or could tell me, but it couldn’t hurt to try.
He sat down at his desk, pushed some of the wires and other stuff out of the way, and pulled one of the laptops forward and plugged my phone into a USB cord sticking out of it.
“She didn’t know I wasn’t at Yale. That’s why she freaked out when I went off the grid—she called there and found out I wasn’t even registered and she couldn’t track me down,” he paused to tap at the keyboard before he continued, “I was at a training facility. Dad got me into a pilot project that runs concurrently with a college program. So technically I was at college, am at college, just not how Mom thought.”
I looked at him sideways. “Why no cover at Yale?”
He shrugged. “Careless loose ends and a mistake on my part letting her get worried. If she’d gotten a hold of me or had called the numbers that were on the fake Yale package I’d sent her, she never would have known. Until I got here, of course.”
“So what Agency?” I asked. Though if Dad got him in, it was likely high clearance stuff: NSA, CIA, Homeland Security, maybe somewhere else that I didn’t even know existed.
He shook his head and gave me an apologetic look. I exhaled, knowing that meant no matter how much I prodded him, I wasn’t getting any more information. “And Mom doesn’t know anything?”
“No. She’d totally freak out. Dad wasn’t even going to go for it, but in the end, they recruited me and it’s not like he could really stop me.”
I had to agree that Mom would have freaked out if she’d known. She knew what she was marrying into with Dad, since he’d been in various roles in the military and CIA since before they’d met, but she wasn’t a big fan of the life and was never shy about saying she didn’t want it for her kids. I hadn’t thought Robert was into it (I sure wasn’t—give me a safe desk job writing human interest pieces, thank you very much) but evidence of the last five minutes was pointing to the contrary.
“So are you on assignment or something?” Which made it even stranger that he was here with me.
He gave me a blank look.
“What?” I said.
“You are my assignment. That’s why I’m here; to keep you safe.” He knocked me on the head with his knuckles. “You didn’t figure that out?”
I swiped his hand away. “Shut up. I’m new to all this; give me a second to catch up.”
He turned back to his computer and typed in a few more things, but it looked like code on a black screen. “What are you doing?”
“Tracking these texts.”
“We should call Mom and Dad. What about the protocol?” I said, suddenly panicking that something had happened to them, too. Maybe something way worse than a threatening text.
“I’m already on it. I’ve sent a message to Dad through the agency’s encrypted system.”
“My brother, the spy.”
He smirked at me then looked back at his screen. “Okay, these texts came from somewhere in the Middle East. Yemen or Saudi Arabia. That’s good, at least.”
“I’m still a bit freaked,” I said.
He nodded. “I’m going to get some security here.”
“Are you freaking out?” I asked, because he looked as cool as a cucumber.
“A little,” he admitted. “I didn’t expect...” he trailed off as a bunch of random characters popped up on his screen. “Hold on.” He leaned forward, his eyes scanning the screen, his lips moving a little. Then he dug around his desk for a pen and a pad of post-its, scribbling something down.
Apparently he was some sort of code-breaker now. I should have known he would never flunk out of Yale.
“Mom and Dad are fine,” he said suddenly on a loud exhale, telling me he had been a lot more worried than he was letting on. “They’re moving to a safe house. They want you in London ASAP.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going to meet the security team here and then head back to the training facility.”
“What about Christmas?”
“Not this year, B.”
He returned his focus to his screen. “What passports do you have?”
“My Prescott one and the real one.”
“What name is this phone in?”
“Prescott.”
He cursed. “You don’t have a clean passport?”
I shook my head.
“I don’t like that—they know who you are and have your alias, so you can’t fly commercially. We’re going to have to get you an agency plane to get out of here, but that could mean a few more days. You’re at risk, but it’s not like you’re a senator.” He gave me an apologetic look.
Then I thought of something. “What if I said I knew a way to get to London tomorrow?”