It was midnight. Kyle slipped out of bed and felt a shiver shoot up the back of his legs as his feet touched the hardwood floor. The house was chilly. But not that chilly. Kyle shivered because he was scared. Scared of what he was about to do. Scared because he was going to have to do it alone. Because that was the deal. Tonight the secret agents were going to make their first move. Only tonight was a one-man job. That was the way Kyle had explained it to the secret agents. And they had agreed. Or at least Chad and Tyrone had agreed.
Lucinda?
Nope.
She hadn’t agreed to anything. She’d sat on her hands and kept her mouth clamped shut. Which Kyle had noticed. You bet he’d noticed. Though he hadn’t said anything. No one had. Except Tyrone. But all he’d said was, “Good luck.” Which Kyle may not have needed.
Or at least not as much.
If his dad had left his PC behind.
But his dad hadn’t. He’d taken his PC and his chair and the books on his bookshelves and all the rest of the stuff from his office and moved them to the room above the Open Book. Except for the desk. And the old-man photograph of Ernest Hemingway with his white beard. The desk was too big to move in a taxi. And the photograph covered the wall safe.
Which told Kyle two things: First, the manuscript was still in the desk, or the drawers would be unlocked. And second, the backup disk was still in the wall safe, or the photograph would be gone.
Which meant Tyrone had been right.
Kyle needed all the good luck he could get. Because Kyle couldn’t simply hack into his dad’s PC and read the book. He had to break into his dad’s desk. Which looked more like a solid oak fortress than a place where you sat down and dreamed up a story. It was an old desk. Really old. And ugly. With a cubbyhole a grown man could barely slide his knees under, and two drawers to the right of the cubbyhole that locked and unlocked using the same lock.
So why did Kyle have to break into them now?
Tonight?
Because Kyle’s mom had told Kyle that tomorrow his dad would be coming with a pickup truck to take the desk to the Open Book.
That was what Kyle had explained to the secret agents. He’d told them tonight was the night. His only chance. Which sounded fine then. Exciting even. But sounded a whole lot different now. Alone. In the dark. Tiptoeing into the room. His heart hammering. His legs going wobbly. His mom sound asleep two floors up.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
Kyle jumped. So high and so fast Shakespeare would have been proud.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
This time Kyle was ready for it. Sort of. And his first thought was that it had to be his mom. Her footsteps. That she was awake. And walking down the stairs. But her slippers didn’t go Tap! Tap! Tap! Which sounded more like a knock than footsteps. No, not like a knock. It was a knock. Which didn’t necessarily rule out his mom. Maybe she’d woken up. And read his mind. And was telling him not to touch his dad’s desk in Morse code through her bedroom floorboards.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
But the taps weren’t coming from above. They were coming from here. This floor. And they sounded more like knuckles on glass than wood. Which didn’t make sense unless …
Tap! Tap! Tap!
Kyle nearly went into his kangaroo routine again. He didn’t. His heart did his hopping for him. Because he turned. And stared. At the office window. And saw two eyes staring straight back at him.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
Fortunately Kyle had a strong heart. So it didn’t blow a valve. Or flood a chamber. Or go on strike and stop beating altogether. Nor did Kyle faint. Nor scream. Nor run away. Nor do any of the thousand things that would cause him to crash into a wall or knock something onto the floor. Instead, he just stood there. Frozen. His mouth hanging open. His eyes popping out. Which made him look silly. That was for sure. But at least it didn’t wake up his mother. And bring his secret agent society to a screeching halt.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
By now the tapping was getting old. At least to Kyle. And you can bet Lucinda agreed. Since she was the one peering in through the window and bruising her knuckles while she tried to convince herself that sometime before the sun came up, Kyle would surely have to close his mouth and put his eyes back inside their sockets and come to the back door and let her in.
Which, of course, was why she’d sat on her hands and kept her mouth clamped shut back at the Tofu Tutti-Frutti. She knew she’d never be able to stand it. That she’d have to do something—anything—besides stare at her ceiling all night long and picture Kyle in front of his dad’s locked desk with his heart hammering and his legs going wobbly. And, no, it wasn’t easy getting here. But I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time telling you how her stomach cramped when she cracked open her front door, or how creepy the school behind Kyle’s house was in the middle of the night, or about the goose bumps up and down her back when she crawled by the security guard. Because you’re probably more interested in why Kyle’s dad was such a dope and left his manuscript behind in the first place.
Because you’re right. It was dopey. But Kyle’s dad figured his manuscript would be more protected locked up in his old office than sitting out in the open in his new apartment. Because the Parker family trusted one another. Kyle’s dad was certain that neither Kyle’s mom nor Kyle would ever go back on their word and read what they’d promised they’d never read. Which, of course, was what Lucinda figured Kyle would figure. And get a guilty conscience. And maybe even freeze. Which was only part of the reason she skinned her knee climbing the wall between the school and Kyle’s teeny-tiny backyard.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
Okay. Okay. That’s it. No more tapping. The synapses in Kyle’s brain finally fired enough jolts to let him know it wasn’t a burglar or a werewolf or his dad busting him cold. Maybe Kyle recognized Lucinda’s eyes. Or her lips. Whatever. He did. Finally. And felt his heart slide out of his throat. Enough to give him the strength to lift his right leg. And move it forward. And do the same with his left. In what wasn’t the smoothest walk you ever saw. But it got him to the back door. Which got Lucinda inside. Which was all that really mattered. Since, as Kyle was about to discover, he didn’t have a clue how to open a locked desk. Which was the second reason Lucinda skinned her knee on that wall. Though she wasn’t thinking that. Not at the moment. Instead, she was thinking about her mother’s famous warning:
“No one likes a know-it-all, dear.”
These may not have been the sweetest words Lucinda’s mom ever whispered in Lucinda’s ear. But two years ago they’d stopped Lucinda from telling her dad how to connect the wires to the woofers and tweeters of the stereo. Lucinda knew how to connect them, of course, because she’d read the manual. Which Lucinda’s dad hadn’t done. Which was why the Brandenburg Concertos sounded fuzzy.
The next day, when Lucinda and her mom were alone, Lucinda’s mom told Lucinda she could now connect the wires correctly but never mention a word of it to her father. So Lucinda did. Knowing full well her dad would notice the difference in the sound and get mad. Or hurt. Or something. Except he didn’t. Or, if he did, he kept it to himself. Which absolutely amazed Lucinda. But it also taught her a lesson. It taught her there was truth, sure. And honesty. And these were good things. Of course they were good. But there were also times when cold, hard facts were not as important as people’s feelings.
So you can imagine Lucinda’s dilemma as she watched Kyle twist a paper clip, then a screwdriver, then, finally, a bent fork one way and the other inside the Stamford lock that locked the top drawer of his dad’s desk. Lucinda knew it was a Stamford because, like the woofer and tweeter manual, she’d read all about locks after she’d read a story about a safecracker when she was in the fourth grade.
So Lucinda knew that if the Stamford was old, really old, as old as his dad’s desk looked, you didn’t need to actually pick the lock. All you needed was something thin and firm—like a laminated library card—to slip into the slot between the top of the drawer and the drawer frame and then slide the card to the right. That would unhook the hook. Both hooks. Which would unlock the drawers. Which was what Kyle wanted to do. And Lucinda knew how to do. Only there was all that truth and feelings stuff Lucinda had to deal with, since the way Lucinda saw it, her mom was only part right when she whispered, “No one likes a know-it-all, dear,” since her mom should have added, “especially a guy.”
“Kyle?” Lucinda said.
Kyle didn’t answer. Kyle was back to twisting the paper clip with his right hand. And jerking a flashlight with his left. And probably making a mark on the lock that his father could spot from across the street blind-folded While Lucinda was just about to jump out of her skin watching Kyle bungle the whole thing. Plus, she hated the sound of her voice a moment ago when she’d said “Kyle” all mushy-gushy. Like Kyle was some delicate treasure you dare not drop or his self-esteem would shatter all over the floor. So Lucinda simply sucked in her breath, pulled her laminated library card out of her back-right pocket, gently pushed Kyle’s hand aside, slipped the card into the slot, slid the card right, heard the click, and opened the top drawer.
“Cool,” Kyle said.
And that was it. That was all he said. Not “Know-it-all,” or “I was just about to do that,” or “You think you’re so smart, don’t you?” He said, “Cool.” And looked at her. Really looked at her. The way he looked at Shakespeare. Just for an instant. But an instant was enough to turn Lucinda’s heart into thunder.
“What’s wrong?” said Kyle.
“Nothing.”
“You look upset.”
“I’m not upset.”
“Okay,” said Kyle.
“Okay,” said Lucinda.
“So where did you learn to do that?”
“Pick the lock?”
“Yeah, pick the lock. What did you think I meant?”
For a moment Lucinda thought he meant where did she learn to put her hand over her heart to stop it from crashing out of her rib cage. Which should give you a pretty good idea of how flustered she was. Which made her even more flustered. Since the last thing she ever wanted to be was a girl who got flustered. Which made her wonder whether she really wanted to have a mad crush on Kyle Parker if it meant possible broken ribs every time he gave her his dog look. So she made a deal with herself. No more mad crush. She and Kyle were secret agents. With a plan. A plan to get Kyle’s dad’s book published. And that was it. Period. Forget all the other stuff. It would just get in the way.
“I read it in a book,” she said.
She said it proud. She said it know-it-all. Since who cared what he thought about her now? Only Kyle was no longer paying that much attention. Because his eyes had shifted to the open desk drawer.