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“Sure thing,” he said.

Frankie groaned and plopped down on the couch. Mr. Toodles immediately hopped into her lap, leaning his head against her and sighing as she scratched his ears. “Are you guys going to get all geeky again?”

“Yes, we are,” Wally confirmed.

She stifled a yawn with her hand. “Can Mr. Toodles and I go to sleep?”

“Sure,” I replied. “But first would you check out the bedrooms and coordinate where everyone is going to sleep? Mr. Matthews only has a couple of beds, so the couch and floors that have rugs are going to have to count as beds.”

“Got it,” she said. “Any idea when everyone will get here?”

“Sometime between now and morning,” I replied. “They’re staggering their arrival. But I have no idea exactly when they’ll arrive.”

“I just hope Kira and Mike bring food like they promised.” Wally pulled out his laptop and set it on the table. “Dinner seems like ages ago.”

“Food is the least of our concerns.” I unraveled a bunch of cables, then crawled under the table with them to connect the plugs to the outlets. “I just hope everyone has turned off their cell phones as required. Getting here undetected and staying that way will be the trickiest part.”

Wally peered under the table at me. “Stop freaking out. They know what they’re doing. But now, it’s our turn. Let’s get things underway in the areas ofourexpertise.”

I crawled out from beneath the table and sat down, booting up my laptop. While I was waiting for it, everything hit me. My dad was on the run, someone had kidnapped my mother, and I was trying to go up against powerful bad guys in the government. Exhaustion, fear, and anxiety filled me as my breathing started to accelerate and panic set in.

“Wally, what am I doing?”

Wally glanced over me, then pulled his chair closer to mine. “What do you mean? You’re trying to save your mom.”

“I know, but what if I can’t do it? What if I mess up and she dies or someone gets hurt? How am I supposed to manage this? I’m just a kid.” I felt perilously close to tears.

“You’re not just a kid,” Wally said firmly. “You’re a spy in training, and the smartest person I’ve ever met. Even smarter than me, although if you tell anyone I said that, I’ll deny it.”

I smiled, grateful for his support.

“Seriously, though, you’ve got this, Angel. You’re not alone. We’re behind you. We wouldn’t follow if we didn’t think you could do this. You know that, right?”

“What if your faith is misplaced?” I whispered.

“It’s not. And even if it was, we’re in charge of our own futures and make our own decisions. Right now, we see a threat to our team…to our friend. We’re going to get your mom back safely, and we’re going to take down whoever kidnapped her. But you can’t be so afraid of the unknown that you can’t form a plan or execute.”

“Now you sound like Professor Allard.”

He smiled, seemingly pleased by the comparison. “I do, don’t I? Look, just have faith in yourself, because we have faith in you.”

I exhaled a deep breath, the pressure in my chest easing. “Thanks, Wally.”

“You’re welcome.” He pushed my laptop toward me. “Now, I do believe you have a riddle from your dad to find.”

Leave it to Wally to keep it real. “I do. I sure hope it’s there somewhere.” I placed my hands on the keyboard and began searching through my numerous accounts. Before I logged in, I needed to make sure the bad guys couldn’t track me through my computer. I couldn’t afford the time to buy and set up the equivalent of a burner laptop, so I just had to make sure they weren’t monitoring my real activity.

I was pretty sure my dad trusted me to avoid their snooping now that he’d alerted me to their activities. Inspired, I grabbed Wally’s signal jammer out of his bag, turned it on, and put it beside my laptop while it booted up. That would prevent my laptop from transmitting a short “phone home” signal before I had a chance to isolate my computer. It took me about forty-five minutes, but when I finished, I was confident no one could monitor the true activity on my computer. Access was blocked, but even if they’d somehow installed something I missed, my activities were partitioned, so all they’d see would be infrequent periods of use, which I hoped would mimic me playing a video game. I felt satisfied with my work as I left my visible partition and hopped over to my secure workspace.

Twenty minutes later, I struck gold in account number twenty-three.

“Got it,” I said, downloading the riddle to my hard drive. “Now, let’s hope I can solve it.”

“You can,” Wally said, peering over my shoulder at the document. “Good work, Angel. It’s game time.”

Chapter Twenty

ANGEL SINCLAIR