Meg Cabot - Code Name Cassandra

Thank God he had, too, or I'd be the one with a footprint across my face, as opposed to Clay.

I tried to pay him back the ten he'd given to Mrs. Herzberg. He wouldn't take my money though. Also, he insisted on paying for Keely's Happy Meal and my giant Coke. I let him, thinking if I were lucky, he might expect me to put out for it.

Ha. I wish.

Then, once we'd compared notes on our adventures with Clay, I left Rob sitting with Keely while I got on the pay phone and dialed Jonathan Herzberg's office.

A woman answered. She said Mr. Herzberg couldn't come to the phone right now, on account of being in a meeting.

I said, "Well, tell him to get out of it. I have his kid here, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do with her."

I didn't realize until after the woman had put me on hold that I'd probably sounded like a kidnapper, or something. I wondered if she was running around the office, telling the other secretaries to call the police and have the call traced or something.

But I doubt she had time. Mr. Herzberg picked up again almost right away.

"Hey," I said. "It's me, Jess. I'm at a McDonald's—" I gave him the address. "I have Keely here. Can you come pick her up? I'd bring her to you, but we're on a motorcycle."

"Fifteen m-minutes." Mr. Herzberg was stammering with excitement.

"Good." I started to hang up, but I heard him say something else. I brought the phone back to my ear. "What was that?"

"God bless you," Mr. Herzberg said. He sounded kind of choked up.

"Uh," I said. "Yeah. Okay. Just hurry."

I hung up. I guess that's the only good part about this whole thing. You know, that sometimes, I can reunite kids with the parents who love them.

Still, I wish they didn't have to get so mushy about it.

It was after I'd hung up and felt around in the change dispenser to see if anybody had left anything behind—hey, you never know—that I noticed the van.

I walked over to where Rob and Keely were sitting.

"Hey," I said. "We got visitors."

Rob looked around the restaurant. "Oh, yeah?"

"Outside," I said. "The white van. Don't look. I'll take care of it. You stay here with Keely."

Rob shrugged, and dipped a fry into some ketchup. "No problem," he said.

To Keely, I said, "Your dad's on his way."

Keely grinned happily and sucked on the straw in her milk shake.

I went up to the counter and ordered two cheeseburger meals to go. Then I took the two bags and the little cardboard drink holder and went out the door opposite the one where the van was sitting. Then I walked all the way around the outside of the restaurant, past the drive-through window and the Dumpsters out back, until I came up behind the van.

Then I opened the side door and climbed on in.

"Ooh," I said appreciatively. "Nice air you got in here. But you'll wear out the battery if you sit here and idle for too long."

Special Agents Johnson and Smith turned around and looked at me. They both had sunglasses on. Special Agent Smith lifted hers up and looked at me with her pretty blue eyes.

"Hi, Jessica," she said, in a resigned sort of way.

"Hi," I said. "I figured you guys might be getting hungry, so I brought you this." I passed her the drinks and the bags with the cheeseburgers and fries in them. "I super-sized it for you."

Special Agent Smith opened her bag and looked inside it. "Thanks, Jess," she said, sounding pleasantly surprised. "That was very thoughtful."

"Yes," Special Agent Johnson said. "Thank you, Jessica."

But he said it in this certain way that you could just tell he was kind of, you know. Unhappy.

"So how long have you guys been following me?" I asked.

Special Agent Johnson—who hadn't even touched his food—said, "Since shortly after you left the camp."

"Really?" I thought about this. "All the way from there? I didn't notice you."

"We are professionals," Special Agent Smith pointed out, nibbling on a fry.

"We're supposed to be, anyway," Special Agent Johnson said, in this meaningful way that made his partner put down the fry she was eating and look guilty. "How'd you know we were here, anyway?" he asked me.

"Come on," I said. "There's been a white van sitting on my street back home for months now. You think I wouldn't notice?"

"Ah," Special Agent Johnson said.

We sat there, all three of us, basking in the air-conditioning and inhaling the delicious scent of fries. There was a lot of stuff in the back of the van, stuff with blinking red and green buttons. It looked like surveillance equipment to me, but I could have been wrong. Nice to know the government wasn't wasting the taxpayers' money on frivolous things like the monitoring of teen psychics.

Finally, the luscious odor of Mickey D's proved too much for Special Agent Smith. She reached into her bag again and this time pulled out one of the cheeseburgers, then began unwrapping it. When she noticed Special Agent Johnson glaring at her disapprovingly, she went, "Well, it's just going to get cold, Allan," and took a big bite.

"So," I said. "How you two been?"

"Fine," Special Agent Smith said, with her mouth full.

"We're doing all right," Special Agent Johnson said. "We'd like to talk to you, though."

"If you wanted to talk to me," I said, "you could have just stopped by. I mean, you obviously know where to find me."

"Who's the little girl?" Special Agent Johnson said, nodding toward the window, where Rob and Keely were sitting.

"Oh, her?" I leaned forward and, since he obviously didn't want them, dug my hand into Special Agent Johnson's fries and pulled out a bunch for myself. "She's my cousin," I said.

"You don't have any cousins that age," Special Agent Smith said, after taking a sip from the soda I'd bought her.

"I don't?"

"No," she said. "You don't."

"Well," I said. "She's Rob's cousin, then."

"Really?" Special Agent Johnson took out a notepad and a pen. "And what's Rob's last name?"

"Ha," I said, with my mouth full of fry. "Like I'd tell you."

"He's kind of cute," Special Agent Smith observed.

"I know," I said, with a sigh.

The sigh must have been telling, since Special Agent Smith went, "Is he your boyfriend?"

"Not yet," I said. "But he will be."

"Really? When?"

"When I turn eighteen. Or when he is no longer able to resist the overwhelming attraction he feels for me and jumps my bones. Whichever comes first."

Special Agent Smith burst out laughing. Her partner didn't look so amused though.

"Jessica," he said. "Would you like to tell us about Taylor Monroe?"

I cocked my head innocently to one side. "Who?"

"Taylor Monroe," Special Agent Johnson said. "Disappeared two years ago. An anonymous call was placed yesterday to 1-800-WHERE-R-YOU, giving an address in Gainesville, Florida, where the boy could be found."

"Oh, yeah?" I picked at a loose thread on my jeans. "And was he there?"

"He was." Special Agent Johnson's gaze, reflected in the rearview mirror, did not waver from mine. "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you, Jess?"

"Me?" I screwed up my face. "No way. That's great, though. His parents must be pretty happy, huh?"

"They're ecstatic," Special Agent Smith said, taking a sip from her Coke. "The couple who took him—they apparently couldn't have children of their own—are in jail, and Taylor's already been returned to his folks. You never saw a more joyous reunion."

"Aw," I said, genuinely pleased. "That's sweet."

Special Agent Johnson adjusted the rearview mirror so he could see my reflection more clearly. "Very nicely done," he said drily. "I almost believed you had nothing to do with it."

"Well," I said. "I didn't."

"Jessica." Special Agent Johnson shook his head. "When are you finally going to admit that you lied to us last spring?"