Meg Cabot - Code Name Cassandra

Pamela reached up to run a hand through her short blond hair. "No, Hal," she said tiredly. "He's not."

"He's my friend," I said. I didn't say Rob was my boyfriend because, well, he's not. Plus I thought it might look even worse than it already did, me being gone for hours, then showing up with some random guy in tow. "And we were just leaving."

But my efforts to cover up the truth about my feelings for Rob proved to be for nothing as Dr. Alistair said, pretty nastily, "Leaving? Oh, well, isn't that special. You seem to have a knack, Miss Mastriani, for being unavailable when you're needed most."

My mouth fell open. What was this? I wondered. If he was going to fire me, why didn't he just get it over with? I had to hurry up and get to sleep if we were ever going to find Shane.

"What about those special powers of yours?" Dr. Alistair went on. "Don't you feel the slightest obligation to help us find this boy?"

Even then, I still didn't get what was going on. I just thought Dr. Alistair was crazy, or something.

I think Rob must have felt the same thing, because he reached out and grabbed one of my arms, just above the elbow, like he was going to pull me out of the way if Dr. Alistair whipped out that baton and started firing.

I went, "I don't have special powers anymore, Dr. Alistair."

"Oh?" Dr. Alistair's shaggy white eyebrows went up. "Is that so? Then where were you all afternoon ?"

I felt my stomach drop, as if I'd been on an elevator. Except, of course, that I wasn't. How had he known? How had he known ?

"Okay," Rob said, steering me toward the door—I guess because I was so stunned, I wasn't moving. "We're going now."

"You can't go anywhere!" Dr. Alistair thumped on his desk with his fist. "You are an employee of Lake Wawasee Camp for Gifted Child Musicians, and you—"

Something finally got through the haze of confusion his question about where I'd been all afternoon had cast around me. And that something was the fact that he was still speaking to me as if I worked for him.

"Not anymore," I interrupted. "I mean, I'm fired, aren't I?"

Dr. Alistair looked alarmed. "Fired?" at the same time as Pamela said, "Oh, Jess, of course not. None of this is your fault."

Not fired? Not fired ? How could I be not fired? I had taken off for hours, without offering a single explanation as to where I'd been. And while I'd been gone, one of the kids in my charge had disappeared. And I wasn't fired ?

The uncomfortable feeling that had been creeping over me since I'd set foot in Dr. Alistair's office got stronger than ever. And suddenly I knew what I had to do.

"If I'm not fired," I said, "then I quit. Come on, Rob."

Pamela looked stricken. "Oh, Jess. You can't—"

"You can't quit," Dr. Alistair cried. "You signed a contract!"

He said a bunch of other things, but I didn't wait to hear them. I left. I just walked out.

Rob and the others followed me out into the waiting area. The John-Waynish secretary was there, talking on the phone. She lowered her voice when she saw us, but didn't hang up.

"Are you crazy, Jess?" Ruth wanted to know. "Quitting, when you didn't have to? They weren't going to fire you, you know."

"I know," I said. "That's why I had to quit. Who would want to hang on to an employee like me? I'll tell you who: someone with ulterior motives."

"I don't really understand any of this." Scott, speaking for the first time, looked concerned. "And it probably isn't any of my business. But it seems to me if you really do have psychic powers and all of that, and people want you to use them, shouldn't you, I don't know, do it? I mean, you could probably make a lot of money at it."

Rob and I just stared at him incredulously. Ruth's look was more pitying.

"Oh," she said. "You poor thing."

It was right then that the double glass doors to the administrative building blew open. We all backed out of the way as two people, holding dripping umbrellas, stepped into the office waiting room.

It wasn't until they shook the umbrellas closed that I recognized them. And when I did, I groaned.

"Oh, jeez," I said. "Not you again."

C H A P T E R

14

"Jess." Special Agent Smith shook rainwater from her hair. "We need to talk."

I couldn't believe it. I really couldn't. I mean, it is one thing to have the FBI following you wherever you go.

But it is quite another to have the people who are supposed to be anonymous tails come up and start talking to you. It simply isn't done. Everyone knows that . I mean, how uncool can you get?

"Look," I said, holding up my right hand. "I really don't have time for this right now. I am having a personal crisis, and—"

"It's going to become really personal," Special Agent Johnson said—his lips, I noticed, looked thinner than usual—"if Clay Larsson gets his hands on you."

"Clay Larsson?" I tried to think who they were talking about. Then it dawned on me. "You mean Keely's new dad?" .

"Right." Special Agent Johnson threw Rob a look. "His cousin's mother's boyfriend."

Rob screwed up his face and went, "My what?"

I didn't blame him. I was confused, too.

"After you left him this afternoon," Special Agent Johnson explained, "Mr. Larsson rightly guessed that the person who had kidnapped his girlfriend's daughter was someone who'd been hired by the child's father. He therefore paid a little visit to your friend Mr. Herzberg, who returned to his office after his rendezvous with you at the McDonald's."

"Oh." God, I'm a moron sometimes. "Is he … I mean, he's all right and everything, right?"

"He's got a broken jaw." Special Agent Johnson referred to the notepad he always carries around. "Three fractured ribs, a concussion, a dislocated knee, and a severely contused hip bone."

"Oh, my God." I was shocked. "Keely—"

"Keely is fine." Special Agent Smith's voice was soothing. "We have her in protective custody, where she'll remain while Mr. Larsson is still at large."

I raised my eyebrows. "You guys didn't catch him?"

"We might have," Special Agent Johnson pointed out—rather nastily, if you ask me, "if certain people had been a bit more forthcoming about their activities earlier today."

"Whoa," I said. "You are not pinning this on me. It doesn't have anything to do with me. I'm just an innocent bystander in this one—"

"Jess." Special Agent Johnson frowned down at me. "We know. Jonathan Herzberg told us everything."

My mouth fell open. I couldn't believe it. That rat! That dirty rat!

It was Rob who asked suspiciously, "He told you everything, did he? With a broken jaw?"

Special Agent Johnson flipped back a few pages in his notepad, then showed it to us. There, in shaky handwriting I didn't recognize—it certainly wasn't Allan Johnson's precise script—was Jonathan Herzberg's version of the events leading up to his assault by his ex-wife's boyfriend. My name appeared frequently.

The louse. The louse had ratted me out. I couldn't believe it. After everything I'd done for him …

"Jess." Special Agent Smith, in her powder blue suit, looked more like a real estate broker than she did an FBI agent. I guess that was the point. "Clay Larsson is not a particularly stable individual. He has an arrest record a mile long. Assault and battery, resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer … He is a very dangerous and volatile person, and from what Mr. Herzberg tells us, we have reason to believe that, at this point in time, he has a particular grudge against … well, against you, Jess."

Considering the foot I'd smashed into his face, I could readily believe this. Still, it wasn't as if Clay Larsson knew who I was, much less where I lived.

"Well, that's just the thing," Special Agent Smith said, when I voiced these thoughts. "He does know, Jess. You see, he … well, he pretty much tortured Keely's father until he told him."