I was only half listening. All I could think about, when food was in front of me, was eating. I inhaled three large pepperoni slices before I finally slowed enough that I could pay attention.
“We should only be gone for thirty minutes,” Marc said. “We need to make sure he doesn’t notice his wallet’s missing during that time.”
“I could plant a second wallet,” I said. “Like what Dr. Roberts did to me.”
“Can you?” he asked. “Have you tried it?”
“I never stuck around long enough,” I said. “But it’s a good idea. I wish I’d thought of it before.”
Axel perked up, pointing a long finger at me. “No, miss sticky fingers. No more pickpocketing if you’re going to be connected at all with us.”
“Don’t give me that high moral ground lecture,” I said. “You’re wanting to steal a peek at this guy’s office. You’re not telling me what you’re doing with what you find.”
“We’re just looking at it,” Corey said.
“Yeah, you’ve said that.” I took another bite and talked while I chewed. “You’re committing a felony breaking and entering just because you’re curious.”
Marc’s differently colored eyes slid over to Axel. The guys stared quietly at each other, as if silently debating how much they were willing to tell me about what they were really up to. That was really all they needed to do to confirm my suspicions. This wasn’t simply someone’s curiosity.
“Who do you work for?” I asked.
Mouths stopped chewing and glances were exchanged across the pizza boxes. They only did it for a second before they resumed, but again, it confirmed my suspicions.
I dropped my pizza on my plate and snapped my fingers at Marc. “If you aren’t doing it to steal drugs for yourself, or to make money in some way, you’re an investigation team. You said it could be drugs, but you don’t know. Corey can hack into a high school’s computer files. Dr. Roberts could switch his wallet from my hands for a newspaper. You planted people at the mall knowing I’d be there.”
“I didn’t know it was you,” Marc said. “We didn’t know who it was. We were asked a favor to flush out a thief. It just happened to be you.”
“That’s what’s confusing me,” I said. “That’s a mall security job. That’s maybe local police. Local police don’t need to swipe a security card to break into anywhere. They just grab a warrant and go. Neither does the FBI. Not on American soil. So you’re either Homeland Security that’s above all the need for a warrant... I’d say CIA perhaps, because you’re looking at drugs and that could be an international operation. I want to say either of those, but for some reason I don’t think that’s it.”
Corey stared at me, open mouthed, pizza in his hand. Brandon had curious eyes. Marc was grinning, his arms folded at his chest and sitting back. Axel was smirking, his head in his palm, his elbow planted on his knee, simply watching.
Raven pointed a finger at my face, looking back at the others. “Who wanted to hire the smart girl? I told you this was a bad idea.”
Brandon kicked Raven under the coffee table. “Shut up.” Brandon waved a finger at me. “And you, just do your job. It doesn’t matter—”
“No,” Axel said. He crumpled a napkin and tossed it at his plate. He sat back and lifted his foot, crossing it over his knee, rocking his ankle back and forth. “Let her keep going.”
I flitted eyes between each of them, trying to pull pieces out of the air to fit together. “I want to say CIA or Homeland Security, but if that were the case, you wouldn’t be working security at a mall in the middle of South Carolina. You also wouldn’t need someone like me stealing a key card. You’d have some special hacking gadget for that sort of thing. So you’re either lying to me about this not being for profit, or there’s some private security informant division you’re working for. The Academy?” I sucked in a breath, snapping and pointing a finger at Axel. “You mentioned that. What’s this Academy?”
Marc looked me in the eye. “It’s a school,” he said.
I stared directly at him. His face was stern, but there was amusement in his eyes still. “That trains you to do this kind of thing? Where Raven is training people with guns? They pay you and let you do your own thing, but ask you to do these special investigation jobs?”
“How do you figure they let us do our own thing?” Marc asked. “You don’t even know anything about us.”
“It’s Axel’s glowing fish,” I said. “That requires a high-tech lab, and time to alter DNA on that level. Did you see his room? All those notebooks? Either he’s stealing them, or if they’re his alone, he’s been writing since the age of negative a hundred and four. And Corey’s computer science friends at the college even though you’re only... what? Nineteen?”
Corey glanced at the others, as if unsure whether to confirm or deny this.
“We turn nineteen next month,” Brandon said, and his mouth went slack again as he stared at me.
“And he was talking about taking perhaps some classes or at least attending lectures later. So it can’t be a full time gig if he’s expected to get to class.” I planted my palms on the coffee table, drawing myself up on my knees and leaning forward. “You’re an investigation team of some kind, but not on an official level. I want to know what this is. So either you guys tell me what’s really going on, or I’m going to go find this supposed bad guy and tell him someone wants to sniff around his basement and steal his stuff. I’m not getting arrested for a felony when I stood a better chance getting a slap on the wrist for pickpocketing at the mall.”
The silence after my rant lasted for a solid couple of minutes. Glances were exchanged. I glued my lips together, waiting it out. I knew I had them pegged, I just didn’t know which part was true. And I wanted to believe they weren’t in it to simply steal drugs, but that had been the easiest answer to believe. The other part was just the next answer based on what I’d been given, but it still seemed so far-fetched. This crew? A private espionage team of some sort?
Raven leaned over, picking up the plate with my last piece of pizza on it and sniffed. “What the hell kind of pizza did you get?”
Marc grinned, his blue and green eyes lighting up and growing wide. He looked over at Axel. “I think that’s a record.”
“It’s your fault,” Axel said. “You brought her here. I told you not to bring her here.”
“I’m sorry,” Marc said. “I didn’t realize we were bringing Sherlock Holmes. My background check told me she was in the lower half of her grade all through high school.”
“You should know better than anyone that paperwork can be deceiving on intelligence.” Axel turned, directing his dark eyes at me. “We aren’t getting arrested for anything. And you aren’t going to tell anyone what you know about us. You’re bluffing.”
I twisted my lips, meeting his stare. “Fine. Just tell me who you work for and why I shouldn’t worry about getting arrested.”
Axel took a glance around at the other guys again and then sighed. “I can’t tell you all the details, but for a broad generalization, the Academy is a private group with their own interests. Part of our work, our team in particular, handles training, and sometimes we get called in to check out what’s going on in the neighborhood. That’s not everything, but as far as you’re concerned, that’s all you need to know about.”
“Who hires you?” I asked.
Axel sighed. “You ever hear on cop shows or movies where they say ‘an informant told us’? That’s part of what we do. Our team in particular deals in information.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “The cops let you do this? That’s who you’re keeping tabs on people for?”
“It depends on what it is,” he said. “To keep it simple, let’s talk about this case. A rumor came to us that our target suddenly started going out late at night into sketchy parts of town and talking with particular drug dealers. He’s rich, and doesn’t need the money, and his money sources are clean, but we don’t know why he’s suddenly
interested in talking with these people. While the police are curious, there’s no evidence he’s doing anything wrong. He’s just in a position that he could do a lot wrong if he’s up to something.”
“How did you know he was going to those places?”
“We tracked his location via his cell phone.”
I glanced at Corey. “Was that you? Did you find that?”
Corey’s cheeks tinted and he shrugged, wordlessly answering my question.
Marc cut his hand through the air. “It doesn’t matter who did it. The point is, we keep our eyes and ears open for things like this. The guy we’re looking at happens to travel the globe. We’re wondering if he’s considering a drug import and lining up buyers.”
“And you have no proof he’s doing anything wrong,” I said.
“Exactly.” Marc picked up his plate, planting it on top of Brandon’s empty one. He started cleaning up the table. “But it would be wrong if people like us didn’t at least check it out. We’re not collecting pictures, or stealing his business, or trying to find evidence he’s doing anything wrong at all. We’re the opposite. We’ll clear his name and his reputation, if he’s a good guy, so someone like the CIA, or worse, doesn’t have to come in. We don’t care what he’s up to as long as it isn’t something that’s going to be illegal or kill a bunch of people. Either this guy is clean and we’ll clear his name off the list, or he’s a bad guy and we’ll start the ball rolling so someone with authority can take over. We don’t collect evidence. We just make sure there’s evidence enough to be collected if that needs to happen.”
“If you work with groups like the police, can’t they give you special tools to work with? Why ask me?”
“The police and the FBI don’t know, or care, about who we are. We’re informants. We leave anonymous notes and phone messages. We use our own talents, and tools we can get from any local hardware or electronics store, or anything we can make ourselves. Using anything too high tech draws attention. Using his own key card against him won’t leave much information about us. He won’t be able to track us.”
“So how do you get paid?” I asked. “If they don’t know you, the CIA doesn’t pay you anything for ratting out bad guys?”
“This isn’t everything we do,” he said.
“But you’ll do a job like this just out of the kindness of your heart?” I asked.
He huffed, glancing at Axel.
Axel shrugged. “It’s complicated.”
This whole thing felt crazy and I knew there was more to it. They couldn’t just follow everyone in town around. How did they pick up that this guy was acting odd? They were feeding me half-truths. “Un-complicate it,” I said.