Annum Guard: Blackout Part 6

I look down at it. "Um, okay." Bonner didn't mention confidentiality agreements, but that makes sense. I look back up. Mike fishes one out of his pants pocket and unfolds it.

I take the paper. "Colton, do you-"

"Nope." He tosses his head back to get the hair out of his eyes.

Shocking.

"I'll print you another one. In the meantime"-I point to the mound of boxes taking over the library floor-"have at it."

At the end of the day, Bonner calls me into her office. Red is slouched in one of the chairs; Bonner sits behind the desk with her arms folded. Red kicks the chair next to him over in my direction.

"So," he says as I lower myself, "how are our interns?"

I look at Bonner, who has her lips pressed together in a line and one eyebrow raised, then over at Red, who has one elbow casually resting on the arm of his chair, his thumb and forefinger cradling his face.

"Do you want total honesty?" I ask, still looking at Red.

"Why would we want you to lie?" Bonner clucks her tongue. "Accurate reporting is part of your job."

I don't even look back in her direction. "Paige is intense, but I haven't quite figured out if that's a good or a bad thing. She got through the most doc.u.ments today by far and tabbed and highlighted everything she thought was important, but we'll need the a.n.a.lysts to check that she's on the right track and not just highlighting nonsense."

Bonner clucks her tongue again. "Well, obviously."

I grip the arms of my chair. "Mike seems to be a good fit, I guess? He's personable and easy to work with, and he's also really bright." I think of his pa.s.sword, and it makes me smile. Then I think of the third intern and clear my throat. "Colton is useless. He's barely literate. He asked me where the bathroom is twice. Who has to ask where a bathroom is twice? You did drug test him, right?"

Red smiles, but Bonner makes a loud harrumph that causes both of us to look at her.

"Do not antagonize Colton Caldwell. You know who his mother is."

"I'm not antagonizing him," I say, even though I don't think that's the truth. "And besides, you asked for total honesty."

Bonner presses her lips together.

"What I don't understand is why we even have interns in the first place. I mean, I get that the vice president wants me to babysit Colton for the summer, but bringing along his two friends? To an agency that's supposed to be a complete secret? Confidentiality agreement and background checks aside, is this really something we should be doing? What about XP? Are we just forgetting about him?"

Bonner's chair sc.r.a.pes back on the wood floor as she stands. Then there's a finger in my face, and I flinch.

"That is cla.s.sified information and you are not to mention it. Ever." Her eyes flick to the chair next to me. "Red, you can leave us."

I watch Red's reaction. He was being groomed to take over Annum Guard back when Alpha was still around. He spent three years training for it, from what everyone else has told me. And then at the last minute, the DoD swept in and replaced him with an outsider. Red's nothing more than Bonner's puppet these days, here to take orders and follow them, no questions asked. That can't be an easy switch. There's a moment when it seems he wants to protest-probably to point out that he should be the leader of Annum Guard right now because that's what he was hired to do-but then his face relaxes into a look of resignation. He stands without saying a word, and the door closes behind him.

Bonner lowers her finger. She rests both hands on the desk and leans forward.

"I must say, I'm disappointed. You didn't figure out who the other two are?"

"I . . ."

"Michael Baxter, son of renowned venture capitalist Layla Baxter, and, more importantly, grandson of Francis Howe."

My mouth drops open. "The defense secretary?"

"And Paige Wharton. As in daughter of Senator William Wharton out of Philadelphia, ranking member of the Committee of Homeland Security and Government Affairs, the committee which, I don't need to remind you, is presently investigating this agency's indiscretions."

Senator Wharton was the one who questioned Zeta. He knows about Operation Blackout.

"I a.s.sure you, I did not say yes to babysitting a bunch of college kids this summer. I hired three promising young people whose performance this summer could save Annum Guard. Do you know how close you are to being shut down for good?"

I blink. Once. Twice. Because I caught that-how close you are-not we. And everything about Bonner's body language is telling me she's anxious. She's fiddling with a ring on her right hand, and she won't make eye contact for more than a second. She's pale, and her breathing is heavier than usual. Good. The upper hand is mine.

"Why didn't you tell me this before? Don't you think that's kind of important information for me to have?"

Bonner drops back into her seat. "No, I just presumed you would act like the professional you allegedly are. You need to make sure our guests are well taken care of, do you understand?"

I stare at her until she looks away. It takes only a few seconds. Is she setting us up? Is the vice president?

"You're dismissed," Bonner says without meeting my gaze. I wait a few more seconds to make her squirm, then I turn and put my hand on the doork.n.o.b. "But, Iris . . ." I glance back. Fear has taken the place of anxiety. I've never seen her look like this before.

"Don't let me down," she says. "You can't afford it."

CHAPTER 6.

"So when do we get to, you know, do stuff?"

I stop and set my pen on top of the notes I'm taking concerning a mission in 1945 when my dad took a bribe from the president of an energy company. I look at Colton. "What?"

"You know." Colton waves to the back staircase, leading down to the gravity chamber and situation rooms. "Stuff. Like what the dude with the orange hair and the guy with the crooked nose are doing."

I'm sitting on the library's burgundy Persian rug with about a hundred doc.u.ments spread around me and a yellow legal pad on my lap. It's Wednesday. Only two days left until my mom has to be out of McLean. I'm trying not to think about that because I don't have a solution. h.e.l.l, my mom hasn't even returned my call from last weekend.

But then again, that's not unusual. When she's manic, she has way too much going on to think about making a phone call, and when she's on a low, she can't bring herself to press the numbers.

Paige is sitting next to me. She bites her bottom lip and reaches into the box for another stack of doc.u.ments. Mike is spread out on the couch and doesn't bother to look up either.

Yellow and Green were both summoned to meet with federal investigators downtown this morning, and the only other Annum Guard member around is Indigo. He's sitting at one of the two computers in the corner. He looks at me for a half second, his eyebrows shoot up in disbelief, then he turns back around.

"First of all," I say, "the guy with the orange hair and the guy with the crooked nose have names. They're Orange and Blue." As I'm sure you know. As I say their names, a feeling of jealousy p.r.i.c.ks my skin, because both Orange and Abe were sent on reconnaissance missions this morning by Bonner. Orange's has something to do with Eta-Violet's mom-rigging a gubernatorial election, while Abe is at a riot in Providence in the 1800s. It seems like my teammates are going on missions left and right, and I haven't been on one since I stalked my dad in 1939.

I shake my head-like that will get rid of this feeling. "And second of all . . ." I think about how to word this. Be nice to Colton. Be nice to Colton. I swallow my pride. "Second of all, only very select people can project, if that's what you're talking about. And I hate to break it to you, but you're not one of them." And then I laugh this phony, contrived laugh that no one joins.

"Well then, when do we get to sit in on briefings and stuff?" Colton asks.

Never, jacka.s.s. NEVER.

"That's not up to me."

"No offense, but this is boring." Colton waves his hand at the piles of paper stacked all over the library.

"Dude," Mike says, finally looking up. "Chill."

"Shut up, Baxter." Then Colton looks at me. "I mean, don't take this the wrong way or anything"-I brace myself-"but we're all kind of VIPs, you know?" He waves his hand around the room again. "So I thought we'd get to do more interesting stuff. I'm sure the White House wouldn't have us reading about"-he looks at a paper and squints-"alternative minimum tax."

At least three different responses flash through my head, but they all involve four-letter words or an insult to Colton's manhood, so I think a little harder. I draw a complete blank.

"Hey, Iris, I have a question for you." Mike scoots down off the couch and hands over a sheet of paper. "This here." I look down. It's a balance sheet from the 1970s.

Colton scowls and whips back around in his chair.

I squint at the paper. I don't understand half of it. Three quarters of it. "Er, I'm not sure what this is. Which box did it come from?"

"Oh, don't worry about it." Mike leans in closer to me. The stubble from a day-old shave brushes my shoulder. "I don't really have a question." He shoots a half-glance at Colton, then drops his voice to a whisper. "I know he can be difficult. It's part of the culture he grew up in."

"Mm-hmm," is all I say. Because that's such a BS excuse. Mike and Paige grew up in the same culture, and somehow both of them are perfectly capable of acting like normal people.

"I think we're going out to grab a bite to eat later tonight," Mike whispers. "You should come." But before I can answer, he slips back onto the couch.

I reach down and grab a stack of papers. It's a stack that Paige worked on. I can tell immediately because it's highlighted and tabbed with about eight different colors-as if a gay pride flag mated with a bag of Skittles, and their baby threw up all over the pages.

Paige looks over and sees me holding her papers. "Do you need the key I made again?" She grabs a three-by-five index card and thrusts it into my face. "Pink highlighter means an economic issue. Yellow highlighter is political. Blue tabs are companies to investigate, while green is-"

I hold up a hand to stop her. "I've got it," I lie. I don't look very hard at Paige's work. I learned early on that she's the kind of person who highlights 90 percent of the page, which completely defeats the purpose. But seeing as how none of these doc.u.ments have anything to do with Eagle, I haven't called her out for it.

"It's fine, Paige. Really." I set down the stack and pick up another. Colton's initials are in the top-right corner, but other than that, the first page is untouched. I flip to the next, then to the next, then to the rest until I've hit the end. No highlights, no tabs, no notes, nothing.

Colton is now sitting with his back against one arm of the couch. One leg is tucked underneath him, while the other is splayed straight out. He has on headphones-the big, bulky kind that don't actually make the music sound any better but are meant to advertise that you dropped a grand on them-and is moving his head back and forth with his eyes closed.

"Colton!"

I don't get a response.

"Colton!"

I ball up a piece of paper and send it flying. It bounces off his forehead, and his eyes spring open.

"What the h.e.l.l?" He pulls his headphones down so that they rest on his neck and glares at me.

I hold up his papers. "You didn't mark anything on these."

He shrugs. "I didn't think there was anything worth marking." He slips the headphones back onto his ears and looks down. It takes him only a second or two to get the sway back.

I clench my hands together. Not because I don't agree with him-there's basically nothing worth marking in any of these doc.u.ments-but because I don't think there's been a second in Colton's presence that I haven't wanted to punch him. I stare at him for so long that he has to feel my gaze. He has to know how annoyed I am. And yet he doesn't look up.

I reach for the next stack. Mike's initials are on the top. I scan the first page. It's one of Orange's missions. He tracked my dad's 1968 meeting with some guy named Xavier Portis who worked for RA Enterprises. Yeah, whatever. I drop the stack onto the floor, then stop.

Wait.

I grab it and check the name again. Xavier Portis.

XP.

"Hey, Mike, come here a second," I say without looking up. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him get up and sit down next to me. I hand the page over and let him scan it.

"Oh yeah, the RA thing. I remember this."

"When did you look at this?"

He shrugs. "Two days ago, maybe?" And then his face lights up. "Is it important?"

It's the best lead we've had in four months. But I can't tell him that. I can't tell anyone that. Bonner and Red are the only people in the Guard who know about XP.

So I give him a shrug of my own. "Where are the boxes of doc.u.ments on this?"

Mike leans in closer to the page, and his shoulder brushes against mine. He smells good. Like expensive cologne and peppermint. His fingers find the middle of the page. "Boxes 347 and 348. I'll see if they're still in the library."

But before he can even move, an alarm blares.

This isn't the security alarm, which is loud and chirpy. This is two low, slow blasts, like a siren.

"What is that?" Indigo asks, jumping up from behind the computer.

Both of us scramble to the door as two more blasts sound through Annum Hall. Violet rushes down the stairs and jumps into the foyer.

"What's going on?" she asks. "I've never heard that before."

I look back into the library. Paige is sitting on the floor, with her mouth open, and Mike hasn't moved an inch, but Colton is up and heading for me.

I hold out my arm. "You stay there! All of you, stay there!"

Then Bonner's door bangs open. She looks at us for a split second, and her face says it all. Something is very wrong. She rushes past us to the back stairwell. Her heels stomp-stomp down the concrete staircase.

"Stay there!" I yell again into the library, then I glance from Indigo to Violet. The three of us react at the same time. I nudge Indigo out of the way as I race to the back door, while Violet straight-up bodychecks me, flinging me into a table. I steady myself and follow her down the stairs, Indigo right behind me.

It's not hard to figure out where Bonner is. The door to Situation Room One is wide open, and the three of us barrel inside. Red is standing at the front of the room, staring at a computer projection screen that's totally black except for the words "ERROR: SUBJECT NOT FOUND." His shoulders are tensed, like he's forgetting to breathe.

"What do you mean it just deactivated?" Bonner yells over the blare of the alarm. "It can't just deactivate! And shut the d.a.m.ned alarm off!"

"I'm telling you, it did!" Red shouts back. "And I'm working on it!" He bends over a laptop and punches the keys.

"Do you have anything?" Bonner asks. "Vitals? A location?"

"Nothing! I have nothing. All I have is-" Then Red's head snaps up and his eyes narrow at the sight of me, Indigo, and Violet. "What the h.e.l.l are you all doing here?"

Bonner turns around, too. But surprisingly, she doesn't look mad at the intrusion.