The Profile Match Read online

  I followed her out to the living room and stopped between the coffee table and the Wall of Fame.

  “Bye, Spencer,” she said.

  “Bye. Good luck.”

  She grinned. “Thanks. I’m going to need it.”

  Then she left. The inner door remained wide open, and as the screen door hissed slowly closed, I stepped up to the mesh to watch her go. There was a green Hyundai in the driveway. Grace opened the passenger’s side door, and the lights in the cab went on, illuminating the driver.

  Eli.

  Mother pus bucket . . . “I don’t believe this!”

  I slammed the inner door. Enough crazy. I turned to see Grandma and Prière watching me from the kitchen table. I shot them both a “don’t ask” look and went back to my room.

  And sulked.

  Until I remembered that Eli had asked out Grace and she’d told him no. And then I remembered New Year’s Eve and Meg Farland. I was being jealous and unfair.

  As I calmed down, the reason Grace had stopped by came back to me in a rush. Arizona had offered!

  I took a few minutes then to pray. I thanked God for letting me have this dream and asked for him to help me always be worthy of the privilege.

  Then I called Lukas to tell him my news. Because I needed a friend at that moment who could make it all about me for five minutes.

  REPORT NUMBER: 21

  REPORT TITLE: I Finally Get Some Kimbal News

  SUBMITTED BY: Agent-in-Training Spencer Garmond

  LOCATION: Grandma Alice’s House, Pilot Point, California, USA

  DATE AND TIME: Friday, March 1, 8:11 p.m.

  The next month flew by. Game by game, we won our way through the Southern Section playoffs, and it was all I could do to keep up with that and school. Arizona State wanted to fly me down to sign the contracts, but I had no time with all the games, so Coach Greer came to me, and we had a little signing party in my school gym. They gave me a pile of merchandise—T-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, socks, shoes, and even an Arizona State phone case. Sue Adams covered the momentous occasion, but as it was the best day of my life, her presence didn’t bother me.

  Kimbal had vanished. This update on the man was the first to come from Isaac. No one could find Kimbal anywhere. I wondered if Moreland had called him in for questioning, and he’d run. Isaac didn’t think so, but he also didn’t know anything. You’d think a Field Intelligence Junior Operative at the L. A. Field Office would know something . . .

  I kept up my bi-weekly dinners with MacCormack and Diane, but I was letting them down, prophecy wise. I took the Corvette for a couple spins but didn’t get anything new on Anya.

  Grace was back in the Mission League. Came to morning and afternoon classes. True to her word, she had asked her mom about us, and her mom had said, “Not yet.” How was that for cryptic?

  Grace was doing much better with the whole controlling thing. She hardly ever talked back to me when I asked her to do something for Alpha Team. It was still weird, being around her. I felt like we were tied by some invisible string that was pulling us together as much as we were trying to stay apart. Reading Joshua hadn’t helped me much with this situation, so I looked up Bible studies that helped with patience. I did a short one on Abraham and Sârah, then started a long one on the book of Job.

  Then came my “birthday,” which I’d always celebrated on March 1, since I’d been born on a leap year on February 29. Grandma had offered to throw me a party, but with all the attention from signing with Arizona State and the dinners with MacCormack and school, my idea of a nice birthday was to stay home. So Grandma grilled steaks, for just the two of us. She didn’t even invite Prière.

  It was actually kind of nice. But also kind of sad. I mean, at eighteen, I figured this was my last birthday at home. Maybe not, but how was I to know anything about my future now that I was no longer a kid?

  After dinner I was working on translating my dad’s journal when my phone fan. It was Grace’s mom.

  My heart leapt and I hurried to answer. “Hey, Mrs. Thomas. Is everything okay?”

  “We’re fine, Spencer. I wanted to thank you for how hard you’ve tried to honor my decision to stay away from Grace during all that’s been going on. I know how much she likes you, and I also know how well she listens.”

  I winced, wondering what exactly she meant by that.

  “Grace has been on me for quite some time, begging me to change my mind about the two of you spending time together, and well, since you both have bodyguards following you everywhere, and since nothing even remotely suspicious has happened in months, and since you’re eighteen now, well, I suppose it’s okay if the two of you are friends again.”

  My pulse started to race. “Friends,” I said.

  “Oh, you know what I mean,” she said.

  I gave her a wry laugh. “No, Mrs. Thomas, I really don’t. I need you to be crystal clear on this. I don’t want to get in trouble because I misunderstood anyone.”

  “Boyfriend and girlfriend,” she said. “I don’t mind if you date again, Spencer. That’s what I’m saying. I trust you.”

  Wow. That was weird to hear from the mouth of your girlfriend’s mom. “Thanks, Mrs. Thomas. I appreciate that.”

  “I appreciate you, Spencer. Be careful out there.”

  “Uh, you got it.”

  And she hung up.

  I just sat there, staring at the phone, shocked. After all this time, she’d finally changed her mind.

  Not sixty seconds later, Grace called, begging me to take her to the new Marvel movie.

  “I’ll be right over,” I said.

  Ha! Happy birthday to me, baby.

  I ran to the living room, told Grandma the news, and sprinted out to the Banana.

  I picked Grace up at her place. The movie was good. Being with Grace was even better. After, we went for ice cream and walked around downtown. Grace held my hand. I felt like a million bucks. I was eighteen, had a car, a full-ride offer to a Pac-12 school, a gorgeous girlfriend whose mother approved of me, and tomorrow my team would be playing the Southern Section final against Riverside Poly. What more could a guy ask for?

  I drove Grace home and parked the Banana out in front of her house. She leaned over the center console and kissed me goodnight.

  Kissing Grace never got boring.

  No joking, no more than ten seconds had passed when a knock on my driver’s side window about ripped my heart out of my chest. I peered out the window, which had partially fogged up, and could barely see someone standing there in the distant lamplight. I wiped my sleeve over the glass, making a clear swath that revealed Grace’s dad standing outside with his arms crossed.

  Great. I rolled down the window. “Hey, Mr. Thomas.”

  “Why don’t you two come in the house where I can keep an eye on you?”

  “Daddy.” This from Grace, who had also folded her arms. “Want to come in for a bit, Spencer?” she asked me.

  With her dad on shotgun alert? I didn’t think so. “I should probably get home. Got a big game tomorrow. Southern Section final.”

  Grace sighed. She looked a little mad, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Time to go, Gracie,” her dad said from outside my window.

  She growled. “Text me when you get home?”

  “You got it.”

  She climbed out, and I drove away before her dad could give me any more stern advice. Really, I got it. He was the dad. I was the punk dating his only girl. But it would be nice if the guy trusted me even half as much as his wife did.

  ● ● ●

  In a state as big as California, winning your section final was almost a bigger deal than winning state. These were the teams we played against all the time. Our rivals. So when we beat Riverside Poly on Saturday, 56–47, it was no small thing. We were back-to-back Southern Section Champions, and it felt amazing. Three recruiting coaches stopped to congratulate me after the game—California Baptist, Point Loma, and Cal Poly—D2 schools but all Cinderella tea
ms that had made the NCAA tournament in the past. All three knew about Arizona State, but wanted to keep in touch, just in case.

  There was little time to celebrate our section title. The first SoCal Regional game would happen next Wednesday at Crossroads High School in Santa Monica—all but the final would be played there. We’d be facing St. Augustine, which was a Catholic school from San Diego. We’d never played them before, so Monday after practice, we stayed late to watch a game tape Coach had put together. They weren’t consistent keeping their defensive players on the left side, so Coach wanted us to go left as much as possible. He also pointed out that it would be up to me and Chaz to keep their point guard from driving to the hoop, which, on the tape, he did quite often and with ease.

  Not with me, he wouldn’t.

  When I got home, Prière was at my house, in the kitchen with Grandma. This time they were making crepes.

  I just couldn’t even . . .

  When Grandma went out in the back yard to shut off the sprinklers, I felt the need to confront the guy. “Are you here all the time because you’re into my grandma? Or are you here to spy on me?”

  He stared at me and said nothing. Didn’t even blink.

  “Dude,” I said. “Are you going to answer?”

  “Is my affection for your grandmother bothersome to you, Spence?”

  I groaned. “Forget I asked.”

  “I do have news for you today,” he said.

  I perked up. That was a much better reason for him to be at our house. “What’s up?”

  “David”—which he pronounced dah-veed—“was spotted going through security at the Los Angeles Internationale Airport. He took a plane to Paris.”

  A chill ran over me. Kimbal had skipped town? Skipped the country? “When?” I asked.

  “Two days ago. I know you were wishing to be informed as to what we are knowing of him, so . . .” Prière shrugged.

  “That’s it? You don’t know where he was going or who he was with?”

  “He was travelling alone. He was passing la douane à Paris—uh, how do you say . . . uh, customs? So as far as we are knowing, he is in Paris, though he could have been hiring a private plane to be flying him elsewhere or even taking a train or a car.”

  Kimbal was gone. To Pairs. He knew we were onto him. That I was onto him. No wonder I hadn’t seen anything on the cameras I’d planted in his house.

  Well, that settled it. I was going back to Kimbal’s place, and this time I was going to do a thorough search.

  After dinner, I got out my phone to text Grace and see if she wanted to come along, but I stopped myself before I wrote anything.

  I remembered how the field office had cloned my cell phone when they’d given me this new one. If they were monitoring me—and I had every reason to believe that they were—they must know that Grace and I had broken into Kimbal’s place before. Strange that no one had ever said anything. Still, I didn’t want them to know I was going today.

  Guess I was on my own, then.

  After Grandma went to bed, I snuck out the back. My car was too noisy, and my detail would have seen me take it, so I walked to Kimbal’s.

  I made quick work of the lock and went in. With Kimbal out of the country, I wasn’t worried about getting caught, so I flipped on the lights in the kitchen and looked around. The place had been clean—the floor marked with vacuum stripes.

  I checked where Grace had found my journal. It was still there. I checked my cameras and mics, they were all there too. The bedroom had been clean last time, including his computer, but I turned on his desktop again just in case I’d missed something. While it was loading, I ransacked his desk drawers, found some Field Opps kits and pocketed them.

  “What are we looking for this time?” someone said.

  “Ahh!” I about jumped out of my skin.

  Grace was standing just inside the bedroom door.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  She lowered her gaze, like I’d caught her with her hand in the cookie jar. “I was watching the Find My Friends app, and I saw that you were here.”

  Wow. That was . . . totally possible. “Why would you have even thought to look at that?” I asked.

  She bit her lip. “I kind of check it a lot,” she said.

  I tilted back my head. “You spy on me?”

  “It’s not a red card or anything like that. I just . . .”

  “You’re just spying on me,” I said, grinning.

  “I just don’t want you to leave me out of anything important.”

  “Listen, I was not leaving you out, Grace. I was going to text you about coming here, but the field office cloned my phone. I didn’t want them to see.”

  “Oh.”

  “How did you get here, anyway? Did your detail follow you?”

  “I took my bike. And they didn’t see me. I promise. So what are we looking for?”

  “Kimbal fled the country,” I said. “I decided to give the place a more thorough going over. See if we might have missed something before.”

  “I’ll start in the kitchen again,” Grace said, walking out.

  I stood there a moment, a little weirded out. But the clock was ticking, so I got back to it.

  Just like before, the computer was clean. Not even a file for pictures or taxes or personal email. I shut it down, then searched his dresser drawers and under his bed. There I found a wicker basket full of miscellaneous cords. I also found an old iPhone. It was dead, but a little more digging and I found its charger. I plugged it in, then went back to my search. I found a gun safe in the closet—wondered if there was anything interesting inside. I wasn’t the greatest at combination locks, though, and I didn’t want to ruin the thing with Drew’s crowbar method of opening safes. I called Grace back in and asked her to try to open it. While she messed with the safe, I went back to the phone. It had power now but unsurprisingly, no service. I opened an old email app that was still attached to Kimbal’s account. It wouldn’t load new emails, but the old ones were still there.

  “That’s pretty sloppy, Kimbal,” I said.

  “What?” Grace called from the closet.

  “Nothing,” I said, grinning as I found a familiar name on an email from several years back. I opened it.

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: Long time

  Liam,

  Been a while, hasn’t it? Good to know you’re so close. I could use your help with something important.

  Diane

  The email was stacked in a thread with the same subject line. It took me a while to break it down. I read five or six boring emails from Diane, but Kimbal hadn’t responded until she’d started with the threats.

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Re: Long time

  If you continue to ignore me, I’ll have to email Director Moreland at the field office. I’m sure you don’t want me to do that, but it seems you’re leaving me no choice.

  Diane

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Re: Long time

  What do you want?

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Re: Long time

  I want the boy you call Spencer Garmond.

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Re: Long time

  You’ll have to get through me first.

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Re: Long time

  I won’t take no for an answer. I will get the boy, with or without your help.

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Re: Long time

  I can get you the information you need, but you leave Spencer alone. We do this my way.

  From: [email protected]


  To: [email protected]

  Re: Long time

  My patience has a price, Liam. If you agree to help me out with some errands in Pilot Point—look the other way here and there—I suppose we could arrive at an understanding.

  Then Kimbal had replied with his phone number, which was the last email in the thread. It had been a while since Kimbal used his Pilot Point Police Department email address. I took note of the date. This last email had been a few months after I’d come back from Moscow. So Anya had found me in Moscow, told Diane where I was from, and when she looked, she’d found someone she knew close by. Kimbal.

  How did they know each other?

  This had been over a year before I’d been put on the Sayle case. My guess was, Diane and MacCormack were somehow involved with the iVitrax being cooked in Pilot Point. And they’d needed the Sayles help to distribute it. I bet the Sayles had never met Kimbal—unless he’d come in while he’d been dating their secretary, Jessica. My guess was he’d only been dating her to keep an eye on the Sayle’s business, so he could make sure he was the guy on duty when it came time to “look the other way.”

  And to delete the footage I’d captured. The footage that had helped indict the Sayles.

  So Kimbal had been helping the drug runners to stave off Diane—to keep her away from me. It kind of softened my anger toward the guy. Kind of. But what had happened in Alaska? Did Tebow and Blondie come after me because Kimbal had failed and the Sayles had been arrested? And how did Kimbal know them? What was his past connection to Diane?

  And what did she have on Kimbal that he would cave and break the law? It must be big. Big enough that he didn’t want Moreland to know.

  Like betraying my parents?

  “It’s totally empty,” Grace said. She was standing outside the closet, looking at me.

  I joined her there and gazed down at the empty safe. “Nice job opening it, though,” I said.