The Profile Match Page 6

“Oh no?” He picked up a remote control from his desk and pointed it at the TV that was still playing a muted news channel. The screen flicked to an image of Grace, kneeling on the floor beside the bed in the room I had just left, praying.

  My stomach twisted. “You were watching us?” What a creep.

  He waggled his eyebrows. “More than that.” Using the remote, he pulled up a menu. A few quick selections, and a series of frames appeared on the screen. Though they were frozen, the thumbnails were all shots of Grace’s room. MacCormack selected one of the more recent ones, and it filled the screen.

  I watched myself enter the bedroom. Grace leapt off the bed and ran to me. We hugged. I spun her around. Then we sat on the bed, and my heart sank.

  “I don’t go around kissing my friends,” MacCormack said, “at least not like that.”

  I didn’t know what to do or say, so I just glared at him.

  “Look, I don’t like doing all this,” he said. “I have people who take care of such things. But they’re not here at the moment, so here’s how this is going to work. Answer my questions, and I’ll let the girl go. Answer my questions before Ms. Vseveloda arrives, and you’ll save yourself a lot of pain. I’m sure you remember how much she likes questioning people.”

  I pictured Anya’s knife slashing across my chest. All this time, did Anya work for MacCormack? Was he on the Leaders of Cults list I’d learned about back in Moscow?

  “I didn’t tell Anya anything last time, and I won’t now,” I said. “It doesn’t matter how much she tortures me because I don’t have the answers she wants.”

  “We’ll see about that. Anya won’t be working on you this time.”

  I didn’t understand at first. And then it clicked. “Are you crazy? Grace doesn’t know anything!”

  “But you do.”

  Panic was making me sweat, but I forced myself to calm down. “Listen, I have prophecies sometimes, but I haven’t had any about a person called the First Twin. I really haven’t.”

  “You’re lying. I know because I’m gifted in Discernment too, Spencer. I just play for another team now.”

  Did MacCormack used to be in the Mission League? “Why don’t you just kill me?”

  “You’re too valuable to kill.”

  The frustration of MacCormack’s dancing around the truth made me want to punch him. “I was your fan. I believed in you and the projects you made. All the charities you run around the world. I thought you cared about people.”

  “Charities help with my taxes and paint a positive image of me to the public.”

  “So it’s all a lie? You don’t really care about anyone?”

  “I care about myself. I care about making a lot of money.”

  “What about Diane? Don’t you care about her?”

  He chuckled. “It’s funny you should bring her up, Spencer. Diane is far more than my partner in the romantic sense of the word. We were business partners first.”

  “What kind of business partners?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  “I’m just trying to understand.” And the dude was making it really hard.

  “I don’t need you to understand. I need you to cooperate. Do you know how much money I’ve spent chasing you all over the world? I don’t like wasting money.”

  I tensed my leg, thinking of my knee surgery. “I just wanted to play basketball.”

  “Yeah, about that. Let’s be real. You’re a good basketball player, but you’re not that good. The sooner you admit that, the sooner you can realize the other potential locked inside you and put your time into something worthwhile.”

  I grinded my teeth at his basketball insult, but his cryptic statement had piqued my curiosity. “What potential?”

  “People will pay a lot of money for secrets, Spencer. Heck, you could start your own NBA team with the money you could make off dealing in prophecies.”

  A chill ran up my arms. Treating my visions like some kind of commodity, like heroine or iVitrax? I’d never heard of such a thing.

  MacCormack sat at his desk. “Diane and Anya are on their way here now. It’s a long flight from Cambodia. They arrive tomorrow morning, so you have until then to get your priorities straight.” He pressed a button on his phone. “I’m done in here.”

  The door opened, and Tito came in. I walked toward him, eager to get back to Grace.

  “Spencer.”

  I turned back in time to catch MacCormack’s wink. “Don’t forget, I’m watching.”

  I gave him the dirtiest look I could muster and followed Tito back across the house. The moment I re-entered the bedroom, Grace tackled me in another desperate hug.

  “Where’d they take you?” she asked. “What’s happening?”

  I pressed my finger to my lips and scanned the bedroom until I found the camera, just above the door. The room had a private bathroom, so I pulled Grace in there. Sure enough, I spotted a camera, poised in one corner of the ceiling. What a sicko.

  I thought about disabling both cameras, but until I had a plan to escape, there was no reason to annoy the man threatening to torture Grace.

  The bathroom had a long, standing shower with two showerheads. Kinky. I opened the door, cranked on the water on one side, and moved the showerhead until it was pointed up the wall. Then I pulled Grace into the opposite corner where it was dry.

  She squealed and tried to fight me, but she was so small, I easily pushed her inside and shielded her with my back from any residual splashing.

  “Listen!” I yelled, and when her eyes met mine, I lowered my voice. “He’s got a camera in the bedroom and in here too. He’s been recording us. He played some footage back to me.”

  Grace gasped. “Why would he do that? What does he want?”

  I didn’t want to tell her. Didn’t want her to worry. But was it fair to keep it a secret? Anya was coming. And she would hurt Grace unless I told them Grace was the First Twin. Then who knew what they’d do to Grace.

  “Prophecies,” I said. “He said something about dealing in prophecies.”

  “But prophecies don’t work that way.”

  “I don’t understand it either. But Anya is on her way. We have to get away before morning, because she’ll hurt us.”

  Grace nodded. “Then let’s get out of here.”

  I turned off the water, and we climbed out of the shower. The back of my shirt was damp from mist that had splashed me. The bathroom mirror had fogged up, but the moment I stepped into the chill, air-conditioned room, I shivered.

  I gave the bedroom a thorough investigation and was dismayed to suddenly realize this was an interior room. No windows. Nor did I find a vent or air duct or crawl space or anything else that was always present in your basic spy movie. The only way out was the front door, which was being guarded on the other side by Tito. Not even my Field Opps kits could help us.

  I glanced at the walls and ceiling but saw nothing but paint.

  “What’s wrong?” Grace asked.

  “This room is probably lined in copper mesh. Behind the drywall and under the floorboards. That’s why my cell has no service.” And why there were no windows. This was a holding cell. “There’s no way out. We’re trapped.”

  No wonder Tito hadn’t bothered to search me.

  “Seems like a lot of work just to kill a cell phone,” Grace said.

  “MacCormack is rich.” And he’d been a bad guy for a long time.

  “What are we going to do?” Grace asked, her voice cracking.

  I pulled her close and turned away from the camera, whispered in her ear. “We wait. The Sloans will send the cavalry.”

  I just hoped it arrived before Anya did.

  ● ● ●

  Grace and I watched a bunch of TV, but I didn’t really absorb it. Don’t think Grace did either. The hours dragged by. Richard Locke, MacCormack’s estate manager—aka butler—brought us some dinner, and when the door opened, I saw Tito wasn’t in the hallway alone. Another beefy bodyguard type had join
ed him—probably to scare me out of trying to escape. Sadly, I saw no point in trying. Even if I managed to subdue Tito and his beefy shadow, it was a long way to the front door, and who knew if I could find us a car?

  Just after midnight, Grace shut off the TV. It was weird to think that at this time last night, she’d broken up with me. Now we were sitting in the dark on a bed inside the mansion of a famous Hollywood producer.

  Only in my life.

  Grandma must be freaking out. I hoped Mr. S had filled her in. They must know where we were by now. What was taking them so long?

  “I knew you’d come,” Grace said from the darkness.

  “I’m just sorry it happened,” I said. “Especially after last night.”

  “I’m sorry for last night too,” she said. “I was scared.”

  I swear, this girl tangled my brain more than calculus. “Scared of what? Me?”

  “Yes.”

  The word hissed in the darkness, making me feel somehow sinister. “I would never hurt you, Grace.”

  “I know.” The jolting gasps of several jagged breaths made me hope she wasn’t crying again. “My whole life I’ve been alone except for God,” she said finally. “But God didn’t protect me from my dad. And Mom didn’t protect either. She tried. We’d move away. But she always went back, eventually. And Dad always hurt me more than he hurt her. You know I love my dad, Spencer, but for so long, he wasn’t safe. He was sick.”

  I cringed at how she made excuses for him—like his abusing her wasn’t so much a felony as it was shrapnel from his own addiction.

  “When I was thirteen, I had a dream,” Grace said. “God gave it to me, I know he did. I dreamed that someone came into my life and saved me from my dad. Someone who would love me like no one ever had. Not even my mom, because even though she loves me, she would never give up Dad to protect me.”

  “You found Jesus,” I guessed.

  “No, Spencer. This was a person. I saw him in my dream, but he didn’t have a face. He was strong and safe and took care of me. I used to think it was Eli. He’d always been nice to me.”

  Eli. That punk. “How long have you known him?”

  “Since seventh grade. But from the moment I first saw you in Harris Hall, I wondered if it might be you. I convinced myself I was wrong because you were a jock. But later I started to hope it might be you. And when you punched my dad—when I saw you holding him against the house like that . . . I knew.”

  I had so many questions, but I hoped she might answer them if I stayed silent.

  “Are you awake?” she asked, finally.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I know God sent you, Spencer. But I’m scared I might be wrong. Scared you’ll hurt me too. So I tried to see how far I could push you.”

  That ticked me off. “Grace, that’s insane. Why would you mess around like that? What if I was some kind of selfish jerk? I’m twice your size. I could have hurt you.”

  “I’m used to pain, Spencer. I’m numb to it. And I didn’t care if you hurt me. I had to know I if I could trust you. I had to push you to prove to myself you were the one. And you are.”

  I lay there in the dark, ears ringing from the silence after those words. Talk about messed up. What in the figs and jam does a guy do with something like that?

  Still, I didn’t want to hurt Grace. She’d been through enough. I pulled her to me in the darkness until her head was resting on my chest. She started crying again, which made me worry that I probably shouldn’t have touched her, but when I tried to pull away, she clung to me.

  Maybe she just needed to cry.

  So I held her and let her cry. And I drifted off to sleep.

  REPORT NUMBER: 7

  REPORT TITLE: An Old Friend Takes Me to Meet the Boss

  SUBMITTED BY: Agent-in-Training Spencer Garmond

  LOCATION: Irving MacCormack’s Mansion, 14217 Evans Road, Los Angeles, California, USA

  DATE AND TIME: Monday, November 5, 4:34 a.m.

  I’m standing in an apartment, hands raised up by my shoulders. A man is pointing a gun at me. He’s Asian. I don’t recognize him. Behind him, out the window, a city spreads out around us. We’re on the upper floor of a tall building. The guy tells me to move, but before I can, a door bursts open and Kimbal runs inside, holding a gun of his own.

  “Stop!” he yells. “Don’t hurt him!”

  The Asian guy shoots. Kimbal flies back and hits the wall, slides down it, leaving a swath of red over the white paint.

  Things blur, and I’m suddenly in a hospital room, walking toward a bed surrounded by IVs. I expect to see Kimbal, but they’re attached to a woman lying there under a thin, white sheet. Her blond hair is splayed over the pillow. She turns, and it’s Anya.

  “Help me,” she whispers.

  Someone grabbed my shoulder. My eyes flashed open. Light stabbed through the darkness, illuminating a figure standing over me. My League Combat Training kicked in. I whipped up my leg, hooked him, and pinned him to the bed. He landed on Grace, who screamed.

  It all came back. Grace. MacCormack’s house. I scrambled over my attacker and Grace, then pulled her off the other side of the bed with me. “Time to go,” I said.

  “Spencer, stop!”

  I knew that British accent. A flashlight beam swept over the wall, paused on me and Grace, then spun back to the face of its holder.

  I’d taken down one of the Mr. Sloans.

  “We don’t have much time.” He circled the foot of the bed and headed for the open door.

  No sign of Tito or his beefy shadow at their post in the hallway. I took Grace’s hand and tugged her after the agent. Rather than going back toward the stairs, Mystery Sloan turned right. We wove through a part of the house I’d never been in, ran down a back stairwell that let out in the kitchen. We exited into the backyard. The sky was black, so it must still be night. MacCormack’s dogs were barking, but they were far away. Mystery Sloan approached a motorcycle, grabbed two helmets off the handlebars, and shoved them at us.

  “Put these on.”

  We obeyed, and the next thing I knew, we were both on the bike behind Mystery Sloan as he drove over MacCormack’s back lawn. When we circled to the front of the house, I spotted the dogs sprinting toward us, tongues lagging out the sides of their mouths. Mystery Sloan aimed for the opened front gates, where several men were standing, and gunned it.

  The men must have been agents because they not only didn’t try to stop us, they closed the gates behind us, trapping the dogs on MacCormack’s property. We rounded a bend and approached a blockade of police cars, their lights flashing over the surrounding road and forest.

  Mystery Sloan stopped the bike beside a black sedan and said, “Get in.”

  We got off the bike and climbed in back. The front seat was empty.

  I looked down on Grace, who was again holding my hand. “You okay?”

  She nodded. “Much better to be out of there.”

  True that. Relief overwhelmed me, but if Grace was the First Twin, she’d likely get her share of attention from the baddies eventually. I would shield her from it as long as I could.

  The driver’s door opened, and a man climbed in. He was tan, and his blond hair was buzzed military short. He stretched his arm over the back seat and grinned.

  My jaw dropped. “Isaac?” I said.

  “Agent Schwarz, thank you very much,” he said. “I’ll be driving you scofflaws to the field office.”

  Oh, man. “The L.A. Field Office?” I asked.

  “Go there often, do you?” Isaac asked.

  “Never, but my grandpa used to run the place. What are you doing here?”

  “I’m working. The better question is, what are you doing here?” he glanced at Grace, eyebrows raised.

  “This is Grace,” I said. “Isaac used to be in the Pilot Point Mission League.”

  “I was a senior Spencer’s rookie year,” Isaac said. “Got my first red card to watch him. To this day, that was one of my toughest assignment
s.”

  Grace cracked a smile. “That sounds about right.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Isaac said. “When his name came over the scanner tonight, I had a crippling moment of déjà vu, until I saw the place and realized it wasn’t a skyscraper he might try to rappel down using a modem cable.”

  “It was an extension cord,” I said.

  Isaac pulled a face. “Oh, pardon my faulty memory.”

  “Are you working Special Forces?” I asked.

  “Nope. Did the training and decided to go field. If you must know, I’m a Field Intelligence Junior Operative.”

  “So soon?” I asked.

  “I did my time. Now I’m earning my place. And you better not mess things up for me.”

  “I’ll try not to,” I said.

  Mystery Sloan got in on the passenger side, catty-cornered from me, and Isaac hit the gas.

  Sloan looked back at us. “You two okay?” he asked.

  “Fine,” Grace said.

  “Thanks for the rescue,” I said. “I suppose I’m in trouble?”

  “When are you not in trouble?” Isaac asked, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.

  A fair point. I sighed and settled back as Isaac headed out of the mountains and into Westwood. It was a short trip to the Wilshire Federal Building, which was only a few blocks south of UCLA. I’d seen the massive seventeen-story white building on the news before. People liked to protest here, but at this hour, the parking lot was deserted.

  The Mission League Los Angeles Field Office was in suite 1500. We went through security, then took one of ten high-speed elevators up to the fifteenth floor where we went through security again. We finally entered a lobby of sorts where familiar faces were waiting.

  “Grace!” Mrs. Thomas vaulted off a black leather couch and grabbed her daughter in a crushing embrace.

  “Where’s dad?” Grace asked.

  “He’s at work, honey,” Mrs. Thomas said. “I called him as soon as I heard you were safe. He’s trying to get someone to cover his shift so he can get over here.”

  I looked beyond them to where Mr. S, Prière, and Grandma Alice were getting to their feet from another couch.

  “Boy, you try my heart,” Grandma said, hugging me. “What am I going to do with you?”