Free The Inside Job by Jackson Pearce

like a sausage being strangled. My legs barely fit into the spandex-y pants. They were a little too long, which only made me look shorter. The white shirt was decent enough, but when I tucked it in, my body kind of looked like a mushroom cloud of smoke erupting from the pants.
    You’d think this kind of thing wouldn’t bother me as much anymore, now that I wasn’t surrounded by classmates making fun of me. You’d be wrong.
    But we had work to do, so I sighed, gave Walter a
yeah, I know it’s bad
look, and the two of us went on our way.

CHAPTER NINE
    The Geneva Country Club was right on the edge of Lake Geneva, the lake the city was named after. It had a spectacular view of the snowcapped mountains and a billion old trees with gnarled branches thicker than my body. It also had a very big gate out front, with a very big security guard. He waved people in fancy cars through one at a time, smiling and greeting them in a variety of languages—it was pretty impressive.
    â€œ
Excusez-moi, monsieurs!
” the guard said, stepping in front of us.
“Peux-je vous aidez?” Can I help you?
    I smiled at him brightly and answered in French, but I let my voice take on a bit of a British accent, since the Kessel brothers were at school in England. “Hello—Sven, yes? We’re here with our father, Monsieur Theodore Kessel.”
    â€œHe’s an oil baron!” Walter said cheerily. I did my best not to glare.
    â€œMonsieur Kessel?” the guard said, eyeing Walter suspiciously. “But he went in ages ago. Why weren’t you with him?”
    I looked at Walter and folded my arms. “That would be because of my
dear
brother here, and his big mouth. Victor complained about father not sending any decent horses with us to school. Then they got in an argument. Then Father said that if we were going to be so unappreciative, perhaps it’d do us well to learn the value of hard work. And then—well, let me summarize it for you: he threw us out of the limo a kilometer back. I think my brother’s a little dizzy from all the walking here,” I said, lowering my voice at the end.
    Sven laughed broadly and gave Walter a pitying look. He dropped his voice a bit. “Well, that was a bold thing for him to say, seeing as how your father inherited his fortune, no? But let’s leave that between us.” He winked. “All right, all right—go on in, gentlemen.
Passez un bon après-midi!
”
    I grinned at him, and Walter and I hustled in. Walter looked like his heart rate was just now slowing—the whole bit about getting thrown out of the limo was off book, and it’d rattled him. What was crazy about Walter was that he
had
all the skills to be an amazing spy. It was just that he always freaked out and worried he
didn’t
, and that wrecked him.
    â€œYou okay?” I asked him.
    â€œYeah. Yeah,” he said. “Sorry. I just haven’t done any real fieldwork in . . . well. Since you and I were on that mission to the sports school for SRS.”
    We walked toward the country club’s main building, sidestepping golf carts and the occasional horseback rider—who were
indeed
wearing the exact same clothes Walter and I were. We stuck our chests out, like the proud sons-of-a-rich-guy we were, looking down only to check that our nails were clean.
    The main building looked something like a castle—in fact, I think it used to actually
be
a castle. It was solid stone, with large, arched wood doors and honest-to-goodness turrets at the tops, which were dotted with white and red flags. Behind flower-covered windows, I could see giant leather sofas and ladies wearing thick pearl necklaces. Black cars were delivering a constant stream of fabulously dressed people to the wood doors, where a butler wearing white gloves bowed a bit and ushered the visitors inside. For a moment I worried that the butler would question us like the guard had, but