Free The Doublecross by Jackson Pearce Page B

that?”
    â€œBecause,” Oleander answered as she walked away, “you’ll realize I’m telling the truth.”
    Truth.
    She couldn’t be—there was no way. And yet, that word shone like a beacon in my head, guiding me toward the last time I’d heard it. My parents, talking in the kitchen, my mom’s voice on the edge of tears.
We pretend like we don’t know the truth.
    Could this be the truth my parents were talking about?
    Clatterbuck warily escorted me to his office, which was on the same floor as the gym and tucked away in a corner—as such it had been spared the sprinklers on the floor above. Being basement level, it didn’t have a window, but he’d tacked a few dozen tropical calendar pictures to the back wall, which worked as a surprisingly decent substitute. Tropical pictures aside, the room looked like it belonged to a comic book illustrator, or maybe a zombie movie aficionado. There were vintage movie posters on the wall by the door and little figurines on every flat surface. Toy cars still in boxes and pictures of him with everyone from the Queen of England to that guy from the action movies. I couldn’t help but think this office rivaled Kennedy’s bedroom in terms of colors per square foot.
    And it didn’t look as evil as I’d expected for The League.
    Clatterbuck gave me a sort of smile and turned to go, yanking a baseball player bobblehead off a shelf and tucking it safely into his pocket as he went. As soon as the door clicked, I sighed and collapsed into his desk chair, wiggling around as the edges of the duct tape covering the cushion poked me. My mind felt crowded, too many thoughts bumping into one another.
    SRS agents were taught to trust our guts—it was the very first thing we learned when we started training at seven years old. Go with your first instinct and never look back. I’d always liked that—the idea that the right thing, the ground truth, was already deep inside us, and we just needed to listen to it. It was the lesson that convinced me not to give up when training got terrible, when Walter got muscles, when Kennedy became the best gymnast at SRS—because I always knew that deep down, the true thing in me was a spy, through and through, no matter how slowly I ran a mile.
    But now, even while my head was shouting that Oleander must be lying, that The League was tricking me, the deep true thing was whispering, chanting over and over:
Truth. Truth. Truth.
    Find the truth.

Chapter Ten
    I thought I was losing my mind—time seemed to be going in reverse. Then I realized time actually was going in reverse—that Clatterbuck had some sort of goofy backward clock. I shook my head at it, then continued to comb through his desk drawers. Most were full of Chinese menus and paper clips.
    Someone rapped on the door. I eased the desk drawer shut and stood up gingerly.
    â€œHale?” a tiny female voice called out. “It’s Beatrix. Beatrix Clatterbuck? From the gym?”
    â€œI remember,” I answered through the door.
    â€œI brought you some pizza. My uncle said you didn’t eat earlier.”
    â€œI don’t want it,” I answered, though again my stomach growled at that exact moment just to mock me.
    â€œOkay,” Beatrix said, sounding doubtful. “I didn’t lick it. Seriously. Open the door.”
    â€œIt’s locked—”
    â€œNo, it isn’t,” Beatrix said. “I mean, it is, but it’s locked from your side. They couldn’t just lock you in forever; there’s no bathroom.”
    She was right about there not being a bathroom, though it hadn’t occurred to me till she’d said it. I strode to the door and pulled down on the handle; it clicked and the lock popped out obediently. I exhaled in disbelief—
they really had left me in an unlocked room?
—and pulled the door open. Beatrix grinned at me, and it was hard not to notice her