Free Two Lies and a Spy by Kat Carlton Page B

crane my neck to see it over her shoulder. We read in utter silence, my eyes flying over phrases such as “unlikely to be coincidental,” “dubious timing,” and “links to an offshore account held by a shell company.”
    This doesn’t sound good. There’s no outright accusation of anything, but there is a recommendation to interrogate, and there are several surveillance reports on subject IA-062192. They’re written in dry, boring language and detail a travel schedule that matches my mom’s, a dead-drop point, and an acknowledgment that subject IA-062192 “made” her street team and then tried to run.
    “IA” can only be Irene Andrews. And “062192” is the date she joined the Agency: June 21, 1992.
    Finally, there’s a note at the bottom of the document:
    SUBJECT IA-062192 IS BEING HELD FOR DEBRIEFING AT LANGLEY.
    Rita whistles.
    The Agency has my mom . . . and they clearly suspect her of something underhanded—which is ridiculous. Making a tail and then losing it, trying to disappear; it’s completely normal for my mother. She’s on guard all the time. It’s part of her job.
    And anything to do with an offshore account? That just means that the op she’s working on is a black one. One where national security might be compromised if all the details are transparent and trotted out for the mediato examine. Think about it: Did the navy write a check and log the specifics when they sent the SEALS into Pakistan to get Osama bin Laden? I don’t think so.
    “What have you found?” Luke asks.
    “The Agency is questioning my mother,” I say. “Where would they detain someone at Langley?”
    “Most detaining is probably done in, oh, say . . . a detention center.” Evan winks. “However unlikely that may sound.”
    I ignore him and his idiot sarcasm and look at Luke for guidance.
    “He’s actually right,” he says. “Langley has no official detention center. But I’ve heard rumors of one.”
    “You don’t know where it is?” My tone is urgent.
    He shakes his head. “Somewhere in the bowels of the complex.”
    Once again Lacey shocks us to the core. With a classic hair toss she says, “I know exactly where the detention center is at Langley.”
    “You do?” Luke stares at her. We all do. Lacey’s full of surprises today.
    “Of course.” She turns and heads for the staircase. “Let’s regroup in Luke’s room, in case Mom or Dad comes home.”
    Rita quickly logs out of Mr. Carson’s laptop, dusts off the eye shadow from the keyboard, then closes it. We all follow Lacey’s perfect, perky buns up the stairs.
    “How?” Luke demands. “How do you, of all people, know where the detention center at Langley is?”
    She smiles secretively. “Maybe because I’ve been . . . detained . . . there.” She tosses her hair again. “By a totally hot security guard.”
    Luke frowns. “When?”
    And Evan is compelled to ask, “Don’t these traffic cops and security guards care at all that you’re sixteen , and therefore what you Yanks like to call jailbait?”
    “Not after they get a good look at the girls,” Lacey says, gesturing at her biggest assets.
    “Slut,” Rita mutters under her breath.
    Luke looks nauseated.
    Evan looks unimpressed.
    “So where is this detention center?” I demand.
    “Yeah, where?” Rita says. “Let’s go!”
    Lacey scoffs. “This is the Agency we’re talking about. We don’t just storm the doors and take no prisoners. We need a plan and an official reason to go there.”
    “What was yours?” Luke presses his sister. “When your security guard buddy showed you the detention center?”
    “It’s so not important.” Lacey waves her hand dismissively.
    “Oh, I know what it was. That was the day you got picked up for shoplifting,” Luke says. “And you had to spend a little time waiting for Dad to rip you a new one.”
    “I told you, I did not shoplift. I left the store accidentally with that handbag, and security jumped to the worst possible