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“Why don’t we race?” It was a stab in the dark, but I never claimed to be good at this.
“Race to where?” Jack asked. It was a pretty small veranda.
“To the car,” I said. “Winner decides where we go from there.”
Given the fact that I was almost positive that I could beat him in a fair race, it was a stroke of genius.
“Race to the car,” Jack tried the idea out by saying it out loud.
I nodded.
“This thing really isn’t your deal, is it?” he asked.
“What thing? The party?” I asked, planning to press the whole “race to the car” thing.
“The party,” Jack confirmed. “The squad, the whole popularity thing.” He paused. “You’d rather those girls think that I dated Prince William than that you did.”
“Your point?”
“Why are you a cheerleader?”
He sounded suspicious. Darned Cheerleader Aversion.
“If I tell you, can we race?”
He nodded. “Why the hell not.”
I mulled the question over, trying to come up with an answer that was at least partially true. “I like to do things that people tell me I can’t,” I said finally. “And nobody ever thought I’d make the Squad.”
Least of all me.
“Huh,” Jack said. And then, without another word, he bolted off the veranda and back into the party. It took me a couple of seconds to figure out that he was headed to the car.
“Cheater!” I yelled after him. I quickly scanned the surrounding area. He had enough of a head start that there was no way I could beat him taking the same route. Luckily, there was one other route available. Casting a single dubious look at my boots, I climbed on top of the railing, jumped off the veranda, and landed on the ground outside, a full story below. Not knowing how much time I’d bought myself, I ran full blast for the car.
By the time Jack got there, I’d taken off my boots and was pretending to buff my nails.
He looked from me back up to the veranda. “You jumped.”
I nodded.
“Cheater.”
I could feel the smile spread across my face. Ah, the sweet taste of victory.
Gallantly, he walked around to my side of the car and opened the door for me. I snorted. He ignored me.
After he’d settled himself in the driver’s seat, he turned to me. “So,” he said. “Where are we going?”
It was on the tip of my tongue to say his dad’s office, but something stopped me. I wasn’t the first one to use Jack to get to Peyton. If I asked to go there directly, who knew what kind of memories I was going to stir up? The last thing I wanted was for him to compare me to Chloe or Brooke.
“I don’t know where we’re going,” I said slowly, “but I know what we’re doing.”
Jack waited.
“Actually,” I said, divinely inspired, “I know what you’re doing.”
“What I’m doing?”
“It involves a Xerox machine and your butt,” I said. He blanched, and I continued. “Such is the price of defeat.”
“You want me to xerox my butt?”
I shrugged. “It beats this place. Where’s the nearest copy shop?”
Jack, still unsure whether I was mentally unstable or just highly unpredictable, turned the car on and put it in drive. “I’ve got someplace else in mind,” he said.
“Does it have a copy machine?” I asked. Translation: is it your dad’s office?
Jack didn’t answer. Instead, he smirked and pulled onto the road. “You know, Ev,” he said, “this obsession with my butt is getting old.”
CHAPTER 32
Code Word: Pressure
“Where are we?” I had a feeling we were in the underground parking complex attached to the law firm, but I asked the question anyway. “That’s like the fifth gate we’ve gone through.”
Jack shrugged. “Security.”
“This must be the most secured butt-copying facility of all time.”
Jack whipped his car into a parking space. “It’s my dad’s office,” he said. “They’re kind of anal about security.” He smiled. “Pun intended.”
We got out of the car, and Jack punched a code into a panel on the wall, and the glass doors slid open for us.
“Evening, Jack.”
“Evening, Mike.” Jack preempted my question. “He’s one of the night watch. We have full-time security.”
“What are you guys securing here? Nuclear weapons?” I could practically feel Chloe (or whoever was on the listening end of my feed) groaning at that question, but it’s what I would have asked if I hadn’t known anything about Peyton at all.
Jack shook his head. “It’s a law firm. We have some high-profile clients.” He whipped out a key, and once we were in the elevator, he used it to access the top floor of the building.
“If it’s so secure,” I said, “why do you have a key?”
Jack stared straight ahead as he answered. “It’s a family thing. My dad gave me one the day I turned sixteen.”
“Does he expect you to join the biz?” I asked.
Jack’s face hardened. “Something like that.”
Zee could have read more into his expression than I could (and, I thought, she probably would if my necklace was catching all of this on tape), but I got the feeling that Jack wasn’t exactly anxious to take over the evil empire. Maybe that was why he used his access to bring girls to Peyton to do inappropriate things with copy machines.
The elevator doors opened, and I was shocked that everything looked so normal. There was a large (and incredibly posh) reception desk in front of a glass wall that had the firm’s name embossed on it in scripty letters. The ceilings were high; the floors were wood. Jack immediately took a left, and I followed. I’d memorized the layout, so I knew that we were moving conveniently toward both the copy room and his father’s office.
As we entered the copy room, Jack narrowed his eyes at me. “If you tell anyone about this,” he said, “I will kill you.”
He sounded mockingly matter-of-fact, but given our surroundings, I couldn’t help but take his words a wee bit seriously.
Jack bowed then, and without further ado he approached the copier, turned around, and went to work.
My hand went automatically to my neck, covering the necklace. No one on the Squad needed to see this.
As it turned out, though, Jack copied his butt like a professional. He hopped up on the machine, and with a little maneuvering, slid his pants down in the back.
