Page 2 of One Knight Stand

See that spare paper clip on the table? Fashion it into a deadly weapon in four seconds.

No key to the car? Hot-wire it in under a minute and be on your way.

I’d never known a class could be so much fun. Next to cryptology, the MacGyver Class was my favorite course.

“Two minutes.” I tossed my backpack on my desk chair. “One hundred and twenty seconds. Can you believe it? It’s a record for me. And Professor Pérez was tricky about it. He threw in two extra wires to slow me down. It was a lot harder than I’d expected.” It was weird to hear myself say that aloud and actuallymeanit, because for the past eleven years in school, I’d been mostly bored and coasted through my classes. Now I was challenged every minute at UTOP, and I loved it.

I was beyond grateful I’d been able to try out for the school. To get invited to UTOP, you had to be plucked from the obscurity of high school and sponsored by an agent who thought you had potential to be a spy. Slash, the current director of information assurance at the NSA, had sponsored me. I doubt Slash is his real name, but since he works at the NSA, it’s not surprising he’d conceal his actual identity. Slash is the fiancé of my IT mentor, Lexi Carmichael, and both of them are well acquainted with my hacking skills. Exactlyhowwell acquainted is another story.

“You know, Frankie, I never realized how easy it is to break into a car, even for a klutz like me. Mike, as usual, got into the car in fourteen seconds, then took only twenty-seven seconds to crack the steering column and strip and pair the right wires. He’s unstoppable.”

“Mike is going to be hard to beat,” Frankie agreed. “Apparently, he spends his free time reading books on electronics and lock picking. I had to give up after fifteen minutes. Ugh! In my class, hot-wiring is dominated by Jax and another guy named Sully. Both of them can break into the carandhot-wire it about fifty seconds. As far as I can tell, they’re the real kings.”

“Well, none of them are going to be kings of hot-wiring for long.” I unzipped my backpack and pulled out a couple of books and a notebook. “We’re learning how to hot-wireoldcars. As soon as we move on to modern cars, hot-wiring will bemydomain. I’m anticipating my only competition at that point will be Wally.”

“How’s that?”

“Think about it, Frankie. Cars later than about 2000 are nearly impossible to physically hot-wire because of the chips in the key fobs. No old-fashioned wiring is going to work on that. However, that does mean that the keyless cars with coded ID fobs are right in the sweet spot formyexpertise. All I need is a laptop, a tablet or phone, and a specialized app, and I can beat the pants off Mike’s twenty-seven seconds or Jax’s thirty-five.”

“Sweet. I’d love to see their faces after you do that. Speaking of mad skills, are you ready for driver’s ed today? I know you’re killing it on the virtual track, but real pavement is entirely different. Did you know that the explosions and rubber bullets they fire at us on the virtual course are supposedly what they’ll actually throw at us when we’re driving on the physical course? Pamela MacDonald told me.”

“Who’s Pamela MacDonald?”

“Seriously, Angel? She’s the girl with the long brown hair that sits next to you in class.”

“Oh.” I thought for a moment, crunching my brow as I tried to bring her face to mind. “I thought her name was Kim.”

Frankie heaved a sigh and dramatically placed her hand over her heart. “What am I going to do with you?

I tried not to look guilty but failed. “You know people aren’t my thing.”

“They betterstartbeing your thing. Spy school, remember?”

“I know. I know.” I blew out a breath, taking her words to heart. I’d learned during the UTOP trials that being a people person made it easier to gather intelligence and information, the number one priority of a spy. “I’ll work on it. I promise.”

“You’d better.”

I paused, realizing this was the perfect opportunity to back up my previous statement. “Ah, and how was your class, Frankie?” I racked my brain, trying to remember which class she had. I should know this, and yet…I didn’t. I totally sucked at people skills, even with my best friend.

“I had Forgery and False Identification, because I know you forgot,” she said. “Today we were presented with the dizzying array of tools and graphic programs the US government has at its fingertips to create the most amazing fake IDs. I was like a kid in a candy store. I’ve never been so excited about anything in my life. It’s like a dream come true. I can play with graphics all I want without worrying about being arrested.”

I guess I’d always thought the spy stuff involved car chases, shooting the bad guys, and, weirdly, playing poker in a tuxedo. But the truth is that the life of an operative is not all glamour and thrills. In fact, most of it is tedious work such as research, information collection, and data analysis. Or in my case, computers.

Still, I felt exactly the same way about hacking as she did creating fake IDs. Here at UTOP, we could excel at our talents without fear of retribution. In fact, we wereencouragedto do it, all while under proper adult supervision, which meant one thing:

Spy school rocked.

Chapter Three

ANGEL SINCLAIR

I hadn’t mentioned it earlier to Frankie, but I was both excited and completely terrified for my next class, Driver’s Education: Escape and Evasion.

The night before, several of us had been up late playing the defensive driving simulator our professors had provided for us on our laptops. With a little creative coding, Wally and I had been able to modify the multiplayer version of the simulator. Now, instead of just being able to practice the various maneuvers they wanted us to demonstrate proficiency at performing, we could play tag inside both the urban and rural environments of the simulation.

While Wally and I took modifying the simulation code as a professional challenge, we justified it to ourselves by arguing it was helping to improve our situational awareness as we chased each other around the virtual course. It was also good practice for me because I was the only one of my team that didn’t have a driver’s license yet, just a learner’s permit.

I was the king of the virtual track.

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