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It was so different that I abandoned the elevator and walked toward her. She cupped her hand over her mouth, mumbled a few things into the phone, and then quickly hung up. She avoided my eyes. I saw her rubbing her toes together anxiously, ruining her wet nail polish.
    Spies notice these things.
    â€œSomeone will be here in a minute to escort you back,” she said. “The whole place just went on lockdown.”
    â€œLockdown? Why?” Lockdown was serious—it meant something on a mission had gone wrong, so doors were locked, files were reviewed, and recordings were studied. No one came or went, so information couldn’t be lost or shuffled or forgotten.
    The receptionist’s lips parted, but then we heard theelevator begin to move. It chimed. The doors opened. My eyes widened—it was Agent Otter, and to his right was Dr. Fishburn, the director of SRS. He wore a shiny gray suit, the same color as his hair.
    â€œHale,” Dr. Fishburn said. His voice sounded like that blue hand soap smells, all crisp and sharp and sinus clearing. “Come with us, please.”
    â€œWhat’s going on?” I asked cautiously.
    Otter spoke now, voice gruff and wildly unlike the snaky tone he normally took with me. “It’s your parents, Hale. They’ve been compromised.”

Chapter Five
    Spies live dangerous lives.
    I’d always known that—in fact, the danger was part of the reason I’d always wanted to be a field agent. But when I thought about my parents’ job, I always saw being a spy mostly as dangling off buildings and karate chopping bad guys and stealing important hard drives—dangerous, sure, but also exciting and full of adrenaline and heroics. I never doubted for a moment that they’d be back, Mom retelling the nonconfidential parts of the tale and Dad struggling to shake his fake Russian accent. When your parents are The Team, you’ve got a whole houseful of medals proving that they can overcome any villain anytime and usually still make it home in time to start dinner.
    But they weren’t coming home. They weren’t cominghome tonight or tomorrow, and probably not the next day either.
    Because spies live dangerous lives.
    â€œYou understand, Hale,” Fishburn said, putting a hand on my arm gently. Fishburn’s office looked like him, all hard lines and metal surfaces and a half dozen locked file cabinets, one of which Otter was leaning against. “You understand that we don’t think they’ve been—”
    â€œKilled,” I finished for him. I thought saying it aloud would make the whole idea of it easier to handle, but it didn’t.
    â€œExactly. They’re more valuable to The League alive,” Fishburn said, nodding, like my basic comprehension impressed him.
    I wasn’t afraid of much. I’d gone through years of spy training, after all. Did I
like
getting beat up when my classmates and I sparred? No. But it meant I wasn’t afraid of getting hit. I wasn’t afraid of the dark, either—sure, I couldn’t see spring-loaded rope traps in a blackout-training hall, but my classmates couldn’t either. I wasn’t afraid of heights, so long as I had decent climbing equipment, and I wasn’t even afraid of getting caught while running a training mission, since being afraid of getting caught is the fastest way to actually getting caught.
    I was afraid of The League.
    They were a top-secret organization, just like SRS. The difference was, they were . . . well . . . evil. SRS was a secret,sure, but we were on the side of righteousness and morality and other good, legal stuff. The League, however, was a wholly criminal organization. You’ve heard of the mob? Of heist rings? Of the black market? All The League’s work. Almost every major crime in the country traced back to them, and half the minor crimes did too. Two high-ranking agents like my parents would be invaluable to a bunch of