Code Name Cassandra by Meg Cabot Page A

difficulty. I heard several thumps as the runners collided with pieces of furniture, and a number of people shrieked as the lights went out.
    Then frightened voices began to call out my name.
    “Oops,” I said. “Power outage. There must be a storm somewhere.”
    More frightened whimpering.
    “I guess,” I said, “we’ll all just have to go to sleep. Because we can’t do anything in the dark.”
    It was Shane’s voice that rang out scathingly, “There’s no power outage. You turned out the lights.”
    Little brat.
    “I didn’t,” I said. “Come over here, and try the switch.” I illustrated for them, flicking the switch on and off. The sound was unmistakable. “I guess everybody better get into their pajamas and get into bed.”
    There was a good deal of moaning and groaning about how were they supposed to find their pajamas in the dark. There was also some bickering about the fact that they couldn’t brush their teeth in the dark, and what if they got cavities, et cetera. I ignored it. I had found, in the utility kitchen, a flashlight, for use in the event of a real blackout, and I offered to escort whoever wanted to go to the bathroom.
    Shane said, “Just give me the flashlight, and I’ll escort everyone,” but I wasn’t falling for that one.
    After everyone had done what he needed to do, ablution-wise, I reminded them all about the early morning Polar Bear swim, and that they had better get plenty of sleep, since their first music lessons would begin right after breakfast. The only time they wouldn’t be playing their instruments, in fact, would be at the Polar Bear swim, meals, and a two-hour period from three to five, when lake swims, tennis, baseball, and arts and crafts were allowed. There were nature walks, for those who were so inclined. There even used to be trips to Wolf Cave, a semi-famous cave near the lake—semi-famous because up so far north, caves are almost unheard of, the glaciers having flattened most of upstate Indiana. But of course some stupid camper had gotten himself whacked on the head by a falling stalactite, or something, so now spelunking was no longer listed as one of the activities allowed during the kids’ few short hours of free time.
    It seemed to me that for kids, the campers at Lake Wawasee weren’t allowed a whole lot of time to be … well, just kids.
    When they were all in their beds, and had sweetly sang out good night to me, I took the flashlight with me into my own room. No sense adjusting the fuse box so that my own light would turn on: they’d just see it, shining out from under the crack in the door, and know I’d lied to them about the power outage. I took off my counselor shirt and shorts, and, in a pair of boxers I’d stolen from Douglas and a tank top, I consumed most of a box of Fiddle Paddle while perusing, by flashlight beam, the contents of the envelope Pamela had given me to give to Ruth.
Dear jess,
    I hope this finds you well. Your camp counselor job sounds like a lot of fun.
    Yeah, right, I grunted to myself. Of course it sounded like fun … to people who’d never had the displeasure of meeting Shane, anyway. The very feminine cursive went on.
Enclosed please find a photo of Taylor Monroe.
    I shined the beam from the flashlight into the envelope and found a color studio portrait—like the kind you would get at Sears, with Sesame Street in the background—of a curly-headed toddler in overalls. OshKosh B’gosh.
Taylor disappeared from a shopping mall two years ago, when he was three years old. His parents are desperate to get him back. The police have no suspects or leads.
    Good. A neat and simple kidnapping. Rosemary had done a lot of homework to make sure of this. She only sent me the cases in which she was certain the kid in question actually wanted to be found. It was my only condition for finding the kids: that they really wanted to be found.
    Well, that, and maintaining my anonymity, of course.
As always, call if you find him. You know