Girl Undercover 8 & 9: Traitor & The Smiley Killer by Julia Derek Page A

fist to her lips and bit it, staring at her feet. “I don’t know what was worse—the sudden gunfire or what they wanted Burt to do to me.”
    “The sudden gunfire?” I asked. “Who was shooting? Did someone get hurt?” I pictured all the blood in the living room and in the room then, and saw it on Nadja’s own blouse as I lowered my gaze.
    “Someone from outside,” Nadja explained. “Someone fired what sounded like a machine gun through the wall. Burt and the governor got hurt, and that’s why they had to leave before finishing. But they said they were coming back.”
    I froze. “Is Burt seriously hurt? He’s not… dead, is he?”
    “No, he was only hit in the arm,” Nadja said. “The governor was worse off. The senator and that other black man had to help him out of the room. They were taking them to get patched up before returning.”
    “What exactly was it they were supposed to finish, Nadja?” I asked. She gazed off into the distance, looking like she was in pain. I suddenly dreaded her answer.
    “They wanted Burt to shoot me dead with a gun,” she said, her voice small.
    Ian and I both stared at her. “What? Why?” I blurted, cutting Ian short; he’d opened his mouth to say something.
    “To prove his loyalty to them and the cause,” she explained, looking at us again. “Those were the words they used when they initially ordered him to kill me.”
    Ian’s and my gaze locked momentarily over Nadja’s head. The picture was becoming clearer now.
    “Please tell us what happened in there word for word,” Ian said. “What did they say to each other when you were coming to? Were they talking?”
    “Yes, but I’m not sure what they were discussing,” Nadja said. “Something about meeting up with others later. They noticed that I was awake pretty quickly. Governor Chatterly did.”
    “Okay,” Ian said. “What happened then?”
    “He notified the others that I was awake and said that they should do what they’d come for, so they could get out of there. The other man handed Burt a gun. ‘Go ahead and shoot her,’ the senator said. ‘When she’s dead, we can be sure that you’re loyal to us and the cause.’”
    Nadja buried her face in her palms then, inhaling and exhaling deeply. Instinctively, I put a hand on her shoulder, stroking it. It could not have been easy having to listen to those words. She soon lowered her hands, though, and straightened.
    “How did Burt seem?” I asked. As hard it must have been to hear someone ordering your death, I couldn’t imagine Burt being happy about having to complete such a task, either. Not the Burt I knew at least. Then again, I never did speak to him much as I went back UC the second time. Maybe he had changed.
    She stared with empty eyes at the bum splayed on the seats before her. His loud snoring had calmed down significantly.
    “Tense,” she said after some time. “That’s the only word I can think of to describe how he looked. I can’t tell what he was thinking because he wasn’t meeting my eyes. I kept trying to make him look me in the eyes to see what he must be thinking. Maybe to understand what was happening, how I’d ended up in this situation. Why they wanted him to kill me so badly. But he refused to look me in the eye as he took the gun from that other black man.”
    She took a deep breath, her chest expanding and shrinking back again. “It was only as he raised his hand and pointed that gun to my face that he finally met my gaze. It was as though he was trying to tell me something with the way he was looking at me. Something like, ‘don’t be scared, Nadja. Everything will be okay.’”
    The way Burt had looked at me in the apartment he shared with Jonah flashed through my mind. He had been trying to tell me something with his eyes, too.
    “But he didn’t end up shooting you,” Ian stated matter-of-factly.
    “No, because that’s when someone fired a burst of bullets into the room. Burt was hit and the governor so