Spy Ski School by Stuart Gibbs Page B

had to rip the sleeves off his suit to accommodate them. Apparently, the cold didn’t bother him. He stood still as stone as we passed, although his eyes followed us suspiciously.
    Erica acted as though she didn’t even see him, rambling on about hucking off ledges and pulling kangaroo flips in the terrain park, until we were well past him and at the ice rink again. Then she turned to me, fluttered her eyelashes, and announced, “Let’s go ice-skating!”
    I stared at her, thrown. There weren’t any bodyguards around for her to be acting in front of, and yet “Let’s go ice-skating!” was one of the last things I would have everexpected to hear Erica Hale say, along the lines of “I love scrapbooking,” or “Unicorns are awesome.”
    â€œIce-skating?” I repeated. “You mean, like, for fun?”
    â€œOf course for fun, sillypants,” Erica chirped, giving me a playful swat on the shoulder. “Why else would we do it?” Then she took me by the hand and led me into the skate-rental area.
    I stopped breathing again. Only for a second, but I was aware of it this time. This was the first occasion in months that Erica had touched me in any way that didn’t involve demonstrating martial arts. I was relatively sure she was merely playacting, but still, it was human contact. Between this and my glimpse of Jessica Shang, I was a mess.
    We wound through a few benches where people were in the various stages of putting on or taking off rental skates. As we passed among them, I leaned in close to Erica and whispered, “You don’t do anything for fun. Are Shang’s men around?”
    â€œCheck out the ice cream parlor,” she whispered back, finally sounding like herself again.
    I glanced back the way we had come. The ice cream parlor looked perfectly normal, though. There were no hulking men in suits there. Only a long line of families with small children and a guy reading a newspaper on a bench. “What do you mean?”
    â€œWho reads a newspaper outside when it’s twenty-two degrees?” Erica asked.
    I looked back, feeling like an idiot again. Now that I knew what to look for, the guy didn’t appear to be reading his newspaper at all. He was only pretending to read it, while really keeping his eyes on the crowd, carefully assessing anyone headed toward the hotel lobby. Thankfully, he didn’t seem interested in us. Between the pizza place, the ice cream parlor, and the ice rink, there were dozens of other kids our age around and we were blending in perfectly.
    â€œThere’s another guy by the pizza place,” Erica informed me. “And a third by the skate-rental booth. I clocked them all the first time we came through.” Rather than waiting in the long line for rental skates, she plucked a pair off the ground that a kid my size had just changed out of and shoved them into my arms. “Here, put these on.”
    I instantly did as she’d ordered, figuring that questioning it would only annoy Erica. I sat and yanked my shoes off. “Aren’t you going to skate too?”
    Erica didn’t answer me. Instead, she looked up at the Arabelle and said, “Looks like Shang’s staying on the fifth floor.”
    I looked up too. Sure enough, on the top floor, high above us, lights were flicking on in several rooms.
    â€œNice recon.” I slipped my foot into an ice skate and started lacing it. “So what’s the plan?”
    Erica sat beside me and looked at me adoringly, which made me stop breathing again. Then she tenderly ran her fingers through my hair, which nearly gave me a heart attack. And after that, she secretly slipped a radio transmitter into my ear, confirming yet again that the only reason she ever touched me outside of a dojo was as part of an act.
    We had used the radios on missions before; I could hear anything Erica said to me, while no one else could—and mine could pick