Scarlett Undercover by Jennifer Latham Page B

to him in the first place. “Thanks for guarding Thumper,” I said.
    He pointed a gnarled finger at me, scrunched his eyebrows low, and was just about to learn me but good when my phone rang. “Gotta go,” I said, and scooted outside to answer the call.
    “Hello?” The voice on the other end of the line was Gemma’s. She didn’t sound good.
    “Where are you, kid?”
    “In the janitor’s closet at school,” she said in something just north of a whisper.
    I sank down onto the steps, sick at myself for not checking in with her earlier that morning. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”
    “For now. But Oliver just came to my class and tried to get Mrs. Thomas to let me leave with him. He said he needed to tell me something personal. If we hadn’t been in the middle of a math test, she’d have let me go. She sent me to the main office after I finished. I came here instead.”
    “That was smart, Gemma,” I said. “Really smart.”
    “I think he was going to take me.”
    “Take you where?”
    “Nowhere good.”
    I remembered the text Quinn never saw on his phone—the one threatening Sam—and knew she was right.
    “Listen, Gemma, I need you to go to the nurse’s office and tell them you just threw up.”
    “Okay.” Her voice was tiny.
    “You give the nurse my number and say I’m supposed to come get you, that I’m your new nanny.”
    “There’s a pickup list,” she said. “If you’re not on it, they won’t let me go with you.”
    I stood up and started toward the street.
    “All right,” I said. “Then scratch that plan and juststay put. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Don’t move. Is there a security guard at the door?”
    “No. Stokes walks around the halls. There’s a buzzer to the office by the front gate that you have to ring for them to let you in.”
    “Fine. I’ll call you when I’m outside. Then you go to the office and tell them you’ve been sick, that you called your nanny from the bathroom because you were scared. I’ll hit the buzzer up front, and you ID me on the security camera. That should get me inside. I’ll take it from there.”
    She sniffled.
    “Can you do that for me, Gemma?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Good. You hang tight, kid, and call me if anything happens. I’m coming for you.”
    “Okay,” she said. “But, Scarlett?”
    “Yeah?” I said, racing a slick-haired, pin-striped lawyer-type to the lone cab parked on the curb. My hat flew off. I didn’t look back.
    “Please hurry.”
    “I’m coming, kid,” I said, getting into the cab. The suit flipped me off from ten feet back.
    “Just hang on.”

15
    F or my first visit to Chandler Academy, I’d dressed in a blue pleated skirt, joined the crush of bodies pouring in ahead of the first bell, planted my business cards in the bathrooms, and walked right back out. No muss, no fuss. And thanks to the story I’d cooked up with Gemma, getting in the second time around was cake, too.
    Smuggling her out was a different matter altogether.
    I found her in the office, looking miserable. As soon as she saw me, she ran over and threw herself into my arms.
    Again with the affection
, I thought, smiling in spite of myself.
    “You’re the Archers’ new nanny?” the secretary asked. According to the nameplate on the desk, her first name was Miss, her last was Pritchard. Cat’s-eye glasses hung from a chain around her neck, and the hairs in her bun were yanked so tight I could hear their follicles weep.
    “I am,” I said in my best “yes ma’am” voice. “Gemma called to say she’s been sick.”
    “So she tells me.” Pritchard gave my biker boots a hard look. “Nurse McMahon is on his way down.”
    She’d barely finished saying so when a man walked in wearing freckled forearms that would have put Popeye’s to shame.
    “Well?” He whipped a thermometer out of the pocket of his skull-and-crossbones scrubs. Waggled it at us. “Which one of you just had the reverse breakfast?”
    “Miss Archer was