“You know I’m an orphan, like you. After my folks were gone, I was put in the foster system, but I was never adopted—too old and too loud, they said. Apparently that made me just perfect for another family, a much bigger one: the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI was putting a program together in conjunction with Homeland Security to stop terrorist cells from getting a grip on the minds of high-school kids. And what better way to guard our schools than with undercover juvenile agents? Sounds crazy, right? Hollywood crazy. But they got funding from a CIA slush fund, if you can believe that, and they picked half a dozen orphans from California for a pilot scheme. We were trained in a place called Quantico and then inserted in a school.” Chevie paused to check that Riley was still awake, half hoping that he would not be. “Any questions so far, kid?”

Riley stirred. “Just one. What is Hollywood crazy?”

A good question. “You like those adventure books, Riley. Well Hollywood crazy is something so wild that it wouldn’t seem out of place in a H. G. Wells story.”

“I see. Carry on.”

Chevie shifted a little on the boards, trying for at least a modicum of comfort. “My target was an Iranian family with four kids in the school. I was supposed to cozy up to the kids, get into their circle, and call the office if they had any terrorist plans. A simple observe-and-report mission. No weapons for teenagers, you understand. So I did what I was told, acted friendly, got close. And I realized that these kids weren’t interested in terrorizing anyone—they just wanted to make it through high school, like the rest of us. If anything, they were the ones being terrorized. We had a group of real sweethearts in our school who couldn’t tell the difference between Saudi, Iraqi, and Iranian, and couldn’t care less. One night a Jeep full of these guys corners my Iranians outside a theater. It got real ugly real fast. One of them pulls a weapon, starts putting shots into the asphalt.”

“I can guess what happened,” said Riley. “You did not take kindly to this behavior.”

Chevie scowled. “No, I did not. I twisted that gun out of his hand, but not before he managed to put a ricochet into his own leg.”

“It appears to me as though you were something of a heroine.”

“Yeah, you would think that, except I got a little carried away and fired a warning shot overhead.”

“That does not sound so serious.”

“No, except now the kid claims that I shot him. And I have gunshot residue on my hand, and some joker with a camera phone captures everything on film, but from a crappy angle that shows me doing all my martial arts but not the kid shooting himself.”

“Ah. Gunshot residue sounds like evidence that Sherlock Holmes would look for.”