The Inside Job Read Free Page B

great security system
despite
the ancient cameras,” Walter said darkly, and to my surprise, Kennedy, Beatrix, and Ben all nodded in agreement. Clatterbuck was staring at the ground, since he was a little wary of confrontation, but I could tell he agreed too.
    â€œSeriously? Guys, we can do a lot more good if we’re not worrying about keeping the lights on,” I said.
    Kennedy spoke up. “But . . . Hale. All that money belongs to SRS.”
    â€œYes. That’s why we should take it,” I said impatiently.
    â€œNo, you don’t get it—it belongs to SRS. Which means they probably got it by doing something terrible. That money is . . . Well. It’s . . .
bad
,” Kennedy said. And she was right, of course—SRS made their money in some prettyterrible ways. Black market deals. Robberies. Heists. Ransom payments.
    Still, I shook my head. “Money is money. Whatever SRS did to earn it, it’s done. Besides, isn’t it better that we do something
good
with that money, to undo the bad?”
    â€œYes. I think we should give it away. To charity,” Walter said, his voice a little uncertain.
    â€œOh, good idea,” Ben said. “There’s this space camp that would be really grateful—”
    â€œWe’re not
giving away
millions of dollars while we’re eating five-dollar pizzas every night,” Otter scoffed. “We’re spies, not Robin Hood and his army.”
    â€œRobin Hood had a gang of thieves, not an army,” Beatrix said. Otter glared, and Beatrix shrank down. The room fell into stony, uneasy silence, save the dusty whir of old computer fans. I looked at Kennedy; she was studying the owl stickers on her boots intently, which was something she did when she didn’t agree with me.
    I exhaled. Maybe they had a point, and that money was dirty—money earned stealing and hurting and destroying and conning. That didn’t make much sense to me, to be honest, but . . . well. Maybe I was thinking too much like an SRS agent. Maybe if I were a better League agent, I would agree with them more, right?
    You want to be a hero, don’t you, Hale? Like your parents?
I said to myself. I closed my eyes and tried not to daydream too hard about the air-conditioning working all summer.
    â€œAll right,” I said, exhaling. “All right—how about we get the money. We see how much it is. And then we take what we
have
to have to cover the basics, and everything else, we give away to that space camp.”
    â€œWe are
not giving money to a space camp!
” Otter roared. His head was flushed red and purple, like a giant grape.
    â€œWe’ll decide once we have it!” I said firmly.
    Otter stared at me, then at the others, then back at me.
    â€œI like Hale’s idea,” Kennedy said.
    â€œMe too,” Ben answered. The others chimed in one at a time, except Clatterbuck, who seemed torn between the promise of new computers and space camp. Finally he shrugged at Otter.
    â€œNo harm in waiting to make a choice,” he said. Clatterbuck wasn’t much of a spy, but as the only other adult in the room, his words shut down Otter’s argument in a way the rest of ours couldn’t.
    â€œFine,” Otter snipped. “Fine, fine, fine. We’ll decide once we’ve got the money. Which means we have to get the money. Nine hundred hours tomorrow, everyone. We’ve got to figure out how to get to Switzerland.”
    Otter spun around and stomped out of the room, talking about “superior officers” and “subordination” and a few other
s
words I didn’t understand but that definitely weren’t pleasant. Kennedy and Beatrix bounded away together, and soon Ben and Clatterbuck were off to begin salvaging parts of the BENdy Straw (“Do you think it’llbe bad if we take the hoses from the sinks on the fourth floor?”), leaving me and Walter alone on the