Spy School Viva Vegas

Chapter 15 - SMASH

Unknown Location
Somewhere outside of Las Vegas
June 14
1200 hours

"Wakey. Wakey."

Was this really Erica this time, or was Chip going to be in my dorm room again, I asked myself. I felt the hard fingernail thwack against my forehead between my eyes. I opened my eyes and the room I was sitting in slowly came into focus. There, in front of me, was a face that I had been looking for, but not exactly wanting to see - Murray Hill.

"Why do people keep waking me up like that," I asked, slurring my words. The knockout gas had not quite worn off, and I felt like I had cotton stuffed between my ears.

I turned my head and the room tilted to the side, and started to spin. I closed my eyes regaining my composure, and found my ankles bound to the legs of a chair and my arms were strapped behind me. All my friends were there too, to my relief, tied up in a similar way. Although, being trapped in this small vault shaped metal box wasn't exactly the best situation to be in. Several, bright, fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling, and I had to shut my eyes to block out the shine. Unfortunately, the only way out of the room was directly behind Murray, a heavy metal sliding door.

"Hey! Bens awake. Hey everybody! Bens awake," Murray said a little too loudly. He turned and looked at all my friends, who also appeared to be slow to wake up. Except for Erica. She looked poised for action. He was feigning surprise, since he had been the one to impatiently wake me. "How's it going?"

It was always surprising to see how Murray had changed since our last meeting. It could be weeks between these meetings, and in that time he would go through dramatic changes. This time, he had grown a mustache. Sort of. When I first saw the fuzz above his upper lip, I thought it was a chocolate milk stain. To be fair, that actually was more likely. He was constantly consuming junk food. But, no, the hair was real. It was clear he had grown it as a way to appear older, or at best, a very weak disguise. It had the opposite effect, and he looked like a teenager that was trying to appear to be older than they actually were. In the few seconds I had been awake, he had stroked it twice, clearly trying to draw attention to it.

So I decided to irritate him instead, "What's wrong with your face?"

"Nothing's wrong with my face. What do you mean?"

"It's like you haven't bathed. Do you wash your face," Mike asked, picking up on the game.

"Is this your 4 million dollar condo? Seems like you got ripped off. It's just a square metal room" Chip said.

Murray decided to ignore us. It was clear he had another agenda. So he said, "I'm dying to know. How did you find me?"

He wasn't dying to know, he probably already knew, but I played along and said, "Jessica remembered you got an apartment as down payment when you worked for her father."

A big grin spread across his face. And, with that, I realized that I had been set up. I always felt it was strange how he seemed to be leading us into a trap, but now it was obvious that it had been a setup all along. I didn't think Jessica had been in on it, but it was clear Murray had used her.

"You dropped a hint on purpose. Didn't you? You wanted her to tell us," I said.

"Maybe," Murray said coyly, but then he couldn't hold the rest back. "I may have mentioned it once or twice. I knew if she got caught she would try to get back into Ben's good graces." He glanced at Erica, but kept talking to me, referring to me as if I wasn't in the room. "Oh boy, does she have it for our young Ben here. It was like nonstop Ben this, Ben that, on the boat ride in Costa Rica."

I didn't know if that was true. I also didn't care if it was. I knew exactly what he was trying to do. He was needling me and Erica, trying to get under our skins. However, there was still something strange about him. He seemed to be acting, well, playful. It felt like he was anticipating some big joke that only he knew what the punchline was.