“Why was Ruby still in bed when we showed up? The sun has been out for fifteen minutes,” Grandpa Tom grumbled. “When I was a kid, it was my job to wake up the roosters so they would crow. She’s wasting the day.”

“Ruby has a lot of things on her plate at school,” her father explained. “She needs all the rest she can get.”

“Too many extracurricular activities aren’t good. Let a kid be a kid, I always say,” said Uncle Kevin.

Cousin Leaf chuckled. “I know what she’s doing up so late. She’s writing love letters to boys.”

“Don’t tease her, Leaf,” Aunt Denise said, taking the baby from Sarah. “Look at this beautiful boy.”

Yes, do your job, Noah. Take the attention off me, please, thought Ruby.

There was a knock at the door and she heard Uncle Eddie shout that he’d get it. A moment later he returned. “There’s a man here to see Ruby.”

“Me? Who is it?”

“He says he’s your principal,” Uncle Eddie replied. “Are you in trouble, kid?”

“Ruby?” her father asked suspiciously.

“Um, no, he’s just very dedicated,” Ruby lied as she snatched her coat. “It’s probably about the winter dance. He wants me to be on the decorating committee.”

Moments later, she was outside on the front step, talking to the principal. A curious relative’s face peered out of every window of her home.

“Looks like you’ve got a full house today, huh?” the principal said, staring at the prying eyes.

“Jewish mother, Protestant father—all of Israel and England is here,” Ruby explained.

“It’s hard to believe they get along,” the principal said.

“Really hard to believe because they don’t. So … what’s going on?” Ruby asked, cutting to the chase. “Is there news on Tessa?”

“No, not a peep.”

“Then why not use the com-link?”

“Because I didn’t want anyone else to hear what I’m going to tell you. We have a huge problem,” the principal said. “I think we’re about to be exposed.”

“Exposed? By whom?”

“Savage,” he said. “I got a call on the secure line. He told the president about the team. Not about the upgrades—not yet—but the big guy knows we exist.”

The news felt like a blow to her belly. “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know. That’s why we’re going to talk to Alexander Brand.”

“Are you going to ask him to come back?”

“No,” the principal said. “He won’t. But I think he’ll be able to tell me what to do.”

Ruby felt a little guilty leaving her folks alone with the mob they called family, but not that guilty. She grabbed her things, pulled a hat over her head, and climbed into the principal’s Jeep. Soon, they were driving southwest along a scenic highway lined with snowy fir trees. After an hour, they turned onto an old country road that ran next to a crystal lake and then past tiny little cottages with ribbons of smoke escaping from their chimneys. The farther they drove, the more breathtaking the scenery. Ruby felt like they had entered a beautiful painting.

Then came more turns that forced them to make a few stops and reroutes. Ruby and the principal were ready to give up when they suddenly stumbled upon a mailbox hidden behind a thorny bush. The principal stopped the Jeep, got out, and shoved the branches aside. The mailbox had a name painted in red: A. BRAND.

They drove up the overgrown driveway path made from years of tire tracks and coasted beneath a canopy of leafless trees until a tiny log cabin appeared on the shore of the lake. As soon as the principal cut the Jeep’s engine, he and Ruby’s eardrums were assaulted by what sounded like the painful death throes of a very large animal.

“What is that?” Ruby asked.

The principal shrugged. “Could be anything. A moose … a bear. We should be careful. The most dangerous animal is the one that’s dying.”

The two spies crept around the corner of the house and immediately spotted the source of the noise. At the end of a long dock sat a lone figure who appeared to be strangling a cat. Ruby took off her glasses and wiped the smudges off the lenses, then slipped them back on to get a better look. She could see the man was not hurting an animal but rather playing an oboe—badly. When he blew on the woodwind’s reed, it emitted a sound like a duck exploding inside a kazoo. His screeches terrified the lake birds, who flew away, panicked.

“Um …,” Ruby said, at a loss for words to describe what she was seeing.

“A broken heart can do strange things to a man,” the principal explained. “Brand took Lisa’s betrayal particularly hard. He had some loss when he was a kid—his brother was killed in the air force, and he’d built a lot of walls around himself. I suspect the librarian was chipping away at them before she went nuts.”

“I don’t think Ms. Holiday was the only one to go nuts,” Ruby said as another note soured the air.

They walked across the lawn, past the house, and onto the dock, where they stood waiting for Brand’s atrocious concert to end. When the last jagged note was played, the former hero set his instrument down on his lap as if its weight was more than he could bear.

“How did you find me?” he said without turning to face them.

“We’re spies,” Ruby said. “But I suspect we could have just asked who was out here torturing a goose.”

Brand growled and turned in his chair. “The oboe is the dignified gentleman of the woodwind instruments!”

His face was thin and covered in a long, ratty beard filled with flecks of food and dead leaves, and his once perfectly coiffed hair was long and greasy. He wore a filthy shirt spattered with stains, and he smelled like an old catcher’s mitt left out in the rain.

“I’m trying to teach myself to play,” Brand said. “It’s not something you pick up overnight.”

“How long have you been trying to teach yourself?” the principal asked.

“On and off? Ten years.”

Brand picked up his instrument and blasted another ragged note into the air. Somewhere, a bear roared angrily.

“We need to talk to you,” Ruby said.

“No.”

“No?”

“To whatever you want to ask,” he said.

“Shouldn’t you let us ask the question first?” the principal said.

“No.”

Ruby scratched her belly. She was allergic to stubbornness.

“Alex, we are barely surviving,” the principal said. “Savage is about to tell the president our secrets, the kids haven’t been in a classroom in months, and your ex-girlfriend is kicking our behinds. Every day, five twelve-year-old kids have to stop another end-of-the-world scenario. They’ve been depending on luck more than they should, and yesterday the luck ran out. Lisa kidnapped the president’s daughter.”

“She’ll bring Tessa back once she realizes what a brat she is. Serves her right.”

“What do I do about Savage?” the principal asked.

“Prepare for the worst.”

“He’d listen to you.”

“I said no.”

Ruby stepped forward. “So you’ll let old bullet-head tell the government about us? You know what that means, right?”

“If they come, run,” Brand said. “Destroy the Playground. The self-destruct password is ‘Maxwell Smart.’”

“You’re also turning your back on Ms. Holiday!”

Brand turned to face Ruby. His eyes were full of anguish.

“Ms. Holiday is sick,” Ruby said, her voice shaking. “She must still be infected with the villain virus, and you walked away from her. She needs your help!”

Brand shook his head. “Ms. Holiday is not suffering from any virus. She was spying on us.”

“That’s not true!”

“Yes, it is, Ruby,” Brand said. “When she went rogue, I wanted to believe that she was sick or being manipulated. But we searched her house. We found fifteen different passports, seven different birth certificates, and detailed notes on the Playground, you kids, and me. The Lisa Holiday we know is really Viktoriya Deprankova of Novosibirsk, Siberia. She’s the daughter of exiled political activists. When she was fifteen, she robbed her parents, stole a car, and drove it cross-country with a professional thug named Lars Corsica. They got married, but when they were arrested for the stolen car, Lars told the Russian police his bride was responsible for a dozen crimes he had actually committed. Viktoriya was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. After the verdict, she was approached by a member of the Russian secret service, who offered her a way out of jail—she could become a spy.”