Spy School: Framed for Murder (DISCONTINUED)

Chapter Six: Lydia Silverman

Thankfully, we didn't have to walk the rest of the way.

After strolling for a few minutes, we'd reached Georgetown Waterfront Park. Erica had pickpocketed a few hundred bucks from some rich-looking businessman, then hailed a cab. I'd attempted to scold her about moral values, but shut up when she asked me if I would prefer to walk the rest of the way to Virginia.

Erica told the taxi driver to drop us off at George Washington Memorial Parkway near Parkway Headquarters, which was quite a distance away. We officially entered Virginia when the taxi driver took us across Chain Bridge, but even then, George Washington Memorial was still a long way away. At some point, the taxi driver had asked us what us high schoolers were doing out. I'd briefly wondered why he didn't ask that earlier - it didn't seem right to just pick up a couple teenagers during school hours without questioning what we were doing - but Erica replied smoothly by saying, "Oh, I'm already twenty years old. I'm just taking my little brother here to go sightseeing - he's homeschooled."

Erica's acting skills were so good, even I almost believed it. The driver nodded, as if in a hypnotic trance, then didn't talk for the rest of the drive.

He'd pulled into the parking lot of Parkway Headquarters and asked, "Is this a good place?"

"Yes," Erica had assured him. "Thanks for the ride." She then proceeded to hand him all the money she'd stolen - and judging by the taxi fare sticker plastered on the side of the car I'd seen earlier and quickly doing the math, we'd given him an extra two-hundred dollars.

The driver's eyes had widened as he greedily accepted the money, then wished us a fun time. As soon as we left the car, the driver hastily drove off, as if afraid we'd change our mind and demand for the two-hundred bucks back.

"I'm starting to think he didn't deserve that money," Erica mused, grabbing my arm. "Come on, let's go."

We had to walk backwards since Parkway Headquarters was a few miles past our destination. The reason we didn't want to let on our real destination was because we wanted to cover our tracks as well as possible, including not telling anyone about our whereabouts. It was highly unlikely that the police would happen to find that taxi driver and interrogate him, but again, just in case it did happen, we refrained from telling him our genuine destination.

Erica decided to take it easy this time, allowing us to stop and rest every ten minutes. Before, she'd been rushed because the police were searching for us, but now that we were so far away, finding us was going to be hard. But because we were taking constant breaks, it was already past 1700 hours when we finally reached Lydia's house.

"Looks like she's already home," Erica observed, staring at the silver BMW parked in her driveway.

The type of neighborhood Lydia lived in wasn't a destitute one, but not a particularly elegant one either. Her house was one story tall, and the walls were a solid concrete gray color. Her lawn and shrubs were tame and a few potted plants sat near her doorway, decorating the otherwise bland porch.

Erica barely knocked on the door before it flew open, revealing a tall and attractive woman wearing a black and white business suit, half of her dirty blonde hair hanging down in curly waves and the other half still stuck in a somewhat disheveled bun. Her sculpted eyebrows furrowed at the sight of us, and her hazel eyes flickered back and forth behind us  in a perturbed manner before pulling us inside and shutting the door. "Erica?" she whispered in a hush voice, her agile fingers quickly undoing the rest of her bun. "Cyrus told me what was going on."

I wasn't surprised that Cyrus already knew - he was a spy, after all. The fact that he told someone else was news to me - like Erica, he rarely ever told other people certain things unless they were trustworthy.