Scott slowed the vehicle as he looked across Kat and out the front window as the GPS dinged. In the back, we had no windows to speak of; there were none on the sides, and the rear windows were covered with a Velcro foam that kept anyone from looking in at us while we were running surveillance.
“I’m gonna turn us around,” Scott said, as the van accelerated again. “I’ll park us with a clear view and we can get the cameras going.”
“Or we could just go up and ring the doorbell, see who’s home,” Clary said.
“Clary, our mission is to recon first,” I said. “Ringing the doorbell isn’t exactly a subtle way to find out who’s inside.”
“What, you wanna sneak around the back and peer in the windows or something? Screw that.” I heard his seatbelt unsnap and he was already moving toward the back doors, even though we were still moving. “Let’s get this party started!” The back door swung open and he was out.
“What the hell is he doing?” Scott said, and he slammed the brakes. “Is he seriously going to go knock on the door? What is he thinking?”
“Clary doesn’t think, does he?” Reed asked.
“Dear God, I hope he gets the right house,” I said, already unfastening my seatbelt. I ran the ten feet to the back door and jumped down to the pavement, racing to catch up with Clary, who was already up on the sidewalk. The air held a dampness, and the sky was hazy, a light fog still lingering thanks to the cloud cover.
“Clary!” I said, trying to keep my voice down, knowing he could hear me. “Clary!” I said again, now only a few feet behind him. He had reached the steps at the bottom of the house and was starting to ascend the first when I caught him. “Clyde,” I said with a hiss as I laid a hand on his shoulder. He brushed it off.
“Girl, ain’t no one calls me Clyde,” he said as he continued up the steps.
“What are you doing? I am in command of this mission—Ariadne is going to have your ass if you don’t get back in the damn van.”
“I’m gonna get this show on the road,” he said as he reached the front porch. A squeak of an old floorboard caused me to cringe, as though it were attached to a wire that would report directly to Omega HQ that we were, in fact, here. I felt as though they were watching us through a pinhole camera and could see stupid Clary in his Ugg boots and me trying to get him to listen to reason. “Why tiptoe around these clowns when we can just push ‘em right out into view and start kicking ass?”
“That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said, “and not the mission.” The paint on the siding was peeling, leaving cracks of dark, old wood peeking out from behind the dirtied white paint, the chips still laying scattered with leaves all around the porch. “We’re supposed to investigate first—”
“Well, we gonna investigate right now.” He smiled at me with that gap-toothed idiot look of his and slapped his hand against the screen door, hard, rattling it on its flimsy hinges. He swung it open, then smacked his palm against the interior door five times, loud enough that I was sure that they could hear it at Omega HQ, wherever it was, even if they didn’t have any microphones anywhere in the state. “Hey!” Clary shouted. “Open up, Omega! It’s the Directorate. We’ve come to kick y’all’s asses, so get on out here.”
I closed my eyes and placed a gloved hand over them, as though I could blot out the horror of what was happening as easily as I could cut out the light around me. “Did you really just tell them we’re from the Directorate?”