An Agent's Inbox #13

Dear Agent,

An undercover operative for the clandestine group known as the Institute, seventeen-year-old Kat's job is to befriend volatile teenagers in order to ascertain their risk to society.

Her latest assignment is Audrey Foreman, a girl who sees monsters. A girl the Institute deems violent, high risk. Kat must gather enough evidence to justify Audrey's arrest before any actual crime is committed, but there's just one problem: Audrey isn't dangerous and the Institute doesn't care.

So when Kat finds traces of a mission that imploded two years ago in the same town, she suspects she's actually there to tie up loose ends. Working to uncover Audrey's connection to the old case, Kat begins to doubt the Institute's infallibility--especially when she examines the private jobs it sometimes accepts. But this is no time to have a moral crisis: the agent involved in the original case is still undercover at the local high school and eager to report back on Kat's changing priorities. He can't leave, not until Audrey has been silenced, and if Kat doesn't help then she could lose her job, her friends, even her life. Especially if Audrey's monsters turn out to be real.

THE TURNOVER is young adult mystery complete at 80,000 words. 

Thank you for your time and consideration,

S.A.

THE TURNOVER

It starts like any other case: I get a file. Audrey Foreman. By the time I finish reading, it's midday. There’s a note on the last page: See Cas.

I phone the office.

“Cas?” I say. “Why not Robin?”

“He’s busy. Cas is doing this one.”

“But, Robin’s my handler.”

The phone goes dead, but I don't move. 

“Hey, ” says Bee, coming into the room with her sketchpad. “What's up?”

“I have to see Cas.”

“Cas?” She looks at me, and together we revel in the weirdness. I take my cardigan off the back of the chair and go. Plait my hair in the elevator.

Cas is in her study with the door open, so I just walk on in.

“Kat,” she says, without looking up. “Darling. Take a seat.”

You’d expect us to be cutting edge, here at the institute, but the offices are very nineties. A tiny cactus sits on the desk. There’s a rip in my chair, and I pluck at it while I wait. If she doesn't mention Robin, neither will I. But I want to. I've trained and worked with Robin for my entire seventeen years, so why am I sitting in her office?

“Read everything?”

“Yes.”

“Give me a summary.”

“Audrey Foreman.” I say. “She’s seventeen, lives in a place named Corrbee. It’s a tourist trap. She works weekends in a gift shop, summers in a funfair. She doesn’t have any friends: That’s our first worry. She’s bullied, talks about it online in a 'worrying' manner: We start surveillance. Months pass, she gets worse. Blogs about seeing monsters, like, real monsters. So now we send in the SWAT team.”