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J AMES:
    P ROS :
    In love with Kerry, so easy to blackmail and will
    do what he’s told.
    Strong – James can carry tons of stuff!
    C ONS :
    Hates Bethany – they ALWAYS row.
    Bit of an idiot.

    ‘What the fu …’ James muttered when he finished reading, only backing away from the last word when he remembered where he was sitting.
    As Lauren turned red and shrank into her chair, Mac smiled. The document had clearly had precisely the humbling effect he’d intended.
    ‘James, you can go back to your lessons,’ Mac said. ‘I’m obviously not impressed with your role in this affair and you can consider yourself officially warned. But you were forced into this by your sister and I think it is she and Bethany who deserve to be punished.’
    James ought to have been relieved at getting off, but Lauren’s list of pros and cons was so clinical that it left him feeling like he’d been punched in the head. He loved his sister more than anyone in the world, including Kerry, but at that moment it didn’t seem like the feelings were mutual.
    ‘It’s not what it looks like, James!’ Lauren yelled, getting out of her chair and twisting around as James skulked out of the office.
    ‘Lauren Adams, sit down,’ Mac snapped. ‘I don’t often get angry, but you two are pushing all the wrong buttons.’
    Lauren felt queasy as she lowered herself into the chair. She’d never seen Mac this angry before, which was weird because she thought she’d been in much more serious trouble the time she’d hit Mr Large with a spade.
    ‘I deal with all kinds of trouble on campus,’ Mac roared. ‘Kids get in fights, kids don’t do their homework or get lippy in class. I can live with those things, because it’s a normal part of growing up. But one thing I can’t abide is bullying.
    ‘We train you to manipulate people during undercover operations, but it is absolutely unacceptable to use those skills to make your fellow cherubs do things they don’t want to. Bethany Parker, you knew Martin Newman had a crush on you and you made him all kinds of promises that you had no intention of keeping. Lauren stooped even lower: blackmailing her own brother into doing something that might have landed him in serious trouble.’
    ‘That’s not fair,’ Lauren gasped. ‘It wasn’t bullying. All the stuff we did was to help Jake and the other trainees.’
    ‘Well hoorah for you,’ Mac said sarcastically. ‘Your tactics might have been more subtle than shoving a kid up against a wall and threatening to thump them, but anything that involves forcing people to act against their will counts as bullying in my book.’
    ‘I didn’t even know she was blackmailing James,’ Bethany interrupted.
    Lauren turned sharply towards her best friend. ‘You came up with most of the plan in the first place.’
    Bethany raised her hands apologetically to Lauren. She hadn’t meant to try shifting the blame, but that’s how it had sounded.
    ‘You know what I think, Lauren?’ Mac said. ‘You’re one of our most capable agents, as you demonstrated in your planning and execution of last night’s little escapade. You’re also one of the youngest black shirts in the history of CHERUB. I don’t for one second believe that you’re a bad person at heart. But I do think that the success you’ve had over the past year has rather gone to your head. You’ve started getting too big for your boots.
    ‘I’m giving both of you four hundred punishment laps around the athletics track. As you run, perhaps you can think about your casual disregard for our rules, for campus property and – far more importantly – the utterly dreadful way you’ve behaved towards James and Martin.
    ‘I’ll also be cancelling your next month’s pocket money to pay for the damage to the barbed wire and I’ll expect you both to write carefully considered apologies to your victims.’
    The girls were gobsmacked by the four-hundred-lap punishment, their usually overactive jaws getting a