Undisclosed

Prologue
Millston, Georgia
I was running out of air.
Usually, I appreciated my body more in the water than on land. The curves in my hips, thighs, and torso were guaranteed to help me float. But floating was exactly what I didn’t want right now. Because somewhere above me was a guy with a gun, an angry young man who was looking for me. And the only thing hiding me was the cold Georgia river.
I huddled in a tight ball beneath the surface, my heart beating wildly. In scary situations, I usually inhale and exhale slowly to calm myself, but not being able to breathe was precisely my problem. My lungs started to burn with the lack of oxygen, and I felt frantic to take a breath.
I didn’t know if the gunman could see me in the water or not. Maybe staying beneath the surface would keep me safe from the bullets, but I didn’t have gills. I needed to go up for air or I’d drown.
Unclenching my body, I said a silent prayer and kicked toward the surface, to whatever glinting metal fate might await me there.
The mission wasn’t supposed to involve water or guns. It was supposed to be a simple heist, with multiple contingency plans to keep everyone safe. I didn’t even have the most dangerous role. It had all started the afternoon before . . .

“I’d like to register to vote,” I told the lady with stiff hair and a slightly sour expression.
I slid my passport across the counter, and she peered at it through a pair of glasses on a chain around her neck. It wasn’t really my passport; my name is Amani Kendall, and this was Denita Burrell’s passport. But it had my photograph and today’s date, putting me at exactly eighteen years old.
The stiff-haired lady peered at me over her glasses. I was only fifteen, so I had on glasses of my own and makeup to make me look older. I was tall and plus-size, so no one had thought I was younger than my age since I had made it to double digits.
I saw my reflection in her lenses: oval brown face, large eyes, eager smile—a newly eighteen-year-old Black girl excited to be enfranchised.
And even though the passport wasn’t mine, it was as real as could be. I work for an organization that had had someone at the actual passport office make it and put it in the government files.
Which is why it was so outrageous when she handed the passport back to me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We only accept Georgia identification.”
“Excuse me?” I asked. “This is a United States passport.”
“It was issued in Los Angeles,” she said, “which is a far cry from Millston, Georgia.”
“But all my residence documentation is in order,” I argued.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Come back when you have a state ID. Next!”
She beckoned to a white woman with two kids behind me, and I stepped to the side.
The glasses lady had done the exact thing we had expected her to do, the thing I was there to catch her doing. And I had. In the upper corners of my glasses’ round frames were two smooth blue stones, and the one on the left was a fully functional video camera. The oversize eyewear worked triple duty. The glasses made me look older, they disguised my face a bit, and most important, they were documenting this outrageous voter suppression.
I should have been triumphant, but instead I was furious. How many other Black people had come into this government office and been turned down?
• • •
“It’s perfect!” my dad said later that night as he and my mom reviewed the footage from the glasses cam.
My father, mother, and I sat at the kitchen table in a house the Factory had rented for us—a cozy bungalow on a tree-lined street, only a short walk from the county office.
I sat beside my dad. He was taller than me, with a long and lean figure. For this assignment, he was clean-shaven, with his hair cut in a low fade. The haircut was supposed to make him look serious, but right now, his face was all excitement.
“Look at this,” he said, pointing to the video. “You really linger on your brown hands setting the passport on the desk, but your thumb is covering the perfect amount of your face in the photo.” He grinned across the table at Mom. “We’ll totally be able to use this.”
Mom was brushing out her wig on a Styrofoam wig head. It looked like I was facing two women: above was Mom, with her hair cornrowed back; below was the second head, a ghost-white face that implied features, the wig straight and brown, with just a bump of curl where it grazed the table.
“Agreed,” my mother said. “Are you all ready for part two?”
Dad and I nodded. Our family worked as a team for the Factory, an international espionage agency dedicated to fighting racism, and this was our first mission in the South. We were investigating reports of voter suppression in Georgia. Not only were people of color being turned away from registering to vote, but we suspected that this same county office was also destroying many of the voter registration forms that they accepted.
Mom turned the wig around to inspect it. She nodded and set down the brush. “Get some rest,” Mom said. “We have a big day tomorrow.”