Conspiracy Girl

  I glance over at him and bite my tongue.

  Finn is standing by the window. He’s been there for fifteen minutes, staring out with a look on his face that I’m coming to recognise. It’s unnerving, knowing how good he is at figuring out problems in the real world, and how talented he is at discovering patterns and errors and loopholes in the virtual world. It makes me wonder what he might be able to figure out about a person just by looking at them long enough.

  I’ve never seen anything like the way his mind works. He’s always one or two steps ahead in his thinking – and he’s always watching, evaluating. He has the same look on his face gazing out the window as he does when I say something he doesn’t understand. It’s like the world is a complicated puzzle that he’s trying to riddle his way through.

  I wonder if he’s thinking about the man he killed. It’s hard to imagine what that would do to you. He didn’t seem that upset though. I’ve often thought about what I’d do if I was put in front of my mother’s killers and given a gun. Would I be able to pull the trigger? Maybe not in revenge, but definitely in self-defence. Then I remember what Finn said about the fact it wasn’t Miles or McCrory. He was right all along. I was wrong. It’s not a closed case.

  So who’s behind it? And why?

  I turn back to the job in hand. For now I have a task to complete. I have a notion that I’m going to somehow craft us both blanket ponchos. In reality I’m just trying to give myself something to focus on other than the situation we’re in. Finn’s silence is unsettling me. What is he trying to puzzle out? Our odds of surviving?

  Eventually he draws a deep breath, falls out of his trance and comes and sits down a few feet from me, sliding his backpack on to his lap. He pulls out two guns and starts taking them apart one by one. I think he’s cleaning them, as he runs a strip of blanket through them and starts counting the rounds. Neither of us speaks. The crackle of the fire is the only noise. I glance around at the rough wooden walls, at the door that’s only pulled to and held in place with a slab of wood. We seem dangerously exposed now the snow has melted from them.

  There’s an irony, I guess, to my current situation. I’m stuck in a cabin in the woods with no electricity and without even a lock on the door. There’s no panic alarm, no motion sensors, no guard dog, no ex-SAS soldiers about to rock up toting machine guns if I press a button (not that they did that anyway). We have a knife and a gun that looks to be nearly out of ammo. And yet, as I glance over at Finn, for the first time in two years I realise that I don’t feel afraid.

  FINN

  I put the second gun, the one I took from the guy, into the bag. It’s a nine-millimetre Browning Hi-Power, a make most commonly used by mercenaries – hired contractors who operate in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s another clue to the guy’s identity. I reach into the bag and offer a chocolate bar to Nic.

  She takes it and breaks off a slab before handing it back to me. I shake my head. She needs the calories more than me. ‘Tell me something, Nic,’ I say, leaning forwards to poke a piece of wood into the flames.

  ‘Tell you what?’ she asks, suspicion instantly lacing her voice.

  I glance over my shoulder at her. Her cheeks are warm from the fire, her hair glinting reddish in the flames.

  ‘Who’s Marcus?’

  She almost chokes on the chocolate. ‘What?’ she splutters.

  I hold her gaze. ‘Who’s Marcus?’ I ask again. I’m telling myself it’s a purely disinterested question, that I’m just trying to eliminate all people from the enquiry and I never fully eliminated Marcus the wannabe orthodontist, but the truth of the matter is I want to know who this guy Marcus is and whether he means anything to her, even though the answer really shouldn’t matter to me at all.

  ‘Hang on . . . ’ she says, her eyes narrowing dangerously. ‘What the hell? How do you know about Marcus?’

  I shrug and stare down at my feet.

  ‘My firewalls and encryption were supposed to be impenetrable,’ Nic shrieks. ‘I had them tested.’

  I look at her with an expression that asks Really? You’re still asking that question?

  She shakes her head at me. ‘You’re unbelievable. Do you have any understanding whatsoever about boundaries?’

  ‘Don’t be mad,’ I say. ‘I needed to run a tracer on your emails, see if anyone had hacked into your account.’

  ‘Besides you, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I admit.

  She glares at me but I ignore it. I was only trying to look out for her. It’s not like I was stalking her. ‘So who is he?’ I ask.

  ‘Like you don’t know already,’ she snorts.

  I try not to smile or laugh. ‘OK, yeah, you got me,’ I admit. ‘I ran a check on him. Of course I did. I ran checks on everyone you came into contact with over the last three years. But there’s something about this guy Marcus that doesn’t add up.’ I wonder if now’s a good time to mention the waxing.

  ‘What?’ she says, laughing scornfully. ‘Are you suggesting that Marcus is in on all this somehow?’

  ‘He’s studying orthodontistry and has a totally clean record,’ I say.

  ‘And?’ she asks, staring at me in total disbelief.

  ‘You’re seriously dating the guy?’ I ask, frowning at her. ‘He kind of looks . . . ’

  ‘He looks what?’ she asks, her voice hitching up a notch.

  I’m starting to wish I hadn’t brought this up. But I have, so I may as well follow through. ‘Just,’ I say, looking for the right words, ‘he doesn’t seem like your type.’

  Her mouth drops open before she clamps it shut. ‘How do you know what my type even is?’ she spits. ‘I don’t have a type!’

  I let out a snort. ‘Oh, yeah you do.’

  She blinks at me twice in astonishment. ‘What?’ she asks. I don’t know Nic Preston very well, but I’m starting to know her a lot better, and I can tell that when her voice goes low and quiet like it has just now, she’s on the verge of blowing her top.

  ‘You’ve rented every Ryan Gosling movie ever made in the course of the last six months. And you have a thing for period dramas. So I’m thinking your type is actually pretty obvious. You want someone who’s like a cross between Noah from The Notebook and Darcy from Pride and Prejudice.’

  She doesn’t talk for a few seconds and I start to think that maybe she really is about to lose her shit. I even glance around to make sure I haven’t left the gun lying around. Maybe I shouldn’t have let it be known that I checked her Netflix subscription while I was doing background checks. She turns back to the fire, glaring into the flames and shaking her head. ‘My God, Finn, where do you draw the line?’ she mutters.

  ‘So why are you dating him?’ I ask.

  It’s just a brief flash, but I swear a tiny trace of a smile appears before she stifles it. ‘What’s it to you?’ she demands.

  ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Just curious. I’m gathering evidence for my theory that short, aesthetically challenged men have to work harder to please women, and hence make better . . . boyfriends.’

  ‘He isn’t aesthetically challenged,’ she says indignantly, but there’s that smile again which she’s trying desperately to suppress. ‘He has good teeth.’

  I laugh loudly.

  ‘And I wouldn’t know if he’s a good . . . boyfriend,’ she adds.

  I dart a glance her way but she’s staring into the fire again. ‘Look, I didn’t mean to bring him up,’ I say, trying to hide my smile. ‘You’re right. It’s none of my business.’

  ‘Then why did you?’ she asks, raising her eyebrows at me.

  It’s a good question. Maybe it’s because I want her to tell me she’s in love with him, because that would make things much easier. Or maybe the truth is that I can’t stand the idea of her being with someone else. Unable to put any of that into words, I shrug.

  The silence closes in and for a minute we listen to the dull thud of thawing snow dripping off the gutters and the wind whistling eerily through a gap i
n the window frame. A piece of wood in the fire crackles loudly and I notice that Nic doesn’t flinch. She isn’t pacing either or checking the exit points every few minutes which strikes me as progress, given the circumstances.

  I get up and poke the wood back into the flames. We need to go. We should have already left, but I want Nic to be as well rested as possible before we set off. It’s going to be a tough ski across country.

  ‘I think I was dating him because I thought it would be safe. No risk,’ she suddenly says.

  I glance at her. She isn’t looking at me but staring into the flames. ‘I’m not good at trusting people, especially boys. After . . .’

  ‘That asshole ex-boyfriend of yours sold you out after the trial?’ I finish for her.

  Her eyes fly instantly to me. Her cheeks flush. She nods.

  ‘You know I can remove every trace of that story from the internet if you like.’

  Her eyes light up. ‘You can do that?’

  I nod. ‘It will take a bit of time but yeah, I can do that.’ I wonder why I haven’t thought of it already. ‘Consider it done,’ I say, feeling a tightening in my gut at the sight of her smile.

  ‘OK,’ Nic says after a beat. ‘My turn to ask a question.’

  Her chin is jutting up in that defiant gesture she sometimes employs. ‘Why didn’t you graduate from the FBI intern programme?’ she asks.

  She couldn’t ask me about girls? She had to ask about that.

  ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘You know pretty much everything there is to know about me.’

  ‘Fine,’ I say, sitting down by the fire. ‘I hacked where I shouldn’t and got caught.’

  She sits up straighter. ‘What were you doing?’

  ‘No. You said a question, that’s two.’

  ‘No it isn’t. You didn’t answer the first one properly.’

  I study her. Do I really want to tell her? I guess so. There’s something about Nic that makes me want to tell her the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. ‘I broke into the FBI’s main server, stole some data and leaked it,’ I finally say.

  ‘What?’ she asks, frowning.

  ‘I was investigating this online-paedophile ring in my downtime – still working for the NSA and the FBI’s cyber crimes unit. It was a six-month project, a lot of people working on it. Then I identified one of the key players. Turned out he was a federal judge.’

  Nic’s eyes bug in her head.

  ‘They decided to arrest everyone but him.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Because they believed if they arrested him every case he’d ever presided over would have grounds for an appeal. They didn’t want to deal with the political fallout and the financial meltdown that would accompany something like that.’

  ‘So they let him go?’ Nic asks in disbelief.

  I nod. ‘So I leaked the documents to the press.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Nic whispers. ‘And they threw you out because of that?’

  ‘Yeah, but it was worth it,’ I say. ‘The guy was arrested and charged. He’s currently doing life. And all his cases are under appeal,’ I add.

  Nic doesn’t speak for a few seconds. ‘You did the right thing. I can’t believe they threw you out because of that.’

  I shrug. The truth is I deserved it. Maybe not for that but because of what happened with Eleanor, so I don’t feel mad at the FBI so much as mad at myself for screwing up so spectacularly.

  ‘How did you end up working for the FBI when you were fourteen?’ Nic asks.

  ‘They caught me hacking into the Pentagon’s mainframe.’

  She raises her eyebrows at me.

  ‘I saw this really old movie called War Games about a kid who almost causes a nuclear war by hacking into the Pentagon’s computers, and thought it would be cool to try it.’ I clear my throat. ‘Anyway, turns out, not so cool.’

  ‘Did they arrest you?’ Nic asks.

  ‘Well, they did show up at my grandma’s house pretty damn quick and interrogated me for twenty-four hours straight. I thought they were going to send me to Guantanamo but somehow they realised I wasn’t a home-grown terrorist. And mainly they were intrigued by what I’d managed to do. Apparently I’m the only person to ever have made it through all their firewalls.’

  Though she tries to hide it, I can tell she’s impressed. ‘So they recruited you?’ she asks.

  ‘They couldn’t recruit me officially because I was only a kid, but I did some work for them on the side and they paid for my undergrad degree at Harvard in return.’

  ‘The girls told me that you still catch bad guys,’ Nic says. ‘What did they mean?’

  I frown. They told her that? I stare into the flames trying to figure an answer. ‘I just keep tabs on a few people, police a few websites,’ I mumble.

  The real truth is that Ivarstheblack and I are part of a web group of hackers who patrol the internet, keeping an eye out for criminals that lurk in the darkest corners. We hover in forums and whenever we see something that doesn’t seem consensual or that involves underage kids we intervene, identify the perpetrator, and then send the information to the police. If the police don’t do anything we put the proof into the public domain. But Nic doesn’t need to know all this.

  ‘Your grandma told me that you were trying to find them,’ she blurts.

  ‘Find who?’ I ask, simultaneously wondering what the hell my grandma and the twins didn’t tell Nic and when exactly they found the time to impart all this knowledge. I wasn’t out of the room that long.

  She looks up at me, her green eyes flickering in the firelight. ‘The people who really killed my mum and Taylor. Is it true?’ She’s holding her breath.

  ‘Yes,’ I admit, wondering at how she seems to have accepted the fact it wasn’t Miles and McCrory. She rocks backwards on her haunches. ‘I have this . . . er . . . thing, about justice.’ I cringe. Put this way, it sounds like I have some kind of Batman complex.

  I glance at Nic and find her studying me, a furrow between her eyes. ‘It should have been me,’ she says after a beat.

  I shake my head, not understanding.

  ‘Taylor was meant to be at a party that night but she was running late.’

  For a moment my mind reels. She blames herself? ‘How is that your fault?’ I ask her in a quiet voice.

  ‘She was running late because of me,’ Nic mumbles. ‘She’d had to go pick up her dress from the dry cleaner’s because I’d forgotten to do it. I’d borrowed it the week before.’

  She swallows drily before continuing, staring at her hands. ‘If I had remembered and picked it up earlier in the day then she would have been on time. She wouldn’t have been there. She wouldn’t have died.’

  Finally she looks up at me, tears brightening her eyes. I can see she wants me to blame her, to validate her own guilt.

  ‘Nic,’ I say, drawing a deep breath, ‘it’s not your fault. You are not responsible for Taylor’s death or your mom’s. You aren’t responsible for any of this.’

  She doesn’t seem to hear me. ‘We weren’t that close,’ she goes on in an almost whisper, ‘Taylor and I, I mean. She resented my mum and I moving in. Hated the fact she didn’t have her dad all to herself.’

  She stops and I wait, wanting so badly to reach out for her, and having to force myself to keep my arms at my sides. I wonder how many other people she’s opened up to about this.

  ‘I watched them carrying her down the stairs,’ she says, glancing at me quickly and then into the middle distance as though she’s picturing it all in her head. ‘She fought so hard. She kicked and screamed.’ Nic shakes her head. Her voice cracks. ‘And I did nothing. I just stood there and watched. I hid.’

  She locks eyes with me all of a sudden and I see the flare of defiance in them and I know she is trying to get me to react. She’s pushing for me to condemn her. It’s the same thing I did in the car when I told her about my mom being a heroin addict.

  ‘It was the only thing you could do,’ I tell her. ‘T
here’s no shame in hiding. If you hadn’t, you would be dead too. That’s not what your mom would have wanted. Or Taylor.’

  She shakes her head at me. ‘I saved myself. I didn’t save them.’

  I reach over and place my hand on top of hers, waiting until she looks up at me, her expression so lost and full of regret that it almost cracks my heart in two.

  ‘We can’t save everybody,’ I tell her, ‘no matter how much we might want to.’

  NIC

  ‘We need to go,’ Finn says, tearing his eyes off mine after a long beat and zipping up his bag. He stands up and starts stamping out the fire.

  I get slowly to my feet. I can’t believe I just opened up about Taylor like that. I haven’t even told Dr Phipps that stuff. I felt too ashamed. I expected condemnation. I wanted him to look at me with disgust. I thought maybe if he did that it might help push him away, because the truth is I’m scared by how much I’m coming to rely on him to feel safe. I don’t want that, because what happens when this is over? If we survive this I’m on my own again.

  But he didn’t act disgusted. He made me feel that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t do the cowardly thing, I did the only thing. We can’t save everyone. Finn’s right. Sometimes it’s all we can do to save ourselves.

  Finn is shaking out the poncho I’ve handed him, amusement crinkling his eyes. Once we’re ponchoed up, looking like two characters from The Road about to set off on a trek across an apocalyptic America, Finn opens the door, letting in a blast of icy air.

  He uses a plank of wood to push down the drift that’s piled up outside and when he’s done he lays out the skis and beckons me over. As we don’t have the proper boots we have to tie our feet to them with strips of blanket. Once they’re firmly on, Finn hands me a set of poles and I slide my way as best I can out into the clearing beyond the cabin. The sky is blisteringly blue and the glare off the snow is blinding. The air is still below freezing though and my breath puffs around me in dense clouds. Despite my blanket, my hands and face are starting to go numb already. I should have fashioned blanket mittens and ski masks too.