Conspiracy Girl (15 page)

The door to the street bashes open but we’re already flying down the centre of the road, hitting the cross turn and taking it wide. I turn my head just before we disappear from view and
catch just a single glimpse, no longer than a second, of a man wearing a black ski mask, a gun in his hand, pointed straight at us. I never get to see who’s with him.

My mum. Taylor. Hugo. Goz. I press my cheek against Finn’s back, feeling my tears freezing to my face and welcoming the knife-sharp pain of the wind slicing through me,
as it gives an outlet to the savage ache I’m feeling inside.

We just left him. I can’t shake the image of Goz looking up at me, begging me to help. He was in pain, he was hurting, and we just left him. I know there was no choice. But . . . we have
to go back. I poke my head over Finn’s shoulder. My hair has come loose and whips around my face.

‘We have to go back!’ I yell into Finn’s ear.

He slows up. ‘We can’t,’ he shouts back over his shoulder.

‘We have to!’ I shout.

Finn pulls to a sudden stop down a side street. Already there are signs of life breaking over the city. A truck is unloading fruit and vegetables, stacking the crates at the back entrance of a
restaurant. When we pull up behind it, Finn swings his bag around to his front. He’s shivering hard, I notice. We both are. Finn starts unzipping his jacket. He pulls it off and hands it to
me.

I shake my head. He’s only wearing a sweater. He’ll freeze.

‘Put it on,’ he tells me.

‘But you—’ I start but he interrupts me with a dismissive shake of his head.

‘I’m fine,’ he says.

I pull it on, grateful at the same time as feeling guilty. Finn pulls out his phone and we sit there, still on the bike, as he dials. I huddle behind him, wanting to press my cheek to his back
again, wanting to close my eyes, wanting this to all be over. I keep thinking about Goz and tears are still rolling down my face. They took everything from me already. Now they’ve taken my
dog too. What else do I have left? Except my own life, which I’d happily exchange for the others’.

‘Maggie?’ Finn’s talking on the phone. ‘My place got hit. I don’t know . . . yeah. Just now. Two of them at least. I didn’t get a visual. One of them was
speaking a foreign language. I don’t know for sure.’

I can’t hear what Maggie is saying but Finn stiffens in front of me. ‘They destroyed all my hard drives. Everything. All the sensitive information was in the cube. But it destructed.
They won’t have got anything. Though I don’t even know what they were after.’

I tilt my head to the side. Could they have thought we were hiding inside the cube? Is that why they tried to get in there? And what does Finn mean that it destructed?

‘They shot Nic’s dog.’

At his words I lean forwards so my forehead rests between Finn’s shoulder blades. He wraps his arm around me awkwardly, having to stretch behind his back, and I am so grateful for his
touch that I push myself even closer against him. He presses me closer.

‘Is there any chance you can go over there?’

My ears prick up.

‘Thanks, Maggie,’ Finn whispers. Hope ignites inside me. She’s going to go over there. Maybe, maybe there’s a chance Goz will be OK.

Finn hangs up after a few more seconds of talk and removes his arm from around me so he can make another call. Whoever he’s calling doesn’t answer and he hangs up, swearing under his
breath, before tossing the phone into his bag and revving the engine. I put my arms around his waist without him having to tell me to and he takes off.

‘Where are we going?’ I shout.

‘Vermont,’ he shouts back.

Vermont? That’s at least five or six hours from here.
We’re going to freeze before we get there
, I think to myself, glancing up at the black January sky above us. My face is
numb and my eyelashes are stuck together where the tears have frozen to them. My body aches from shivering so hard.

Finn seems to be impervious to the biting wind, though, accelerating even harder into it. I want to ask what’s in Vermont, but my teeth are chattering too hard to get the words out. Just a
few blocks later, Finn makes a sudden turn into a multi-storey parking lot. We fly up the ramp and roar up three flights until we get to the top. He parks behind a pillar, his head tilting to the
roof, scanning for cameras.

‘Stay here,’ he says. ‘Keep out of sight.’

I start to protest but he’s off already, walking to the nearest car parked in the corner – a beaten-up old Ford. It’s the only one not in direct sight of a camera and I already
have an idea of what he’s about to do.

I’m right. He swings his bag off his back and pulls out a thin metal rod which he stretches out and then uses to slide between the car’s window and its door. I’ve only seen
this in the movies so I’m stunned when it actually works, even more stunned that he carries that thing in his bag.

The alarm starts to sound – blaring through the concrete space, bouncing off the walls. I clutch the seat of the bike but within seconds Finn has done something to the car’s alarm
and rendered it silent.

‘OK,’ he yells.

I take that as my signal to follow him. He’s thrown open the door to the car and he’s busy doing something with a loose nest of wires that he’s kicked free from the steering
column. The engine purrs to life and he looks over and smiles at me, nodding for me to shut the door. I do, my hands still stiff with cold. He turns up the heat and shrugs his shoulders as though
trying to shake some heat back into his body. Once again I feel guilty as I burrow into his jacket, pulling my hands inside the sleeves. A second later, Finn puts the car in drive.

‘Why are we going to Vermont?’ I ask, as Finn pulls on to the street and starts heading north.

He doesn’t answer for a few seconds and then he says. ‘I need to check on someone.’ He presses the phone to his ear once again, but whoever he is trying to call still
doesn’t pick up. He needs to check on someone? He must think someone is in danger. Because of me. An iron fist grips my stomach, squeezing it tight. This is all my fault. More people are
going to get hurt because of me. When will it end?
How
will it end? How can I make it stop?

‘I’m sorry,’ I say quietly, after a few minutes have passed. If I had just turned my phone off maybe they wouldn’t have found us.

‘Don’t be,’ Finn says, reaching over to turn down the heat at the same time that I do. Our hands touch and he pulls away first.

‘But what do we do now?’ I ask.

‘Start over,’ Finn says, staring straight ahead through the ice-flecked windscreen.

Nic falls asleep just after we cross the Massachusetts state line, her head pressed against my jacket, which she’s balled up against the window. She’s not wearing
enough to keep warm, and when we pass a giant shopping mall I contemplate running in to get us both some heavier clothes, but I can’t stop. Not even for a minute.

We drove through a blizzard and out the other side. Now, still heading north, snow blankets the ground and the trees, the sky merging with the horizon. Cars joining the highway have six inches
of snow piled on their roofs. It should take another three hours to get there, given the traffic conditions. I’m assuming that the car will be reported stolen before then but once we’re
off the highway I think we’ll be good. Still, I’m careful to drive under the speed limit despite the fact that with every passing second the tension inside me is ratcheting up another
notch.

As Nic sleeps, I contemplate our situation. Maggie said she was going to head to my apartment to see about Goz, then call a locksmith to fix the damaged door. She isn’t going to report it.
I think about my smashed-up computers and grimace. Goddamn. It’s going to take months to get back up and running again at the same level. Right now the future doesn’t look too
promising, so best to focus on the present.

I glance across at Nic, curled on the seat, arms wrapped around her body. That damn dog was all she had, apart from Aiden. Who are these people and why are they so intent on hurting her? And
more to the point, how the hell did they find us? It had to have been her phone signal.

What is it that she knows – or they think she knows? They took my hardware – all my hard drives that were outside the cube – and tried to get the ones inside the cube. They
were looking for something they thought I might have discovered, then.

I think about my old philosophy teacher telling me about this rule called Occam’s razor. It basically says, don’t complicate things by concocting extravagant theories. Go for the
simplest hypothesis every time. The simplest one in this case is that Aiden Cooper has something, or knows something, that is worth enough to kill innocent people for. In California, the police
believed that it was thieves who were after the contents of the safe – and what if they still are? What if they believed Aiden had hidden whatever it is in Nic’s apartment? It
doesn’t explain though why it’s taken them two years to come looking again. Or why they tried to get my hard drives.

I need to get back online. That much is obvious. I need to drill deeper into Aiden Cooper’s affairs. But that’s secondary to reaching the farm. I hit dial again on my phone but
there’s still no answer.
Damn it.

‘You OK?’

I glance over. Nic has woken up. She glances at the phone in my hand.

‘Oh, yeah,’ I murmur.

‘Who are you trying to call?’

I hesitate before I tell her. ‘My grandma,’ I finally admit.

For a moment she looks puzzled but then she shifts in her seat to face me, the frown becoming a mask of fear. ‘You think they’ll look for us at her place? Is that it? You’re
worried about her?’

I nod.

‘Is that where we’re going? To check on her?’

I nod again, my focus on the road.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says in a strangled voice that makes something catch in my chest.

I look over at her. ‘This isn’t your fault,’ I tell her, my tone more aggressive than I’d been aiming for.

She has turned her head away and is staring out the window, her knees drawn up on to the seat. I feel like punching the wheel all of a sudden.

‘Look, I’m sure she’s fine,’ I tell her. ‘She does this sometimes, doesn’t pick up. I just need to make sure she’s OK. And also . . .’ I break
off, realising I’m not quite ready to tell her everything. ‘I . . . er . . . I have more equipment there,’ I say, ‘some old laptops, bits and pieces. I need them. We need to
get back online.’

Nic turns to face me and I see the tears glistening in her eyes. I’m struck by just how worn out she looks. ‘Do you want me to drive?’ she asks, surprising me.

I shake my head. ‘No, it’s OK. But thanks,’ I add.

She turns away again, staring out at the snow-draped woods that now line the road on both sides.

‘Did you grow up around here?’ she asks after a few moments of silence.

‘From when I was eight,’ I tell her. ‘Detroit before then.’

She tips her head and I feel her watching me out the corner of her eye even as I keep my own gaze fixed firmly on the road. Now we’ve turned off the highway the roads are icier. My desire
to put my foot to the floor is tempered by having seen what black ice can do to a car and the people in it.

‘Where are your parents?’ she asks, wiping the smile straight off my face.

Damn. I should have known that was coming and prepared an answer. ‘Never knew my dad,’ I say, glad to have the road to concentrate on. ‘And my mom died when I was eight.’
Usually I shake off the question about my parents with a
They live in Hawaii
. It’s easier to lie. So why’d I tell Nic the truth?

‘Oh God, I’m sorry,’ she says, biting her lip.

I shake my head. ‘Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault.’

‘What happened?’ she asks in a quiet voice before she blurts, ‘I mean, sorry, you don’t have to tell me.’

‘She was an addict. She overdosed. Heroin.’

Beside me, I feel Nic shrink backwards into the seat. It’s a reaction I’ve experienced a few times and the reason I no longer tell anyone the truth. People treat you as though
you’re an addict too, by association, or are in some way contagious. My fingers grip the wheel tighter and without thinking my foot stamps down on the gas. Suddenly I feel a hand on my arm
and glance down. Nic’s fingers rest on my wrist. I look over at her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says again and I can tell that she means it.

My foot eases off the gas and I nod, distracted by the feeling of her fingers on my skin and then, when she moves her hand, by the loss of the feeling.

Of all the people in the world I guess Nic Preston would understand loss and all the mixed emotions of guilt and anger that go with it.

‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’ she asks next.

I take a deep breath. Goddamn. My family history isn’t something I readily share with people. I’ve never told anyone all the gory details. Not even Maggie.

‘I had a brother,’ I find myself saying, almost to my surprise.

Nic falls quiet, probably musing on my use of the past tense.

‘He died a few years ago,’ I add.

Nic turns her head away from me and for a moment I think I’ve gone too far; I mean, it feels like I’m turning it into a competition – who’s had the shittiest luck and
lost the most family members? That wasn’t my intention.

‘He was an addict too, like my mum. He died in a car accident. He was over the limit. Wrapped his car around a tree.’ Why am I telling her all this? I need to shut up.

Nic lets out a long exhalation. I can guess what she’s thinking – if they were both addicts, then surely I am too? That it must run in the family – a weakness, a bad gene.
Suddenly I know why I’m telling her everything. My subconscious is trying to find a way to let her know I’m not good enough, to admit the worst stuff about me so she knows not to get
too close. It’s also why I only ever have one-night flings with girls. To avoid having to have this conversation at some point down the line.

‘Sometimes,’ Nic says, ‘you get so wrapped up in your own grief that you forget other people are also hurting and dealing with terrible things.’