Conspiracy Girl (21 page)

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. ‘There’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.’

‘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.

Finn glides over to meet me and I have to bite back the smile. In truth he actually looks kind of cute in the poncho. Like a Mexican Mariachi on skis.

He catches me trying not to smile and shakes his head, muttering to himself. Then he pushes off and I follow after him. I haven’t skied in about five years and my legs are wobbly from
yesterday. But within a few minutes we’ve picked up a rhythm and all I can hear is the soft swish of our skis though the snow, the sound of my breathing, and the occasional call of a
bird.

Finn has obviously been doing this since he was a kid – it’s like second nature to him. He’s graceful and fast, but thanks to my OCD exercise routine I’m fit enough to
keep pace with him.

‘You ski well,’ Finn tells me, slowing up so he’s parallel to me.

‘I learned when I was younger. School trips to the Alps. I mainly snowboarded.’

‘One day I’ll have to take you to Aspen,’ Finn says and then shuts up immediately as he realises what he’s just implied. That there will be something between us beyond
this moment in our lives. I don’t say anything. ‘Tell me about your mom,’ he says quickly, as he steers us around a tree.

‘She was the chief exec of a charity,’ I say.

‘I know,’ Finn says. ‘She ran Aiden’s non-profit right?’

‘Yeah,’ I say.

‘It focuses on environmental stuff?’ he asks.

‘Yeah. She ran an organisation a bit like Greenpeace back in London. But the new charity that she set up with Aiden was focused on funding eco-friendly tech solutions. Mainly in Africa.
She was very into saving the world, one solar panel at a time,’ I add wryly.

About an hour later I’m completely exhausted, having to force my arms and legs to obey and keep moving. My hands are completely numb, frozen to the poles. ‘Just
another mile,’ Finn huffs. He too seems like he’s close to exhaustion.

I open my mouth to answer when a crack shatters the stillness around us. We both stop, our heads whipping sideways in the direction the sound came from. It was a gunshot. Finn doesn’t have
to tell me that. I know the noise a gun makes. A flock of crows has risen cawing, terrified into the sky.

My heart starts beating furiously, panic infusing my veins with a toxic mix of adrenaline and cortisol. Finn is over at my side instantly. Another crack sounds out and Finn puts his hand on my
back and pushes me forwards, urging me on. In the distance, I can just make out some tall chimneys, a building of some description, maybe the logging camp we were headed to. With a destination to
aim for I tuck my chin in, hunch down and push forwards. But before I make it two metres I’m pitched forwards as another crack sounds out right by my ear almost deafening me. I let out a cry
as pain explodes in hot shards across my back. I try to keep going but my skis snag on something buried under the snow and my arm gives out as I try to stay upright. I tumble sideways, my legs
ungainly, pain rocketing through my back and arm.

Finn is beside me in the next moment, crouched down in the snow. One of the guns is in his hand. He grips my arm tight. ‘What? Are you hit?’ he asks, but then his eyes drop to the
snow and he tails off.

I twist my head and see he’s staring at a spot of red behind me which is growing bigger and bigger as drops of blood rain down. I blink at it for what feels like an eternity before I
process that it’s my blood I’m staring at.

Finn grabs me around the waist and hauls me behind a clump of bushes. I smother the scream as the pain expands, momentarily blinding me and making the world spin. Finn is kneeling in the snow
beside me, gun trained on the woods, his eyes darting between the trees.

Are they out there? Where? How many are there? How are we ever going to make it out of the woods?
All these thoughts flash into my mind in the slivers of space between searing flashes
of pain.

‘Can you stand?’ Finn asks, throwing a glance my way.

I nod, though I’m not actually sure.

Finn scans the woods one more time, then turns quickly to me and starts tugging frantically at the knots holding my boots to my skis, pulling them free. I try to help but it feels as if an army
of red ants is burrowing into my back. When he’s done with my skis, he turns to his own, yanking them off as fast as his stiff fingers can allow. I sit there, cradling my elbow, watching the
woods all around for any sign of movement, feeling completely exposed and expecting a bullet to punch me backwards at any point.

Finn eventually tosses the skis to one side and then reaches for me, his arm sliding behind my shoulders. ‘OK, we’re going to have to make a run for it,’ he says.

I nod, though the thought of getting to my feet and moving seems impossible.

‘You see that ridge?’ He points to a hill, behind which the roof of the logging camp rises up. ‘That’s where we’re headed.’

Finn helps me to my feet and I grit my teeth as I sway against him. Fire leaps in flaming rivers down my side and along my shoulder. I hiss through my teeth and Finn’s grip on me
tightens.