Conspiracy Girl (7 page)

‘Leave her alone, please!’ I hear my mum beg. ‘Please . . .’

I wrench myself away from the top of the stairs, swallowing my panic and tears, and sprint down the hallway to my mum’s bedroom, hoping to God the sound of my stepsister screaming will
cover me.

Slipping inside, I dive towards the bedside table on Aiden’s side and drop to my knees, fumbling on the underside of the drawer for the panic button he showed me.

My finger finds it and I press down. Nothing happens. I keep pressing it. Nothing is supposed to happen, I tell myself. It’s a silent alarm. But still, I crouch there, too scared to
take my finger off the button. The phone is on the other side of the bed and I am working on building up my courage to let go of the button and run round to it when I hear the soft
shush
of the bedroom door opening.

I turn just in time to see a foot and the barrel of a gun appear. I’m on my feet instantly, sprinting towards the en-suite bathroom.

There’s a savage yell behind me and I’m thrown forwards. My chin strikes the floor, jarring my whole spine, knocking the wind out of me. Strong hands grab me around the waist and
I’m hauled like a sack of coal over on to my back and suddenly I’m staring up into the black-masked face above me. Blue eyes like pin pricks in the darkness. Pupils dilated.
Unmistakable excitement glimmering in them. Foul breath. Acid fear in the pit of my stomach. Lungs burning. A searing pain in my neck. I register all these things in the space of a single
heartbeat.

He reaches for me. His hands grab my waist and he tries to drag me to my feet.

And suddenly I’m alive, fighting just like Taylor did, kicking and screaming. My leg bends reflexively and by chance my knee connects with his groin. He lets out a cry and drops me. My
foot lashes out and slams into the side of his head. He collapses to the ground groaning, his knees drawn up to his chest.

I don’t stop to think. I stagger to my knees. His hand snags around my ankle. I stomp down. Hear a crack. Tumble forwards. Towards the bathroom. Swing myself around the door. Throw
myself against it. Ram the bolt home. Sink to my knees.

A few seconds pass. Somewhere I register that Taylor’s cries have stopped.

There’s an enormous crash as something is thrown against the door, but it holds. I fall back, press myself against the wall, staring in terror at the door. Another thud. It shudders on
its hinges. I grasp for Aiden’s safety razor. It’s a pathetic weapon and I know this even as I hold it out in front of me with shaking hands, tears rolling down my face.

I turn towards the window above the bath but I know without even trying it that it’s locked. All the windows in the house are wired into the alarm system. An idea hits me. I grab a can
of aftershave from the side and, shielding my eyes, hurl it through the window.

Splinters of glass rain down on me but I ignore them. We’re two floors up. I can’t jump. The window doesn’t offer any escape. It faces the back garden and the swimming
pool. Our nearest neighbours wouldn’t be able to hear me scream, but I can only hope that smashing the window will trigger the alarm in case the panic button didn’t work.

I sink to my knees beside the toilet, my eyes glued to the door and the razor still clutched in my hand. Silence has fallen again and all I can hear is my breathing, ragged and out of
control.

After a minute or two of terrifying, heart-stopping silence on the other side of the door, there’s a knock.

‘Hello . . .’ one of the men calls softly from the other side.

I huddle further back against the wall.

‘Helloooo in there,’ he says again, his voice scraping against the wood. ‘Won’t you come out and play?’

Ninety seconds. Aiden said it would take ninety seconds for the security patrol to respond. Surely it’s been that already? Where are they? I start counting in my head, trying to block
out the man’s wheedling pleas, but I only get to twelve before another voice on the other side of the door makes me forget about counting.

‘Nic,’ my mum whispers, her voice hoarse.

I stare at the door, imagining my mum on the other side of it. She sounds so afraid. I imagine her on her knees, her hands pressed to the wood panel, her face just inches away from mine. Is
she bleeding? Is she hurt? Are they holding a gun to her head?

‘We’ve got your mommy,’ the man’s voice sings. There’s a pause. ‘Your choice.’ He’s gruff again now. ‘Come out or we kill her. We
already had a lot of fun with your stepsister.’

I launch on to my feet, the razor hanging limply in my hand. What does that mean? What have they done to Taylor? All the blood in my body has been replaced with lead.

‘No! Don’t come out!’ my mum suddenly screams.

I take a wobbly step towards the door. There’s silence on the other side.

‘Nic?’

I stop at the sound of the man saying my name.

‘Nic?’ The man says again, softly. ‘You’ve got until the count of three to come out or we kill her.’

I reach for the door handle.

‘One.’

I put my hand on the lock.

‘Two.’

‘Nic, don’t do it!’ my mum screams just as the sound of sirens tears through the night, wails bursting in through the broken window.

Everything is going to be OK!

The sirens grow louder and louder.

They drown out ‘three’.

But they don’t drown out the sound of the gunshot.

I sit bolt upright in the bed, my heart thundering a thousand beats a minute. I’m drenched in sweat, shivering hard, and my face is wet with tears. The images from my
dreams are tangled up with the images from last night and together they rush at me as though a dam has broken. It’s like waking from one nightmare straight into another.

It takes me several petrified seconds to remember where I am and then my eyes dart instantly around the room looking for Finn. There’s no sign of him but the bolts on the door are still
drawn and there’s a light coming from inside the cube.

I draw in a breath and let it out in a half-sob. Goz is sitting up, staring at me quizzically.

‘It’s OK,’ I tell him, wrapping my arms around him, still shaking hard. ‘It was just a dream.’

I swipe at the tears angrily. I haven’t had a nightmare about that night for almost six months and the after-effects linger. I press my face to Goz’s fur, feeling tears scalding my
cheeks.
I want my mum.
That’s always my first thought when I wake from these nightmares. The irony doesn’t pass me by.

It hurts. So much I can’t breathe. Just thinking about her and Taylor, what they did to them . . . and having to relive it in my dreams over and over . . . A wave of guilt washes over me.
It should have been me. Taylor wasn’t even supposed to be home.

Everyone told me I did all I could. That it wasn’t my fault. But the facts stare me in the face: I was a coward. I did nothing. I just hid. I saved myself.

Just like last night. I could have done something. I could have come out of the bedroom. I could have confronted whoever was in the apartment. I could have saved Hugo. And what if they find me
again, here? What about Finn?

I look at the door and contemplate sneaking out, but then I glance towards the windows and I remember that I have no money, no credit cards, nowhere to go.

My heart is still hammering wildly. It feels as if I have an orphaned animal in my chest trying to burrow its way to safety. I lie back down on the bed, feeling the reassuring weight of Goz as
he settles against me. I stare blindly up at the ceiling, too scared to close my eyes in case I fall asleep and have another nightmare.

I sit back in my seat, flicking through the images from the crime scene. I’ve seen some dark things in my time, things no person should ever have to witness, and these
are just as shocking – even more so because I keep imagining Nic on the other side of that bathroom door listening to those bastards threaten her and her mother.

The last image in the file is of Aiden. It’s a case file image of him and Carol Cooper on their wedding day. I note that she’s only wearing a gold band and wonder why the CEO of a
huge jewellery company didn’t give his bride a big, fat diamond engagement ring.

My gut is telling me that this is all about Aiden. He’s the link to both break-ins. And he’s one of the richest men in America. I turn to my other computer and start researching
him.

Aiden’s jewellery business – Firenze Inc – is one of the largest luxury jewellery companies in the world, dealing mainly in diamonds and watches. He met Nic’s mother in
London – his company headhunted her away from her job as the head of an environmental charity there. She moved to LA to run the non-profit foundation Cooper was setting up, and her daughter
went too. Nic was thirteen at the time. Within eighteen months Carol and Aiden were married. Now Aiden has quit running the jewellery side of the business and focuses solely on the non-profit.

His alibi for the Cooper massacre was watertight. He was at a business dinner. There were three hundred witnesses, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s not involved. I know
he’s on Maggie’s shortlist too. She’s at FBI headquarters right now, organising the search for him. He seems to have vanished off the face of the earth since his little visit to
Nic’s the other night.

The FBI can’t get access to his emails and files without a subpoena and they’re not yet willing to do that without any evidence. I’m not so constrained by the law, though
– part of the reason Maggie came to me in the first place. But digging into a business the size of Firenze Inc, when I’m not even sure what it is I’m looking for, is going to take
a while.

It was decided that the people who broke into the Cooper residence in LA were trying to steal from Aiden Cooper’s safe. He had close to three million dollars’ worth of diamonds and
other jewels in it. But what if that wasn’t what they were after? What if it was something else entirely? The people behind this are more than just thieves. The level of organisation, the
assassination-style kill shots straight to the head, the money required to pay a hacker to disable the security systems – it’s all pointing to something more than just a burglary. But
above all, what makes me think there’s something much darker going on, something with much higher stakes, is the fact that whoever is behind this went to a great deal of trouble to set up
McCrory and Miles to take the rap. Whatever this conspiracy is, I’m going to get to the bottom of it.

I stare at the picture of Aiden Cooper on my screen, gazing lovingly at his now-dead wife.

On the surface he seems clean. Thing is, when on the surface things seem clean, that’s when they’re usually dirtier than a shit-stained rag.

I wake slowly, unwillingly, as though swimming through wet concrete. Gradually I become aware that I fell asleep again. I’m relieved that I didn’t have another
nightmare and wake screaming.

I’m curled on my side and a lingering scent fills my head, something warm and inviting and, more than anything, comforting. It makes me close my eyes and breathe in deeply. For a moment I
resist waking, wanting to burrow deeper under the blanket and then I realise with horror that it’s the smell of him – of Finn. I sit up, throwing off the blanket he must have draped
over me while I slept.

I blink in the glare of sunlight, streaming through the wall of windows that stretches all along the east side of the loft. We’re somewhere in the West Village I think, though I barely
remember the chaotic race from the safe house to here.

My focus shifts to the table in the corner that’s bowing under the weight of computers. Finn is sitting at a swivel chair in front of them. One hand taps commands on a keyboard, while the
other is sticking a spoon into a jar of something that sits wedged between his thighs. With a sharp pang of betrayal I see Goz is lying at his feet. Finn holds out the spoon laden with what looks
like peanut butter and Goz snarfs it down.

Anger propels me to my feet. Just the sight of Finn feeding my dog makes me want to hurl something at him. I march towards them.

Finn looks up and smiles. ‘Morning,’ he says, before reaching to pat Goz on the head.

I glare at my dog, who ignores me, too busy trying to lick the spoon clean of every trace of Skippy.

‘You’re feeding him peanut butter?’ I ask.

Finn looks at the jar and then at the spoon, which Goz is in danger of swallowing whole. He shrugs. ‘Yeah, he likes it.’ He holds the jar out to me. ‘Want some?’ he
asks.

Is he joking? I don’t want anything he’s offering. I shake my head, still scowling.

Finn sets the peanut butter down and gets up. He starts stretching, pulling his arms over his head and rolling his neck back and forth. I get a brief glimpse of his stomach – that jagged,
low-running scar – before his T-shirt drops back down. He hikes up his sweatpants – he’s changed out of his shorts – and pads over to the kitchen with Goz following him,
apparently having decided he has a new master.

‘Goz,’ I hiss in my Russian Olympic coach voice – the one the dog trainer taught me – and Goz halts and throws his head back at me, his eyes guilty and pleading at the
same time. I’m incensed. Peanut butter? He’ll toss me aside for peanut butter? Goddamn.

Finn starts pressing buttons on the coffee machine, pouring beans into a grinder. He glances over his shoulder. ‘Coffee?’ he asks me.

‘Yes, thanks.’ I’m unable to take the grudge out of my voice.

Finn rubs his eyes and I notice the circles under them, and the five o’clock shadow across his jaw.

‘How long have you been up?’ I ask, wondering where he slept.

‘I haven’t been to bed.’ He pours the ground beans into the machine.

‘What time is it?’ I ask, looking around for a clock.

‘Eleven-thirty. You were out for the count.’