Don't Turn Around (8 page)

That sounded an awful lot like they wouldn’t be going back to her dorm room to hang out, Peter thought. The cold look on her face confirmed it. “I got this,” he said, digging out his own wallet.

“It’s my turn. You paid last weekend,” she insisted.

“Yeah, but—”

Amanda held up a hand, stopping him. “I know you’ve got more money than me. But we’re equal, so we pay equal.”

“Fine.” Peter ran a hand through his hair. “I’ll get the next one, then?”

“Yeah. The next one.” Amanda called back. She was already halfway to the door of the diner.

Peter watched through the plateglass windows as she turned right. The wind grabbed her dark blond hair, sending it flying out behind her. She wrapped a scarf more tightly around her neck and leaned into it. Amanda disappeared into a crowd of other students before reaching the corner.
Not so long ago she would have looked back, maybe even blown a kiss,
Peter thought as he sat back down.

The waitress came over to take the check. He put his hand over it and said, “Actually, can I get an order of eggs and sausage? Over easy, please.”

“Sure you don’t want to try any of this stuff on?” the store clerk asked dubiously.

“Why? I know my sizes,” Noa said.

“Wow.” The girl shook her head, sending chandelier earrings jingling. “That’s amazing. You just walked in, like, two minutes ago. I never buy anything without trying it on first.”

Noa didn’t respond. She didn’t have a lot of patience with small talk, and had never been good at it regardless. Besides, she already owned carbon copies of pretty much everything here: black socks, a bra, and panties; three T-shirts; one wool sweater; two pairs of jeans; a messenger bag; a fake-leather hooded bomber jacket, because the real ones were too expensive; and a pair of tall black leather boots that were on sale. “I’m paying with cash.”

“Okay.” Looking a little put out, the clerk rang up the stack of things Noa had dumped on the counter. She’d methodically gone through the store grabbing enough to hold her for at least three days. Although when it came down to it, this was about all she ever had. Her apartment was right across the street from a laundromat, so she didn’t own much, anyway. Force of habit, since for most of her life she’d been limited to one drawer at The Center.

The Center was a sort of holding tank where foster kids stayed in between families. All told Noa had spent half her life either there, with a random assortment of foster families, or in juvie. And those drawers didn’t come with locks. When your stuff was constantly getting stolen, you learned quickly not to develop attachments to it.

The only exception she’d ever made was for the jade bracelet. Not that it had been fancy or expensive or anything; it was just a narrow sliver of jade, plain and undecorated, a child’s bracelet that now barely fit around her wrist. But it was the sole thing left over from her previous life, the last remaining tie to her parents.

Noa realized she was rubbing her wrist, feeling the slight indentation that remained. She forced herself to stop.
It’s just another thing,
she reminded herself. And in the end, things weren’t worth worrying about. Her parents had abandoned her, anyway. It was silly of her to hold on to any piece of them.

“That’ll be two hundred and eighty dollars and fifty-six cents,” the clerk announced.

Noa handed over three crisp hundred-dollar bills with a pang of regret. She probably should have gone to a secondhand store instead, but she’d spent nearly her whole life wearing other people’s used clothing. She knew it was silly, but she was loath to do it again, even under these circumstances.

Besides, she had a small fortune stashed in a savings account. She just had to get to it somehow. On the way to the store, Noa had stopped at a branch of her bank. The soonest they could get her a new debit card was tomorrow or the day after, and an emergency replacement required ID. She claimed to have left her wallet at home and fled before the questions got too pointed. As it was, she could see the bank teller trying to make sense of this teenager with a healthy bank balance and fancy laptop who smelled like a fishmonger.

Noa was a little nervous about picking up the replacement card. She didn’t have her PO Box key, and depending on who was working the desk, they might ask for ID before handing over the contents. But the cash from Vallas wouldn’t last much longer. The PO Box was a risk she’d have to take. Although it probably wasn’t a bad idea to start setting up a new identity for herself. The guy she’d used to establish the Lathams’ social-security info was serving a three-year sentence in Concord prison. She’d have to put out feelers in The Quad for a new connection.

Which meant getting through another couple of days on less than two hundred dollars. Not impossible under other circumstances, but she really wanted to hole up somewhere that didn’t rent rooms by the hour.

“All set,” the clerk said.

“Thanks. I’m going to change into some of these now, okay?”

The girl shrugged and pointed. “Fitting rooms are in the back.”

Noa went to the one in the far corner, pulled the curtain shut, and swiftly shed her clothes. After getting dressed, she examined herself in the mirror: black sweater, black jeans, black boots and jacket, and a white-and-black-checked scarf. It was startling to suddenly recognize herself. She’d been wearing a nearly identical outfit the day all this started. Her skin was paler from being inside more than usual, but otherwise she appeared completely unchanged.

She tucked the laptop and extra clothing into the messenger bag and left the Apple box on the floor with the stuff she’d been wearing. At the last moment, she grabbed the knit cap. It smelled, but she still kind of liked it. And in Boston, a hat always came in handy.

She walked out of the store without a backward glance and found a café down the block with a
FREE WIRELESS ACCESS!
sign posted in the window. She ordered a coffee, tall and black, then looked over the food menu. She hadn’t eaten since … well, since waking up on that table. And who knew how long it had been before that. Noa was always skinny, but her clothes were hanging more loosely than she remembered.

She ordered a turkey sandwich and chips to go with the coffee. While she waited for the food, she rubbed the spot on the back of her hand where the IV needle had been. There was no sign of it anymore, not even a scab. And when she thought about it, her chest and foot didn’t hurt, either.

But then, she’d always healed pretty quickly. Noa got her order and took it to a table in the corner near an outlet. She plugged in, logged in, and debated her next step. She had to find a place to stay that wouldn’t ask for a credit card or ID, preferably one she could book and pay for online.

Less than a minute later she found a website that offered short-term rentals by owners. Better still, the money could be transferred directly from her bank account, along with a security deposit.

It would leave a paper trail, which was a risk. Noa sat back and debated. On-screen was a place that looked perfect: a studio apartment in Cambridge that was available for just five hundred dollars a week. Noa could hunker down there while she figured out who was after her, and why.

But whether or not she’d really be safe depended on how much they knew about her. Had she just randomly been snatched off the street, or had they been tracking her for a while? They knew her name, but did they know about the fake family she’d set up, and where she lived? Could they get into her apartment? Did they know about the PO Box? They might just be hanging around there, knowing she’d have to get to it sooner or later.

She really didn’t want to look at the file on herself again, but all the information they had on her was probably in there. Fighting past the fear of discovering something terrible, Noa gritted her teeth and dove in.

Again, it proved nearly unintelligible, a mix of scientific and medical jargon. Noa wished she’d paid more attention during the three months she spent in biology class before dropping out. After sifting through more than twenty documents, she found one that contained personal information. Her heart sank at the sight of her address: not going home had been the right decision. Also listed were her height and weight, age, and other stats, the sort of thing they recorded at The Center when you had a physical.

No sign of her bank account and PO Box, though. But those could always be on another page. There were more than three hundred documents in this file, and she’d only skimmed a fraction of them.

While she weighed the pros and cons of renting a place short-term, Noa took a bite of sandwich. At the taste, her nose wrinkled and she nearly gagged. The sandwich wasn’t terrible—the turkey was a little dry and the lettuce was wilted, but that wasn’t it. She popped open the potato chips to clear the taste from her mouth and had the same reaction. It was like her body went into instant revolt. And these chips were salt-and-pepper flavored, pretty much her favorite thing in the world to eat.

It was definitely weird.

Noa tentatively sipped the coffee. No reaction there. She drank another big gulp and waited: nothing.

Oh well,
Noa thought. She’d been through a lot; maybe it was just some sort of delayed stress reaction.

Back to finding a place to stay. Her gut was telling her to chance it. Even if they were monitoring her bank account, any transactions would take a day or so to process. She finally committed to one night in the Cambridge apartment, adding a special request for the keys to be left with the doorman.

While Noa waited for confirmation, she checked her email. Another message from Vallas, who sounded increasingly annoyed. She responded with a single sentence:
Working on it
.

No new missives from her mysterious pen pal, A6M0.

She clicked on the email and went back to the link. It was for a shampoo—not one she used, but she recognized it. A teenage pop star who sang exactly the sort of crap Noa hated grinned out from the page, her hair long and black and glossy. Noa snorted and clicked through links. It appeared to be a standard promo site.

She scanned through it looking for unusual source code; sometimes hackers sent one another messages hidden inside HTML formatting. But there was nothing. Why the hell had someone sent her this? If they’d seen her escaping from the warehouse complex, why hadn’t they tried to stop her? Was this from the same people who took her, or someone else?

Noa sipped more coffee as she pondered, wrapping both hands around the cup to warm them. She still felt unusually cold, like with every exhale she should be seeing tiny puffs of air. Maybe she was in some sort of shock.

She glanced through the picture window. There was a guy leaning against the building across the street. Around her age, wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. The hood was up, so it was hard to see his face clearly. But he seemed to be staring right at her.

They gazed at each other for a minute. Then a bus stopped right in front of him. Noa craned her head, but it didn’t look like he’d gotten on.

The bus pulled away from the curb and back into traffic. The guy was gone.

Suddenly wary and eager to get off the streets, Noa wrapped up the sandwich and chips and stuck them in her bag in case she got hungry later. She tucked away her laptop, slung the strap over her shoulder, and pushed back out into the cold.

CHAPTER SIX

P
eter sat in front of a terminal at the main library. His foot was tapping again, this time out of impatience. The connection here was about ten times slower than what he was used to. But he figured the men who crashed into his house last night wouldn’t dare do the same here.

Still, it was frustrating. He was sitting in the computer room at the Boston Public Library. The fluorescent lighting was dim, barely aided by late autumn light filtering through the large windows. The computer was at least a decade old, some no-name model they probably sold at Radio Shack. The rest of his row was occupied by elderly people who all leaned in, peering anxiously at their screens. Occasionally they’d warily tap a button, as if hitting the wrong command might make the computer come alive and launch off the counter to bite them.

Although last night had taught him that maybe it could, Peter thought ruefully as his own hands danced over the keys.

He was being more careful to cover his tracks this time. Between that and the slow connection, it was taking twice as long for him to get to the initial firewall.

Earlier, Peter had finished his breakfast and wandered through the Tufts campus. Clusters of students hurried past him. The boys wore parkas and jeans, the girls variations on Amanda’s standard uniform of a colorful knit sweater, long skirts over bright tights, boots and hats and gloves. Most had backpacks filled with books. They all looked older and sure of themselves. Which only served to make him feel lamer and more alone. So he hopped the T downtown and went to the library. Amanda’s words had stung, but she might be right about Rain—she hadn’t seemed like the type to screw him, but you never knew. It was stupid for him to rely on another hacker to get information, anyway. Calling in outside help had seemed like a better idea last night.

Peter’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his pocket: Bob again, the third call today. He pressed the button sending it to voice mail. A minute later, a text appeared.

Get home now
.

He ignored it. Amanda still hadn’t responded to his text, which said only:
Sorry
. Maybe he should have written more, about how he hadn’t meant it. Or maybe he should have waited, letting her cool down more before writing anything. He hated this part of dating, constantly trying to figure out what the hell the other person was thinking.

Before Amanda he’d never really had a girlfriend. Not because he couldn’t; from sixth grade on, girls had always liked him. Even though he’d been good with computers, he also played on the soccer and tennis teams, which seemed to balance out the geek factor. He’d started dating when he was twelve, just having fun, hanging out, making out. No big deal. Then he met Amanda, and right away it was different. For the first time, he kind of got what they were talking about in all those cheesy songs. For the first time, he was the one waiting by the phone.