Don't Turn Around (25 page)

He frowned. “I never said that.”

“Cody did.”

“Yeah, well … it’s a crap toaster oven.” He tossed the ruined slices into a trash can beneath the sink.

A voice called through the light shaft, “Everything okay up there?”

“Yes, Pam. Sorry,” Peter called back.

He looked at Noa and rolled his eyes. Something about the whole situation suddenly struck her as unbearably funny—precisely what, she couldn’t pinpoint, but Noa was hit by a rare and extreme case of the giggles.

“What?” Peter demanded as she doubled over with laughter. “I don’t get it.”

“Is something else burning?” Noa managed. She was laughing so hard it was a struggle to breathe.

“Oh, crap.” Peter dashed to the stove and lifted the lid off a sauté pan. More smoke poured off a blackened omelet.

Noa’s laughter redoubled and she dropped to the ground, howling.

“It’s really not funny,” Peter said, frowning as he grabbed the saucepan handle and headed for the window. He held it outside, waving away smoke. “I think I might have ruined the pan,” he said ruefully. “And that was the last of the eggs.”

“Last of the toast, too?” Noa said between giggles.

Peter nodded glumly.

Noa couldn’t help it—she snorted. Maybe because she still wasn’t hungry, the lack of breakfast didn’t have much of an impact. And the whole situation still seemed hilarious—the expression on Peter’s face as he stood there holding a pan full of ruined food …

She lost it again.

Peter finally cracked a grin. “All right, maybe it’s a little funny,” he acknowledged.

“Way to keep a low profile,” she choked out. “Think the fire department is on the way?”

“Maybe,” he said.

Noa suddenly flashed back to clinging on to the fire truck as it drove through the warehouse complex gates. That knocked the laughter right out of her. She looked up to find Peter examining her with a look of concern.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, collecting herself. “Where’s Cody?”

“He had to go to work. We were going to wake you up to do the blood draw, but—well, you’re a hell of a sleeper,” Peter replied. “Cody has a break before he has to go in for hospital rounds. He said he’d come back then.”

“Okay,” Noa said, even though she was already dreading the thought of a needle puncturing her skin, the pulse of blood into a vial … bile rose in her throat, and her hand went to her chest.

“So … I guess I’ll see if I can salvage any of this,” Peter said, looking around the kitchen dubiously. “Maybe Cody has hot sauce.”

“It’s okay.” Noa waved a hand. “I’m not hungry.”

He nodded as if that was normal, even though she hadn’t eaten at all last night. “Great. More for me.”

Noa hated the forced cheer in his voice, but resisted the inclination to snap at him about it. Peter was just trying to make her feel better. It wasn’t his fault she was suddenly a freak of human nature.

“I’m gonna get back to work on those files,” Noa muttered, standing up.

“Yeah, great.” He perked up. “After breakfast, I’ll check the upload status. All the files should be on the remote server by now.”

As she went back toward the living room, Noa heard the hiss of water hitting a hot pan. The living room was smoky, too. Despite the cold, she cracked one of the windows to let it out, then plopped down on a floor pillow, powered up her laptop, and checked email. Nothing new from her annoyingly mysterious pen pal. Out of curiosity, she did a web search for A6M0. Like her, most hackers chose an online identity with some sort of personal connection. Maybe he had, too.

A Google search only elicited a bunch of links to the Australian stock exchange and pages composed entirely in what looked like Japanese. She dug through three pages of results and was about to give up in frustration when she stumbled across a Wikipedia link.

“Ha!” she said out loud. “Got you.”

“What?”

Noa turned. Peter was standing in the doorway rubbing the pan with a dishcloth. “Nothing. I just found something.”

“About Project Persephone?” he asked, stepping into the room.

“No. Something different.” Noa shifted the screen slightly so that it faced away from him. When she’d told Cody and him about the past few days, she’d neglected to mention her guardian angel. She wasn’t quite sure why—it had just been an instinct.

“Oh.” Peter looked confused. “I’ll be in the other room using Cody’s computer if you need anything.”

“Okay.” Noa repressed a twinge of annoyance. It had been a while since she’d spent such an intensive amount of time with other people, but she didn’t remember this level of small talk being the norm. It was exhausting. Yet Peter seemed reluctant to leave the room.

“Good luck,” she said finally, turning back to her computer.

“Yeah, okay,” he mumbled.

Noa puffed out air, annoyed. She turned back to her laptop and dug a bit deeper to confirm the Wikipedia entry—now she had a potential name for her guardian angel. An A6M0 was a WWII Japanese fighter plane—which explained all the entries in Japanese. Allied forces nicknamed it the “Zeke.” So if she was right, her guardian angel was a guy named Zeke. Or he just had a thing for old planes.

None of which got her closer to any answers,
she reminded herself.

A minute later Noa heard a string of curses. A pause, then more.

“What’s wrong?” she finally called out, exasperated.

“I can’t use this.”

“Why not?”

“Come see.”

She walked into the bedroom. Peter was sitting on a plastic chair that looked like patio furniture facing an ancient computer monitor. Noa’s eyebrows shot up at the sight of the enormous tower by his feet. “Is that a Gateway?” she asked. “Really?”

“Really,” Peter replied, sounding pained. “It has to be at least a decade old.” He turned back to it.

“RAM?” Noa asked.

“Thirty-two megs,” he said.

Noa laughed. “Seriously?”

Peter said, “But wait, that’s not all. It’s running Windows 2000.”

“No.” Noa was dumbfounded. She crossed the room and bent over him, tapping a few keys to call up the system stats. “Wow. This thing belongs in a museum.”

“No kidding.” Peter sat back in his chair and said pensively, “I thought my folks gave Cody my brother’s old laptop.”

“Maybe he took that one to work?” Noa suggested.

“Maybe,” Peter said. “Although it’s not like EMTs have a lot of time to check email during their shifts. Anyway, I don’t know if I’ll be able to access anything using this. If you can spare any time on your MacBook …”

“You want to touch another hacker’s computer?” She arched an eyebrow.

“I know, I know,” he said, grinning. “We don’t know each other all that well yet, so it’s early to be sharing computers—”

“Way early,” Noa said. “And you didn’t even make me breakfast.”

“Hey, I tried,” he protested. “But Cody printed out a lot of the stuff you need, right?”

“Right.” All joking aside, Noa was loath to let anyone else touch her computer. It was kind of a geek thing, the way chefs brought their own knives to work. No one else handled the tools of your trade. Still, Peter was right—he’d need something faster than the antique on Cody’s desk. And most of what she was doing today involved matching up files to individual patients—stuff that Cody had printed out, anyway.

“Fine,” she said. “But I’m not sharing passwords.”

“Of course not.” Peter looked horrified. “Like that was even on the table.”

He smiled at her, and she grinned back. Noa was suddenly hyperattuned to how close they were—she’d leaned over his shoulder to examine the computer tower, and their thighs were touching. She was conscious of a sudden tension between them, a strange, almost electric hum. Something in Peter’s eyes shifted, and he leaned closer. “Noa, I—”

“I’ll get the laptop,” she said abruptly, stepping back.

Peter didn’t say anything, but she felt his eyes on her as she left the room.

It was strange. Her ears were burning, and her heart hammered in her chest, which felt abnormally tight again. Yet she doubted that had anything to do with the operation. No, this was something different—and she wasn’t sure she liked it.

The truth was, Noa had never even kissed a boy, a secret that she guarded closely. Not that they hadn’t tried. Back at The Center, and in a few of her various foster homes, she’d been forced to rebut several attempts to kiss her, and worse. The thing was, she’d never wanted to do that with anyone before.
Until now,
she realized suddenly.

Noa caught herself picturing Peter’s lips. They were unusually full for a boy and looked soft, and for just a second she wondered how they’d feel, pressed against her own … she started and shook her head, shoving the image away. She was being ridiculous. The stress of everything that had happened, and the fact that he was being so nice to her—that’s all it was.

Noa scooped up the MacBook and marched back into the bedroom, hoping that her face wasn’t still flushed. Peter still sat facing the doorway, watching her intently. When she entered, he gazed back at her levelly, as if waiting for something. Unceremoniously, Noa shoved the laptop at him. “Here,” she said gruffly, then whirled on her heel and darted back to the living room without meeting his eyes again.

Still feeling unsettled, she went to the piles Cody had stacked carefully in the corner last night. After a moment, Peter started tapping away at the keyboard in the next room. The sound was soothing, and her breathing slowed. With effort, Noa forced her attention back to the printouts.

Somewhere in there might be the name of the kid whose thymus was inside her, Noa thought with dread. She steeled herself. She’d just try to treat the files clinically, as if this was a work project.

It was easier than she thought, once she got past the initial queasiness. The morning passed quickly. Peter tapped away on her laptop as Noa sifted through files, trying to find commonalities that helped organize them. Cody had told her what to look for: blood type first, then certain markers that would indicate the same patient.

Whenever Noa passed the bedroom door on her way to the bathroom or kitchen, she stole a glance at Peter. His heel beat a constant tempo against the bare floor. It was oddly comforting, like the patter of rain against windowpanes. For the first time since awakening on that table, she was able to relax somewhat. It was nice to have a respite from looking over her shoulder.

“Hungry yet?”

Noa glanced up. “Huh?”

“I asked if you wanted something,” Peter said, walking out of the bedroom. He stretched his arms overhead. “I’m starved.”

He licked his lips, and Noa felt her cheeks flush again. She ducked her head to hide it, then turned to check the clock. It was well past noon. “No, I’m not really hungry,” she mumbled.

“Okay,” Peter said. “If you change your mind, Cody said to help ourselves to anything in the fridge. Not that there’s much.”

“What time is he coming home?” Noa asked, relieved that he hadn’t seemed to notice the tension between them earlier. Or if he had, he was pretending it hadn’t happened, either. Which was fine with her.

“Soon, I think. His hospital shift starts at three, so he was just going to run in and … well, you know.”

“Yeah.”
Draw my blood,
Noa thought.
Poke me with more needles
.

Peter scratched his belly through his shirt. “I’m going to take a shower, too. Unless you want to go first?”

Noa wasn’t entirely comfortable taking a shower here, but it might warm her up. And she probably smelled pretty ripe. She was on the last change of clothes from Urban Outfitters, too—she should wash some stuff in the sink. “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

“’Kay. Cody left towels on the edge of the tub.”

He shuffled off toward the kitchen. Noa went into the bathroom and cranked the water to the hottest setting. Facing away from the spray, she dropped her head and closed her eyes, letting the stream loosen the tight muscles in her shoulders.

Low voices outside the bathroom door. Cody must have come home.

Reluctantly Noa got out and toweled dry, rubbing her hair hard. She ran her fingers through it and checked the mirror. The weird thing was that she actually looked pretty good. Paler than normal, which was saying something. But the bags under her eyes had vanished despite her lack of sleep, and there was color in her cheeks.

Noa pulled on the last clean clothes from her bag and brushed her teeth with her finger. She really needed to get a toothbrush. She made a mental note to ask Cody if there was a drugstore nearby where she could grab toiletries and TracFones for her and Peter.

She entered the living room to find Peter and Cody engaged in a low, intense conversation. “What’s up?”

“I found something.” Peter was visibly excited. “Holy crap, though. It’s kind of unreal.”

“Almost too unreal,” Cody said, sounding skeptical.

“I think it makes perfect sense,” Peter retorted.

“Are either of you going to fill me in?” Noa asked wearily. She was starting to feel tired again, and the heat was ebbing from her body, cold edging in from her extremities.

“I zeroed in on one of the shell companies listed on the property deeds for the warehouse and boatyard,” Peter said. “It wasn’t easy, but I tracked it back to three others, all based with offshore holding companies. And guess who finally turned up as the parent company?”

“Who?” Noa hated when people asked questions like that. If he knew who was behind all this, why not just spit it out?

Triumphantly, Peter spun the laptop around so that the screen faced her. Noa frowned. It was the same home page her mysterious guardian angel kept sending her.

“A shampoo company?” she said dubiously.

“Not just a shampoo company,” Peter corrected, pulling down a submenu. “See? Pike and Dolan have their hands in everything. Pharmaceuticals, consumer products, medical research. They even make that fake sweetener everyone uses now.”

“They’re one of the largest corporations in the country,” Cody said. “Charles Pike has given millions for legitimate medical research. There’s a whole wing at Boston Medical named after him. I just can’t imagine he’d risk that by getting mixed up in something like this.”