Conspiracy Girl (8 page)

I look away. That’s what he thinks. Why would he think otherwise? How would he know about the nightmares?

‘It’s a comfy bed,’ Finn adds, smiling to himself in a way that makes me cringe. What exactly does he mean by that? Then I realise with embarrassment that maybe the reason he
hasn’t yet slept is because I was in his bed.

‘Sorry,’ I blurt, then frown at myself.

Finn shakes his head. ‘Don’t apologise.’

I wrap my arms around myself again. I’m groggy and confused, and his nearness and the comment about the bed and the lingering scent of him from the sheets are all combining to unsettle me.
I don’t want to be beholden to him for anything. Him of all people.

‘Did you find anything out?’ I ask, praying he has, because I want out of here.

‘Hugo’s still in intensive care. And there’s no sign of your stepfather.’

I take that in. Where could Aiden be? Cursing myself for being so slow, I pull my phone out of my back pocket. Maybe he’s sent me a message.

‘What the hell?’

I glance up sharply. Finn snatches the phone from my hand. ‘Has this been on the whole time?’ he asks.

I nod. ‘Why?’

‘It’s traceable, damn it,’ he says, glaring at me.

How was I supposed to know?
I feel like yelling, but I don’t. Adrenaline scores new pathways through me. I glance at the door, expecting someone to come storming through it any
second. My nerves are shot to pieces and I automatically reach for Goz to steady myself. He’s right there, by my side, and I grab hold of his collar.

Finn has switched off the phone and taken out the SIM card. He hands the phone back to me, still scowling and shaking his head.

‘Is it going to be OK?’ I ask tentatively.

‘Yeah,’ he says, glancing at me briefly. ‘Should be. I’ve got jammers on the roof.’

I don’t want to ask him what a jammer is but I’m assuming it’s something that blocks signals.

‘Milk?’ Finn asks now, turning to the fridge which, with its steel-faced double doors, looks like it belongs in a mortuary.

‘Yes, thanks,’ I say frowning, and realising something that’s been staring me in the face but which I hadn’t fully registered until now. ‘Where’s
Maggie?’ I ask, looking around in alarm.

‘She’s gone,’ Finn says as he pours milk into a jug and starts frothing it.

‘Gone?’ Dread inches up my limbs like cold anaesthetic.

‘Yeah.’

‘Gone where?’

‘We made a plan while you were sleeping,’ Finn says, handing me a mug of coffee and brushing past me.

I narrow my eyes at his back as he strides towards his desk.

‘We figured it made more sense for her to report back and say she lost you.’

‘Lost me?’ I ask, my voice hiking several notches. Goz whines as my grip on him tightens.

‘She’s going to tell them that the safe house was hit, Ziv was shot and she was knocked unconscious while giving chase. When she came to, she found you were missing.’

I stare at him in a state of total disbelief, a hundred questions erupting in my head, the one that makes it out first being: ‘But . . . why?’

Finn flops down into his swivel chair and Goz immediately wriggles from my grip and takes up residence at his feet. He reaches out a hand and pats him. ‘Because it’ll help having her
working on the inside. And it will mean no one will suspect anything.’

‘But . . . won’t they look for me?’

‘Sure, but how are they going to find you?’

He takes a sip of his coffee, staring at me over the rim. I try to look away but he’s fixing me with a look that seems curious, analytical and confrontational all at once. Like he wants me
to argue with him, or question him.

‘But I thought
you
could figure out who was behind it?’ I say, not rising to his bait. ‘I thought that’s why we came here. Isn’t it? So why did Agent
Corb— I mean Maggie, have to go back?’

I’m starting to panic. How could she do this to me? My stomach is rolling around as though we’re at sea and my throat is squeezing shut. No one knows where I am.
I
don’t even know where I am. And someone, or some people, are after me and are killing any person who stands in the way. My eyes fly back to Finn. Does he realise how much danger he’s
in? Oh hell. I turn around looking for somewhere to set the coffee because I’m afraid I might drop it. I make a move to set it down on the desk but Finn reaches out and blocks my way.

‘Woah woah, not there,’ he says, nodding at the bank of computers and clutter of hard drives. ‘Not near the equipment.’

‘Sorry,’ I mutter.

‘Here, let me take it.’ He grabs it and our fingers brush. I jerk back, spilling hot coffee over his hand. He hisses and sets the coffee on the floor.

My breath starts coming in gasps.

‘You OK?’ Finn asks.

I glance upwards. Finn is on his feet. He towers over me – he’s at least six foot, maybe taller. I come up to his chin.

Ignoring him, I bend over at the waist and try to suck in a breath. Suddenly I feel his hand on my lower back. It burns through my sweater like a branding iron and I shoot upright and jerk away
from him. His hand falls awkwardly to his side.

‘Why is this happening again?’ I wheeze.

I can’t answer her, so I don’t. Scowling, she starts pacing the loft. Her hands are fisted at her sides and her eyes skitter over the space, to the windows then to
the doors and to the cube, as though she’s trying to find either a place to hide or a way out – I can’t figure which.

She pauses by the cube and puts her hands on her hips, breathing as though her lungs are full of water. Tension ripples off her in almost visible currents.

She reminds me of a half-wild cat that I found one summer when I was kid. It was trapped in the barn, going crazy. It was so starved its ribs showed through its fur. It was nursing a crippled
back leg, but when I came close it pounced at me, hissing, fur raising on end. I wanted to capture it and take it into the house, feed it and nurse it back to health. I had an idea I’d turn
it into a pet – maybe make it a wheelie robot leg to run around on – but my grandma told me that an animal that had suffered as badly as that cat likely had would never make a good pet.
It would never learn to trust. She told me it would only scratch me and then she’d have to take me for a rabies shot which she would pay for with my piggy bank savings. Then she told me to
stop being such a soft-hearted sap.

I set it free and never saw it again.

I shouldn’t have touched her just then. Clearly the girl has issues about people being in her personal space. Seeing her glance around the loft I get an idea. ‘Come on,’ I say,
grabbing my keys.

She stops circling and narrows her eyes at me. ‘Where?’

‘Let’s get some air.’

She trails me to the loft door, suspicious as the cat was when I tried to free it. ‘It’s safe,’ I reassure her.

She makes a sound in the back of her throat and I kick myself mentally, wondering what that word means to her. Does she ever feel safe? Did she before last night? Judging from the security
systems she had installed in her apartment and the salivating beast at her side, I am guessing not. And even if they did offer her some modicum of reassurance, that’s now been taken from
her.

From the corner of my eye I see her slip her arm around Goz’s neck to grip his collar. She has another nervous tic too, her hand often sliding down her thigh as though she’s slipping
it into an invisible bag. Possibly a habit she has of holding her Taser when she’s walking down a street. Interesting that she doesn’t carry a gun, but maybe not so surprising.

‘Bring the Skippy-loving beast,’ I tell her as I open the door to my apartment and hold it for her, taking care to give her enough space that she doesn’t have to touch me on
the way out.

She slips her Converse on then stares at my bare feet. ‘Aren’t you putting on shoes?’

‘Nah,’ I say.

She gives me a weird look.

‘Come on,’ I tell her, letting the door fall closed behind her and then jogging up the stairwell.

At the top I unlock the door to the roof and push it open. I hold it for her and watch with a small smile as she steps out and then pulls up short. She looks surprised for all of half a second,
then her expression hardens again. The beast, however, is straight off. He races across the grass and lifts his leg against my blueberry bush.

‘Yo,’ I yell, striding over to him. ‘Go piss elsewhere.’ The animal keeps up a stready stream. Guess I should have thought about letting him out sooner but it
hadn’t actually crossed my mind. Oh well. It needed watering. I’ve been neglectful of my plants of late. Thank God the grass is AstroTurf.

‘Goz!’

I turn back round to see Nic calling off the dog and look round my little roof-garden-come-stargazing-hangout. There’s a grill in one corner, covered by an ivy-coated awning, two sun beds
and a telescope set on the edge, which is currently covered in a tarp. My antennae and jammers are cunningly disguised by a thicket of twenty-foot-high bamboo. I just hope to God they’ve
worked in blocking the signal from Nic’s phone. I’m pretty sure they will have. I paid a hell of a lot of money for them. And if they haven’t . . . well, I guess we’ll find
out soon enough. No need to worry Nic about it though.

I wince as I watch Goz sniff around the sun beds. The last time I was up here was with a girl I met in some bar a few weeks back. I was planning on showing her Orion’s Belt but we never
got that far.

I stride over to one of the loungers, checking no evidence remains of our little get together, and sit down, ignoring the chill and the dampness in the cushions. It’s freezing out and I
regret not putting on shoes because my feet are slowly losing all feeling, but the sky is that particular neon blue you sometimes get in winter, as though it’s been dyed with food colouring,
and it’s good to be outside and staring at something other than a computer screen. I breathe in a lungful of toxic car-exhaust, pretzel and hot dog. Ahhh, New York.

I watch Nic slowly start exploring the roof, staying as far away from me as she can without leaping off the edge. The tension between us is so thick you could wade through it. I don’t know
whether to just broach the subject of the trial but I figure I’ll wait and let her take the lead.

She’s walking back and forth restlessly, stretching out her shoulders and arm muscles. I take the opportunity to study her through half-closed lids.

During the trial it was her vulnerability that made Nic such a focus for the media. In the same way Marilyn Monroe projected a fragile beauty – that sense of something broken beneath the
surface – so did Nic Preston, though without any artifice or design. She was only sixteen at the time of the trial but she spoke in a clear cut voice and held herself with the dignity and
poise of someone twice that. But even so, behind her eyes, you could see she was being hollowed out by pain as clearly as if someone was digging into her soul with a knife and cutting it out piece
by piece. And as if dealing with the murders and the trial wasn’t enough, the media were like starving piranhas thrown a pound of flesh. There wasn’t a single aspect of Nic’s life
that wasn’t analysed, even her love life and school grades made the headlines. There were whole columns devoted to what she wore each day in court. I can’t imagine what that must have
felt like on top of everything else. It made me wish for a special place in hell to be created just for paparazzi and tabloid journalists.

The thing that strikes me most about Nic now, as I watch her pace, is the same thing that struck me back then; her eyes. They’re still hollowed out with pain, though now they have a
guarded look to them, as though she trusts no one. She looks at everyone and everything as though it’s about to attack her – and who can blame her? Despite that though, and despite how
hard she tries to mask it, her vulnerability still shines through. She purses her lips a lot, holds her head high, stares at you like she’s trying to stare
through
you, but the tough
act, is just that: an act. The fear is masked but still there. It’s something she seems to wrestle with, a beast that’s bruising her from the inside out. If she doesn’t find a way
to let it out then one day it’s going to destroy her. I should know. I’m an expert on these things.

She strides over to me then, her arms crossed over her chest. ‘I need to make some calls.’

I sit up and face her. ‘Who do you need to call?’ I ask, rubbing a hand over my eyes. The coffee is buzzing through my system but I haven’t slept in over twenty-four hours so
it’s not making much of a dent.

‘I need to let my teachers know.’

‘I already let school know you’ll be out for a few weeks.’

‘What?’ she hisses angrily.

I shrug at her. ‘I told them it was a family emergency.’

She stares down at her feet and her face contorts. After a few seconds she looks up, throwing back her shoulders. ‘How long am I going to have to stay here?’ she asks.

I’ve been wondering about that too. The truth is I have no idea. ‘As long as it takes,’ I tell her. In some cases the witness has to go into protective custody for years.
‘Hopefully not too long,’ I add quickly, thinking about how that might pan out.

‘Come on,’ I say before she has a chance to start pacing the rooftop, or before that beast of hers has a chance to crap all over my fake grass. ‘I’ll show you what I
found out while you were sleeping.’

‘I just need to use the bathroom,’ I say, once he lets us back into his apartment. I feel like a school kid having to ask permission from my teacher and it annoys
me. I grab my bag and head towards the door Finn points to, feeling his eyes following me the entire way.

Once safely locked inside his bathroom I lean against the wall and take a few deep breaths. Sweat prickles my skin and I rip off my sweater. For a moment I cover my face with my hands and try to
get a handle on everything I’m feeling. Though what I’m feeling is an all-consuming terror and that’s not so easy to get a handle on. I’m scared I’m going to have a
panic attack. I try to remember what Dr Phipps taught me about focusing on my breathing. As I concentrate on that and on slowing my heart rate, I take a look around.