She eyed him and said, “You ask a lot of personal questions.”
“That’s personal?”
Noa nodded. “I don’t talk about my family.”
“All right.” Peter was having a hard time getting a read on her. Unlike most girls, she seemed impervious to his charm. In fact, he got the sense that she could barely stand him. It was discomfiting.
“We should go get the money,” Noa said abruptly, standing and slinging a messenger bag back over her shoulder. “It’s getting late and I still need to find a place to stay tonight.”
“Yeah, me too.” Peter picked up the duffel bag and slid his arms through the straps, carrying it like a backpack. He was wishing he’d brought less stuff; it had to weigh twenty pounds.
She didn’t answer.
“Don’t you think it makes sense for us to stick together?” he persisted.
She glanced sidelong at him. “Why?”
“You ask ‘why’ a lot,” he noted. She didn’t smile. “Anyway, if the same guys are after us, we stand a better chance if we watch each other’s backs.”
Noa kept walking. Her brow was furrowed, face locked in what was apparently her perpetual expression, a stony frown. But she didn’t say no.
“And I’m going to need some of that money, too,” Peter said. “If you want to share it, that’s fine. But we stick together.”
Noa huffed out a breath, then said, “Okay. We stick together. For now.”
“Great.”
“So where do we go?” Noa asked.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Peter said. They stopped in front of the ATM, and he dug out his wallet.
Noa put out a hand, stopping him. “Can you withdraw more if you go inside?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Peter said. He’d never done it before, but it was worth a shot.
“Okay.” She seemed to be thinking. “Get as much cash as you can. Then we need to get out of there fast. They’ll be able to track the withdrawal.”
“You think?” Peter was dubious. Sure, Mason had come after him when he was trying to break into their website. But could they possibly be monitoring their bank accounts, too? AMRF was probably still trying to drag itself out of the technological Stone Age /ALLIANCE/ had thrust it into.
“Yeah, definitely.” She looked around. “We’ll get the cash, then take the T across town. But we need to be ready to run the minute you have that money.”
“Okay,” Peter said skeptically. Even given what he’d been through the past few days, her attitude struck him as excessively paranoid. “You sure we need to be that careful?”
“Yes,” Noa said decisively. “And we can’t stay with anyone you know.”
“Huh.” There went his only plan. Even though he and Amanda had broken up, she’d probably still be willing to help if he was in trouble. But his parents might provide Mason with a list of his friends. They certainly knew where Amanda’s dorm was located. If they couldn’t go there, he wasn’t sure where to turn.
Peter suddenly realized that he hadn’t been exaggerating; he really didn’t have a home anymore. A panicky feeling took root in his stomach.
“What’s wrong?” Noa regarded him closely.
Peter tried to shake it off. “Nothing. It’s just … I don’t know where to go.”
“Join the club,” she grumbled. At his expression, she managed a tight smile and said, “We’ll figure it out. C’mon, let’s get the cash and get out of here. Malls make me twitchy.”
It turned out that Peter was able to withdraw a grand from his account, although the bank manager tried to make him take it in a cashier’s check. He walked out, the cash an uncomfortable bulge in his back pocket. Noa was waiting in front of a bath store a few doors down—the pungent reek of perfumed soap added to his queasiness.
“You got it?” she asked.
Peter nodded.
“Okay, let’s go.” Noa walked briskly in the direction of Copley Place. Peter followed, grateful that she was taking charge.
They were almost at the sky bridge linking the two malls when she glanced back and froze. Peter followed her eyes. There was a big guy in his twenties about forty feet behind them. He didn’t look out of place: jeans, a fleece jacket, a Red Sox cap. But he was talking into a cell phone and seemed to be watching them.
They picked up the pace. The sky bridge was a vaulted glass passageway with crisscrossing white struts one story above street level. Peter checked behind them; the guy was still there.
“Do you think—”
“I don’t know,” Noa said urgently. “But we need to move.”
She broke into a jog. Peter had to hustle to keep up with her—she had long legs and seemed to be in better shape. Or maybe she’d just had more practice at fleeing.
They shot through the bridge, barreling past people lugging shopping bags. A few grumbled in their wake, but no one tried to stop them.
Peter checked back over his shoulder and slowed. “He’s gone.”
Noa grabbed his arm and tugged, saying with irritation, “We have to keep moving. There might be more of them.”
She hadn’t slowed at all, and Peter was forced to break into a run. Startled middle-aged women watched them bolt past, and he pictured how crazy they must look. He was starting to feel silly. Maybe Noa was more than paranoid; maybe she was slightly unhinged. Sure, Mason had tracked him down before—but both of those times, he’d been trying to hack into the AMRF server. And tracing that kind of intrusion was relatively easy, especially the first time, when he hadn’t even tried to hide the IP address. The library computer incident was more perplexing, since he’d used a VPN. But there were still a lot of ways to track the signal back. And he’d remained at the same terminal for hours, which in retrospect made it much easier.
But financial-institution computers were a whole different beast. How could they possibly have access to those?
Peter suddenly realized how. Since he was still a minor, Bob was the cosigner on his account. Such a large withdrawal might have triggered an automatic fraud call. But would Bob actually have shared that information with Mason?
Maybe he hadn’t had a choice. And maybe Noa wasn’t so paranoid after all. Peter picked up the pace.
The Pru was a nice mall, but Copley Place was more upscale, catering to wealthy Bostonians with shops like Barneys, Neiman Marcus, and Louis Vuitton. This was where Peter’s mom had always done most of her shopping. In fact, a lot of the women they sped past were carbon copies of Priscilla.
Noa hesitated. They’d reached the center atrium, a landscaped section that housed two-story-tall trees. The arms of the mall branched away from them in four directions. The ceilings were painted gold, the lighting tastefully recessed. Noa appeared dumbstruck.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ve never been in here,” she admitted.
“Follow me,” Peter said. He headed for the Dartmouth Street exit. From there, it would be a straight shot across the street to the south entrance of Back Bay Station.
They slowed as they exited the mall. Peter was panting hard. His heart felt like it was trying to tear through his rib cage, and his breath wheezed in and out. The duffel bag straps dug painfully into his armpits, chafing him.
Apparently Noa wasn’t in much better shape. They were both practically staggering, like a couple of old people.
“C’mon,” Peter said, grabbing her hand. Dartmouth Street was four lanes separated by a slightly raised cement platform. During a break in traffic, they darted across the first two lanes, paused, then made it across the next two. Peter veered left, going past the entrance to Back Bay Station.
“What are you doing?” Noa hissed. “I thought we were catching a train!”
“Trust me.” Peter pulled her into the doorway of a Japanese restaurant. He scanned behind them. The coast looked clear—just the usual downtown midday crowd. A fair amount of foot traffic despite the cold, everyone moving with purpose.
The guy in the Red Sox cap emerged from the
mall. As he glanced up and down the street, they ducked farther into the shadows. An elderly woman in a moldering fur pushed past him. Red Sox cap didn’t even seem to register her. Eyeing the entrance to Back Bay Station, his right hand went to his ear and his lips moved.
“We have to get out of here!” Noa said fiercely.
She was right—from this angle they were just out of view, but if the guy crossed the street and turned left, he’d be right on top of them.
“One minute,” Peter said. “Relax.”
Noa grumbled something under her breath, but didn’t move.
Another guy suddenly appeared immediately to their left, just ten feet away. He had to have come out of Back Bay Station. Noa looked up at Peter and raised an eyebrow. He felt vindicated. He’d had a bad feeling about entering the train station—it was the obvious choice for anyone leaving the mall. The new guy crossed the street and approached Red Sox cap. They talked for a minute, then went over to the curb. A minute later, a black SUV pulled up and they both got in.
The car pulled away. Peter released his breath.
“Can I have my hand back now?” Noa asked.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” Peter hadn’t realized he was still holding it. She made a big show of shaking it out, as if he’d been clenching it.
“That was smart,” she said begrudgingly. “I didn’t think they’d have someone in the station already.”
Peter shrugged, doing his best not to gloat. “I figured it couldn’t hurt to wait and see.”
“I wonder why they left,” Noa said pensively. “I mean, it would have made sense for them to get more guys to help look. They know we’re around here somewhere.”
“Which is why we have to keep moving,” Peter said firmly.
“Yeah, but where?”
“Actually”—Peter grinned—“I thought of someone who might be able to help.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“What makes you think they won’t look for us here?” Noa asked nervously, shifting from foot to foot. She’d switched the messenger bag to her opposite shoulder, trying to ease the crick in her neck from carrying it. She could still feel the phantom weight of it on her right shoulder.
“Trust me, it wouldn’t even occur to my parents. They don’t know we stayed in touch.” Peter pressed the door buzzer again.
“Maybe he’s at work?” Noa asked, rubbing her arms. It was starting to feel like she’d never get warm again. They’d left Back Bay Station and taken four different buses to get here, backtracking twice to make sure they weren’t being followed. The T would have been faster, but they’d agreed it was best not to take any chances.
Peter hadn’t said much about this mystery stranger who would apparently be willing to take them in, which worried her. She’d rather have chanced going it alone. But she was down to thirty dollars, not even enough for a dive hotel room. Her options were limited. Even if she managed to get Peter to pay for a fake ID, she wouldn’t be able to access the cash she already had. The guys after her might have gotten in touch with Rocket Science—there was no way of knowing, so she couldn’t risk hitting them up for freelance work. Which meant she might have to start over from scratch.
And she still didn’t know what had happened to her on that operating table.
Right now her only option was to stick with Peter and see if they could figure something out by going through those files. That was the only way she’d have a shot at getting her life back.
They were standing in front of a duplex in Mattapan, a working-class neighborhood where the houses mirrored their occupants: They all looked worn and faded and tired, like they’d just pulled a double shift at a job they hated.
Noa was about to ask if there was somewhere warm they could wait when the door to the downstairs apartment popped open. A woman in her midtwenties with a baby on her hip eyed them suspiciously.
“Help you?” she asked in the drawl particular to South Boston. She was wearing a thick wool sweater that hung to midthigh over jeans and dark brown slippers. Her greasy-looking blond hair was shot through with pink streaks, and dots of leftover mascara peppered her under-eyes. The cloth diaper draped across her shoulder was stained blotchy yellow with what looked like curdled cheese.
“Yeah, hi.” Peter cleared his throat and smiled widely at her. “We’re Cody’s friends.”
“Oh!” She brightened immediately. “Sorry, I thought you were selling magazines or something. I swear, those bastards come by twice a day, just when I get the baby down for his nap.” She nodded to the kid, who dozed against her shoulder. Despite the cold, he was only wearing a thin onesie.
“That sucks,” Peter said sympathetically.
“Yeah.” Absentmindedly she stroked the baby’s bald head with one hand. “Pretty sure Cody’s working today. You wanna come in and wait for him?”
Noa and Peter glanced at each other. “If that’s okay with you,” Peter said. “Sure, sounds great.”
Noa followed him, thinking it was funny that people didn’t hesitate to invite him into their homes. She’d rarely had the welcome mat rolled out for her.
Noa squeezed past a collapsed stroller and line of jackets hanging from pegs in the hall, following Peter into a tiny living room. A profusion of glaringly bright plastic toys in all shapes and sizes contrasted starkly with the navy sofa sagging in the far corner.
“Sorry for the mess,” the woman apologized self-consciously, kicking things aside as she crossed the room.
“Great place,” Peter said, sounding like he meant it.
“Thanks.” The woman paused in the middle of the room and smiled broadly at him. There was a gap between her two front teeth, just a touch too large to be considered charming. “So how do you know Cody?”
“He was friends with my brother,” Peter said.
Noa thought that was an odd way to phrase it. Were they not friends anymore? And if not, why was Peter still friends with the guy?
She regarded Peter closely, noting the sadness in his eyes. Suddenly, it clicked. His brother was dead.
“Cody is friends with everyone,” the woman said, smiling. “He’s such a sweetheart. You should see him with Ethan. Amazing.” She gave the baby a nod.
“He’s cute,” Peter offered.
The woman looked at Noa expectantly. Clearly she was supposed to agree. Babies all looked the same to her: On closer examination, this one was even less appealing. His bald head looked freakishly large and rolls of fat spilled out the arm and leg holes of his onesie. Plus a long line of drool seeped from his mouth. “Yeah, really cute,” she managed with a weak smile.
“I’m Pam, by the way. You kids want something to drink? I got water and Diet Dr Pepper.”
“We’re good,” Peter said. “You wouldn’t happen to know when Cody will be home?”
“The hours that man keeps …” Pam crossed the room to lower the baby into a mesh playpen. “I heard him leave when I was giving Ethan his first bottle. Kid wakes up at the crack of it,” she said, chuffing the baby affectionately under the chin. “Cody doesn’t have class tonight, so he should be home soon. Poor guy.” She shook her head. “But I guess they get paid enough later to make up for it.”
“Cody’s a medical student,” Peter explained to Noa. “He’s working as an EMT to put himself through school.”
“I swear, he’d the hardest working man I know, and that’s saying something.” Pam set her hands on his hips. “You mind keeping an eye on Ethan for a minute? I gotta run to the store for more formula.”
“Uh, sure,” Peter said.
“Great.” Pam went into the hall and yanked a puffy down jacket off a hook. “He starts crying, just shove the binky in his mouth.”
“Okay,” Peter said.
“Back in five.” She tugged on the coat and yanked open the door, letting in a blast of cold air. It slammed shut behind her.
Noa stared at the door, openmouthed. She turned to Peter. “Did she seriously just leave her baby with us?”
“Yeah.” Pet
er laughed. They both eyed the baby. Ethan was sitting up unsteadily, his torso rocking slightly back and forth as he gazed at them with enormous eyes. His lips gaped slightly open, like he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened, either.
“That’s crazy, right?” Noa asked. She didn’t have much experience with good parenting, but assumed this wasn’t the norm.
“Yup, totally insane. What do you think, should we take him? Probably could get some cash that way.” He cocked an eyebrow at her, clearly joking.
Noa looked at the baby with distaste. “God, no.”
“Not a kid person?”
“I never thought about it,” Noa admitted. Few of the foster homes she’d been in had younger kids, and at The Center they were kept separate. She’d had limited exposure to anyone under the age of ten since—well, pretty much since she was that age herself. The subject made her uncomfortable. A lot of Peter’s questions did that; it felt like he was probing her and she wasn’t sure why he wanted to know. She decided to throw him on the defensive by asking, “So what happened to your brother?”
Peter winced, like she’d hit him. “PEMA,” he said after a minute.
“Oh.” Noa fell silent. She’d never actually known anyone who died of PEMA, but it was becoming increasingly common. The disease had come out of nowhere a few years ago. She remembered hearing that it had crossed over from deer or something. It mainly afflicted teenagers. PEMA was a truly awful disease—the kids who got it literally wasted away. So far it had mystified scientists—there was no common thread among the victims, at least not that they’d found yet. Initially they’d thought it had something to do with sexual activity, but that was quickly dismissed. PEMA was always fatal, and there was no cure.
Noa didn’t know what to say or do. Peter seemed to have retreated into himself. She drew her feet up onto the edge of the chair and wrapped her arms around them. A clock ticked in the next room, every beat of it resonating in the stillness.
The baby started crying. Noa sprung to her feet, grateful that the silence had been broken. She dug around the playpen. The baby tilted his face up toward her. He’d rapidly gone almost purple, face contorted, tears streaming down.
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