Don't Turn Around

by Michelle Gagnon

  Finally she dropped against a tree trunk, gasping for air. Her soaking wet clothes clung to her, making her shiver even harder.

  Peter dropped into a squat in front of her. “Are you okay? What the hell happened back there?”

  Noa shook her head. She couldn’t bring herself to say the words, even though she now realized that as soon as she’d seen the crab pots, she’d known. The tables weren’t empty because the kids had escaped. They were empty because the kids were dead. All of them.

  “Crab pots,” she finally managed.

  “Yeah?” Peter prodded when she didn’t continue. “What about them? That’s what was on the boat, right?”

  “I thought you grew up in Boston.”

  “I did.” His brow wrinkled. “So?”

  “So you don’t know about crabs?”

  “Just that they’re delicious. Why?”

  “Bottom-feeders,” Noa said. Bile was rising up her throat. She desperately wanted to throw up, get rid of everything inside her. But that would only weaken her at a time when she needed all her strength. So she choked it back and said, “I lived with a crabber once. He used to joke that you should never piss off a guy who owned a boat and a crab pot.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if you put a body in one, there won’t be anything left,” Noa said harshly. “Crabs are like pigs; they eat all of it. Bones, eyes, everything. There would be nothing left to find.”

  “But …” Peter’s voice trailed off as he realized what she was saying. He shook his head as if to clear it, then stood and extended an arm down to her. “Come on.” His voice sounded stronger, more adult. Like he’d suddenly aged a decade. “We have to go. The cops will be here soon.”

  Noa let him lead her back to the car. It was a cold, wet walk through the woods. A few times she stumbled on roots that jutted up out of the soil, or felt the scrape of a branch against her cheek. Each time Peter caught her and kept her from falling. By the time they got back to the Audi, he was practically carrying her. She leaned her head against his shoulder. Her calf throbbed where the wire had gouged it—hopefully the wound wasn’t too deep.

  Peter opened the passenger-side door and helped her in. The NSA program was up and running, she reminded herself. They’d done all they could.

  Now they had to get out of here before the storm troopers showed up. How ironic that she was relying on antihacking government agents to save the day.

  She just hoped that her assault had caught their attention, and quickly.

  Peter pulled on his seat belt and reached for the ignition. He frowned.

  “What?” Noa asked.

  “I left them in here,” he said, half to himself. “I could swear I did.”

  “You left the keys in the ignition?”

  “Yeah, just in case … well, I figured one of us might not make it back.” He examined the steering wheel. “That way you could still get out of here, even if I got caught.”

  “Oh,” Noa said. That wouldn’t even have occurred to her. Of course, she’d just assumed that if they got caught, it would be over for both of them. “Sure they’re not in your pocket?”

  “I’m sure.” He glanced nervously into the backseat. “You don’t think—”

  Peter was interrupted by a rap at the window. Noa went cold. The guy who’d chased her into the college library was leaning over, squinting in. He leered at them, dangling a set of car keys from his hand.

  Swiftly, the guy opened the door and slid into the backseat.

  Peter didn’t recognize him, but then all the guys who stormed his house had basically looked the same. He was dressed in what was apparently their standard uniform: black pants, a heavy jacket, a black knit cap. A nasty scar ran the length of his face—you’d think he would remember seeing that before.

  “You’re Cole,” Noa said bluntly.

  The guy tossed the keys into the front seat and said, “Drive.”

  Peter hesitated. Something cold pressed against the side of his head. He turned and found himself staring down the barrel of a gun. Peter picked up the keys with shaky hands and fumbled to get them in the ignition.

  “Back to the road,” Cole ordered.

  Peter obediently threw the car in reverse. The tires dug into mud for a second, then lurched free with a jolt.

  “Where are we going?” he asked, slowly backing up. The car bumped and jolted over ruts in the road. Peter prayed for the tires to get mired. If that happened, he might be able to distract Cole, and at least Noa would have a shot at getting away.

  “Back to the base. I’ll give you the full tour this time.” Cole’s voice was low and deep and filled with menace.

  He tapped Noa on the shoulder with the barrel of the gun. “Can’t believe I got so lucky. I should buy a lottery ticket. How’d you crazy kids end up together?”

  Peter glanced over at Noa. She sat rigid, staring straight ahead through the windshield. She didn’t answer.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Cole said dismissively. “Makes my life easier. Mason is gonna love this.”

  They reached the main road. Peter checked the mirrors, then backed across so he was blocking it. There were air bags on his and Noa’s sides, he suddenly realized. He could gun the engine, ram the car into a tree. Cole would go right through the windshield.

  He glanced into the rearview mirror. Cole was eyeing him. “Don’t get cute, kid,” he said. “Trust me, I can put a hole in both your heads before we get five feet. Now turn right.”

  Peter gritted his teeth but complied. The headlights illuminated the swath of road leading back to the abandoned naval base, windshield wipers working hard against the solid wash of rain. Some of it collected at the bottom in icy pellets.

  The gate stood open. Beside it was a guy dressed identically to Cole: probably one of the men from the boat. He looked miserable. Cole muttered something under his breath about incompetence. “Stop here,” he said, and they pulled up next to the guy.

  The guy leaned in. Peter guessed he was the one with the gruffer voice. Close-up he looked like a fisherman, graying scruff on his cheeks, oily strands of hair pasted to the sides of his face below a watch cap. He had on a black Carhartt jacket and thick rubber boots. He leaned in as Cole unrolled the window.

  “I told you, we didn’t—”

  A sharp crack! and the guy staggered back a few feet, a shocked expression on his face. A red hole had appeared in the center of his forehead. He dropped to the ground.

  Cole rolled the window up. “Keep driving,” he ordered. “All the way to the end.”

  Beside him, Noa gasped. Peter would have made a noise, too, but found that his voice box had stopped working. He was frozen with fear, utterly paralyzed by it. His ears throbbed from the concussion. He’d never heard a gun go off before. It was loud, much louder than on TV. His eyes were locked on the guy’s still form. A steady line of red seeped out the back of his head, joining a muddy rivulet created by the rain.

  “Pull it together, kid,” Cole said, sounding bored. “Drive, or I do the same to you and take the wheel.”

  Peter looked at Noa. She was staring at the empty space where the man had stood, mouth agape with shock, eyes abnormally wide. Her gaze shifted to him, and they shared a look of horror.

  “You’d better do what he says,” she finally said in a hoarse voice.

  Peter forced himself to turn back to the road in front of him. The windshield swam as though the car had slipped underwater. Mechanically, he flicked the wipers to the highest setting and eased his foot off the brake. The car edged forward.

  The line of buildings hunched like lonely sentinels as they passed. They seemed to have assumed a life of their own, bloodthirsty creatures awaiting the order to pounce.

  “Stop,” Cole ordered, and they pulled up alongside the final building. The door was ajar. Inside Peter could make out a shadowy figure: the other guy who had been loading coolers onto the boat.

  “What’s going to happen to us?” Noa’s voice was oddly bere
ft of emotion, like she’d already given up.

  “Not sure yet. I gotta call it in.” Cole smiled, his teeth startlingly white. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, you’re the golden goose. Your buddy here, though … he might have a date with a crab pot.”

  Noa drew her breath in sharply. Peter wanted to reach out and take her hand again, let her know that it was okay. Maybe his parents would be able to convince Mason to let him live. He pictured the rage on his father’s face the night he left and his heart sank. Probably not. Bob and Priscilla might already be remodeling his bedroom. Jeremy’s was a guest room now. He hadn’t been dead a month when the decorators came in.

  He’d never forgiven them for that. They’d sent Peter on a ski trip, ostensibly to “get away from it all.” And he’d returned home to find that all of his brother’s possessions had been packed up and sent away. He hadn’t even had a chance to grab a small token, like Jeremy’s lacrosse stick or science-fair medal.

  Bob and Priscilla had probably already decided that the death of their sole remaining child was for the best, all things considered. They were practical that way, and as they constantly pointed out, he caused them a lot of trouble.

  “Out,” Cole barked, interrupting Peter’s thoughts.

  Noa and Peter exchanged a glance. Peter hated feeling like he was voluntarily marching to his death. If he made a break for it, though, there was no guarantee Noa would get away. Maybe they wouldn’t kill her, but they sure as hell planned on strapping her to a table again. And he felt responsible for her now. She put up a good front, but underneath all that was something vulnerable; he could sense it. Deep down, he suspected they were more alike than she’d ever admit.

  He just had to hold Cole off long enough for the NSA cavalry to show up. Peter prayed that their program was still running, and that it had attracted enough attention to elicit a response. That Cole hadn’t discovered it and shut it down before it got flagged.

  Noa’s face was locked in the same mask as always, but she met his eyes and he could tell she was thinking the same thing. Stall them. Stay alive.

  He drew a deep breath, forcibly tamping down the fear. They were smart. They’d get out of this. They had to.

  “I said, out!” Cole smacked his head with the barrel of the gun. Peter winced—the hard metal felt like it had made a dent. Reluctantly, he got out of the car.

  The rain had turned to sleet; hard, icy stones pelted him. Peter huddled deeper into his collar and tucked his hands in his pockets. He should have thought to grab something, he chided himself—even a knife, or some pepper spray. Not that either would have been much help against an armed man.

  “Where’s Fred?” the guy called from the door of the Quonset hut. He was small, wiry. Midtwenties, with a smoker’s pallor. A scrubby-looking soul patch marred his chin.

  Cole didn’t answer. He gestured for Noa and Peter to go inside—apparently he wasn’t enjoying the rain, either.

  The wiry guy moved aside as they approached. This Quonset hut was different from the others. The overhead lights were on, an entire block of them. It was glaringly bright in contrast to the other buildings, everything set in stark relief. It looked like a cafeteria. There were long tables set in rows with metal chairs tucked beneath them. A coffee station sat at the far end of the room, beside the same stainless-steel-and-glass serving setup they had at Peter’s school. A stack of red trays perched on the metal railing in front of it.

  It was the kind of thing you’d find in a real hospital, albeit on a smaller scale. Peter tried to imagine what type of person would be able to sit here and eat after experimenting on a bunch of helpless kids.

  Right behind the serving area was a freestanding, enormous walk-in freezer. The door stood ajar. Inside, Peter could make out empty gurneys. The counter had been shifted back to make room for a long table. It was the kind contractors used, with a built-in saw on one end. The table was spattered red, and there were … he forced himself to look away.

  Another blue cooler stood open beside it.

  He glanced at Noa. She’d noticed the cooler, too. He was getting better at reading her expressions. Outwardly she projected the usual blankness, but he could see rage and horror in her eyes.

  “You should be done by now,” Cole said flatly.

  “Hey, man.” The wiry guy looked scared. He held his palms up. “We were trying. But the weather turned to hell, and we figured there was no way to take the boat out without the coast guard coming by.”

  Cole grunted at that, looking back toward the door.

  “So are these …” The guy glanced at them, then looked away. “I mean, I thought we were done here, right?”

  “Done doing what?” Cole demanded, stepping close to him.

  The guy shrank away. “Nothing. I didn’t mean—”

  “We don’t do anything here, and we never have,” Cole spat. He turned away, muttering, “Goddamn incompetents.”

  Cole yanked out a satellite phone with a long antenna. He punched a few buttons and stepped away, speaking in a low voice. He kept his eyes locked on them the entire time, like he was daring them to try to escape. The other guy had retreated to the depths of the room. Like a rat, he paced a few feet back and forth, tugging incessantly at the growth on his chin.

  Peter looked at Noa again. For the first time, she appeared truly frightened. Meeting his eyes, she managed a small smile and slipped her hand in his. Her fingers felt icy.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said, trying to sound reassuring. “They’ll be here soon.”

  Noa gave his palm a squeeze and whispered, “I won’t let him hurt you.”

  “That’s good, because I really hate being hurt.”

  Noa made a strangled noise that sounded like a laugh. Cole’s head jerked toward them and he frowned.

  Peter drew a deep breath and said in a low voice, “I won’t let them take you,” he said. “No matter what.”

  Noa didn’t say anything, but she squeezed his hand again. Releasing it, she stepped forward and said in a loud voice, “Tell him we’ll make a trade.”

  Cole stopped talking. His eyes narrowed and he came back toward them. “What did you say?”

  “A trade.” Her voice was calm, steady. “I’ll stay, and we give you back all the data. But you have to let Peter go.”

  “Wait, no—” Peter protested.

  Cole laughed. “You’re misunderstanding the situation here, sweetheart. You stay no matter what. And I guarantee that after ten minutes alone in a room with me, Peter will cough up more than I need to know.”

  “He can’t,” Noa said. “I changed the cipher.”

  “What the hell’s a cipher?” Cole demanded, looking at her blankly.

  Noa rolled her eyes. “They didn’t hire you for your brains, huh?”

  He snarled and stepped toward her. Peter quickly inserted himself between them. Cole stopped just shy of his toes and glared down at him, as if deciding which body part to dismember first.

  “A cipher is a cryptographic algorithm,” Noa piped up. “It’s like a dead bolt on the files. And I have the only key.”

  “So we’ll get it from you,” he said dismissively.

  “You could kill me, and I still wouldn’t tell you,” she said sharply. “And it doesn’t sound like you can do that, anyway. Golden goose, right? You only get the cipher if you let Peter go. Explain that to Mason.”

  Cole hesitated. Something shifted in his gaze as he examined her. Clearly he was debating whether or not to believe her.

  Peter held his breath, praying they would fall for the bluff. There was no way she could have changed the cipher he used to access the server. He’d set that key up himself. It would have taken a team of computers years of calculations to come up with it. Or Cole about ten minutes to work it out of him, probably. But maybe he didn’t know that.

  “Go ahead,” Noa said calmly. “Ask Mason.”

  Cole’s brow darkened, but he turned back to the phone and said something in a low voice. Apparently he didn’t
like the response, because his glower deepened as his gaze slid over to Peter.

  They were going to let him go, Peter realized. The elation was immediately supplanted by guilt. He couldn’t just abandon Noa. They’d already made it clear that they were planning on doing more terrible things to her. They’d whisk her away and bury her so deep he’d never be able to find her.

  Their hands were still intertwined. Under his breath, he said, “I can’t let you do this.”

  “One of us has to get away,” Noa said. “Someone has to keep trying to stop them.”

  “Then it should be you.”

  “They won’t let me go,” she said impatiently. She was looking past him, toward where the door remained ajar. Suddenly, she frowned.

  “What?” Peter asked.

  “Nothing. I just thought—”

  Cole clicked the phone shut and came back over to them. “It’s your lucky day, kid,” he said, cuffing Peter on the side of the head. “Mason said to cut you loose. As long as your girlfriend gives up the cipher.”

  “As soon as he’s gone,” Noa said firmly.

  “Nope, that’s not how it’s gonna work,” he said.

  “Can I go now?” a whiny voice called from the rear of the hut. Cole frowned and raised his gun again. “Almost forgot about you, Monte. You wanted to know about Fred, right?”

  A whimper. “Please, Cole. I wanted to keep going, I swear. Fred stopped me.”

  “Yeah?” Cole pointed toward the freezer. “So get the rest of the coolers on the boat.”

  “Alone?” Monte said dubiously. At Cole’s glare, he blanched and muttered, “Yeah, okay. I got this. No problem, man, I got it.”

  He moved past them and ducked out the door. The sound of a cooler being dragged against concrete, punctuated by Monte’s strained grunts.

  Cole shook his head. “Morons. This was always my least-favorite site.”