Putting me back together.
I wish I could forget that. Being with Milo helped.
“What do you want with Griff?”
“I want to know if he’s like you—if he could use our help. Because I can help you, Wick. You just have to trust me. You have to be honest. Tell me about Griff. He’s like you, isn’t he?” Hart lifts his arm and I jerk—can’t help it, hate myself for doing it, but I shrink—and Hart’s laugh is a sudden sputter.
“Did you just flinch?” He puts his hand on the armrest as the town car accelerates into the far lane. We make a hard left turn onto a deserted side street. I’ve been so busy talking to Hart that I haven’t paid any attention to where we are and now I’m truly lost. We’re surrounded by nothing but concrete-and-glass office buildings. Everything looks the same.
“That father of yours,” Hart says softly, so softly he could be talking to some frightened animal or threatening a gunman. “He really did a number on you, didn’t he? I’m sorry I startled you. I’ll have to remember that.”
If he’d said that in Bren’s peach-and-cream living room, it would have been a threat. Another dare. I would’ve retaliated. I would’ve lied. No point anymore though, right?
Even so, Hart’s digging for a response. I just don’t know what to give him. Play along? Agree? It’s the truth. My father wasn’t the only monster I’ve ever faced, but he’s the only one who came for me in the light. I know this. Hart probably knows this. Why are things that are the truest so hard to say?
Our driver stops the town car at an underground garage entrance, and after a beat the gate lifts and we coast through a mostly empty parking deck, casting slanted shadows under the yellow lights.
“You look worried, Wick.” The car stops, parks, but neither of us moves to get out. Hart tilts his head as he considers me. “Don’t worry. You’ll tell me all about Griffin eventually. One day soon, you’ll trust me. Everyone does.”
Maybe, but not at Griff’s expense. Those are not my secrets to tell, and besides, this only proves that Griff was right: Once you make yourself useful to the wrong people, you’re never free. I will gladly spend the rest of my life making sure that never happens to him.
There’s a clanging to our right as a freight elevator descends into the parking deck. I watch through my window as it hits the pavement. The rusted doors grind open, revealing a five-foot-by-five-foot square of chrome and polished wood, security camera in the corner, and security keypad by the gate lock. I take a steadying breath, realizing I’m already trying to plan my escape route even though I know, if I go up, I’m not coming back down.
Hart opens his door. “Welcome to Looking Glass.”
5
The freight elevator climbs and climbs and I count every floor. We’re thirty stories up now and still rising, and even though I’m starting to sweat, I kind of wish I could see it. I’ve never been so high.
And we just keep going.
Hart’s on his iPhone again, only putting it away when the elevator finally stops. There’s a pause before the doors open, revealing a stark white foyer—shiny white floor and shiny white walls. It’s like standing in a deserted Apple Store, and I can admit that my inner geek is . . . interested.
Hart motions to me. “After you.”
It takes me a breath, but I push myself forward, walking off the elevator on spongy joints.
“Is that the new girl?”
I jerk, realizing there’s someone to my right, and retreat a step before reminding myself to hold my ground.
Hart steps off the elevator still tapping on his phone. “Oh, hey. Glad you’re here.”
“Where else would I be?” the girl asks without taking her dark eyes off me.
“Yeah . . . true.” Hart stares at both of us, brows drawn together. “Alejandra, this is Wick. Wick, this is Alejandra—”
“Alex,” she says.
“Alex,” Hart agrees. “You two are going to be roommates.”
Oh joy. Alex is a little taller, a little older, and staring me down like she’s trying to decide exactly how she’s going to kick my ass.
“I have a meeting that’s just been scheduled.” Hart squints at the iPhone’s screen. “Do you think you could get Wick to the infirmary and then—”
Now Alex is backing up. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Car accident. No big deal though, right, Wick?” Hart has that easy, plastic smile on again, and if I learn anything from being here, I want to learn that.
“No, no big deal,” I say.
“Wick banged her head,” Hart continues. “And got some cuts and bruises. Can you take her by the infirmary and then show her around, fill her in on how we do stuff? She needs to be with the boss in twenty minutes or so.”
Alex buries both hands in the front pocket of her hoodie. “Fine.”
Hart grins at me. “The driver’ll bring your stuff up. I’ll have it left in your room. See you around, okay?”
“Sure.” The elevator doors close behind me and I try not to wince. Like Alex implied, it’s not as if we’re going anywhere. We watch Hart lope down the hallway, disappearing around a bend, and when I turn to Alex, she’s already facing me.
“So what’s your deal?” she asks, leaning closer.
“Deal?”
Alex’s sigh is long and labored. “You’re not one of those geeks, are you?”
“What does that mean?”
“The kind with personal-space issues and no social skills.”
“No.” Well, not totally. I cross both arms over my chest and glare at her, but it’s a little hard to look tough since Alex has at least three inches on me.
“So you have issues?” she asks.
“Doesn’t everyone?”
Alex’s coffee-colored eyes narrow, but her mouth twitches like she might be amused. “C’mon.”
I spend maybe ten minutes with the infirmary doctor, getting cleaned up and checked over before being told to “run along.” It’s every bit as condescending as it sounds.
“Charming, isn’t she?” Alex asks after I get shoved back into the hallway.
I dry swallow two of the pain pills I was given and nod. “I don’t even know her name.”
“No point. We cycle through doctors pretty quickly. The other guys are . . . challenging to work with?” Alex grins. “Yeah, let’s go with that. Hurry it up or we’re going to be late.”
She pivots and stalks off like a supermodel on the runway, leaving me to trail along after her, my Chucks slapping against the shiny marble tile. The surrounding downtown buildings are close, but late-afternoon sunlight still slants through the windows, making Looking Glass’s white walls and floors almost blinding. The hallway’s lined with enormous abstract paintings. The blues and greens make my chest ache and we’re almost to the windows before I realize why: They’re the same shade of blue and green that always stained Griff’s hands.
He drew in ink, but he wanted to work with oil paints.
“Hey.” Alex snaps her fingers and I jerk my attention to her, cheeks going hot. “Stop gawking. We’re on the fortieth floor. You’ll be assigned a key card for access to this floor and the one above it.”
“What’s upstairs?”
“The cubicle ghetto mostly—computer stations and stuff.” The corridor splits and Alex nods her head to the right. “Kitchen’s down there. Technically, we’re all supposed to help with meals, but after Kent spiked everyone’s food with laxatives last year, Hart hired Mrs. Bascombe to take care of it.”
My feet stall and I have to push myself to keep pace. “Last year? How long have you been here?”
“Thirteen months, eighteen days.”
“Where were you before?”
Alex tugs one hand through her ponytail, dark curls tangling in her fingers. “Around. I did contract work. Anyway, bedrooms, bathrooms, and common areas are on this floor.”
We make another turn, hit another hallway. It’s the same deal. Lots of glass. Lots of light. Cameras everywhere. I s
neak peeks as we pass. Interesting. They’re fixed, meaning they don’t pan like other cameras do. It’s just one continuous image.
Which can make them easier to trick.
Alex slides me a sideways look. “What are you? A senior in high school?”
“Junior.”
“Ugh. I hated junior year. Anyway, it’s basically glorified homeschooling around here. We check in with our teachers, get assignments, return the assignments, get a grade.”
“Are they any good? The teachers, I mean.”
“If you’re smart enough to be here, it shouldn’t matter.” Alex pauses, and when she continues, she’s trying to sound nicer. “I know it’s a lot. You’ll have course work plus the client stuff they’ll assign you, but what else are we going to do, you know?”
We make another turn and return to the foyer. Basically, the entire layout is one big hamster-on-a-wheel circle and Alex’s point couldn’t have been made better. My entire life has been reduced to, maybe, eight thousand square feet. It’s definitely not a prison, but . . .
“That’s pretty much it.” Alex faces me, hands still deep in her hoodie’s pocket, and I notice again how old her eyes seem. They’re beaten down. Tired. That doesn’t happen naturally. No one starts life looking like that. Things have to happen. People have to do things to you.
I know. I see it every time I look in the mirror. Seeing it in her though? It’s a sickening jolt. She’s like me.
“You want to meet the others?” Alex doesn’t wait for me to answer before swiping her key card through the elevator’s security pad. The doors open and I follow Alex inside. We go up one floor, get off. No foyer this time, but the walls are still bright white and the abstract paintings are still enormous.
“Come on,” Alex says and turns to the left. We go, maybe, twenty steps before the space spills wide, revealing a white marble-and-glass waiting area. Two long, red couches frame another set of brightly polished elevator doors. The whole place smells ever so faintly of oranges.
“We use the service elevator,” Alex says. “When clients come to visit, they use this one. It goes to the ground floor rather than the parking deck. And before you ask, no, your key card won’t work on it.”
I nod, slowly turning. Glass walls stretch to our right and left, revealing open work spaces with wide banks of windows beyond them. It looks like a trendy office with computer stations pushed together in clumps and a long conference table next to them. Forty or fifty people could work here and yet there are only three guys on the entire floor.
Alex pushes through a set of glass doors and they all look up, look at me. “Boys, this is Wick.” Alex turns her hand toward me and gestures toward the group. “Wick, these are the boys.”
The two skinny ones wave at me. With their candy-colored graphic tees, they look like nerdy bookends.
“I’m Jake,” says the left one.
“I’m Connor,” says the right one.
“Nice to meet you.”
“And I’m Kent.” The last guy pushes away from his desk to study me, both hands folded on his Buddha belly. Kent’s big—like linebacker big—and has caterpillar eyebrows. Every time he blinks, they shiver. “I’m sure you already know of me. Online, I’m Sever.”
He pauses, waiting for that little revelation to sink in. Wow. Yeah, I definitely know him—know of him, I should say. The guy’s a legend.
“I’m also hungry,” Kent adds. “And I want you to make me a sandwich. That’s how it works around here.”
I shrug. “Not anymore.”
There’s a small cough to my left, and when I look at Alex, she’s grinning. “Well, this is going to be fun,” she says. “We work here most days. Kent’s group leader.”
“Which means you have to do what I say,” he adds.
“And what a joy it is too,” Alex says as I look around. It’s a great space—bright and airy—but sparse too. There’re only the boys, the computer stations, and . . . huh, no security cameras in the work areas. I check each corner of the room, eyes lingering even on the air ducts, and there’s nothing.
“Looking Glass does a lot of consulting work,” Alex says, a little louder than necessary, and when our eyes meet, I can tell she knows I noticed the lack of cameras. “Online securities mostly. It’s how they test what you can do and how you’ll build your résumé. Looking Glass benefits from our expertise and we benefit from their customer contacts.”
“If she’s good enough to stay,” Kent says, taking a step toward me. I have to fight myself to hold still. The guy wears his weight like a weapon. “And don’t think of trying anything on my network. I track everything. You sneeze, I’ll know it.”
“Good to know,” I say.
“So what kind of geek are you?” Connor edges closer. His brown hair needs a cut and he’s wearing too much Axe body spray. It makes my eyes water. “Obviously computers are your thing, but what’s your specialty?”
I hesitate. “Viruses . . . infiltration . . . that sort of thing.”
“Oh. They probably brought you in for that new account, the one with the virus problem.”
Alex shakes her head. “Yeah, no time for that. She has to meet the boss.”
Everyone nods, like this is the most normal thing in the world, and shuffles to his station. I look at Alex and she gives me a well? expression. “Any questions?”
“Not really.”
“Good. This way.” We go through the doors again and, this time, follow the glass wall around until we reach a rear hallway. We’re facing yet another office building, and almost directly across from us, a lone guy stands, one hand at his ear, staring out.
Staring at us?
I slow. “Alex?”
“Yeah?”
“Can people . . . see us?”
She follows my gaze out the window and makes a dismissive noise. “No. Our glass is mirrored. Don’t worry about it. He’s probably just wishing he could jump. C’mon.”
“Wait a second. Look.”
Begrudgingly, Alex looks and we both watch the guy adjust a small light with his other hand.
“Is that . . . a laser microphone?” I ask. “Is he trying to listen to us?”
“Probably. The buildings are really close, and our client list is epic. He could be a competitor. We sweep for bugs all the time though. It’s not going to get him anywhere.” Alex grabs my arm and tugs me along. “Don’t worry about him. Worry about being late to the boss.”
We turn at the corner and Alex knocks on the first door, opening it even though I never heard a response from inside. I trail after her, stepping into a low-lit office. After the brightness of the hallway, it takes my eyes a beat to adjust, and when they do, I stop dead.
The “boss” I’m supposed to meet? My therapist, Dr. Norcut.
6
Neither of us moves until Alex leaves and we’re alone. When the door clicks shut, Norcut smiles. “Surprised?”
Surprised . . . speechless . . . pissed.
“Hart said you were a bit rattled after the accident,” Norcut continues. “He thought we should wait to chat. I disagreed.” Heavy curtains are drawn across the office’s windows, dipping everything in shadows. Norcut moves to my right, and briefly her voice sounds like it’s slithering from the dark. “I’m so glad you decided to join the program.”
I heave myself forward, blood thumping in my temples. “I’m not really sure I had a choice.”
“True.” She shifts again, coming around the side of the desk so we’re face-to-face. Norcut’s blond hair is brighter in the shadows. It makes her look illuminated. “Will you sit down? Please? Like you said, it isn’t as if you have much choice.”
Stiff-legged, I take the farthest-away armchair as Norcut goes to the first set of curtains, pulling them back to reveal an impossibly blue sky marbled with clouds.
“Our program is . . . unique.” She takes the chair next to me and turns sideways so we can face each other. “What did you think of the others?”
Kent immediat
ely springs to mind and I have to squash my gag reflex. “They seem okay.”
“They’re quite brilliant. We found Connor and Jake last year. They enjoy cracking government encryptions and got a little . . . careless, shall we say? Kent is a former child prodigy. He specializes in malware. I’m assuming you see the connection?”
Of course, they’re all hackers. They’re all just like me.
“What about Alex?” I ask.
Norcut lifts one shoulder. “Basically, she’s a thief—corporate espionage mostly. Alex needed help. We were happy to assist. Looking Glass is always looking”—Norcut smiles, amused by her own joke—“for talent. Our clients are Fortune 500 companies, major hospital networks, and a few select individuals who demand the very best in database controls, web securities, and antivirus applications. We stay ahead of our competition by hiring people who aren’t just on the cutting edge. They are the cutting edge, and sometimes that gets them into trouble. Luckily, we’re around to get them out.”
“How did you find me? I’m not in trouble.”
The smile slides into a full-fledged grin. “Your last job attracted quite a bit of interest. There’s so much chatter on the networks now. And then there’s the matter of every person connected with your father turning up dead. You’re in danger. Your family is now in danger.”
As if I needed the reminder. Thing is, I took my last job to keep my family safe. If I hadn’t accepted Carson’s offer, he would’ve blown my secrets and Bren’s into the open. My adoptive mom had barely survived her husband, who was a pedophile and a rapist. Was I really supposed to let the detective reveal she might have bribed a corrupt judge to push through our adoption papers? That her company was failing? That she was crumbling?
And worst of all, that her older adopted daughter was breaking the law right under her nose.
I place both hands on the chair’s armrests. “When do I get to talk to Bren again? I didn’t get to say good-bye to Lily. I want to call them.”
Norcut nods. “Totally understandable, but we think you need a little time before reconnecting with your family.”
Heat creeps along my neck. “‘We’?”
Trust Me Page 3
