“My second day here they had me breaking into some wireless device while Norcut was on the phone. She would cue me to start and stop based on”—I pan my hands—“whatever was going on at the other end.”
Milo lifts one shoulder. “So they were testing you.”
“On what?”
“Does it matter?”
“It does to me.”
“Then you should ask.”
I jerk back. “Ask Norcut?”
“Why not? It’s the only way you’ll get an answer. You think she’s been honest so far?”
“Yeah, pretty much. Maybe.” I study Milo, feeling stupid. He’s right of course. I should ask. It’s just that, I’m not used to getting answers, and I’m damn sure not used to asking questions.
I take a shaky breath. “If they’re so trustworthy, why didn’t you say something to me the night you arrived?”
“I wanted it to be on my terms.” Milo pauses. His thumb finds my lower lip and traces it carefully. “I’ve worked with them before and I wanted to be the one to break the news about us.”
Us. We both take a breath around the word.
One corner of Milo’s mouth lifts in a smile. “I can’t trust you to tell the truth, and I needed to tell the truth. If this is going to work . . .”
He trails off, and in the silence I can fit in everything I can’t say. “I’m trying to be better with that. It’s hard to change old habits.”
“I think it’s hard for you to accept you have a future.”
I laugh. “You sound like Norcut.”
Now Milo’s laughing. “And you sound different. Better.”
“Do I?” I hate how hope wings my voice higher, but I’ve lost a lot and if Looking Glass is my ticket home and Milo trusts them . . .
“Definitely. You sound lighter.” He brushes a strand of hair away from my cheek. “I like the new color. It’s about time. I’ve been waiting for you to get better. When we met, you were so broken.”
“I ruined everything.”
“No, you didn’t.”
My fingers curl into his shirt. “How can you be sure?”
Milo doesn’t answer. He just pulls me closer.
12
The next morning, I sit at my computer station, chewing the skin next to my thumbnail and watching the hallway. All I need to do is just ask Norcut what she had me working on that first day. I should’ve just asked her when we started. It would’ve been natural.
Normal.
I am not normal. I have a laundry list of reasons I will never be normal. I bite down hard and wince. I can fix this. I just have to remember Norcut isn’t my dad. She isn’t Joe. She damn sure isn’t Carson.
There’s a flash of shadow in the hallway and Hart appears—suit and smile, just like always.
Milo’s with him.
Our eyes meet through the glass. He grins and I grin, and somehow, this feels so much easier because Milo’s going to be here.
Hart bumps open one door and motions for Milo to go ahead of him. Everyone stops, stares. It’s pretty much a repeat of my first day, but it’s also Milo. He’s a little over six feet with a lean build, dark skin, and darker eyes—black eyes, honestly. Milo has a grin that can drop jaws . . . and panties.
He’s sexy as hell.
And he knows it.
“Can I have your attention?” Hart asks. It’s totally unnecessary because everyone’s already staring, but Hart’s pretending not to notice our lack of manners. “This is our newest addition: Milo Gray. He’s a hardware expert and I hope you’ll take advantage of his expertise.”
There’s a soft murmuring to my left. Connor and Jake.
“I also hope,” Hart continues, “that I can count on you to make him comfortable and feel welcome.”
Hart’s staring at Kent. Kent’s staring at Milo. And Milo? Milo’s staring at me. It’s like no one else exists.
Maybe for us they don’t.
Milo was the first person to see me, really see me, for what I am. He wasn’t shy then. He’s not being shy now. I kind of want to cringe. I’m still not used to the attention, but then I remember that I don’t have to hide anymore and I grin at him, daring him to laugh.
Kent clears his throat. “Oh, you can count on us to make him feel at home, Hart.”
Milo’s mouth twitches. He’s chewing down that laugh and, suddenly, so am I. If Kent thinks he’s going to bully Milo, he can think again. The jolt of happiness is furious and hot and entirely Milo.
Entirely us.
Sometimes I think most of our relationship is based on how we look at each other and then, together, how we look at everyone else. It’s a constant shared joke, a song we can’t get out of our heads. Like we’re alone, even though everyone else is in the room too.
I used to think it made us dangerous. Maybe it’s actually what makes relationships—real relationships—work.
Maybe that’s something else I’m learning.
“I’m glad to hear you’re eager to help, Kent.” Hart’s iPhone beeps and he checks the screen. “You all know what to do, right? Dr. Norcut won’t be in until later.”
Our cue to get back to work. Everyone shifts around in their seats and the sound of tapping fills the room. Hart’s striding toward me to get to the door. It’s now or never.
“Hart?” I ask as he passes me. “Can we talk?”
Hart stops. “Of course. How are you liking it here?”
“It’s good. It’s fine.”
“Is everything okay?” He sounds like a talk show host again and I try not to squirm. Calling Hart a talk show host isn’t exactly fair. He’s more like a Boy Scout. Which is a nicer description, but makes me feel worse because it reminds me of Todd.
I force my chin up and push my foster father under.
“Yeah, I just . . . I wanted to ask you about my second day,” I say. “About what I was doing.”
Hart’s laugh is a soft burst. “From what I understand, you took a skills assessment test—something about accessing a remote device.”
“I know that. I don’t know why. It makes me . . . nervous that I was turning it on and off. It seemed weird.”
“Weird?”
I try not to grimace. Yes, weird. Just like how I’m acting now.
Hart leans against my desk. “You were running tests for a new client of ours, BioFutures. They do medical devices—pacemakers, insulin pumps, and other implantable devices. Our job is to test the devices’ security. Follow me?”
Absolutely, and that’s why the whole thing looked off. It wasn’t one of my usual targets. Medical devices have been found to be vulnerable to attack. It’s scary to think how someone can switch you off. Terrifying. But honestly there’s better money, better returns, with other types of hacking. Credit cards or bank accounts or whatever.
I nod. “Oh. Okay. That makes sense.”
“We should’ve told you. The others never care. I guess Dr. Norcut didn’t think you would either. Sorry.”
I study Hart. No one ever apologizes to people like me. It’s such a small thing and it means so much. I’m sorry means I regret betraying you. I’m sorry means you exist to someone, that you mean enough for someone to regret hurting you.
“But why wouldn’t we test the device here?” I ask at last. “You could test the software from a location on-site.”
“True, but our customers are rarely here. We don’t want them bothering you guys. Besides, BioFutures wanted to see if the device could be accessed remotely. Since medical devices are under such scrutiny, they want to be first to the market with a hacker-proof device. Wandering through a coffee shop and having someone hijack your pacemaker would be bad for business, you know?”
He laughs at his own joke and I force a smile. It’s a perfectly good explanation. It makes sense and yet I’m still trying to pry it apart, dig for any inconsistency. I mentally shake myself. Hart’s being helpful. If I would just stop being so suspicious . . .
Hart studies my face, my hands. They’re wrappe
d tight around the chair’s armrests. “I’ll be sure to tell you more in the future, okay? You’ll know exactly what you’re doing and why.”
I nod, knowing I should say something, but I have . . . nothing. Zero. My conversations with my dad and Joe never went like this and I’m not sure what to do. This is how normal people behave. It’s stupid easy for something that was so damn hard to say.
“We’re the good guys, remember?” Hart’s grin is as wide as his face. Wider. “That means you too. You’re doing the right thing.” He laughs and scratches his thumb across his eyebrow, ducking his head closer to me. “We’re fighting the good fight, yeah?”
He says it like it’s dorky and he knows and it is dorky, but now I’m laughing too.
And honestly? I kind of might possibly like the idea.
I used to hack to catch cheaters and abusers and deadbeat boyfriends and I believed in it. I saved other women from what my mom went through, but I was never proud of it because I hacked for money—to save myself, to save my sister. And some days, those were absolutely the right reasons.
Until they weren’t.
I spent so much time looking for monsters, I saw them everywhere.
Hart’s grin fades and he crouches down so our eyes can meet. “Look, Wick. I know what you had to do.”
It’s the soft voice again, so soft I know the others can’t hear, but I still stiffen. I don’t talk about who I am. I’m too used to burying it. I am my family’s undertaker. I bury all the bad memories, all our lies, putting everything in little coffins so we can go to bed. And then we all get up and do it again.
Or is that just what I tell myself? Told myself?
“I know what happened,” Hart continues. “I know what you had to do and I understand. But it’s not like that anymore.”
Milo rocks to one side of his chair, watching us. I can see the edge of his face around Hart’s shoulder. He looks so relaxed, I start to relax.
“I know,” I say, forcing myself to take a deep breath.
“We’re going to make sure people with these medical devices can’t ever be hurt by hackers.” Hart’s voice drops a little more. “It’s not so different from what you used to do, right?”
I’m nodding again—or still; I’m not sure.
“Good.” Hart stands and brushes away nonexistent wrinkles from his pants. “I’m glad we talked. You can come to me anytime.”
“Okay.”
“Promise you will if you get concerned again?”
“Promise.”
Hart beams at me and then glances down at his iPhone, which just buzzed. “Sorry. Gotta take this.”
He steps away and I turn to my desk, sneak a glance at Milo.
“See?” he mouths, but he’s grinning too. It’s an I told you so smile, a you owe me smile.
A makes-everything-in-me-go-bright smile.
I face my computer so he can’t see how I’m turning ten shades of red.
“Milo? The boss wants to see you.” Hart opens one of the glass doors and motions for Milo to follow him, leaving the rest of us to our work. We spend the next few hours in silence—a good thing for me because that bloated virus is back and I’m no closer to identifying the purpose. I know it’s a worm—a type of virus that can easily replicate and carry a variety of payloads—but this worm still isn’t carrying anything. There are no malicious or encrypted files . . . in fact, the payload just seems to be replicating itself.
Seventy-four characters over and over again: 596F7520646F6E2774207265616C6C792062656C696576652068696D3F20446F20796F753F
I don’t get it. On top of the worm being obsolete and a low security risk, it was written in assembly code. If the author wanted the virus to avoid detection, it would’ve been written in a modern polymorphic code.
And yet it keeps coming back again and again, getting detected, getting deleted. What’s the point?
I sit back, stare at the screen. What if . . . what if I’m looking at it wrong? What if I’m seeing what it can’t be instead of what it is?
I punch “hexcat” into my Linux workstation and watch the lines of hexadecimal code scroll past. My breath catches.
The virus doesn’t make any sense because it’s not a virus. It’s a message.
You don’t really trust them, do you?
13
All the hairs on my arms go rigid. I sit a little straighter, pretend to stretch as my eyes cut across the room. Everyone’s at work. It’s a relief until I realize I’m being stupid. What am I looking for? A gigantic sign above someone’s head saying “I sent that!”?
I scowl, look at the message again.
You don’t really trust them, do you?
Well, I did. I do.
No, I need to. The word is a small but incredibly crucial difference. I need this to be the real deal because if it isn’t . . .
There’s a link below the question, but it’s a link to what? Proof? Pictures? A cheap Viagra prescription?
Odds are, it’ll give my computer some virus I’ll have to fix and Kent will flip out because I should know better than to dig into this. I drum my fingertips against the edge of my desk because I do know better.
I click the link anyway. It opens another page in my web browser, taking me to an article published yesterday about a dead man.
A dead former judge, Alan Bay.
My hands go cold, clammy.
No. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. I skim the top paragraph, hitting all the high notes: Apparently, Alan Bay was at home when his pacemaker malfunctioned—at least they’re speculating that it was malfunctioning. Full details won’t be known until after the autopsy, but an “insider” maintains it kept turning on and off—multiple times, according to the data history—until he died.
In agony.
I suck air. Suck more air. I cannot get enough breath.
It kept turning on and off. It kept turning on and off.
Because I kept turning it on and off. Bile tips into the back of my mouth and I scroll to the top, read the website name: Datajunkie. It’s like a forum, but this is the only post. That’s good. It makes the whole thing feel made-up.
I need it to be made-up.
I scroll down, check the time stamp. The article was published late yesterday, but was posted to the forum this morning. An hour ago. I take a breath and hold it, keep holding it. Think this through. I’ve been getting these viruses since the first day I arrived. It couldn’t be the same link, though, because I hadn’t hijacked Bay’s pacemaker yet. Which means the previous viruses were what? Other messages? Junk?
I’ve permanently deleted them so I’ll never know, but this message comes so close on the heels of my conversation with Hart—plus there’s only one article posted.
Maybe it’s a prank.
Or maybe that’s just the nausea talking. It’s simmering under my tongue. If this is true . . . I was the person turning the pacemaker on and off.
I tortured Bay, the man who denied my mother’s restraining order and pushed through Bren’s adoption paperwork. I exposed his sons as murderers. He was my last job for Carson and this has to be a coincidence because if it’s not . . .
I take two sharp breaths. How many times did Norcut tell me to do it? Four times? Five?
No. Leave it. Don’t go there. I open another window in my browser—keystroke logging programs be damned—and search Alan Bay’s name. Out of the thousands of results, only the top four are about his death and they basically all say the same thing: Bay fell from political grace, his pacemaker failed, and now he’s dead. Everything else is about his sons and their murder spree.
Because I’m a minor, my name’s never appeared in any of the news articles, but people who were involved with the case knew I was there the night they caught Ian and Jason. Does this person know too? Is that why they sent me the link?
No, better question: Why would Norcut want me to kill Bay?
There’s a wordless roar in my brain again. I rub my forehead, feel the scab by my hairline, and wonder
if I shouldn’t take another couple painkillers. I need to think.
No good, the only thing I can think of is tracking down who sent this to me, and maybe for the first time in my life, my hand stops. I don’t reach for the mouse.
Used to be, I would’ve done an investigation. I would’ve bargained, snooped, spied. I would’ve found whoever sent it.
Only, I’m not supposed to be that girl. To borrow a phrase from Hart: It’s not like that anymore.
Which means I can’t make the same choices I used to make.
I have to tell someone.
But telling Hart means trusting him, believing him. Just as the message implied I shouldn’t. The reminder is frantic, a hysterical voice buried alive in my head and clawing for the surface.
I swallow. This was supposed to be different. Milo said it was different, and Milo doesn’t believe in anything or anyone.
Except for me.
Well, he believes in my abilities, which might as well be the same thing. This is who I am now, right? I have to tell someone.
I put both hands on my desk, force myself to stand. My legs tremble and I push them straight, straighter. I’m almost to the door before I stop shaking and I feel a little more like myself when I see Hart in the hallway. He’s waiting for the main elevator—off to meet a client?—and talking on his cell. At the sound of my footsteps, he turns and I stop.
I clear my throat. “I need to show you something.”
Hart’s eyes narrow. “I’ll call you later,” he says and punches a button on the iPhone. “Are you okay?”
I shake my head and motion for him to follow me, trailing back to my workstation on spongy joints. I jam my thumb toward the computer screen. “Take a look.”
He bends down, inhales hard. “When did you get this?”
“I’ve been getting them since I arrived, but I just now figured out the message portion.” I chew the skin next to my thumb again and study the white tile under my feet. I don’t know how they keep it so spotless here. “The link . . . the link says he had a BioFutures pacemaker. That it kept malfunctioning.”
Hart goes still. “You followed the link? You know better than that.”
Trust Me Page 7
