His face is too bruised . . . both hands are bandaged . . . but then I see the eyes. They’re bottle green and they make my feet stutter against the pavement.
“Griff?”
28
Griff doesn’t respond. He retreats to the sedan’s backseat and I’m grateful for it because he doesn’t see my sudden stumble. My hands reach for him as Bren’s hands reach for me. She pushes me toward the car.
“Bren—”
“Get in.” She shoves me again, only releasing my arm to go around the other side.
“What’s going—”
“Now!”
I haul open the passenger door, throw my bag on the floorboard, and drop into the seat on wobbly legs. I’m barely buckled in before Bren pops the car in drive and floors it. Behind me, there’s the click of Griff’s seat belt and the slide of his jeans against the leather seat. I can’t believe it’s him. I can’t believe—
I turn to prove it to myself and I’m right: It is Griff and his hands are bandaged. We stare at each other and he touches one wrapped-up hand to his wrist like it hurts. I remember the thin skin there, how his heartbeat felt that night he met me at the ambulance. Who hurt him? What happened? I have too many questions and I’m too stunned to ask any of them.
“Are you okay?” Bren asks, making a right at the corner.
I turn to her, try to find an answer. “No . . . are you?”
“No.” Bren yanks the car around another turn and slams on the brakes to wait for a traffic light to change. “I’m sorry I sent you there. I didn’t know what to do.”
“I didn’t exactly make it easy on you.”
Her head jerks toward me, but then the light goes green and Bren guns it. We turn onto another side street and Bren makes a left and then a right, hands holding the steering wheel hard even as the rest of her shakes. Adrenaline? Or something worse?
“I don’t understand.” I tense through another jerky turn. My own adrenaline is wearing off, leaving me numb. Tingly. “What’s going on?”
“I had to get you out of there.”
“Why?” I watch a shadow flash across Bren’s expression. She knows something, but she isn’t saying. “What changed?”
“Your sister told me what was happening, how they were keeping you from talking to us—lying to us about you. I know your father’s escape is another reason for you to stay, but I disagree. Michael’s people have been spotted in Tennessee. They’re moving north. They’re running, and Dr. Norcut never said a word.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I found out for her.” It’s the first time Griff’s spoken and it squeezes my chest even tighter.
“It makes sense,” Bren continues. “Michael can’t risk sticking around here.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.” Bren makes a small huffing noise. “Yes. He thinks so too.”
Bren’s eyes cut to the rearview mirror. She’s looking at Griff, and reluctantly, I turn. He isn’t watching Bren. He’s watching me, and when our eyes meet, he touches one bandaged thumb to his lips.
I know the gesture and it still cracks me open rib by rib. He’s thinking about what to say, and as the silence stretches, I know he doesn’t know where to begin.
That makes two of us.
“What happened to you?” I manage and the words make my stomach sweep low because I’m pretty sure I already know the answer.
“I had to pay for what I did.”
“The narcing?”
A single nod.
Exactly what I was expecting and it still makes me want to vomit. “Did . . . did he hurt you?” Suddenly, I can’t say Michael’s name. I can’t push it past the thickening in my throat.
Another nod and I have to squeeze both hands together to steady myself.
A smile pushes across Griff’s mouth. “He caught me after I contacted you—a parting gift before he blew town. It could’ve been worse.”
Yeah, it could. Because Griff could be dead and he’s not and the gratefulness flattens my astonishment.
I inhale hard against sudden tears. “How . . . how . . . ?”
“How did he catch me?” Griff looks away, watches the cars we’re passing. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“And . . . and your hands?”
Bren glances at me, skin between her eyes knotted. She doesn’t understand what I’m really asking. Doesn’t matter though because he does. Griff holds his palms up so I can see the way the bandages twist across his lifeline . . . or maybe he’s just staring at the backs of his hands. Maybe he can’t believe what he’s seeing either.
“Torn-up wrists,” he says at last. “Second-degree burns on the palms. I lucked out. It could’ve been third-degree.”
But this is bad enough and Michael knew it. Everyone in our neighborhood knows Griff is an artist. He was—is—so talented.
“They’ll heal eventually.” Griff’s hands drop to his lap. “In the meantime, I can do almost everything.”
“Except?”
“Draw.”
Two sharps breaths in and still, still the tears burn my eyes. “Does this mean no more art school?”
Griff’s smile overreaches his face, but there’s nothing real in it, not anymore. “I knew the price, Wick. When I took that job informing on Michael and Joe, I knew what would happen if I got caught. And I paid it.”
We stop at a gas station and switch seats. Griff goes to the front. I go to the back. Bren says just because Looking Glass knows I’m home doesn’t mean everyone else needs to know too, and I totally agree.
I am slightly surprised she thought of it though.
Maybe even a little uneasy.
Definitely sad. My life isn’t the only one that’s changed.
I lie on the floorboard and watch the treetops pass us. We swing right and then left as she winds through the neighborhood, eventually pulling into our driveway. The garage ceiling passes above me as she parks, none of us moving until the door is firmly down.
“It’s okay, Wick,” Bren says, twisting around and putting one hand on my knee. “It’s okay.”
Too bad she doesn’t sound like it is. I climb out of the car, stand in our garage again. There’s my car next to Bren’s, the boxed-up Christmas decorations on my right. It still smells like fresh paint.
Our house always smells like fresh paint.
Griff steps around me, my bag on his shoulder. I wince. “I’ll get it! Your hands—”
He stops, so close I can feel him. Griff’s warm. Being next to him is like lying in a patch of sunshine; I want to curl up and sleep forever.
“I’ve got it,” he says softly and his eyes travel past me, pin to something beyond my shoulder.
I turn, see Lily standing with both hands clutched to the frame. My knees crumble.
“Wick? Oh God!” My little sister flings herself across the garage and grabs me. We slump into each other. She’s almost as tall as me these days, but somehow we still fit each other.
“I missed you,” she says into my neck.
“I missed you too.”
“Come inside, okay?” Lily drags me toward the kitchen, all chilled hands and huge eyes. Bren’s waiting inside. She pushes away from the counter, arms crossed against her chest like she’s holding herself together.
“You have to tell me what’s going on, Wick.”
I shake my head. “You have cameras in your house; probably bugs too. I need to do a sweep and then . . . we’ll talk.”
“Cameras?” Bren puts one hand on the counter, parts her lips like she’s going to argue, and then shakes her head.
“I’ll help you look,” Griff says, putting my bag on the kitchen table.
“You don’t have to.”
He doesn’t respond, just walks out of the kitchen. I hesitate for a heartbeat, then follow.
29
We start on the top floor, taking screwdrivers to all the usual targets—smoke detectors, electrical outlets—and we hit pay dirt. It shou
ld feel satisfying, but it’s not. There are cameras in each of the upstairs smoke detectors and in two of the bathroom electrical outlets. Not only has Looking Glass been watching my family, but they’ve been watching them in their most private moments.
I know how that feels.
Griff holds up the latest discovery, examining the wiring. “How did you know?”
“One of the other hackers told me. It’s a long story.”
“We’ve got time.” He pauses, studying me. “Why’d he—”
“She.”
“Why’d she tell you?”
“She wanted my help. It was a . . . bargaining tool.” I sigh and rub my eyes against the painful heartbeat in my head. Migraines have the worst timing. I’m struggling to keep everything straight, and in the blur, a sudden question powers to the surface. “Did you send me those viruses? The worms with the embedded messages?”
He shakes his head. “What viruses?”
I cringe. If Griff wasn’t behind them, then that leaves . . . Michael? Michael trying to get me to leave Looking Glass, get out into the open so he could find me and get to his money? I don’t want to think about it. Can’t.
“Someone was trying to warn me about Looking Glass,” I say finally. “Whoever it was alerted me to what really happened with Bay. I just don’t know why they would.”
For a long moment, neither of us says anything.
“Okay,” Griff manages at last. “First things first. Let’s finish the cameras. We might have them all. We might not. You have any flashlights?”
“Yeah.” I walk into the hallway and check the closet. Always prepared, Bren has extra blankets, candles, and flashlights lined up in neat, little rows. It’s like if Martha Stewart decided to take up disaster planning. I grab two flashlights, turn them both on, and pass one to Griff.
It’s awkward, but he manages, sweeping the light across the walls to test himself. “This’ll work.”
I shut off the lamps, the overhead lights. The sun’s so low I don’t have to pull the shades. The rooms dip into dark and we start the sweep, moving so easily in the shadows it’s like we were born for this.
And for the briefest second, I’m in that church again, chasing down Todd and searching through the dark for Lily. Griff was with me then too.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
It feels like an eternity in the dark, tracing the flashlight beams over the walls, the picture frames, the furniture. We’re trying to detect any points of light bouncing back to us, one of the few clues that a pinhole camera’s been installed.
I take Bren’s office, her bedroom, and Lily’s bedroom. Griff sticks to the hallway, the bathrooms, and my room, eventually making his way to me. I’ve gone through Lily’s room three times now and I still can’t get myself to leave.
Looking Glass spied on my sister, my adoptive mom. When they thought they were safe and alone, they weren’t. I’ll have to tell them and I don’t want to. I don’t want to ruin what’s left of our lives before Looking Glass. Or were we even safe before Looking Glass? Not really. There was Joe. There was Carson. Before them, Michael. Maybe we were never safe. Maybe the safety was always an illusion.
Griff’s shadow stands in the doorway.
“There’s a good field of vision from this angle,” I say. I’m in the corner of Lily’s room, and from here you can easily see my sister’s bed, desk, and closet. If I were installing a camera, this is where I’d put it—maximum coverage for minimal investment. I turn around, run the flashlight along the wall. I don’t trust myself not to miss something. “Do you think we should do another walk-through?”
I feel Griff before I realize he’s moved. The heat of his chest—suddenly so close—makes me shiver.
“Let’s try this,” he says, holding up his cell. The pale light splashes across his cheekbones and the line of his nose. “Advantages to owning a crappy phone,” Griff says and it’s the first real smile I’ve seen from him in . . . ages. Long before I went to Looking Glass.
Griff labors through someone’s number and puts the cell to his ear. Downstairs, I hear Bren’s voice lift in answer. “Just stay on the line with me, okay?”
I guess Bren agrees because Griff begins to slowly pace Lily’s room, gliding the phone past her walls, her furniture, her stuffed animals. He’s testing for electromagnetic fields, trying to see if the connection will buzz or click. After finishing the room, Griff looks at me and shakes his head.
The relief makes my head go fuzzy—or maybe that’s the simmering migraine; either way I’m glad for the shadows. I’m glad no one’s going to see how close I am again to tears. Griff walks across the hall and opens the door to my bedroom again. I should be right behind him and I’m not. Here it is, my first time really home again, and my feet drag against the carpet.
“Wick?”
“Coming.” I stand in the doorway, take a deep breath to get me through. Even in the dark, I can see Bren hasn’t moved a thing. My bed is made. My clothes are hanging. My computer . . . my computer’s gone. Unease prickles the base of my skull. When Lily moved my stuff to keep it safe, did she move my desktop too?
“I checked the air vents,” Griff says. “They’re empty.”
“Thank you.”
He laps the room, slow and deliberate, as I twirl the flashlight up and down the walls. Nothing . . . nothing . . .
Light.
It’s only a pinprick, but that’s all they need.
“Got one,” I say, approaching the wall near my computer desk. I pull the screwdriver from my jeans pocket and dig the head into the drywall, listen for the tap of metal against metal. “Yeah, it’s definitely a camera.”
“Okay, let me see where they came in from.”
“Maybe from the crawl space?”
Griff disappears down the hallway and I wait, trying not to think about how Kent or Hart or Norcut could be watching us right now. There’s a bump on the other side of the wall, scratching like skeleton fingers clawing through, and then silence as Griff searches. It’s tricky installing cameras into already finished spaces. You have to come in from behind, usually by digging or drilling into the drywall. Sometimes you can do it from the outside, but for a second floor like ours, they’d have to use the crawl spaces. The camera’s body and the damage to the drywall would stay hidden, leaving only the tiny lens visible.
Still no sounds from Griff. The silence has seeped from seconds into minutes and I stand, ready to go after him.
“You were right.” I can’t see him in the doorway, but Griff’s suddenly there. “I found two more. I think we’ve got them all.”
“Good.” I sound as calm as he does, but I have to push one hand against the wall to get my feet moving. I shuffle into the hallway. Downstairs, someone’s turned on a light and I can make out the pictures hanging on the wall . . . the staircase ahead of us . . . Griff watching me.
We are inches from each other and the space feels suddenly like velvet.
I could touch him. I could—my fingers are already seeking his skin. They brush bandage instead and we both shudder.
“Why did you apologize?” I have to force myself to face him. “At Joe’s, you apologized. Why?”
The question’s so sudden he should be surprised. I’m acting like a total weirdo, but Griff exhales like he’d been holding his breath. He turns his attention down, not at me, but at the floor.
“Because I owed it to you. Look, Wick . . . I was interested in you way before you ever noticed me. It’s the way you handle yourself—the way you never back down. I’d never seen anything like it. You amazed me and I wanted you because of it and then, when you got tied up with Carson again, I resented you for it. I thought you were self-destructing and really . . . really you were just standing your ground. I should have been in awe of you. I should’ve helped and I didn’t. I was stupid. I confused you with . . . other people in my life.”
Griff’s eyes lift to mine. His tone is so soft, the kind of voice you save for c
onfessions. “Do you understand?”
I shake my head. I want to look away from him and I can’t.
“I hate myself for abandoning you,” Griff says at last. “You didn’t deserve the way I treated you.”
“And you didn’t deserve the way I treated you.” I have to haul the words from me and the force spurs me forward; my hand finds his arm . . . and tightens. “I should’ve told you, Griff. I should’ve trusted you to understand.”
“But that’s the thing, Wicked.” His smile is bitter. “I wouldn’t have understood. I didn’t get it.”
He stares at me the same way he stared at his webcam the day before, like there’s something else he wants to say, but I don’t have the courage to hear it. I start for the stairs and Griff follows.
“How much do they have on you?” he whispers.
They. Norcut and Hart. Just thinking the names makes the floor of my stomach wobble. “I killed Alan Bay,” I say at last. “Norcut told me it was an assessment test, that I was hijacking some remote computer, but I was actually turning his pacemaker on and off. If she turns over the log reports to the police, it’ll look like I did it on purpose.”
“Shit. What do you have on them?”
“Not enough.” I pause, push my knees straight before saying, “But Norcut offered me a deal. That money my dad had? He stole it from Looking Glass. He was working for them and made off with eleven million dollars. Then Lily took the money from Michael and someone else took it from her. Now I have to get it back or Norcut will retaliate and—”
“Eleven. Million. Dollars. How did Lily . . . ?”
“She took the money from some account Michael had and transferred it into my offshore account. That’s why Michael’s after me; he thinks I have his money and I don’t.”
“And you still won’t if you find it and give it to Norcut.”
“Pretty much.”
“Right. Bottom line, you’re screwed either way.”
“Yeah.” I look at Griff and try not to laugh because it really is kind of funny. I’m not being a bitch here. It’s kind of hilarious. Or I’m exhausted.
Trust Me Page 16
