Conspiracy Girl (2 page)

All of a sudden my attention flies back to the door. Goz has stopped barking and is edging silently backwards away from it.

We watch the door handle twist slowly one way and then the other. Goz hunkers down and lets out a low growl. The door handle stops moving. I keep staring, holding my breath, half expecting the
door to burst open.

But then, from the living room, comes a scraping sound as the bolts on the front door are drawn back. My head flies up. Are they leaving? I strain to listen.

An explosion – what sounds like a gunshot – makes me jolt backwards. A second later I hear the front door smash against the concrete wall of the landing and footsteps careering down
the stairs and then, as I huddle unmoving, unsure what is happening, desperately hoping it’s the armed response unit, I hear something else. The faint sound of someone begging for help.

It’s a voice I recognise. I crawl on hands and knees towards the bedroom door, my gut squeezing tight.

Don’t come out.
I hear my mum’s voice in my head, pleading with me.
Don’t come out!

But I ignore the voice and draw the bolt with a shaking hand, praying the whole time that I’m mistaken. As soon as I throw open the door Goz flies past me, snarling. He leaps towards a
body lying on the floor and I scream, calling him off, even as I throw myself towards the person on the ground.

Hugo – the guy who lives in the apartment below me – is lying sprawled on the landing outside my front door wearing only a pair of sweatpants and a dressing gown. Blood seeps around
his head like a crimson halo.

‘Oh God, oh God.’ I lean over him. There’s a baseball bat by his body and blood is gushing in spurts from a gash in his neck. He must have been coming up to investigate the
noise. My hands hover over him uselessly. I don’t know what to do. I press my palms to the wound, trying to stem the bleeding.

Blood pulses hot and slick over my fingers. ‘Hugo!’ I sob, but he’s unresponsive. ‘Help!’ I scream at the top of my lungs.
Somebody, please help me.
And
then Lara, my other tenant, appears in her doorway. She’s wearing pyjamas, her hair hanging loose over her shoulders, and she stares down at us – her face pale and her eyes round and
unfocused with shock.

‘Lara, call an ambulance!’ I scream at her. She comes to, spins around and flies back into her apartment.

I stay kneeling, with my hands pressed against Hugo’s neck, trying to hold back the flow of blood. It’s slowing. It’s no longer gushing, but rather oozing gently between my
fingers.

‘Come on, please, don’t die, don’t die,’ I whisper, over and over. And in my head I’m thinking,
Not again. Please not again
.

I’m moving from one attack vector to another, trying to find a way in. According to the client the target’s impenetrable, but I have a one hundred percent success
rate so I’m not sweating it. There’s always a back door left open, a chink somewhere that’s waiting to be exploited. You just have to know where to look. And after a few minutes I
find a hole.

I throw a hook through and execute a few commands. It takes a handful of seconds but then the monitor in front of me springs to life, code scrolling in ribbons across the bottom.

Result. I hit enter, sit back and watch as the new program I wrote installs itself. It only took me eight minutes to hack a FTSE 100 company’s internal server. Impenetrable I
don’t
think. I just installed undetectable spyware without them even knowing it.

If I was working for one of their competitors they’d have reason to be worried. Luckily they employed me to test their firewalls and security. I have a report to write up but I shelve it
and stand up, stretching out. I’ve been sitting here for ten hours straight but I’ve earned well into five figures in the meantime, so I’m not going to complain about having a
sore ass.

I walk across the loft and press my thumb to the panel in the wall of the cube – a square room I built myself in the centre of the loft. The walls are reinforced concrete. It has its own
electricity and air supply. Inside, my servers hum like a living thing. I pat the server stack hello. The fans are going full but I quickly close the door to make sure the temperature stays stable
and sit down at the bank of computers. This is where the real work happens.

First off I check on the growing list of people I’m tracking, making sure they’re all behaving themselves, and then I do a few basic admin tests on the firewall of a major non-profit
that works on environmental and human rights issues. It’s been receiving hit after take-down hit from Chinese hackers so I’ve been helping shore it up. Pro bono of course. Most the work
that takes place in this room is unpaid.

Once I’m done with that I check the forums where all the hackers gather – mainly in Eastern Europe these days – and see what’s going on in the world of internet crime.
Within a few seconds of entering the chat room under my pseudonym, Grey Hat, I can pick out which of the people in there are feds and which are the legit criminals. The feds are pretending to be
hackers but they may as well change their user names to FBI1 and FBI2, they’re that obvious. Though I guess no one else is picking up on it because the chatter about credit-card scams and
insider tips on how to get hold of the latest unissued computer games goes on uncensored. I exchange a few words with Ivarstheblack – a Latvian hacker I’ve worked with a few times
– then I log out. It doesn’t matter how many times the feds close in, internet crime grows and grows like fungus in a damp room. They’ll close this site down and within a day it
will be up and running somewhere else.

Locking up the cube, I head to the kitchen. It’s after ten and I’m starving. The countertop is stacked with every appliance known to man, from pasta makers to an ice crusher that
looks like a medieval torture implement, but the only one I ever use is the coffee machine. I don’t want an espresso, though – tonight I’m celebrating my win against the machine,
so I open a cupboard and pour myself a shot of tequila. It burns the back of my throat and I move to the refrigerator, figuring I should probably line my stomach before I knock back any more
celebratory shots.

The refrigerator, which is almost as big as the cube, contains about fifty bottles of Snapple green tea, a box of gourmet Belgian chocolate and a tub of Skippy peanut butter.

I shut the door. Man, I need to do some grocery shopping. Barefoot, I slope over to my bed – still unmade from this morning – and grab a T-shirt and my keys.

Goddamn, it’s cold outside. I shove my hands into the pockets of my jacket and start jogging down the block, wishing I’d stopped to put socks on. The Striphouse is
still busy when I push inside. Its windows are all fogged up, people are pressing against the bar and there’s a line of folk waiting to be seated. The
maître d’
clocks me
the second I walk in and saunters over, flicking her hair over her shoulder. Ignoring the three waiting couples in front of me, she flashes me a blinding, bleached-white smile.

‘Finn,’ she purrs. ‘Table for one?’

‘The bar’s fine,’ I say, stamping my feet to get some feeling back into them.

‘Can I take your coat?’ she asks as we walk towards the bar.

‘No, it’s OK.’ I shoot an apologetic shrug to the people still waiting in line.

Despite how crowded it is, a stool magically appears at the quieter end of the bar.

‘Thanks, Cassie,’ I say, hopping up on to it.

‘No problem.’ She flashes me another smile. Lowering her voice she leans in, giving me a clear view of her cleavage. ‘You know, I’m still waiting for you to call,’
she murmurs into my ear.

I take a deep breath, getting a waft of perfume that makes my eyes water. ‘Yeah, sorry, been busy.’

‘Excuses, excuses,’ she says, pouting.

I shrug, because what am I going to say? It
is
an excuse. I’ve not been
that
busy.

Her hand slips to my thigh and I glance down at it. Wow. New York girls definitely have no problem going after what they want. Problem is, though Cassie is undoubtedly hot, I know better than to
have a one-night stand with the
maître d’
of my favourite steak house. No matter how good it would be, guaranteed it wouldn’t be better than the rare ribeye they serve
here.

Thankfully, before Cassie can crush me against the bar and force me into naming a time and place, she gets called away. She makes sure she brushes her hand over my thigh one last time before she
leaves and I draw in a breath, reminding myself that the ribeye tastes really, really good.

I’m sitting on the sofa but I don’t remember getting here. I’m clutching Goz around the neck with both hands and staring blankly at my smashed television
screen.

‘Nichola Preston?’

I start and look up. A man is standing in front of me. He’s wearing a blue jacket and latex gloves. The white paper covers over his shoes are splattered with blood. He crouches down on his
haunches before me, shooting a wary look at Goz before returning his attention to me. ‘Nichola?’ he asks.

‘It’s Nic,’ I murmur.

‘My name’s Agent Ziv,’ he says softly. He’s about forty, with a worn face and kind but tired eyes. ‘This is my partner, Agent Corbell.’

I glance over his shoulder. She’s young – maybe mid to late twenties, with curly brown hair pulled back into a ponytail and dark brown eyes. She gives me a sympathetic smile.

‘We’re FBI,’ Agent Ziv says. ‘We were hoping we could talk with you about what happened here tonight.’

‘Is Hugo going to be OK?’ I ask. No one has told me anything. The ambulance crew arrived, pushed me out of the way and started working on him, yelling things to each other and into
their radios, hefting him on to a gurney as the cops tried to calm Lara and get me to tell them what had happened.

Once I gave them my name and they checked it against their records, they went strangely quiet and now I know why. They were calling the feds. I guess that’s what happens when history
repeats itself.

‘He’s on his way to the ER. We’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything,’ Agent Ziv tells me.

‘Thanks,’ I manage to say. My throat is hoarse and I can’t think why, then I remember that I was screaming.

‘Just to get this straight,’ Agent Ziv says to me, ‘Hugo is your downstairs tenant – is that correct?’

I nod.

‘And Lara has the apartment on the ground floor?’

I nod again.

‘And you own the building?’ Agent Corbell asks, taking in my apartment with a slightly awed-looking expression on her face.

‘Yes,’ I whisper. I know, it’s a big building for an eighteen-year-old to own, but I bought it with the life insurance I received after my mother was murdered. If I could have
my mum back I would gladly live in a cardboard box for the rest of my life.

Oh God. Suddenly I clutch my stomach and fold forwards, spots whirling like a blizzard in front of my eyes. What have I done? Why did I think I could be safe here in New York? That it
wouldn’t happen again? The ground starts to shake, and then I realise it’s not the ground that’s shaking. It’s me. And I can’t stop.

‘Hey.’

I look up. It’s the woman – Agent Corbell. She’s stepped forwards. She drops down to her knees in front of me and smiles. ‘Why don’t we go into the bedroom and get
you cleaned up, then we can find somewhere else to talk.’

For a brief second I want to argue with her, but then I look down and see I’m drenched in blood. When I stand up I note, with a strange feeling of detachment, that I’ve got blood all
over the cushions and the rug. Agent Corbell puts her hand under my elbow and steers me towards the bedroom. She closes the door gently behind us but then we hear a scratching sound, followed by a
bark, and she has to let Goz in too.

‘Come on,’ Agent Corbell says, leading me through to the bathroom. The water comes up to the very edge of the tub and has already turned ice cold. The cops who first arrived on the
scene must have turned it off. Or did I? I don’t remember. Agent Corbell reaches over and pulls the plug and then fetches me a clean towel.

‘Do you want me to help?’ Agent Corbell says.

‘I want a shower,’ I manage to say.

She moves quickly to the shower and turns it on for me. ‘I’m going to step outside. I’ll be in the bedroom if you need me.’

I nod and she leaves, giving me another sympathetic smile as she closes the door.

I turn to face the mirror and flinch in fright. I look like I’m wearing a Halloween mask. My hands, when I hold them up in front of my face, are bright red gloves. My eyes pop out starkly
– huge and still round with fright.

At the sight of my reflection I start shaking all over again, and then, in a desperate burst of movement, I rip off my clothes and step into the shower. I grab the soap and a flannel and start
scrubbing my skin, scouring every inch of my body until all the blood is gone, and then I wash my hair, my fingers digging into my scalp as though trying to rip it free from my skull. Finally, I
crouch in the shower and let the water flood over me.

Eventually the hot water runs cold, so I climb out and wrap a towel around myself before heading on shaky feet into the bedroom.

Agent Corbell is sitting on the edge of my bed. Goz has his head tucked on her lap and she is stroking him absent-mindedly while looking at the photograph of my mother on the night stand. She
smiles when she sees me and gets to her feet. ‘Is that your mom?’ she asks, nodding at the photograph.

‘Yeah,’ I say.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says quietly, then, after a pause. ‘I followed the case.’

That’s no surprise. The whole world followed the Cooper case. When a woman and a teenager get murdered in their Beverly Hills home, the media tends to pay attention. I nod, avoiding her
eye, and turn towards the wardrobe.

‘Is the case still open?’ she asks.

I draw in a breath, pain spearing me between the ribs. I shake my head once. They caught the guys who did it – Robert Miles and Casey McCrory. They both stood trial for double homicide and
attempted robbery, and they were both found not guilty. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t do it. Even the police are convinced of their guilt, which is why the case remains
unofficially closed even though no one was ever convicted of the murders.