Conspiracy Girl (3 page)

A thought worms a path through the deeper levels of my consciousness, trying to break the surface. It’s a thought I’ve been trying to suppress. What if it was the same men, who broke
into our house in LA two years ago and killed my mum and stepsister, who broke into my house tonight?

It isn’t possible
, I tell myself, firmly. Why would they wait two years? Besides, the last report from the firm I pay to keep tabs on the two of them showed Miles was living in a
Veterans Association home in Arkansas and McCrory was working on the rigs up in Alaska.

I head to my wardrobe, wondering if I should ask Agent Corbell what she thinks, but the question gets stuck in my throat. It must have something to do with Miles and McCrory. Why else would the
FBI be here?

Now that the shock is wearing off I’ve started shivering and my limbs are stiffening up. I grab a pair of black jeans, a camisole top and a thick hooded sweater. I need to keep busy, keep
moving, keep my mind from wandering too far into dark places, dredging up memories I’ve worked hard to bury.

Taylor’s screams still echo in my head like nails scraping down a blackboard, making me grit my teeth. The flashbacks are starting up too. I thought I’d got past that, that I’d
found a way to control the panic attacks, but now it feels as if I’m right back at square one.

Agent Corbell turns around while I pull on my clothes and pretends to interest herself in my book collection. It’s only then I remember my iPad. There are a dozen security cameras
installed at different points in the building. My iPad connects remotely, via encrypted wireless, to a security company’s server which uploads all the video and the keycard entries for the
day.

‘The cameras,’ I say. ‘My iPad. Everything should be on that. Call the security company. There should be footage from the cameras!’

Agent Corbell is already at the bedroom door. ‘Where’s the iPad?’ she asks.

‘I’ll get it.’ I try to push past her, but she bars the doorway.

‘Sorry,’ she says, giving me a weak smile. ‘We’re trying not to contaminate the crime scene. Tell me where it is and I’ll go get it.’

Glancing over her shoulder I see that my apartment is now a hive of activity, with crime scene officers combing every inch of space. One is on his knees behind the sofa, searching for evidence
that may have fallen between the floorboards. Two more are taking fingerprints from the door and windows. A man in white coveralls is snapping photographs of the oil-spill of blood by the door.
Hugo.
I swallow hard as I notice the baseball bat has rolled across the floor, painting a crimson streak across the floorboards.

‘Where is it?’

I turn back to Agent Corbell. ‘Um, it’s over there,’ I say, pointing. ‘In my bag. On the sofa.’

She walks past the guy on his hands and knees and past a woman fingerprinting the door and alarm pad. I stare at the green blinking light. How did they get in? The alarm was on. I take a step
towards the keypad but a guy in a mask and white coveralls holds up his hand and warns me back.

I can’t even walk in my own home. But it’s not my home any more, is it? All those efforts I made to feel safe, to create a place that was all mine, where nothing bad could happen,
were for nothing. Nowhere is safe.

My lungs feel like they’ve caught fire. I can’t catch a breath and my mind is whirring a thousand miles an hour. I can’t stop thinking about Hugo, worrying if he’s OK.
Someone needs to call the security company and find out what happened. The panic alarm too. Why didn’t they respond to it? The armed response team was supposed to be here within three
minutes. They never arrived.

Agent Corbell walks back over just then. ‘I couldn’t find it,’ she tells me.

‘How did they get in?’ I say. ‘The alarms were all set. I know they were.’ After the LA incident I was diagnosed with OCD. I’m obsessive about setting the alarms
and locking the doors. ‘How did they get in?’ I repeat, anger masking the more plaintive note of despair in my voice. I want her to give me an answer.

But Agent Corbell just shakes her head at me in confusion. ‘We’ll look into it.’

I look around, taking in the cracked television screen and the open door of the refrigerator, which is still being swabbed for prints. ‘What did they want?’ I ask.

‘You tell me,’ Agent Corbell answers.

I frown at her. Isn’t it her job to find out?

‘Do you have a safe here?’ she asks. ‘Does it look like they might have taken anything?’

I shake my head, scanning my living room and kitchen. ‘Just my bag,’ I say. ‘It had my wallet and iPad in it.’

‘Well,’ says Agent Corbell, ‘something doesn’t add up. I don’t think we’re looking at an ordinary break-and-enter.’

Just then Agent Ziv appears behind her. ‘We good to go?’ he asks Agent Corbell.

She looks at me. ‘Nic, do you want some help packing a bag?’

‘What? Why?’ I ask, looking between them both.

‘We’re taking you to a safe house,’ she answers.

A safe house. The words conjure up images of dilapidated cabins in the middle of dark woods. Or a house in the suburbs surrounded by other identikit houses. So when we arrive
at an old tenement building close to the Bowery, I’m surprised.

Agent Ziv ushers me out the car with his hand on my elbow and I flinch at his touch. The urgency and silence with which he and Agent Corbell scan the darkened street and rush me inside sends a
shiver of fear up my spine, and I’m glad that I have Goz with me. He’s picking up on the tension too, straining at his leash and bounding up the stairs ahead of me, a rumbling growl
emanating from his throat.

Corbell stops in front of a door on the third floor and knocks twice. A tall man wearing a suit opens the door a crack then, seeing us, he lets it swing open.

My eyes fall instantly to the gun in his hand. He gives me a curt smile and once again I feel Agent Ziv’s hand on my back, pushing me into the apartment. I step quickly inside with Goz,
immediately scanning for exit points and hiding places.

Agent Corbell starts doing a sweep of the rooms while Agent Ziv talks to the man with the gun. I’m guessing he’s another agent because he has an FBI badge attached to his belt.
‘This is Agent Wise,’ Agent Ziv says.

Agent Wise holds out his hand. ‘Good to meet you.’

I shake his hand but I can’t say
likewise
. Thankful as I am to have people looking out for me, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be living this again.

‘Agent Wise will be back in the morning to take over from us,’ Agent Ziv says as Wise grabs his coat and heads to the door.

‘OK,’ Agent Corbell says, holstering her gun and glancing around. ‘We’re here for the night. May as well get comfortable.’

It’s a small apartment. The living room is sparsely furnished with a tatty sofa, a stained carpet and an old TV. A Playstation sits on the floor alongside two empty containers of Chinese
takeout that Goz immediately sticks his nose into. A window looks out over a small yard ringed by other apartment buildings. There’s a fire escape beneath. I note that the windows have only
basic Chubb locks on them – how safe is this safe house?

Agent Corbell and Agent Ziv have taken off their jackets and their shoulder-holsters are visible, but I don’t feel comforted. I feel terrified – the kind of terror that grips you
with vice-like claws and refuses to let go. It’s going to take more than two armed guards to ever make me feel safe again and that realisation almost makes me sink to the floor. I suppress a
sudden sob.

Agent Ziv yanks the curtains shut and Corbell drops my bag to the floor by the door. ‘I know you’re tired,’ she says, ‘but if we could take your statement now while
everything is still fresh in your memory, that would be great.’ She gestures towards the sofa and I drop slowly down on to it, though my instinct is to stay standing, keep moving. My foot
starts tapping immediately and I have to push my hands on to my thigh to stop it.

‘How about we start with the basics?’ I hear the sympathy in her voice and sense she’s trying to make this as easy as possible. It’s just that every single question takes
me back to LA, to the countless police interviews I had to sit through then. I’m not sure I can do all this again.

‘So, how long have you owned the apartment?’ she asks.

I take a deep breath. I don’t have a choice but to do it all again. ’Eight months.’ I clear my throat. ‘I moved here in June.’

‘To go to college?’

I nod. ‘I’m a freshman at NYU.’

‘Before that you were living with your stepfather, Aiden Cooper, in LA, is that right?’

I nod. It took a lot of extra tutoring to get me through my SATs because I’d fallen so far behind with my schoolwork, but once I’d set my mind on moving to New York and getting away
from LA I was happy to put in the extra time. It gave me something to focus on besides the outcome of the trial.

‘So: yesterday. Walk us through your day,’ Agent Corbell says, leaning forwards and resting her elbows on her knees.

‘I had lectures from eight to twelve,’ I tell her.

‘What are you studying?’

‘I’m majoring in Psychology.’

She nods and I sigh to myself. I know, it’s kind of obvious as majors go. The girl whose mother and stepsister were murdered in a home invasion by two drug addicts with mental health
issues is now studying human behaviour. Go figure.

‘OK, so after lectures what did you do?’ she asks.

I try to think back but already yesterday seems like a lifetime ago. ‘I went for lunch.’

‘On your own? With somebody?’ Corbell asks.

‘On my own.’

Always on my own. I don’t make friends easily. It’s hard to let people get close. Davis, the boy I was dating at the time of the LA break-in, sold his story to
People
magazine for a six-figure sum. I have trust issues. Go figure again.

Even if he hadn’t done that, there comes the point with every potential friend or love interest where they ask me about my family – or worse, Google me – and find out who I am
before I have a chance to tell them. It’s like trying to start a friendship with someone while you’re both crossing a minefield.

There’s only one person I’ve made friends with since moving to New York, a girl called Liva who I met on campus in my second week. She was involved in a big trial last year that the
media went wild over – something to do with human trafficking – so she gets what it’s like to be thrust into the public eye. But we haven’t really hung out together outside
of college.

As I tell Dr Phipps in our weekly sessions: it’s more than it’s worth, dealing with the sympathy. People stare at me all Oprah-dewy-eyed, but I know that secretly all they care about
is hearing the gruesome details first-hand so they can go and tell their friends that they met the sole survivor of the Cooper murders.

Our story made headlines. Everyone knows about the Cooper murders. My stepdad Aiden was famous for owning the biggest jewellery store in the world. Then there was the fact that Taylor, my
stepsister, was a regular in the gossip columns of
Star
and
People
, forever being papped at premieres and in the front row of fashion shows. She loved being in the public eye. I
often wonder how she’d feel about it now.

They made a trashy daytime TV movie about the murders called
Conspiracy Girl
, in which some Z-list actress with fake boobs played Taylor and a girl who used to star on
The Mickey
Mouse Club
played me. Except she couldn’t do a British accent so she sounded like Britney Spears doing an impression of Queen Victoria. The whole premise was that there was some kind of
conspiracy behind the break-in and murders and that the two men who stood trial were merely scapegoats. Like all conspiracy theories, it was based on crackpot ideas with no basis in reality. But
the defence team created a case around a similar theory, the jury lapped it up, and the media went wild for it.

‘You dating anyone?’ Agent Ziv asks.

I shake my head. There’s this one guy, Marcus, who I met in line at Starbucks a few weeks back. We’ve been for coffee a few times and he’s invited me to the movies, but I
wouldn’t exactly say we were dating. He’s nice I guess, and polite, and the first person in ages who hasn’t looked at me pityingly. He doesn’t ask questions about my past
either, though unless he’s been living on Mars for the last five years he must know who I am, and I don’t sense he’s the type of guy who’d sell his story to the papers. But
who knows? I would never have guessed Davis would either. Davis said he loved me, we dated for a year, even lost our virginity to each other, but that didn’t stop him from cashing the cheque
and telling the world every intimate detail of our relationship.

Marcus hasn’t tried to kiss me yet either. We haven’t even held hands. He seems to realise I like my own space, or it could be he’s scared of Goz. Either way I’m
grateful. When I told Dr Phipps he suggested that’s probably why I chose to go out with him and why I insist on bringing Goz on dates. No chemistry means I don’t have to worry about
getting close. Psychologists suck sometimes.

Agent Corbell interrupts my thoughts. ‘And then you went to the gym?’ She’s reading from the statement I gave the cops earlier.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I go every day. Or try to. I was there from two until about five.’

Corbell’s eyebrows raise but I ignore the look. I have an intense exercise schedule. It’s one of the ways I hold on to my sanity. I used to do ballet but after the break-in I
stopped. Now I just hit the gym. If I don’t, things tend to spiral out of control.

Agent Corbell glances down at the notebook in her hand. ‘And you said in your earlier statement that your stepfather, Aiden Cooper, paid a visit yesterday out of the blue?’

I nod.

Corbell cocks her head to one side. ‘I thought he lived in LA?’

‘He does,’ I answer. ‘He had a meeting in New York. He stopped by on the off chance.’ It’s only then that another realisation hits me with hurricane force.
‘Oh my God,’ I say, rising from my seat. ‘You need to find him! You need to call him. Do you think . . .’ I break off, not sure exactly what I’m asking. I was so
wrapped up in Hugo and worrying about him that I didn’t stop to think of Aiden. But what if his visit and the break-in aren’t coincidental?