Spies and Prejudice (20 page)

Mary Chris shakes her head. “It’s not the kind of thing he talks about over dinner.”

Jason fingers a series of DVDs next to the flat screen. “Try
Close Encounters
.”

Drew looks up from the computer. “Nope.”

“Jaws? E.T.? Schindler’s List?”

“Stop with the Spielberg references.” Drew looks at Mary Chris. “I need something concrete.”

“Every DVD in this place is a Spielberg movie. Keep trying.”

Drew taps something into the keyboard. “Nothing.”

“The Sugarland Express,”
Mare says quietly.

“What?” Drew looks at her expectantly.

“Spielberg’s first movie.”

“We’re in!” Drew’s face lights up as the monitor glows white and Mr. Moss’s desktop flashes on one of the monitors.

Drew clicks on the document library and begins scanning through the files. “These are all encrypted.”

Mary Chris steps forward. “Let me see.” She leans over the desk and starts clacking away on the keyboard. Watching Mare hack into her father’s computer system is too much. She thinks she’s helping me, and she is, but I hate that she’s helping Drew too. “What are we looking for exactly?”

“Something to do with an energy drink called Juiced.” Drew watches the screen flash as Mare types in codes.

“This one!” Mare clicks on a file and a title flashes up on the screen. “Juiced Project—Closed Files.”

Footsteps tap on the tile outside the door. “Shh!” I say. “Do you guys hear that?”

Everyone freezes. Drew reaches into his pocket and pulls out a thumb drive, casually inserting it into the computer and pushing a button. The files download with a whirr just as a key turns in the lock on the door.

Mare throws herself in Drew’s lap.

Jason lies down on the couch and pretends to read the back of a DVD. I just stand there frozen, waiting for the train to come.

The door opens and a tall man with dark brown hair bursts through. At least I think his hair is brown, at the moment all I see is the gun in his hand.

Mary Chris laughs from Drew’s lap. “Hi, Dave!”

The man, Dave, glances over at Mare, but the gun is still pointed squarely at my chest. “Mary Chris? What is this?”

“You know, it’s not polite to hold a gun on my friend.” Mary Chris looks completely calm.

Dave looks at the gun in his hand and sets it back in the holster on his waist. Now that the gun isn’t aimed at my chest, I can finally look at his face. Dave is older than my father, but not much. He still has all his hair and a square face that probably looks good on camera but is kind of boxy in real life. I can’t stop staring at his eyes.

Eyes as blue as the sky.

H
e stares at Drew and Mary Chris draped across the chair. The monitor is black. When did Drew turn it off?

“What are you kids doing up here?” Dave walks toward the desk, where the papers are still stacked into neat little piles.

“What does it look like? We’re having a party.”

Dave crosses his arms. “You know you’re not allowed in here.”

“I won’t tell if you won’t.” Mare raises her eyebrows. “I’m sure Daddy won’t be happy to hear that a couple of high school kids snuck in right under the nose of his chief of security.”

Chief of security. Blue Eyes is the chief of Moss’s security? I step toward him. Part of me wants to throw myself on him and punch him until he’s unconscious. Only the gun at his waist keeps me rooted to the floor.

“You have to leave.” He addresses Mary Chris, but his eyes dart over to me, like he senses my barely contained threat.

Mare throws her head back and spins the chair around. “Party pooper.” She’s really convincing.

“If you leave now, I’ll keep this between us.” Blue Eyes waits as Mary Chris stands up and takes Drew’s hand.

“Come on, guys.”

Jason stands and comes beside me. “You okay?” he whispers.

“I think so.” My left leg shakes with adrenaline. All I see is my mom’s killer.

The four of us walk out of the office and wait while Blue Eyes locks the door. He follows us all the way out to the parking lot.

The gun is behind me. Did he use a gun to kill my mom before he pushed her car off the bridge? Was the gun that had been pointed at my chest the same gun? All at once I can see my mom clearly, not the one in the pictures, but her, her face frozen in fear as he holds the gun to her forehead.

I reach for the pepper spray in my messenger bag. “Hey, Dave,” I say, taking a step toward him.

Jason catches my arm, holding it down before I can pull out the pepper spray. “Don’t.”

“Let go of my arm.”

“I can’t. I’m still your bodyguard.”

Dave takes one last look over his shoulder and then jogs back to the office building with his hand on his holster. His jog is graceful for someone so big. I’m reminded of Tanner even though I’ve managed to avoid thinking of him since I left Orange County. My heart aches a little as I watch my mother’s murderer disappear into the darkness, though whether it’s for her or Tanner, I can’t tell. Maybe both.

It’s what happens when you love people.

They leave.

“Wow!” Mary Chris says. “That was close.”

“You were amazing!” Jason gives Mare a hug. “You should consider trying out for
Hamlet
. Our Ophelia has really bad hair.”

I turn to Drew. “Did you get anything?” I don’t look away, daring him to deny it.

He pulls the thumb drive from his pocket and waves it at us with a grin. “Only one way to find out. Let’s load up the laptop.”

“Not here.” Mare looks back to where Dave disappeared.

We pile into cars and head to my house, where at least we’ll have some privacy.

Jason waits until we’re halfway home before he asks me again if I’m okay.

I almost blow the question off, but I can’t bring myself to do it. “I don’t know. Dave fits the description perfectly of the guy who hired Heather Marrone to say my mom drove off the bridge. He still works for Moss. He’s still going about his business like nothing happened.”

Jason nods, but still doesn’t say anything.

“Do you think Mare’s dad knows?”

“No way.”

“But if Dave wanted to release the drink, he could’ve just taken the formula himself. Why is he protecting it?”

“I don’t know.”

I can’t stop picturing my mom with the gun at her forehead, imagining how scared she must have been.

“How did you know I was going to Mace him?”

Jason grins. “I’ve seen that move before. Just before you sprayed
Collin Waterson at Kennedy Patton’s ‘While the Parents Are Away’ party in eighth grade.”

“Why can’t anyone let that die?”

“ ’Cause it was epic. Besides, beating him up at Homecoming is not exactly the kind of thing that will make people forget.”

“You heard about that?”

“Collin might have told me.”

“What? When?”

Jason blushes. “Sometime between the walk on the golf course and the make-out session.”

“You and Collin?”

“What? He’s sweet. He’s just a little confused right now.”

“No kidding.”

“You have to promise to keep this super tip-top secret, okay? I don’t think Collin is ready for the world to know.”

“Tip-top secret. Got it.”

“I mean it.”

“I can keep secrets.”

“No offense, Strawberry, but you’re kind of known for exposing secrets.”

Okay, so I have a reputation for beating guys up and revealing skeletons they’d rather keep buried. No wonder Tanner was the first guy to even try to kiss me. It’s the way I thought I wanted things, but kissing turns out to be kind of amazing. At least kissing Tanner does.

I try to remember his face, just to see if I can. He’s still there, but even now the sharp edges of his face are blurring.

As we pull into my driveway, I recalibrate. I have to focus on
getting the thumb drive from Drew before he can copy it. I know how he’ll play it. He’ll get it uploaded on his laptop and let Mary Chris encrypt the files. Then he’ll make a big show of giving me the thumb drive, but he’ll already have saved everything to his computer.

Inside, I hand Drew Jason’s laptop before he can get his own out of his computer bag.

“Thanks,” he says, not appearing thrown at all.

I watch Drew watch Mare hacking through the files. I know the moment Mare gets the file open because Drew’s lip curves into a sly smile. I’m seeing him for the first time, not his cover, but the guy who’s here for one reason and one reason only. I know exactly how he feels right now, enjoying the little rush that comes the moment that you’re going to get what you came for. He reaches for the keyboard but stops when Mare calls my name, as if he’s just remembering that this is still my show.

I sit down at the keyboard and skim through the files. There’s a lot of preliminary sales figures, marketing materials, and a national ad campaign, and some e-mails about the same. After a half hour, my eyes are blurring, but I stop on a document marked “confidential.” I read through it and then read through it again. It’s some kind of list, but I don’t understand half the words on the page. “What is this?”

Mary Chris comes up behind me and reads the document. “It’s a glucose-based formula. It looks like the base for the energy drink.”

Drew looks over my shoulder. “Where’s the rest?”

Mary Chris stares at him. “The rest of what?”

Drew lowers his voice. “If this is the base, what about the flavor and
energy components?” Translation: where’s the good stuff? Where’s the part that makes people addicted?

Mare scans the page and flips through the rest of the documents in the electronic file. “There’s a note here. Part two is its own file. Hang on.” Mare freezes on a document and reads. “There’s an identification code with a server address. Once we identify the server, we can trace the computer where the rest of the document is stored remotely. If these files are any indication we’ll still have to get to the hard drive. The formula’s kept on two separate machines for extra security.”

Drew nods his head. “So we have to go back.”

“We can’t. Dave Preston will have the entire building on lockdown after our little party stunt.” Mare goes back through the files I just skimmed. “There’s nothing about your mother here.”

I try not to be too disappointed. I don’t know what I expected to find. Certainly not a memo detailing the plan to murder her and make it look like suicide. Still, it bothers me that only Drew gets what he wants. Not that I’m going to let that happen.

I take the thumb drive out of Jason’s laptop and close my hand around it. Simple.

Drew stares at my hand, watching me cross the room to where Lulu lays stretched out on the floor snoring. “I need that back,” he says, his voice so casual that I would never suspect how much he wants the files if I didn’t already know better. “My English paper is on there.”

“Oh.” I look at the little black drive. “I can’t ask you to take this. It might be dangerous. I’ll e-mail your paper in the morning.”

“Great,” he smiles, and for a second, I think this was too easy. “Does this laptop have Scrivener?”

Jason shakes his head. “No.”

Drew walks over to me and holds out his hand.

“We can download it,” I counter, closing my hand back around the drive.

“No point risking viruses.” Drew’s eyes narrow as he waits.

Lulu lifts her head, suddenly awake. She blinks sleepy eyes up at Drew.

“Traced it!”

We both turn to look at Mary Chris.

“The other half of this file is on a computer in the north end of the warehouse.” Mare’s smiling, but I want to strangle her for telling Drew exactly where to find the rest of the formula.

Drew grins at me. “Genius.”

My first instinct is to run. Lulu sits up, forming a canine wall between us.

Drew backs up a step. “Um, Berry, you might want to call off your dog.”

I don’t want to call off my dog. I think I want to sic my dog on him, even though as near as I can tell she’s just panting and drooling. I’m not knocking it. Death by Saint Bernard drool would be a nasty way to go.

“What’s going on?” Jason walks over to us, in full character as bodyguard, with his shoulders back and his neck stretched tall.

“Berry was just going to give me my English paper so I can finish my homework tomorrow.” Drew’s voice is strained.

Lulu growls and flashes her teeth. Whoa. She actually looks kind of Cujo-y.

“Not according to Lu,” I say, trying to make a joke of it and failing miserably.

Drew backs up another few steps until Lu finally goes back to panting. I stay firmly behind her. He picks up his computer bag, and for a second I think he’s given up. That he’s going to leave.

He doesn’t move toward the front door. Instead, he reaches in his bag and turns to face me.

For the second time tonight, I stare down the barrel of a gun.

L
ulu lays down at my feet, content now that Drew has retreated to the other end of the room. She’s oblivious to the fact that the danger has increased exponentially.

“You brought a gun into my house?” I say it before I can stop to think that chastising the man with the gun might not be the best plan.

Drew looks nervous. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just need the drive.”

“Why?” I tighten my grip on the hard drive.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I said I was trying to stop Moss from unleashing Juiced on the public, would you?”

“Put down the gun and I might be willing to listen.”

“Can’t. Give me the drive.” His hands shake and the gun drops lower.

“You won’t shoot me.”

“Strawberry.” Jason steps toward me. “Give him the drive.”

Drew almost smiles. “I won’t shoot you.” He lowers the gun further. “I can’t say the same about Cujo here.”

My lip starts to tremble. “No.”

Mary Chris closes the laptop. “Please. Give it to him.”

I step around Lulu, putting myself between her and Drew’s gun. I keep walking to Drew, closer and closer, until the gun is nearly touching my shirt. I hold out my palm, offering up the little black thumb drive.

Drew closes his fingers around it, his fingers brushing against my palm with such familiarity that I feel like a complete idiot. I trusted a stranger with my secrets. With Mare’s. Drew opens his mouth to say something, but I hold up my hand to stop him. I glance at the gun between us, the cold weapon that says more than anything that could ever cross his lips.