Don't Let Go (12 page)

“What?”

“Nothing.” Daisy looped an arm around his back. “You’re just so darn cute.”

“The bus leaves in ten minutes,” he said. “We can probably spare five for you to admire me—”

“Just get on with it,” she said, swatting him. The sooner they got this done, the better. Even though they only let the signal out for a few minutes, who knew how close Pike’s men were? It was like toting around a tiny bomb.

Teo drew a deep breath, then opened the box. The bug was perched on a bed of plastic wrap. He dug it out and held it gingerly on his palm.

The pose struck Daisy as funny; it looked like he was proposing with the world’s ugliest engagement ring. She grinned and said, “I keep thinking it should beep, or light up, or something.”

“Me too,” Teo agreed. There was nothing to indicate that the bug was even working.

Daisy ticked off the seconds in her mind, holding her breath. She’d reached two hundred by the time Teo said, “That should do it.” He carefully set the bug back on the plastic and wrapped up the box. After lowering it into his pack, he said, “C’mon.”

The two of them sprinted the five blocks to the bus station. Teo already had their tickets, and they climbed on board a westbound bus right before the driver closed the doors.

“That all you got?” he asked, eyeing their packs.

“Yup,” Daisy said cheerily. The man was still regarding them suspiciously, so she continued. “Divorced parents. We’ve got clothes at Dad’s place, too.”

The driver grunted and punched their tickets. Daisy walked all the way to the back of the bus, finding them a seat away from the other passengers. She didn’t think they’d appreciate all the cuddling she and her “brother” were about to engage in.

She settled into the window seat and immediately hunkered down, staring out the window. She couldn’t stop scanning the street for men dressed in black.

“Do you think they’ll come?” she asked in a low voice.

“Maybe,” Teo said. “But we’ll be long gone.”

Daisy nestled against his shoulder and murmured, “Love you.”

Teo kissed her hair. “Love you, too.”

With a groaning of gears, the bus lurched clumsily forward. Daisy watched as the streets swept past. She imagined commandos storming the Albuquerque slum tonight, and their rage at not finding them. At the thought, she smiled and whispered, “Gotcha.”

“Any luck yet?” Noa asked without looking up from her keyboard.

“Nope.” Peter took another slug of Red Bull, wincing when even that small movement sent a twinge of pain up his spine. The wound was healing, but it still hurt constantly.

In spite of that, he had to admit it was a relief knowing the bug was gone.

Pike had actually LoJacked him; the thought still gave Peter the willies. He wondered if his parents had known. Hopefully they drew the line at implanting a tracking device in their kid.

He couldn’t stop picturing Mason sitting somewhere with a transmitter, leering at the dot pinging on-screen. No wonder he’d known that Peter was breaking into his apartment; he’d been tracking him the entire time.

Peter shuddered, then glanced over at Noa. She was leaning forward intently, her hair covering her face as she focused on the monitor in front of her. She had to be at least as tired as he was, but she’d barely taken any breaks. He was worried about her. She seemed to have lost even more weight, and it wasn’t like she had any to spare in the first place.

“Want another MRE?” he offered. “I could heat a few up.”

“God, no,” she groaned. “I swear I preferred the road food.”

“I don’t know. The Salisbury steak is decent.”

“Stop,” she warned. “Or I’ll make you eat one in front of me.”

“I don’t think my doctor would approve of that,” Peter joked. He had no clue how soldiers subsisted on MREs for months on end; already the mere sight of them made him feel like puking.

Still, they could hardly complain. Loki had turned out to be a surprisingly good host, allowing them unfettered access to “mission control,” as he called it. If necessary, you could probably oversee a lunar landing from there. The room housed twelve monitors and six computer towers with an insane amount of processing speed. It was so impressive that Peter managed to forget for long stretches that they were nearly a hundred feet underground. Almost.

Yesterday, he’d ducked outside for a few minutes. Another gorgeous day, warm and sunny. Part of him wanted to go flying down the hill with his arms winged out to the sides like a kid. Maybe he could persuade Noa to join him; she could definitely use the fresh air, and some sunlight. For a second, he allowed himself to imagine them lying in the grass beside each other, hands linked as they stared up at the clouds.

As soon as he thought it, he got a flash of Amanda, and the look she’d given him the last time they’d kissed. Peter sighed. Nothing ever seemed to be easy for him.

At least they’d managed to stay in one place for a few days, which was practically a record for them. It looked like Loki had been right: The bunker had blocked the bug’s signal. So as far as Charles Pike was concerned, they’d left Denver far behind.

He didn’t doubt for a minute that Teo was sticking to the plan, letting the bug ping as they traveled west. He and Daisy might already be in California. He imagined them hanging out on a beach, while he and Noa huddled in the darkness like a couple of moles.

Peter blew out a sigh and ran a hand through his hair: It felt oily. He should take a shower. It was far too easy to lose track of time down here. Three days had passed, but it could have been weeks. Last night he’d stayed up until three a.m. without realizing it. He and Noa had been working pretty much nonstop.

No luck so far, though, which was a bad sign. And of course, even if they did find the key file, they’d probably still need to crack a password.

Encryption was like a secret code, not so different from the ones Peter and his brother used when they were kids. The simplest codes replaced one letter with another a certain distance away; for example, with a two-step code, every
a
became a
c
. He’d spend hours decoding his brother’s secret messages, discovering in the end that “wmsp dccr qkcjj” translated to “your feet smell.” In spite of everything, Peter smiled at the memory.

Of course, this was a lot more complicated. Here, the “letters” were bytes of information, the instruction to “shift letters by some distance” was the encryption algorithm (AES 256), and the distance (2, for example) was the key. They’d need both the algorithm and the key to decode the file.

It was a long, arduous process, and so far Peter had only made it halfway through his pile of server drives. At this rate, they’d be here for weeks. He wasn’t entirely certain that Loki was willing to play host for that long.

He glanced over at Noa: She looked totally consumed by what she was doing. Swallowing hard, he opened a new browser window.
Probably good to take a break
, he told himself, knowing full well it was a flimsy excuse.

After making sure that the image would only open on the screen directly in front of him, Peter hit enter.

The security camera footage was grainy, and set at an angle. But he’d gotten lucky: Today the curtains were open.

A tiny figure lay on a hospital bed. The image was black and white, and the girl was so pale, she was barely visible against the sheets. Still, he could tell it was her.

Amanda.

He’d hacked into Boston Medical’s security feed months ago. On the road, it had only been possible to check every couple of days. Every time Pike’s men nearly caught them he’d been wracked with guilt, convinced that despite his precautions, his online footprints had been tracked.

Still, he couldn’t bring himself to stop.

The fact that a bug was responsible had actually been a huge relief, even if he’d unwittingly been the one carrying it. And here, with Loki’s extensive firewalls, there was almost no chance that anyone would catch him looking.

Not that it was pervy or anything. It was just that as long as Amanda was still lying there, there was a chance to save her. And knowing that gave him hope.

As Peter watched, someone entered the room. He leaned forward with a frown: It was a man. Her dad, maybe? He sat by the bed for a minute, without touching Amanda. There was something so familiar about the way he held himself. . . .

Peter sucked in a deep breath. It was Mason. Even though he couldn’t see his face clearly, he’d know him anywhere.

The fact that he was still alive, after Peter had basically left him gift-wrapped for Pike, was a shock. He should have known that somehow Mason would weasel his way back into Pike’s good graces.

But what is he doing with Amanda?

It felt like all the air had suddenly been sucked out of the room. Peter’s hands clenched into fists. It was bad enough that Mason had made Amanda sick in the first place; now he was hovering over her like a vulture, admiring his handiwork?

As he watched, Mason abruptly stood and left the room, closing the curtains behind him. Peter stared at them for a minute as they swayed back and forth. He had to get back to Boston to protect her.

But if he raced to her bedside, then what? Mason had to be close by with a slew of Pike’s mercenaries. And Amanda needed to be in a hospital; even if he managed to get her out, he wasn’t equipped to take care of her.

In all likelihood, that’s exactly what Mason wanted. Maybe he suspected that Peter was keeping an eye on things from afar, and this was his way of taunting him. Drawing him in, forcing his hand.

If that was the case, it was working.

Peter stared at his shaking hands, willing his fists to unclench. He had to stay here. Once he found what they were looking for, the proof that they needed, then he could go save Amanda.

And God help Mason if anything happened to her first.

“What’s wrong?”

Peter jerked reflexively and glanced over his shoulder; Noa was eyeing him with suspicion.

“Nothing,” he said, quickly shutting the window. With great effort, he forced levity into his voice as he said, “This would be so much easier if someone had named a file ‘decryption key.’”

“Wouldn’t that be lovely.” Noa sat back and stretched.

“Tired?” Peter asked, taking in her appearance. The days underground had rendered her already pale skin practically translucent, and the glow from the monitors made the shadows beneath her eyes particularly pronounced. The burst of energy she’d had when they first arrived seemed to have dissipated entirely; she was sleeping more and more.

“What, I don’t look ‘glow-y’ anymore?” she teased.

Peter groaned. “I can’t believe you’re still going on about that.”

“Oh, I haven’t even begun.” Noa crossed her arms over her chest, an impish look in her eye. “I just wish I’d taped it.”

“It was the oxy talking,” he grumbled.

“Really?” She raised an eyebrow. “So you don’t think I’m a gorgeous sea creature?”

“I did
not
say that,” he protested. “Did I?”

Noa burst into laughter. Grinning, she turned back toward her monitor.

“Just wait,” Peter warned. “Someday, you’ll be saying the same thing about me.”

“That you’re a gorgeous sea creature? I seriously doubt it.” Without looking at him, she continued in a more muted voice, “Do you think they’re there yet?”

Peter shrugged. “Maybe. Depends on how many stops they made.”

A long beat, then she said quietly, “I really hope they’re okay.”

“They’re fine,” he said firmly. “Hell, they’re probably in better shape than we are. Riding busses and eating vending machine food. That sounds like heaven right about now.”

“Wow,” Noa said. “Remind me to apply to a different heaven than yours.”

“Did I forget to mention the waterslides?”

She laughed again, and Peter silently cheered. It had been a long time since he’d been able to make her laugh. Despite how she looked, maybe Noa was getting better.

“So you’re okay then?” he asked lightly.

A long pause, then she swiveled to face him. “Actually,” Noa admitted, “I’m not feeling so hot.”

“I can tell.” He rolled across the floor, stopping a foot away from her. Noa flinched slightly, the way she always did when someone entered her personal space, and Peter repressed a sigh. “Listen, I know something is going on with you. Maybe I can help.”

Noa was already shaking her head. “No one can help.”

“But—”

“Peter,” she said firmly. “You don’t understand. Some of what happened, back in Santa Cruz . . .”

Peter waited for her to continue, but her gaze was fixed on the concrete floor. He asked gently, “You mean, when Zeke died?”

“Before that,” she said in a small voice. “The people we were staying with were scientists, doctors. They were helping me figure out . . . well, you know.”

Peter nodded. The small of his back throbbed in sympathy. He’d only known about the bug for a day before it was removed. Noa had been living with the knowledge that there was a stranger’s thymus implanted in her chest for seven months. And they still weren’t totally sure why it was in there, or what it was doing, aside from messing with her sleeping and eating cycles. In her place, he’d have gone nuts by now.

“Anyway, when their compound was invaded, I found out that the Forsythes used to work for Pike. They might even have had something to do with PEMA.”

“What?” Peter interrupted, startled. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Roy and Monica were killed that night,” she said bluntly. “So I didn’t think it mattered. But before he died, Roy told me that my cells were degenerating.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“I know,” Noa said soberly. “He wasn’t sure what it meant, but that’s probably why light hurts my eyes so much now, and why I’m always tired.”

“Okay.” Peter ran a hand through his hair again. “So is your body rejecting the thymus?”

Noa shrugged. “Maybe. All I know for sure is that I’m always tired. I’m always cold. Everything hurts, all the time. And this cut that I got in Little Rock?” She rolled up her sleeve to show him a long, ugly gash from a tree branch. “It’s not healing. So I’m not exactly a superhero anymore.”