Don't Look Now

by Michelle Gagnon

  “Good,” she heard from over her shoulder. “He wasn’t the one they wanted anyway. Probably would’ve just had to shoot him.”

  Noa lunged toward him with a growl, but her attacker had kept his distance and when she got to her feet, his rifle was fixed on her chest. “Stay back!” he warned. “Your friend is still breathing. You don’t behave, that can change real quick.”

  Noa looked down; he was right, she could see the shallow rise and fall of Zeke’s chest. Squaring her jaw, Noa raised her hands. The woods were at her back—she could run that way. Maybe even make it to the beach, if she managed to avoid the rest of them. But that would mean leaving Zeke, and this guy obviously didn’t have any qualms about shooting him. She couldn’t let that happen.

  The gunman walked over to where his friend lay on his back and nudged him with his foot. “Shit, you smoked Costa. The boss isn’t going to be happy about that.”

  Zeke was lying on his side with his eyes closed. It looked like someone had painted a wide swath of red across the belly of his white shirt. He’d fallen on his good side, but a growing pool of red spread out from his waist. He was losing too much blood. If she didn’t do something, he’d die right here.

  “Save him,” she said, “and I’ll come with you.”

  The guy snorted. “Save him? Yeah, right. You’re coming with me whether you want to or not.”

  Noa pulled the gun out from behind her back, raised it, and pointed it at her temple. “No, I won’t,” she said with finality.

  Above the mask, his eyes widened. “What the hell? Are you nuts?”

  “I’ll do it,” Noa said, her voice steady. “Unless you help him. I’ll walk with you to the van, you give him first aid. And then, when I see that he’s going to be okay, I put the gun down. Not before that.”

  “Like I care if you shoot yourself,” the guy said, his voice full of bluster. “I already got enough of you kids. They didn’t say we had to get all of them.”

  “But I bet they said you had to get me. And alive, too,” Noa said. “So yeah, I think you care.”

  A long silence as he weighed what she’d said. Noa didn’t blink, and barely breathed. Everything depended on whether or not the guy in front of her was smart enough to follow orders. They must have demanded that she be taken alive. But he might not understand just how important that was to them.

  And if he didn’t care . . . then this could end with both her and Zeke dead.

  “Fine,” the guy finally said, although he didn’t sound happy about it. “I’ll get someone to carry him back to the van. But after that, no—”

  His words were cut off as he was suddenly tackled from behind. Noa started, nearly firing the gun. Two figures rolled on the ground in a tangle of limbs. Suddenly, the person on top jerked his head up—weathered skin, streaked with soot. Roy opened his mouth and yelled, “Noa, run!”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  Acting on instinct Teo dropped, flattening out his body. A grunt behind him, and the sound of something heavy hitting the ground.

  “Teo!”

  Teo looked up. The guy with the rifle was lying prone. Daisy stood above him, brandishing a shovel in both hands. Flipping over, he saw that the bullet had whisked past him and hit Berinsky in the back. He lay facedown in the grass, motionless.

  “Come on!” Daisy urged. She dropped the shovel, turned, and ran.

  Teo scrambled to his feet and followed. They raced through the trees, dodging low-hanging branches. Belatedly, he realized that he should have grabbed the rifles. “Where are we going?” he gasped. “To the street?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “We’ll stay off the road for a few miles, then try to hitch a ride into town.”

  Then what? Teo wanted to ask. Were they just supposed to pretend that none of this had ever happened? Go back to living on the streets, trying to forget about the kids they’d left behind?

  He didn’t feel comfortable with that. But what was he supposed to do?

  The fog was so thick and pervasive, Teo quickly lost all sense of direction. He tried to reconstruct the layout of the property. A thick, twelve-foot-high hedge bordered three sides; the fourth dead-ended at the cliffs overlooking the ocean. The main house sat in the center, surrounded by an acre of open fields and gardens. The rest was heavily forested, and dotted with smaller guest houses and outbuildings. He hadn’t walked the entire perimeter, but was pretty sure that only one main gate led to the road.

  And right now, he had no idea which section of the woods they were in; he couldn’t even pinpoint where the main house was anymore. Hopefully Daisy had a better sense of where they were going.

  Voices to their left. Teo grabbed Daisy’s arm and yanked her down as he drew into a crouch.

  “Wha—”

  He put a finger to his lips. Her eyes went wide, but she nodded.

  Together, they pressed up against the trunk of a tree. Teo carefully leaned around the side.

  Crap. They’d reached the gate; just past it, the driveway hooked right before meeting up with Route 1. But the exit was blocked by vehicles. More commandos everywhere, all bearing nasty-looking rifles. Teo’s heart sank—it didn’t look like there was a way past them.

  Daisy must’ve realized the same thing. She shook her head and said, “The hedges have wires running through them, and the electricity is probably still on. We can’t risk it.”

  Teo’s heart sank. “So what now?” he whispered. “Hide?”

  Daisy’s pale face was dewy with droplets of moisture. She chewed her lower lip thoughtfully, then said, “The beach. It’s the only other way out.”

  Teo figured this was a bad time to mention that he was barely capable of a dog paddle.

  Yelling, followed by barked orders. Teo eased around the side of the tree again, staying low. A kicking and screaming Janiqua was being pushed toward a white panel truck by two men with guns. Her hands were bound behind her back, and her shirt was filthy and torn. She was raging and spitting. At the last minute, she tried to run.

  One of the men casually cuffed her across the chin. Janiqua went flying, hitting the ground hard. They yanked her to her feet and threw her inside.

  “How many more?” the other guy said.

  His partner held up a sheet of paper. “Three, including the big fish.”

  “Good,” the first guy muttered. “I’ve had enough of this crap for one night.”

  His buddy grunted assent as he slid the door closed. The truck rocked slightly as someone thumped around inside.

  A tug on his hand. “Teo,” Daisy whispered urgently. “We’ve got to go!”

  “No,” he said, surprising himself. “We’re not leaving them.”

  Daisy opened her mouth as if to protest, then she slowly nodded. “Okay,” she said resignedly. “But what can we do?”

  Teo scanned the scene—too many guards for them to handle on their own. They needed to create a distraction somehow.

  At that moment, another pair of guys marched along the driveway, just a few feet from where they were hiding. They were dragging Taylor between them. He ducked back down.

  “Hey!” Taylor shouted. “Let go!”

  “Get in the truck,” one of them growled.

  “I told you, you idiot,” she snarled. “I’m not supposed to go with them. That was the deal. I told you where they were, now you’re supposed to let my brother and me leave.”

  Brother? Teo thought. She must mean Matt. It all clicked into place. Taylor and Matt had been working against them the whole time. He flashed back on earlier that evening, when everyone had been sitting around a roaring fire in the Forsythes’ living room playing a celebrity game. They’d laughed at him for not knowing any of the people they were talking about. It had been fun; Teo had finally felt like he was part of something.

  And this girl had destroyed all that.

  “Holy crap,” Daisy gasped. “Taylor told them where we were?”

  Teo nodded tightly, not trusting himself to speak. He’d nev
er understood what people were talking about when they said they “saw red.” Now he got it. It felt like waves of hot blood were surging through him, clouding his vision. His fists clenched into tight balls, and his whole chest tightened up until the contraction was crushing his ribs.

  He hoped these bastards would do terrible things to her.

  “Teo!”

  He looked down and realized that Daisy was tugging urgently on his arm again. She was looking past him.

  One of the guards had suddenly shifted toward them. Teo saw his eyes widen.

  “Hey!” the guy shouted, pointing directly at them. “There’s two more!”

  Teo didn’t think, he just reacted. He gave Daisy a shove and yelled, “Go!” then darted in the other direction, hoping to draw them off.

  Branches tore at his skin as he stumbled through the woods. The mist was dissipating, which made it easier to find his way, but also increased the chances that he’d be spotted. The middle of his back itched; he couldn’t stop picturing red laser sights zeroing in on it. . . .

  The sounds of pursuit behind him. He shifted direction, darting left. His muscles responded with an extra jolt of speed, and for a second he felt the familiar surge he used to get during track meets, when it felt like he’d tapped into some secret reserve. He’d had regular meals and decent sleep the past few days, so he was physically in much better shape than he’d been just a week ago.

  Hopefully, it would be enough.

  Teo cut right, then left again. The crashing sounds in the woods behind him seemed to be fading. Unfortunately, he’d also lost all sense of where he was. Was the sea ahead, or behind him? He prayed that Daisy had made it there safely. And that maybe, in the chaos, some of the others had managed to escape.

  A huge shape suddenly loomed up in front of him, and he had to backpedal to avoid hitting it: the barn! Which meant that the path to the beach was only a hundred feet away. As he ran past, Teo scooped up the hammer he’d left sitting on a sawhorse that afternoon. Not much use against a rifle, but better than nothing. He kept running.

  Turning the corner, Teo nearly crashed into a figure running toward him. He pulled up short, gasping for air.

  It was Taylor. Her eyes wild, she stared at him for a minute, then spun and started to sprint past him.

  A second later, the guy chasing her flew around the side of the barn. At the sight of Teo, he raised his gun.

  Teo whipped the hammer in a wide arc and slammed it into the side of the guy’s head. His helmet flew off, and Teo drew the hammer back and swung again.

  The guy grunted and sagged to the ground.

  Teo stared down at him for a second, his shoulders heaving.

  “Nice,” someone behind him said.

  He turned quickly—Taylor was standing there, hands on her hips. He saw her eyes flick toward the rifle on the ground. They lunged for it at the same time, but he got there first. Whipped it up and pointed it at her.

  She laughed at him. “What, you’re going to shoot me, Teo?”

  “I might,” he said. And realized to his surprise that he meant it. Any residual doubt in his capabilities had been swept away. He felt hard, sure of himself. He wondered if this was how Noa felt all the time. He was pretty sure she wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.

  “Go ahead,” Taylor said moodily as her shoulders slumped. “I’m pretty much dead now, anyway.”

  “You should be,” he snapped. “You sold us out.”

  “I didn’t have a choice!” she retorted. “You have no idea what they threatened to do to my brother.”

  “Yeah, well—nice job saving him. I bet he’s already in the van with the others.”

  She looked stricken. Teo’s finger twitched on the trigger—he didn’t have time to mess around with her. He had to get to the beach, and to Daisy. The woods were still full of bastards trying to catch them.

  “Get out of here,” he said, jerking his head to the side.

  Taylor narrowed her eyes, as if suspecting a trick.

  Teo kept the rifle up as he backed away, headed toward the beach path. Once he turned the corner, he wheeled and trotted off in the direction of the beach, the gun heavy in his hands.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  The first downed guard lay on the ground a few feet inside the building. His eyes were bugged out, and he was clawing at his throat.

  Mason made a tsking sound and said, “Bad reaction. That’s unfortunate.”

  Peter hurriedly checked to make sure the straps of his mask were tight. Swallowing hard, he carefully stepped over the guy and followed Mason down a long, dark hallway that looked like something out of a horror film. Wisps of gas hung heavy in the air; snaky tendrils of it wrapped around Peter’s arms and legs as they moved slowly through the building.

  Mason walked with purpose, as if he knew precisely where he was going. Peter had to trot to keep pace. The interior of the building was in even worse shape than the outside; the walls were cracked, and tufts of insulation poked through enormous gashes in the drywall. Between the damp, mold, and level of dust in the air, Peter couldn’t imagine a worse environment for sensitive computer servers. Was this seriously the best place Charles Pike could come up with to hide his data?

  Mason hooked right down the next hallway and led Peter up a flight of stairs. The top was blocked by a fire door. Mason flicked open a keypad on the side and punched in an eight-digit code, then pushed the door open with both hands.

  Peter left the door open, in case they needed to beat a fast retreat. He followed closely, working it out in his head. Obviously, Mason had some sort of arrangement with the guard who had handed them the masks. Peter wondered how much money he’d been promised to betray the people he worked with. And if Mason would let him live long enough to spend it.

  The second story was a dramatic departure from downstairs. Solid white walls extended the length of the hall on both sides. The floor was bare concrete, meticulously clean.

  The air was still wreathed in tendrils of white gas, however. It poured from the vents above.

  Halfway down the hall, a guard lay on the ground. Mason stepped adroitly over him as if he wasn’t there. This guard’s eyes were closed, his chest rising and falling as if he was simply deeply asleep.

  Peter nearly stumbled over him. He knew it was psychosomatic, but he was having a hard time breathing. He wondered if the mask was really working; he felt dizzy, sick.

  They turned right down another hallway, toward the center of the building. Mason stopped in front of a massive door that would have been right at home in a bank vault. He punched in another code, then swung the lever and wrenched it open.

  Peter stepped inside. This room was strikingly similar to the one at Pike & Dolan’s corporate headquarters, except it held only a quarter as many servers. They hummed along in the background. There was no gas, aside from what had followed them in; there must be a separate ventilation system.

  Mason was watching him; the goggles accentuated the extraordinary blackness of his eyes.

  “I didn’t bring a data sniffer,” Peter said, realizing that it would have been pointless, anyway. It wasn’t as if their infiltration had been discreet; Charles Pike was going to know that someone had broken into his servers, since obviously the rest of these guards weren’t on Mason’s payroll. So what was he doing here?

  “No need,” Mason said, his voice muffled. “We’ll be taking the hard drives. All of them.”

  He started along the aisle. Peter followed warily, watching Mason extract hard drives from the server banks. He looked around the room—there were over fifty servers in here. How long before the effects of the gas wore off, and the room was flooded with ticked-off guards?

  Mason was carefully stacking hard drives in the open backpack. He glanced at Peter. “Care to help? We are in a bit of a hurry.”

  Peter hesitated, then went to the far end of the room. As he disconnected the cords on a hard drive, his mind raced. Mason could have brought anyone wit
h him—this job didn’t exactly require incredible hacking skills. So was he supposed to get the information off these drives afterward? Maybe they were encrypted, and that’s why Mason needed him.

  He was working on the third server when he felt a tug on the back of his head. Spinning quickly, he dropped the hard drives he’d collected—they clattered to the ground. Mason was standing right behind him. With another violent yank, he tore the gas mask off Peter’s head.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Peter demanded.

  “I’m leaving you behind,” Mason said matter-of-factly as he stooped to gather the hard drives off the floor. “Sorry for the confusion, but as it turns out, I won’t be requiring your skills after all. Charles will be so delighted to have finally caught the ringmaster behind Persefone’s Army. Sadly, your compatriots escaped with the hard drives. But one must accept losses in any business endeavor.” He dropped the drives into the bag.

  Peter took a step toward him, enraged. “You assho—”

  Suddenly, the room cartwheeled. He staggered back, knocking his head against a hard metal server frame. His knees gave out, and he slowly slid to the ground.

  Blearily, he watched Mason move away from him, sliding hard drives out and disconnecting them with practiced ease. This had been a setup all along. His eyelids felt heavy; there was less gas in here, thanks to the recycled air, but apparently it was still potent enough to knock him out. Peter remembered the first guard they’d encountered, the one having a “bad reaction.” Was the same thing happening to him? His throat constricted, and his lungs battled for air. He felt like he was suffocating to death.

  But he had no intention of dying alone.

  Determined, Peter fought back the waves of darkness washing over his vision. Unsteadily, he lurched to his feet.

  Mason paused and looked up. His eyes creased in a smile as he said, “You should just relax, Peter. Fighting will only make it worse.”

  “Amanda,” Peter croaked out past the blockage in his throat. “Where?”

  Mason shrugged. Though his mouth was hidden, Peter could swear he was smirking. “I have no idea where Ms. Berns is now, Peter.” He slid out a final drive, tossed it into the pack, and tucked Peter’s mask on top of it. Slinging the bag over one shoulder, he said, “I do hope Charles isn’t too hard on you. He has a terrible temper, you know. Shame that all of this will be falling on your shoulders, but it worked out quite well for me.”