Rules of Survival(43)

Shaun’s gaze slid past her to the house next door. It was decrepit and screamed keep away. For a moment, a look crossed his face. An expression that was all darkness and rage. But he wiped it away and flashed little Miss Perky Pants his brightest smile. “Actually, I’m here to see you.”

Her expression brightened, and she blushed. Eyebrows fluttering, she swished her long hair to the side and giggled. Oh, God. I was going to be sick. “Me?”

The urge to hit her came over me fast and strong, which was pretty funny since, before meeting Shaun, I’d never even made a fist. Obviously I wasn’t his girlfriend, but did she know that for sure? No way. And yet here she was, eye-humping him and flicking her hair in his face. If this was the kind of annoying drama-laced shit I’d missed out on in high school, then I was about to start considering myself lucky as hell Mom had kept us on the run.

“Are you still into all that computer stuff?”

Her face fell the tiniest bit. “Oh, yeah. Totally. My dad would shit bricks if he knew, but what can I say. I’m a natural.”

“Look, I hate to ask you, but I’m in a little bit of a tight spot, and I was hoping I could get your help.”

“Trouble?” Her expression instantly changed. The jovial bimbo was replaced by someone calm, cool, and collected. She peered down the street, then motioned for us to follow her around the house. “What kind of trouble?”

“It’s complicated, and I don’t want to go too much into it. I was hoping if I gave you a name, you could check and see what came up?”

“I can try. And since you came to me, I’m guessing you don’t mean Google…”

Shaun tugged me along behind. “Google won’t cut it with this.”

She nodded and pushed open the side door to the garage. “Gotcha. So just a name? Would help if I knew more though…”

“The less you know, the better,” I said, speaking for the first time. I was ready to explode. It was bad enough that he hadn’t introduced me on his own, but it was obvious this bitch was purposely ignoring me. It was funny, since my entire life, Mom taught me that being ignored equaled staying alive. That tumble into Gerald’s panic room must have knocked my brain out of whack, because if this girl didn’t acknowledge me soon, I was liable to punch her. Several times.

Shaun was obviously a bad influence on me.

She looked me up and down, frowning, then picked up the shackle chain. “Shaun, why are you chained to a homeless girl?”

He nodded to me and closed the door behind us. “Chris, this is Kayla,” he said. “That’s the other thing I need your help with. Think you have anything that can cut the chain?”

He’d ignored the insult. I, on the other hand, couldn’t. “Shaun, why are we here visiting Bimbo Barbie?” Because seriously, who pulled weeds in full makeup and loose hair?

Her mouth fell open. “Excuse—”

Shaun rolled his eyes and had the nerve to cover my mouth with his free hand. “Chris, I really need your help here. I don’t have a lot of time.”

She gave me a slight shake of her head, then turned back to him with a sickeningly sweet smile. “My machine is under there. After that, I think we can find something to free you from your…friend.”

Following her gaze, I bit back a snide reply. The urge to tell her all about the friendly things we’d been doing together the night before nearly made me explode.

On the other side of the room, a white sheet covered nearly the entire space. She walked across and threw off the large cover. Beneath it were several monitors and twice as many computer towers. They were covered in what looked like a decade’s worth of dust and cobwebs, a few of them dented on the sides with what looked suspiciously like baseball bat indentations. If this was what she planned on helping us with, we weren’t going to get far.

“Dad doesn’t come out here at all. He thinks he destroyed all my stuff years ago, but I rebuilt.”

Shaun and I watched as she pulled the front panel off the first computer case and stuck her hand inside. A moment later the lights on the front of the case began to flicker.

“Is that a computer inside a computer?” I asked, confused.

She beamed. “Yep. Pretty brilliant, right? Hide the stuff in plain sight and you never get caught.”

“Caught?”

She shrugged it off, but I could tell she loved the attention. “I got busted cracking into one of the local bank branches when I was ten…”

“So, you’re a hacker?”

She cringed and flipped on the screen. “‘Hacker’ is such an ugly word. I prefer boundary tripper.” She winked at Shaun. “Sounds sexier, yeah? So who we looking for?”

“This is a little backward. We’re looking for someone named Mick, but we don’t know anything else about him.”

Chris stared at him. “Shaun, I’m good, but no one on earth is that good. Last name, city, or date of birth? Relatives? I need more to work with…”

“No, no. I know. Try doing a search on Melissa Morgan.”

Chris wound a small alarm clock next to the computer and began punching keys. “Date of birth?”

Shaun looked to me and I sighed. This felt like betrayal somehow, but I was out of options. After all I’d done lately, what was one more, anyway? “November twenty-fifth. Seventy-seven.”