Ace of Spades Sneak Peek(51)
I should just leave; her condescending tone isn’t worth it. But I don’t. Like a zombie, I give the guy my phone and he plugs it into his computer.
“Were you able to get into the USB? I told Devon to bring his too—”
Peter shakes his head. “It’s impossible. All the files are unusable. I could look at his too if you want, but the files on your USB seem to be deliberately corrupted, which I’ve never seen before…”
“We’ll just see what comes up with tracing the messages back … How about the CCTV?” Chiamaka asks.
“I looked for the CCTV that covers the area by your lockers at the time you thought the USBs were planted, but there was a power outage just before. It killed the lights and the cameras and didn’t restart until just before first period.”
Aces always seems to be several steps ahead of us; they are very sophisticated too. I try to think of anyone I know who might secretly be a tech genius and who might have something against me, but my mind goes blank.
Peter hands my phone back. A black screen with a bunch of code pops up on his laptop.
“It’s done, everything I need is here,” Peter says, which kind of makes me nervous.
It’s not like I have anything too incriminating on there … just messages, and really, what message can be worse than the damage Scotty’s old phone archive has done?
“I’ll work on tracing the locations these messages were sent from, shouldn’t take me too long,” Peter says.
“When can you have it done by?” Chiamaka asks.
“I have a lab report due, so maybe before the end of the week…”
She touches his shoulder.
“Peter,” she starts, cocking her head to the side. “It’s very urgent, I’m sure you understand that.”
He nods, his face turning red.
“Good, so I can count on you to have it done by first thing tomorrow?”
Peter looks both terrified and turned on. That alone creeps me the hell out, enough to make me want to leave this lab, but I stay put for reasons unknown to my conscience.
“First thing tomorrow,” Peter repeats.
Wow. Is that all the convincing straight boys need?
“Thank you, Peter.” Chiamaka ruffles his hair, which he doesn’t seem to like so much, and then she pulls me toward the exit.
I move to open the classroom door, but Chiamaka stops me, pressing her hand to my chest.
I swear, if she doesn’t stop touching me—
“Let me go first, wait five minutes, then you leave. We don’t need people thinking we are onto them, got it?”
I make the okay sign.
I don’t know how surprised junior-year Devon would be by Chiamaka and me suddenly talking so frequently, but I know that he’s judging me harder than senior-year Devon is.
* * *
Mr. Taylor has my headphones in, listening to my piece. I finally managed to make an initial recording this morning, and I have been watching him nervously for the last three minutes.
He finally takes them off and looks at me. “This is good, really good. I think you have something great here, Devon.”
Great isn’t amazing.
“I’m going to go and check Tabitha’s piece. Good work, keep it up.”
I sigh, looking down at my music. Where did I go wrong?
“’Sup, Devon,” Daniel says, appearing at my desk.
I look at him. “Hey.”
“So, I have something pretty big to tell you,” he starts.
“Okay, sure.”
With Daniel Johnson, something “big” could range from pizza on the lunch menu to There’s a new headmaster, did you know that?
He looks around, his eyes darting all over, then landing on me. “I know who’s leaking your secrets.”
I feel like I could throw up all over his Marc Jacobs shoes.
“Who?”
“You have to promise not to tell anyone—this could get me in trouble.”
Now I’m really scared.
I keep going over it in my head. Only someone I know—or someone who followed me—could have known about everything that came out. The only person I’ve trusted with all the information was Jack. Why would Jack do that? I don’t know. And why would Jack know anything about Chiamaka?
“I won’t tell a soul,” I say, even though I’ll definitely tell Terrell and Chiamaka.
He leans in, whispering, “The FBI.”
I breathe out. I forgot that this is Daniel.
“Do you cover your laptop camera?” he continues.
I shake my head, trying to calm down and get rid of this feeling of dread.
He hits the table. “It’s them. I’m telling you, man.”
“Thank you, Daniel.”
“It’s okay, anything for my main man.”
I blink at him a few times, unsure of how to react. Giving up on a reaction, I turn, facing my music, hoping Daniel gets the hint and leaves or shuts up.
* * *
It starts raining on my way back from detention. I carry my backpack above my head to try to keep from getting wet, but that doesn’t do much. I can see home in the distance as I walk, but the closer I get, the farther it seems to be. I push through the drizzle and the wind until I finally reach our front door.