Don't Turn Around

CHAPTER ONE

When Noa Torson woke up, the first thing she noticed was that her feet were cold. Odd, since she always wore socks to bed. She opened her eyes and immediately winced against the glare. She hated sleeping in a bright room, had even installed blackout curtains over her apartment’s sole window so that morning light never penetrated the gloom. Noa tried to make sense of her surroundings as her eyes adjusted. Her head felt like it had been inflated a few sizes and stuffed with felt. She had no idea how she’d ended up here, wherever here was.

Was she back in juvie? Probably not; it was too quiet. Juvie always sounded like a carnival midway: the constant din of guards’ boots pounding against metal staircases, high-pitched posturing chatter, the squeak of cots and clanking of metal doors. Noa had spent enough time there to identify it with her eyes closed. She could usually even tell which cellblock she’d been dumped in by echoes alone.

Voices intruded on the perimeter of her consciousness—two people from the sound of it, speaking quietly. She tried to sit up, and that was when the pain hit. Noa winced and fell back on the bed. It felt like her chest had been split in half. Her hand ached, too. Slowly, she turned her head.

An IV drip was taped to her right wrist. The line led to a bag hanging from a metal stand. And the bed she was lying on was cold metal—an operating table, a spotlight suspended above it. So was she in a hospital? There wasn’t that hospital smell, though—blood and sweat and vomit battling against the stench of ammonia.

Noa lifted her left hand: Her jade bracelet, the one she never took off, was gone. That realization snatched the final cobwebs from her mind.

Cautiously, Noa raised up on her elbows, then frowned. This wasn’t like any hospital she’d ever seen. She was in the center of a glass chamber, a twelve-by-twelve-foot box, the windows frosted so she couldn’t see out. The floor was bare concrete. Aside from the operating table and the IV stand, rolling trays of medical implements and machines were scattered about. In the corner stood a red trash bin, MEDICAL WASTE blaring from the lid.

Looking down, Noa discovered that she was wearing a cloth gown, but there was no hospital name stamped on it. She tried to get her bearings. Not juvie, and not an official hospital. She got the feeling that whatever this place was, bad things happened here.

The voices grew louder; someone was coming. Noa had spent the past ten years fending for herself. She’d learned better than to trust authority figures, whether they were cops, doctors, or social workers. And she wasn’t about to start trusting anyone now, not in a situation like this. Slowly, she eased her feet off the table and slid to the floor. She wrapped her arms around herself, repressing a shiver. The cement was freezing, like stepping barefoot onto a glacier.

The voices stopped just outside the chamber. Noa strained her ears to listen, catching a few fragments: Success … call him … what do we … can’t believe we finally …

The last bit came through crystal clear. A man’s voice, sounding resigned as he said, They’ll handle it. She’s not our problem now.

Fighting to keep her teeth from chattering, Noa desperately scanned the room. A few feet away, a metal tray held a variety of medical instruments. She’d nearly reached it when the door at the far end of the room opened.

Two men dressed in scrubs crossed the threshold. The first was a thin white guy, a few strands of blond hair pasted across his forehead beneath a surgical cap. The other doctor was Latino, younger and stockier with a straggly mustache marring his upper lip. Seeing her, they froze. Noa seized the opportunity to edge closer to the tray.

Where am I? she asked. Her voice came out weaker than usual, like she hadn’t spoken in a while.

The doctors recovered from their surprise and exchanged a look. The blond one jerked his head, and the Latino rushed from the room.

Where’s he going? Noa asked. She was two feet from the tray now, and he was three feet past it.

The doctor held up his hands placatingly. You were in a terrible accident, Noa, he said soothingly. You’re in the hospital.

Oh, yeah? Her eyes narrowed. Which hospital?

You’re going to be fine. Some disorientation is to be expected. The doctor glanced back over his shoulder.

What kind of accident?

The doctor paused, his eyes shifting as he searched for a response, and Noa knew he was lying. The last thing she remembered was leaving her apartment and walking toward Newton Centre station to catch the train into Boston. She’d been heading downtown to pick up a new video card for her MacBook Pro. Noa had turned right on Oxford Road, passing Weeks Field on her way to the T stop. The last heat of an Indian summer day was soft on her skin, daylight sifting through trees already shedding their leaves in a riot of fiery oranges and reds. She’d been happy, she remembered. Happier than she’d been in a long time, maybe ever.

And then, nothing. It was all a big blank.

A car accident, he explained, a small note of triumph in his voice.

I don’t own a car. I don’t even take taxis, Noa said warily.

A car hit you, I mean. The doctor looked back again, increasingly impatient. Clearly the other guy had gone for help. Which meant she was running out of time.

Noa suddenly fell forward, as if the wooziness had overwhelmed her. The doctor lunged to catch her. In one smooth motion, Noa scooped a scalpel off the tray and pressed it against the side of his neck.

His mouth opened wide in a surprised O.

You’re going to get me out of here, she said firmly, or I’ll slit your throat. Don’t make a sound.

Please. The doctor’s voice was hoarse. You don’t understand. You can’t leave, it’s for your own—

A rush of footsteps pounding toward them.

Shut up! Noa shoved him in front of her, keeping the blade pressed against his neck as they went through the door. She paused outside: not a hospital at all, but a giant warehouse the size of an airplane hangar. Makeshift aisles composed of cardboard boxes and long lines of metal filing cabinets surrounded the glass chamber.

Which way out? she hissed, keeping her mouth close to his ear. They were nearly the same height, five-ten, which made it easier.

The doctor hesitated, then pointed right. There’s an exit, but it’s alarmed.

Following his finger, Noa spotted the narrow hallway leading off to the right. She propelled him toward it. Someone was shouting orders. As they entered the hallway, she heard the chamber door being flung open behind her. More yelling as they realized she was gone. It sounded like at least half a dozen people were after her.

The hallway was long and narrow and lined with more boxes stacked to shoulder height on both sides. One of the fluorescent tubes overhead flickered, casting them in a pulsing strobe. Noa fought to ignore the stabbing pain in her chest, and the ball of panic right alongside it.

Ten feet farther and the hallway turned right. They rounded the bend and came face-to-face with a large metal door. It was chained shut.

That’s not an alarm, Noa said flatly.

There’s no point hurting me, he pleaded. You can’t leave. He’d never let you go.

Beside her, the top box on the stack gaped open. Noa dug her free hand inside, then risked a glance: metal bedpans, nothing she could use to break a padlock. She was trapped. Noa fought the urge to scream in frustration. Out in the expanse of the warehouse floor, she’d stood a chance of escaping. Now, she was a rat at the end of a maze. At most, she had a few minutes before they found her.

Take off your clothes, she ordered.

What? But— he sputtered.

Now! She pressed the scalpel deeper into his neck.

A minute later, the doctor shuddered in his underwear as she stepped into his crocs and pulled the mask up over her face. Good thing he’d decided to stay—the Latino’s scrubs would never have fit her.

It won’t work, he said.

Noa frowned and responded with a double-fisted uppercut: a trick she’d learned the hard way, by being on the receiving end once. It connected with the doctor’s jaw and his head jerked back. He dropped hard, knocking over boxes on the way down. He didn’t get back up. I hate negativity, she muttered.

The Latino doctor suddenly darted out of the hallway, skidding to a stop in front of them. Noa reached into the box beside her.

Jim? he said, eyes widening as Noa raced toward him. As she ran she drew her arm back, then swung the metal bedpan as hard as she could. He shied away, drawing his arms up to protect his face. The bedpan made a loud, hollow sound when it connected with his temple. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he dropped to the floor beside the other doctor.

Noa dashed back down the hallway, pausing at the end. She was still clutching the scalpel in her left hand, but chances were the people she was up against had knives, maybe even guns. The warehouse was dimly lit, which worked in her favor. It was enormous, too, so the people searching for her would have to split up. The scrubs might fool them at a distance, but that trick wouldn’t work for long; they were sure to find the doctors any minute now. She had to find a way out.

Noa edged along, keeping to the shadows. Ten feet down the adjoining wall she spotted a gap: another hallway, about thirty feet away. It was a risk—she might get to the end only to discover that the door was bolted like the other one. But spending too much time on the warehouse floor was suicide.

She moved as quickly as possible toward the opening, hoping that at a distance she’d be mistaken for the blond doctor. The crocs weren’t exactly ideal: They squeaked against the raw concrete, and there was no way she’d be able to run in them. Better than being barefoot, though. At least her feet were finally warming up.

She’d nearly reached the corridor when someone shouted, Hey!

Noa slowly pivoted.

The guy facing her was large and lumpy; he looked like a kid had stuffed clay into an oversized security uniform, dabbing on a stubby nose and ears as an afterthought. There was a gun in his right hand.

I already checked down there, the security guard said, indicating the space behind her with the gun barrel. Don’t waste your time.

Noa nodded her thanks, hoping he wouldn’t find it strange that she wasn’t answering. He sauntered off toward the next hallway, the one where the doctors were stashed.

She was about to slip down the corridor when someone across the room hollered, Stop her!

Turning, Noa spotted the blond doctor standing at the edge of the opposite hallway. In the darkness, his bare skin practically glowed. His arm was extended, finger pointing at her accusingly.

The security guard swiveled back toward her with a frown. Their eyes met, then Noa spun and broke into a run.

Peter Gregory was bored. He spent most weekends at Tufts University with his girlfriend. But Amanda was swamped with a huge paper, and she’d told him in no uncertain terms to not even consider showing up to distract her. His parents were away in Vermont celebrating their thirtieth wedding anniversary at the type of pseudo-bed-and-breakfast they loved, an alarming amount of chintz the only thing that differentiated it from a regular hotel.

At first, Peter had been kind of psyched—a whole weekend to himself, no one to put up a front for. He could spend it online, monitoring the projects birthed by his brainchild, /ALLIANCE/. Yesterday, a Croatian member announced he was on the verge of tracking down the kid who posted a video of setting a cat on fire. That had been a particularly gruesome attempt to garner fifteen minutes of fame, but sadly not an unusual one. Peter had been checking all day, though, and there were no new posts. Hardly anyone on /ALLIANCE/ at all. Maybe everyone was busy logging rest bubbles on World of Warcraft, he thought with a grin.

Peter liked to think of these vigilante hackers as his minions. Since he’d founded the underground website a year earlier, it had snowballed. It turned out he wasn’t the only one ticked off by all the hypocrisy out there. They’d become a loosely knit community of hackers with a mission: to target Internet bullies, animal abusers, sexual predators, and everyone else who took advantage of the weak. Peter’s only rule was no violence. He saw /ALLIANCE/ as a way to wreak justice by pranking the bad guys, and so far, that hadn’t been an issue: After all, the people who counted themselves as /ALLIANCE/ questers could wipe out someone’s credit history or destroy their privacy with a few keystrokes. In the end, that was a lot more effective than beating someone up.

Peter had already made the circuit of the house a few times, absently flicking lights on and off. It was big, a four-thousand-square-foot McMansion, so that consumed some time. He ended up in his dad’s office. He plopped down in the Aeron chair and spun a few times, then propped his feet on the desk as he tilted back. Through the picture window beside him their lawn stretched away from the house like a rolling black tide, stopping at the street where it lapped at towering elm trees.

Saturday night, and he was home alone. There was a party at his buddy Blake’s house, but he wasn’t really in the mood. After going to college parties with Amanda, the high-school equivalent struck him as a lame waste of time. Still, there was nothing to stop him from having some fun. His dad kept a bottle of twenty-year-old bourbon in his lower right-hand desk drawer. He wouldn’t miss a few pulls.

Peter punched in a code and the bottom drawer popped open. Ridiculous of his father to think that a three-digit lock would keep anyone out. Peter shook his head as he uncorked the bottle. It was insulting, really.

He took a swig and leaned back. Someone had inscribed a note on the label: For Bob Gregory, with sincere appreciation. The signature was illegible; probably another jerk his dad had thrown money at to achieve some awful end.

His father was the reason Peter had initially started /ALLIANCE/. A self-described do-gooder investment banker, his dad was the kind of guy who insisted on driving a Prius with all the bells and whistles, but couldn’t be bothered to drop his Pellegrino bottle in the recycling bin. He’d make a show of tucking a five-dollar bill in a homeless guy’s cup if people were around, then go home and donate the maximum amount allowed to a campaign geared toward keeping that guy on the streets. And Peter’s mother was no better. As a high-priced defense attorney, she spent her time ensuring that Boston’s most lethal lowlifes never saw the inside of a prison cell. The two of them were perfect for each other, Peter thought with a snort. No wonder they’d made it thirty years.

It had been a while since he’d checked out what Bob was up to, Peter mused, scratching his chin with the mouth of the bottle. Couldn’t hurt to take a look.

A stack of papers and files filled the rest of the drawer. Peter dug them out and splayed them across the desk, then started flipping through. Mostly dull stuff: stock reports, investor statements, prospectuses from a variety of hedge funds. One file was thicker than the others. He recognized his father’s careful writing along the tab, AMRF in block letters. Peter frowned. He went through the drawer fairly regularly. This was a new addition.

He perused the papers inside the file: more quarterly reports, meeting minutes in some incomprehensible shorthand. His father was listed on the letterhead as both a board member and financial adviser. No surprise there—Bob always jumped at the chance to join a board roster, and financial advisers surely got some sort of kickback.

Peter took another tug from the bottle of bourbon, then eyed it. If he drank much more, Bob would be able to tell. Reluctantly, he replaced the cork.

He was about to tuck the various papers and files back in the drawer, rearranging the bottle on top of them, when his eyes alit on the line item Project Persephone.

That was pretty exotic for a financial company; they tended to have a penchant for testosterone-driven names like Maximus and Primidius. Peter scanned the page, but all he could tell was that whatever Project Persephone was, it consumed a hefty chunk of AMRF’s significant annual budget. As in, almost all of it.

Something about the name, though, struck him as familiar. Peter keyed up Bob’s laptop, typing in the password when the box appeared on-screen: his mother’s birthday, of course. He did a quick web search for Persephone, and realized where he’d seen the name before: When they studied Greek myths back in middle school. Persephone was the girl who got kidnapped and dragged down to Hades, but her mom cut some deal where half the year, she returned to live back on Earth.

Peter sat back in the chair, puzzled. His eyes fell on the clock across the room: nearly seven thirty, SportsCenter would be on soon. The Bruins had played a game earlier, and he wanted to see the highlights. He debated closing the drawer and going on with his evening, but something nagged at him. Peter sighed and ran his fingers back over the keyboard, instituting a basic search on AMRF.

A long list of organizations went by that acronym, including the Algalita Marine Research Foundation and Americans Mad for Rad Foosball. Skimming the list, none of them jumped out as the kind of company Bob would invest in. Peter hesitated, then decided to dig further. He shut down Bob’s computer and went to retrieve his laptop.

Twenty minutes later, he was pretty sure he’d found the right site. From the look of things, it was some sort of medical research company, although whatever they were researching was buried under a string of code names. He dug around some more, but the majority of the company’s files were locked behind firewalls that resisted his first attempts to throw a ladder over. Peter knew that given enough time, he could surmount them—in the past, just for fun he’d hacked unnoticed into the Pentagon, FBI, and Scotland Yard databases. The question was, could anything Bob was involved with possibly be worth the time commitment?

Probably not, Peter decided. With a yawn, he powered down the laptop.

A minute later, his front door was kicked in.

CHAPTER TWO

Noa found herself in a corridor identical to the one where she’d left the doctors. She raced down it, the guard’s footsteps pounding behind her, joined by the sound of others giving chase. The crocs flapped against her feet, slowing her down. She finally gave up, kicking out of them as she hit the corner. No point keeping her feet warm if it meant getting caught.

She glanced back—the guard had just rounded the corner, huffing hard, his face beet red. Just ahead of her, another set of double doors. No padlock, but one of those red signs that warned of an emergency alarm hung above the exit.

Noa ignored it and pushed through. The alarm sprang to life, blaring in her wake.

Outside, it was dusk. Freezing cold air hit her immediately, penetrating her thin cotton scrubs. Noa quickly scanned the surrounding area: It was some sort of warehouse complex, battered-looking, dust-colored buildings lining a narrow road. The pavement was uneven and scored with potholes. No cars or people in sight.

Noa broke right, aiming for a narrow gap between the buildings on the opposite side of the road.

Behind her the door slammed open against the wall, and she heard the guard shout.

The space between the buildings was narrow, barely wide enough for a single car to pass. A few Dumpsters, but otherwise no signs of life. Noa tore by a set of doors identical to the ones she’d escaped through. Too dangerous to go back inside a building, though—she had a better shot out in the open.

The part of her brain that was geared solely toward survival was screaming at her to go go go … it was a familiar voice, and listening to it had gotten her through bad situations before. Noa shut down the rest of her mind and let it take over, pushing aside the other distracting thoughts flitting through. Like the possibility that there might be more kids like her in each of these buildings, laid out on cold steel tables with bandaged chests.

A sudden sharp pain in her right foot nearly sent her sprawling. Noa staggered to the nearest building. Leaning against it, she lifted her foot and dug out a jagged piece of glass embedded in her heel. She bit her lip as blood flowed freely from the wound. She could hear them getting closer. Ignoring the throb in her foot and the matching one in her chest, she pushed off the building and started running again. The alley crossed another road before continuing on between an identical pair of warehouses. Everything looked abandoned; there wasn’t a vehicle or person in sight. Where was she?

Noa chanced a look back over her shoulder. The original guard had fallen back, but five others in the same uniform and much better shape were gaining ground. At the sight of them, Noa started to despair. She didn’t even know if she was still in Boston. And there didn’t seem to be any end to this warehouse complex.

Noa shoved those thoughts away. She wasn’t the type to give up, not even when it was probably the smarter choice. She ignored the pain in her chest and foot and the shouting voices behind her. Warehouses streamed past, punctuated by more narrow alleys. She abruptly broke free of them and nearly stopped dead.

She was facing an enormous parking lot, the blacktop so shiny it looked like a pond that had iced over. The air was thick with salt and oil, the wind tugging at her now that there were no buildings to catch it. As far as she could see, there were rows of boats perched on trailers.

Noa realized where she was: a marine shipyard, dry-dock storage for boats. Off in the distance she was relieved to recognize the Boston skyline, a cluster of dark brown buildings aspiring to be skyscrapers but falling short, tapering off as they slouched west.

As if on cue, a plane roared past a few hundred feet above her head, making a final approach. Her heart leaped: South Boston, then; somewhere near Logan Airport. An area she knew relatively well, thanks to six months spent in a City Point foster home.

The realization spurred her onward. Noa darted between the boats. They were parked close together in narrow slots. Some were battered workboats, with barnacles and algae smearing their hulls. As she progressed, they increased in scale until she was threading between daysailers and trawlers, cabin cruisers and sloops. Glancing back again, she realized with relief that, at least for the moment, she’d managed to lose them.

The voices sounded like they were spreading out—the search would slow them down. And it was unlikely they’d be able to check every boat for her.

There was also no way she could keep running. As her adrenaline reserves dissipated, her muscles started to protest. She felt weak, exhausted. The pain in her chest had escalated until it felt like someone was punching each breath into her, and her foot killed. She finally slowed to check it: bleeding, but not too badly. Despite the core heat she’d built up running, she was shivering. She needed to find real clothes, and some shoes. And if she kept going, she risked charging straight into one of her pursuers.

Noa scanned the boats, looking for one that would suit her purposes. A hundred feet away towered a miniyacht, with a sleek cherry hull and a dive platform hanging low over the back of the trailer.

She raced toward it.

Without breaking stride, Noa grabbed the rung of the ladder leading to the dive platform. She slung herself up and over the gunwales and dropped to the deck. She lay there, keeping very still as she tried to control her breathing.

Footsteps approaching. They suddenly slowed. Noa stopped breathing entirely as they paused. The deck of the boat was ten feet off the ground; she could hear someone panting just below her.

Where the hell did she go? a guy gasped.

Damned if I know. The second voice was deep and guttural, the accent more Rhode Island than Boston. Wicked fast for a little girl. How’d she get out?

"Jim was supposed to