“Initiation?” he asked. “Does it involve whipped cream? Please tell me it involves whipped cream….”

“Noah.”

“Yeah?” He stopped talking long enough for me to say a single word.

“Goodbye.” I flipped the phone closed and shuddered again at its freakishly bright color. Still, I knew that I’d be facing something far, far worse as soon as I looked up from the pink.

“Well, are you going to stand there, or are you going to help me?” Chloe had the amazing ability to somehow cram a different insulting undertone into every single word she spoke.

“Hello?” Chloe said, hands on her hips.

“Fine,” I grumbled. “Let’s just get this over with.”

At Brooke’s orders, Tara had abandoned me, leaving me alone with Chloe as the others went on their merry way to do whatever mentally stimulating activities cheer-spies did in their off time. The only bright side was that Chloe had been forced to let me into her lab, and the tech geek in me was practically salivating over the wall-to-wall, floor-to-floor technohaven workshop.

“Once I get the audio set up, we’ll talk hacking,” she said.

Part of me wanted to tell her that I didn’t “talk hacking” with anyone. I just did it. Toby Klein worked alone. The other part of me was way too curious as to what exactly was involved with setting up the audio and whether or not the four computers set up in the lab had government access.

Chloe popped the digi-disk into a player that looked surprisingly like an actual CD player. After getting a look at her powder puff decoder, I’d expected something with a bit more pizzazz.

I stopped myself. Had I actually just thought the word pizzazz? Clearly I’d passed the point of no return a few handsprings back. My pizzazz instincts, as completely mortifying as they may have been, weren’t entirely wrong, because the next instant, Chloe picked up a couple of sparkly picture frames (glam shots of Chloe and Brooke inside both) and arranged them on either side of the player.

I raised an eyebrow at her in question.

“Filter,” she said. “Each frame has its own program, and they’re linked wirelessly to the player. The pink one filters out white noise. The purple one focuses in on human voices.”

“How…” I stopped myself from asking the question the second it tried to leave my mouth, and Chloe immediately and without pause made me devoutly wish I’d stopped any of it from escaping in the first place.

“My lab,” she said sharply. “My secrets.” She smiled Brooke’s patented no-teeth nonsmile. “Your job is hacking: codes, firewalls, security systems. That’s all you. Technology and equipment design? That’s me.”

And the line was thus drawn in the sand.

Daintily, Chloe pressed a button on the player, adjusted the volume, and then turned to face me again. “So,” she said. “Infotech.”

In the background, I could hear a conversation on the disk, as clear as if the people were standing in the room with us. “Good morning, Mr. Hayes. Coffee, black.” The sound of a ceramic coffee cup set down on a wooden desk.

“Most of the audio is garbage,” Chloe said. “If and when we hit something good, I’ll know it.”

And you won’t, her tone taunted me.

“So,” I said, forcing myself not to physically assault her; I had a feeling that would be frowned upon. “Infotech.”

“I pulled up the basic file,” Chloe said, and she literally tossed a pile of papers at me. “They’ve got almost nothing uploaded to the internet. If you can get within their wireless range and access the company password, you can file share, but you probably won’t find anything of interest unless you dig around a little, and you probably won’t be able to dig around unseen. These guys secure websites for a living. They developed the beta version of the program the government uses to safeguard their databases.”

I shrugged. “And look how well that’s turning out for the government,” I said. “Infotech’s system can’t be half as secure as the CIA’s—they can’t possibly have the funding. If these guys can find a way into the government’s files, I can find a way into theirs.”

“Without them noticing?” Chloe was nothing if not skeptical.

“I’ll ghost it,” I said, not caring if she knew what I meant by the term or not. I hadn’t learned computers by the books. I didn’t spend much time talking to other hackers. Every piece of terminology I used was my own, completely made up in the mind o’ Toby. “I’ll piggyback on a few of their usernames simultaneously and use their traffic to mask my own. Then I’ll set up a new username, and use its traffic to divert attention away from what I’m doing.”

“And what will you be doing?”

“Other than accessing their files and looking for the program they’re using to hack us?”

Was it weird that I was suddenly referring to the U.S. government as “us”?

“Finding the program won’t fix everything,” Chloe said.

“Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll find the program. You worry about the rest. I do the hacking and break the codes. The technological innovations, those are yours, right?” I couldn’t help it—I tried a no-teeth smile of my own.

Chloe opened her mouth to say something, and given the look on her freakishly symmetrical face, it probably would have been something I would have been forced to make her regret, but the audio track had picked up again, and we both stopped to listen.

“Mr. Gray here to see you, sir.”

Gray. As in Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray.

“I understand you’re meeting with one of our clients this afternoon,” the voice I identified as Gray said. “He’s concerned about the settlement we’ve drawn up. Most of his concerns with the settlement can be easily assuaged by putting him in contact with our claims department. The officer in charge is working out of his home today, but if you could tell the client that he can be reached at this number, that would be wonderful.”

There was a faint sound then. Paper being handed from one man to the next? Immediately, I began practically salivating for that paper. I wanted to know what it said. Was it actually a phone number? Was it a message that Mr. Gray, as a partner in a nefarious law firm, had known better than to speak out loud? Which “client” were they talking about? Heath Shannon, perhaps?

For a long moment, there was silence. Then the secretary-type person offered Gray a coffee, and as he declined, I could hear someone flip open a cell phone and type in a number—presumably the one Gray had just handed his cohort. So much for my secret message theory.

For about fifteen seconds after the interaction ended and miscellaneous office noises filled the tape, Chloe and I just stared at each other.

“Your pores are the size of land mines,” she said finally.

“The twins must be slipping.”

I gathered the papers she’d thrown at me. I could look at them just as well at home as here.

“We aren’t done here,” she said. “There’s still more audio, and you have no idea where Infotech is, let alone how you’re going to get close enough to enter into their wireless system. You don’t even know what kind of program you’re looking for, and we’re going in first thing tomorrow.”

I waved the papers in front of her face. “My pores and I will figure it out.” With all the dignity I could muster, I grabbed my pink cell phone, pulled down my cheer shorts (which had inched their way up my freshly waxed thighs), and asked Chloe one final question.

“Which way’s the exit?”

CHAPTER 17

Code Word: Gossip

The Quad was a frigging labyrinth. Even after Chloe haughtily pointed out the exit, I’d still somehow managed to get turned around. But I was not, repeat NOT, going to go back and ask for a clarification of her directions. I wasn’t an idiot, and I wasn’t about to risk feeding Chloe’s obvious superiority complex any more than I already had.

“You’re pissed at Chloe. And lost.”

Years of training had me whirling around to face the owner of the voice. As I turned, I shifted my weight back on my heels, sinking into a ready position.