“Toby!” Noah had never sounded so happy to hear from me. “Where are you? Did they take you to their secret lair in room 117? Are you doing secret cheerleader things? Did anyone mention me?” He lowered his voice. “Are they wearing those shorts that sayCHEERon the butt?”
I couldn’t help but glance down at the back of my own shorts.
“Noah, put Mom on the phone.”
“Answer the question,” Noah said, completely impervious to what should have been a very clear and demanding order. “Does it sayCHEER? On their butts?”
“Tell Mom I won’t be home for dinner,” I said. “We’re doing this … uhhhh … this initiation thing tonight.”
That, apparently, was the wrong lie to tell Noah.
“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 wordpizzazz? 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 thesecond 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 thegovernment,” 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.”
