Perfect Cover (The Squad #1)(27)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“You might want to call your parents, To-bee,” Chloe advised me, condescension dripping from her tone. “You’re not going to be home for dinner.”

CHAPTER 16

Code Word: Pizzazz

Five minutes later, I added two additional firsts to my list of things I’d never done before (and desperately hoped never to do again). First, I became the owner of a limited-edition hot-pink cell phone identical to one owned by innumerable vacuous celebrities. Mine, of course, came equipped with a variety of special features, ranging from my very own electron wave accelerator to the world’s teeny-tiniest hard-core hard drive, but that didn’t make it any less pink. Secondly, for the first (and I hope only) time in my life, I did exactly what Chloe Larson had advised me to do. I picked up my nauseatingly pink cell phone and called home.

“Noah’s Love Haven, Noah speaking.” My brother answered the phone.

“Noah,” I said calmly, “I’m going to forget this ever happened. Please never answer our phone again. In fact, the whole talking thing? Not your forte, so…”

“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 say CHEER on 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 say CHEER? 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 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.”