Fake

  When I was done, Axel had already tossed my old clothes into the fountain. We were making a mess, but maybe some hobos could use some new clothes. I felt bad since they were Corey’s. I kept Avery’s business card, tucking it into my pocket. I still wanted to hang onto that.

  Marc looked at me when we’d returned to the group, quietly asking if I was okay. I guess he knew what I’d been through. I waved him off, trying to tell him it didn't matter. We had to get out of there.

  The fact that there had been bugs at all left me feeling creepy-crawlies all over even now. I was scratching behind my ears and around my neck, thinking there was one left.

  The boys lead the way to a black car. Did it belong to them? I didn’t recognize it from the weeks I’d known them. Axel held the front passenger door open and looked at me pointedly, silently telling me where to sit.

  Marc never said a word the entire time. He avoided my gaze, impossible to read.

  We took off in silence with Axel driving and Marc in the back seat.

  Kevin had split up from us, walking in the other direction. Had he parked further down the road? He was supposed to go to some hospital. I wondered why they were going there instead of some Academy bunker. Didn’t the Academy have a safe house or something? Some sort of fortress so kidnappers couldn’t just grab Corey?

  Or was it that the hospital was a public place with security and internet and Corey could do his thing in relative safety? Maybe it was good protocol thing. I’d have to figure it out later.

  It was only four in the morning, and only a fraction of the homes around us had lights on in the windows as Axel drove through downtown Charleston. Some people were getting up for the morning jog, the morning coffee, the morning commute. We were on our way to find Dead Randall, the only link we had to this core, whatever it was.

  “Where are we going?” I asked from the front seat, tugging at my pants. They were too tight and kept sliding down over the underwear. “Are we going to check out Randall’s house?”

  “We’re going to look in for a little while,” Axel said. “We’ll figure out where he worked. Maybe he had this core in a warehouse or somewhere else. First, we need to figure out what a core is. When we find the core, we’ll keep an eye on it. We find these guys getting close to it, and we’ll jump them.”

  “That’s our plan?” I asked, smirking. “Jump them?”

  “We’ve got to find it first,” Axel said. “Then we’ll figure it out from there. For all we know, this core could be a nuke. Or a code that breaks into National Security. We’ll have to be careful.”

  “I’ve got Corey figuring it out,” Marc said. He sat in the back with his head bowed, staring at his cell phone. He typed into it. “I told him this was Murdock’s Core and it has his Guard Dog security packet. He’s going to fill me in when they figure it out what it might be.”

  “If it’s Murdock’s Core, why aren’t we chasing a Murdock?” I asked.

  Axel shrugged. “The email said Randall, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Marc said. “Randall Jones. The only thing in the email. No Murdock.”

  That was kind of odd. Why call it Murdock at all? “How is Corey involved anyway?” I asked. “They said something about he wrote the security packet… doohickey thing?”

  “He’s got some security software he wrote,” Marc said. “But it’s freeware. Free software. It’s a pretty sophisticated cryptic thing. Apparently whoever has this Murdock’s Core, they used his software for the security. So they assume Corey could hack it.”

  “They said Corey could figure out the password, too,” I said. “They thought Corey could do it quickly. Can he really break into it if they’d gotten the real Corey?”

  “Give Corey a few minutes,” Marc said, his eyes lit up and he lifted his head. “All I gave him was a name, and he’s already on the trail for what this thing is. He’ll be able to find out more. He might even be able to give us some good info about that cell phone once Kevin gets there with it.”

  Axel took state road 17 out of downtown, crossed the bridge and headed north toward Mt. Pleasant. Old Historical Charleston neighborhoods cleared and we got into the suburban sprawl on the other side of the bridge.

  Before we got too far, Axel’s phone on the dash lit up and he touched the surface to answer. “What’s up, Corey?”

  “Hey guys,” Corey’s voice came through on speaker. “Looks like this Murdock’s Core is a burner phone service. Sort of.”

  I sat up. He’d figured it out so quickly? I wanted to ask how he did it, but didn’t want to interrupt. I turned back to look at Marc, who only grinned proudly and mouthed something that I thought was, “Better than I thought.”

  “What do you mean, sort of?” Axel asked.

  “More sophisticated. It’s a service not even on the Feds’ radar. Includes an eight-hundred number you dial into that keeps track of your phone numbers and voice mails at a central server. Technically, you can use any cell phone you’d like. If you want to be super careful, you can switch out SIM cards and it keeps track of your business contacts and lets you keep the same number, it just changes your ID number on your phone regularly. Better for business if customers don’t have to keep up with new numbers all the time. There’s more to it, but that’s all I can get without looking either at one of their cell phones they use, or figuring out where the core is. But the core is a central server that keeps the usernames and passwords required for accounts and manages the service.”

  “So it’s an illegal cell service they want access to?” Marc asked. “This is illegal, right?”

  “All cell phones are required to be regulated and tracked, at least in the States. Whoever this Randall is, he might be the owner or something. Someone has to run it. But yeah, one-hundred percent illegal operation if the government can’t regulate it. What I’m not sure about is how exactly they’re hitting cell phone towers for service and getting away with it without being traced by the FCC or the NSA. I mean, I had to hack into some deep networks to even figure out this much.”

  “Thanks Corey,” Marc said.

  “Is Kayli there?” Corey asked.

  “I’m here,” I said. Hearing Corey was good for me. He was safe. Had they told him what had happened to me? Or to Brandon?

  “Just wanted to say hello,” he said. “You okay?”

  Corey was being cute. “Yeah,” I said, my heart lifting at his concern, even if I wasn’t sure exactly how much they’d told him.

  “We’ve got her,” Marc said. “Don’t worry.”

  “Okay. Going to work on the cell phone when Kevin brings it. I’m tracking the messages I’ve gotten from them. Their emails are hard to trace because they’re from a different burner cell. Seems like they were all sent from the same phone, and it was bought here with cash, and these IPs don’t have any other activity. Their GPS signals that were stored are public places and random. They’re very careful.”

  “Do your best. Call with updates,” Axel said before he hung up. “Let’s find this Randall Jones. That’ll get us closer to finding out where this core is.” He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t like that we’re looking for something illegal.”

  “Maybe we should give these kidnappers access,” Marc said. “And then let them all go down with the Feds.”

  “Maybe,” Axel said. “We need to get ourselves out of this mess, first. We may need to check out who is involved with this service. Anyone who needs an underground cell phone might be someone we’re interested in checking out.”

  Marc smirked. “It’ll be like an Academy payday.”

  My eyes widened, and I looked over at Axel, who was unreadable at first, but his eyes were shifting from the road, to the dash, to the mirrors and then over to me. When he met my gaze, he held it for a long time. There was a slight shake of his head. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”

  “What am I thinking?” I asked, because I hadn’t made the connection yet. I only heard Academy payday and I was wondering how uncovering a core
would be that. I thought they didn’t get paid.

  “The Academy won’t use the cell phone service,” he said. “But imagine who would use such a service? Someone who wouldn’t want to be overheard enough to risk possible jail time for a conversation over the phone.”

  I hated to play Devil’s advocate, but I had to. “We don’t know why they would need one,” I said.

  “So it’ll be better if the Academy investigates, wouldn’t it?” he asked.

  I wanted to say it wasn’t our business what they were doing, but at the same time, maybe I was wrong. Simply having an illegal cell phone line, and buying into it, was a good indicator of corruption. I wondered if the Academy would keep such a service for themselves though. Or was it too great a risk to be discovered that way. I mean, right now there were bad guys looking to get access to this core they discovered. The Academy seemed, from what I understood, to operate in plain sight using everyday items that blended in. Anything sophisticated attracted attention.

  The car was quiet as Axel drove on. Mt. Pleasant didn’t have a mountain on it at all, as far as I knew. The highest point in Charleston was any of the buildings downtown. Still, Mt. Pleasant was a collection point for the high-end middle class and wealthy who preferred suburbs over islands and couldn’t get one of the limited homes downtown. Mt. Pleasant homes and shops were newer, the roads well maintained and without need of historical permits.

  After what seemed like an eon of staring out the windshield, Axel pulled into one of the ritzier subdivisions. These homes had garages at ground level, and the homes were built on top of the garages. Being close to the water, it served as protection against hurricanes and flooding.

  He slowed through the neighborhood, gliding through the streets. A few blocks later, he made a circle, selected a house and parked in the driveway.

  Was he insane? “Someone’s going to see us,” I said.

  “This house is for sale. There’s a sign in the front yard.”

  Oh. “The neighbors will see us.”

  “The neighbors are asleep. It’s four a.m. Let’s go.”

  Marc hopped out and opened my door before I got to it. I got out, clutching at my pants to keep them on my hips correctly. He closed the door quietly and turned, following Axel without saying anything. He even avoided my eyes.

  Oh god. I paused in the driveway, watching them walk to the street and turn. I started off slowly, creating distance between us. Was he mad at me? Why wasn’t he talking? It wasn’t that he hadn’t talked before, it was that something was suddenly on his mind and he seemed to be avoiding only me. Or was I being paranoid? No. His lips were tight, face grim.

  I tramped after Axel, too afraid to address Marc and start a scene. Maybe he was feeling the edge because Brandon was missing. Had I ever seen Marc truly upset before? What was he like?

  Did he blame me for all of this?

  “Where are we going?” I asked. “Is this his house?” I didn’t understand why we parked somewhere and left the car.

  “No,” Axel said. “We’re just borrowing it.”

  “I thought we were going after Randall. Which house is his? And what are we looking for?”

  “If we find out who he is, how he died, it might lead us to these German guys. Maybe they killed him and left clues. Crime scenes usually are riddled with them. And if we find this core in the meantime, hopefully we can do the right thing by it. First thing, though, is to make sure Brandon is safe.”

  I followed the guys to a greenhouse in the next cul-de-sac over from where we’d parked. The house was similar to all the others, stacked on top of a garage. There were low hedges, and a brick mailbox and an American flag hanging from a pole in the front lawn. If Randall Jones had been hosting an illegal cell phone service, you wouldn’t have been able to tell from his front lawn.

  “This it?” I asked. It didn’t look very expensive, not compared to some other properties I’d seen elsewhere in Mt. Pleasant. I don’t know why, but when the German asked to find this core and get it, I expected it was from someone rich. Really rich. Why get something if not to sell it for money?

  Axel and Marc stood close to a palm tree planted on the corner of a property a block down the street from where we’d parked. Their heads moved in opposite directions, checking out the neighborhood, the layout. I imagined they were doing spy calculations to figure out the best move. The lights were off in the Jones’s home. The garage doors were closed. The property looked still, uninhabited.

  “Is there a Mrs. Jones?” I asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” Axel said. “I think so, or else this property would be up for sale after he died.”

  “Are there little Jones children?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “What do we know?”

  Axel turned his head toward me. His dark eyes met mine, and he challenged me that way. “I know we should be quiet and take a look around.” He headed to the garage.

  “We can’t just barge in,” I said.

  “We don’t have time to do this the right way,” he said. “We have to do it the quick way.” He hunched a little, sneaking up toward the house and trying to be discreet about it.

  Marc followed him close, a shadow. He still hadn’t said a word, not even a breath about the mission we were on. Was he being quiet because he had to be or because he was angry at me? Why wouldn’t he look at me? This was going to drive me crazy. I’d have asked flat out but it really wasn’t the time to get into a fight. I swallowed back my bubbling fear and tried to stick close to them.

  The Jones’s front porch was on a second story balcony with staircases leading up. The garage doors had a single normal door between them, making a lower level entryway. It was tucked behind the staircase that lead to the porch. Stupidest design ever. Someone could hide underneath the staircase and break into the garage.

  Guess where Axel headed?

  “There could be a security alarm,” I whispered to him as I followed.

  “Quiet,” Marc said, surprising me by responding at all. “And stay close. Go where I do.”

  Axel walked up to the door, jiggled the handle and waited. He did it again and then waited again. He examined the door closer, pulling out a keychain with a flashlight attached. He aimed it at the door, examining the lock.

  I turned around, scouting the area. We were shadowed by the staircase, and there weren't any front lights on. I angled to keep myself between his light and any neighbors that might be snooping.

  Breaking and entering was worse than getting caught pickpocketing. I was on edge, waiting for an alarm. I turned, trying to look the other way when Marc materialized in front of my face, closer than he’d been before. My heart leapt.

  “Ugh,” I whispered. “You scared the sh—”

  “Shh,” he said.

  “Come on,” Axel whispered.

  I turned, and Axel had the door open. He was holding it and gesturing I should enter. He was going to play courteous Southern gentleman now? I smothered a groan and walked in. Maybe he wanted me to get shot first if the widow got spooked and came down with a loaded gun.

  The garage was wider than I thought with two cars parked on either side, one was a minivan. Yup. Family. There were kids. Shit.

  “We can’t be here,” I whispered. I wasn’t going to spook some mom when her husband just died and with kids here.

  Axel moved forward, close enough that his chest pressed against my back. His hand slipped over my mouth, covering it.

  His breath fell against my ear. “Listen,” he whispered. “We’re going to get some information and slip out again, but I can’t do it if you’re talking. I need you as quiet as possible. Please.” He wasn’t fooling any more. He was begging.

  I nodded against the hand pressed against my mouth. When he released me, he moved to the lead. I looked behind us. Marc was at the door, holding it open, keeping an eye on the street and the neighborhood, being a lookout.

  There were boxes stacked together on shelving near the back. Trash
bins were against the wall. There was old workout equipment in the corner. The cars were newer models, the inside of the minivan was spotless but there was a car seat. There were a couple of bicycles, one with training wheels, and a tricycle.

  Axel tucked his head around the other car, a smaller SUV. He tried the handle, no luck: it was locked. He was lucky the alarm wasn’t set to super sensitive.

  He was so quiet, he could have been floating. He went over to the boxes, examining the different ones. He pointed to me, and then pointed to the trash cans.

  I shook my head. No way was I digging through trash.

  He pointed again, more insistent this time and I scowled. Kayli Winchester went from pickpocket to trash diving. Not exactly a promotion.

  The trash bins were big, blue, and there was a recycling bin next to it. I tried the recycling first, old cans, newspapers, glass wine bottles…a lot of them. Poor lady. Her husband was dead. Couldn’t blame her. For that reason, though, I had to leave the recycle bin alone. The cans and bottles made it impossible to move much around without them clanging against each other.

  The blue bins held black trash bags. I gazed in at them, trying to figure out the contents just by looking at the outside. What was I supposed to do with these?

  I glanced back at Axel, he pulled a box down, opened it and examined the contents. He closed it again, pulled another down and then opened that one.

  I groaned. He was making noise. I listened, not hearing anything coming from the house, but not trusting my ears. Kids were a problem. They wake up easily. They move quietly and could spot us and alert their mom.

  Taking too long would get us caught. I ripped open the trash bag on top, examining. This one was filled with typical kitchen garbage, the second one had a collection of smaller, transparent bags. If I had a home office, I’d have those clear small trash bags in my trash bin. This was probably a winner. I lifted the entire thing out and closed the bin again. They weren’t going to miss it. Job done.