by Stone, C. L.
Avery came up beside me, putting his palms under the frame of the window and then nodded to me. “One, two...”
“I don’t think we should,” Ethan said. “This is breaking and entering, isn’t it?”
“Three,” I said.
Avery lifted at the same time, and after a slow start, it slammed up into the frame above. I think there was a loud crack, but I was going to pretend it was old wood, and not glass.
“Kayli,” Ethan said. “Are you sure it’s okay?”
“He’s not home,” I said. “And he’d be okay if we used his house for a bit.”
“Yeah,” Avery said. “He got kidnapped so he’d want us to figure out a way to save him.” He turned to me. “Right?”
“I guess.” I wasn’t totally sure if he’d been kidnapped even. I was hoping that wasn’t the case. Maybe he’d gotten away. I felt guilty leaving him behind.
“You guess?” Ethan asked. “Are you even sure?”
I wasn’t really sure of anything anymore. All I knew was, Ethan had access to what everyone wanted, and I wanted this to be over once and for all. Even as I worked my way into Blake’s house, I was concocting a plan to figure out how I could call everyone out in the open and end it. Maybe Ethan could let them into the observatory under false pretenses and trade for Axel and the others.
It was a dangerous call. I wasn’t sure Ethan would agree, and if Alice might somehow manipulate him into not trusting me, get access to the core, and then kill off Axel anyway. By now, she had to know I had Ethan. She could lie and say that I’d been lying. “Ethan,” I said, starting to climb into the window. “Once you get in here, you need to tell me about—”
I had my foot on the floor one minute, and the next, I was shoved over, and on my back, the wind knocked out of me. For a split second, I wondered if I had passed out and collapsed. But I realized my legs were tangled up and there was a weight pressing me into the wood floor.
A body sat on my legs, a face hovering, looking down at mine, so close that in the darkness, I couldn’t tell who it was.
Hot breath fell on my neck, snapping me into action. My heart pounded as I shoved back with my butt, and then lifted an elbow, making contact.
“Chto za huy,” a strong, deep voice said in my ear. Cough. Groan. “Kayli. Fuck.”
I sat up, finding Raven clutching at his lower abdomen. He wore a wrinkled black T-shirt, dark blue jeans, and combat boots. His closely cropped brown hair flattened against his head. The tattoos along his arms and the massive guy that he was made him look scary, especially with his face contorted.
I sucked in a breath, excited and relieved at the same time. I lunged at him, not caring that I’d injured him, and threw my arms around his neck. “Raven! What the hell are you doing here?”
He grunted and wrapped a big arm around my waist, holding me to him. He lowered himself, pressing into me, until I was against the floor. He held me like that for the longest time, simply hugging me against him. “Following my little thief,” he said, the thick Russian accent filling in every syllable. “Like I’m supposed to.”
“Who is that?” Avery said from somewhere I couldn’t see above Raven. “Are we fighting him or are we happy he’s here? I can’t tell.”
“He’s fine! He’s a good guy. Sort of.” I pushed at Raven until he started to sit up. I coughed, still catching my breath, and then rose, scooting out from under him. “Did you come by yourself?” I asked. “Where’s—”
“Hey!” said a familiar, cheery voice. A moment later, Corey entered through the doorway. My heart lifted at seeing his face. It felt like a lifetime ago since I’d seen him last. He was so much like his brother, except for his happy eyes and disposition. He wore a Mario Bros. T-shirt, jeans, flip-flops. His hair had that messy, just out of bed look. At first he spotted Raven, and then Ethan and Avery in the doorway, appeared confused, and then walked further into the room until he met my eyes. He smiled big. “There you are.”
“You’ve been following me?” I asked. “For how long?”
Corey shrugged. “Since you took Mr. Anderson’s car, and he called it in. Until you ditched it. But then you went into the building and we tried to follow but...”
The noise in the abandoned building. Maybe it wasn’t hobos after all. “You didn’t tell me?”
“You had people following,” Raven said. “We were keeping an eye on them.”
“Who?” I asked. “Did you see them? And why did you tackle me?”
“Missed you,” Raven said. “I got excited.”
I squinted at him. I’d only been gone a couple of days and I get tackled?
Corey helped me up, and the moment I was standing, he gathered me in a hug. “I missed you, too.”
“Could we get inside, please?” Ethan asked. “Maybe we should sit down and straighten out this whole mess.”
A few minutes later, we were all standing around the kitchen island. I needed food, so I was raiding the freezer, finding a box of frozen chicken sandwiches.
“What are you doing?” Corey asked. “You’re stealing his food?”
“He won’t care,” I said, pretty sure he probably wouldn’t even notice. The freezer was filled with Hot Pockets and sandwiches and other frozen delights. It was a mini-grocery store on its own.
Raven opened up one of the pantries, and started to inspect the contents.
“There’s Pop Chips in those cabinets somewhere,” I said. “Find me some?”
“Pop Chips?” Corey asked.
Raven opened, and left open, half of the cabinet doors before he came across the chips. He took out two and placed them on the counter. He looked at Corey, and then at Avery and Ethan. “You want chips, too? She’ll eat a whole bag. So will I.”
I was going to say I couldn’t eat a whole bag plus the sandwiches, but then I was hungry. I needed fuel to get my brain working.
“Don’t you think we should focus?” Ethan asked. He stood facing the still open window. His eyes went to the door, to the furniture, to us, to the ceiling. He shifted on his feet. “I don’t think we should be here any longer than we have to.”
“Sure,” I said. I studied him. I got that he was uncomfortable being here, but it felt like something else was off about him, too. I started unwrapping sandwiches, at least enough for Raven and myself, and put them in the microwave. “Basically, my idea is to offer up access to your observatory and your core to Eddie and Alice in exchange for Axel and the others. We give them what they want, and then we walk away. Once we’re clear, we call in the police. There won’t be any harm to anyone, especially if we act quickly.”
Ethan stepped forward, pointing at me. “Now wait a second. We can’t prove Alice has anything to do with this. What makes you think Alice even has your friend?”
Raven sidestepped in front of me in a protective stance, but I nudged him out of the way. “Because she told me she did,” I said. I left the microwave to lean against the kitchen island, staring him in the eyes and hoping he took me seriously. “Yesterday...I think. Maybe. I’m getting my days confused, but...”
“When is the last time you slept?” Corey asked, squinting at me. He came over, and touched gently at the skin below my eye. He rubbed gently. “You’re starting to look like a raccoon.”
I slapped at his hand to push it away. “Stop that. We need to get to Axel and Brandon and...”
“Wait a second,” he said, his eyes wide. “What do you mean? Where’s Brandon?”
Uh oh. Brandon didn’t want Corey knowing about him being kidnapped. “Uh...”
“Kidnapped,” Avery said. “Bummer, isn’t it? Right after he got free the first time, he gets kidnapped again.” He bobbed his head and made a sympathetic face.
Corey’s eyes widened. “What?”
“Totes,” Avery said. “Axel and...uh...Blake, too, right?” Avery looked at me. “There’s one more, though. Max?”
“Marc,” I said, grimly, looking at the counter. “Marc. And Doyle, I think. Maybe. I’m not sure
about Blake and Doyle.”
Avery snapped his fingers and then scratched at his head. “Right. Marc. I’m starting to lose track, too. They started out kidnapping girls, and now they’re kidnapping guys. So we trade them for this core, yeah? And then the police can sort out the rest.”
Corey’s mouth was open, his eyebrow arching above one eye. “Hang on a second. So she has Brandon and Blake?”
“Yeah,” Raven said. “What’s this kidnapping?”
I tried to catch them up quickly on what had happened. They probably should have been told what was going on from the start. Maybe Brandon didn’t want him chasing after, but I thought Corey was smarter than that.
Raven grunted at the end. “We were supposed to be running around after you so you don’t do anything stupid, and trying to identify anyone that might be following you.”
“I thought you guys were at the hospital,” I said.
“We were,” Corey said. “Up until today. Last night when we got a call from Mr. Anderson saying he was going to check up on Brandon inside some house on Kiawah. He said you’d taken his car and were supposed to head to us. Only you never showed up, so we went looking for you. Kevin’s back at the hospital in case you showed up. We followed Mr. Anderson’s GPS on his cell phone. We were on your tail to Hannahan when you turned around, and then caught up with you at that building before we lost you again. The signal was hard to read after that. But where is Brandon now? With Alice or the other one?”
Did the cell phone not work because it was too close to Ethan’s tower? “Last I saw him, he was at Ethan’s house. I lost sight of him. Alice told me she had him. Actually, she told me he left me there alone. But she implied she had him, and didn’t need me anymore.” Sort of. She didn’t even imply she had him. It was just girl intuition when someone was lying. But if she thought she had Corey, then it was true she really didn’t need me anymore.
Corey’s face darkened. Raven’s did, too. They shared a look of silent conversation.
“Don’t plan anything funny,” I said. “I want to go save them, too. That’s what we’re doing. We can do it with the core.” The microwave beeped then and I took out the sandwiches.
“This is ridiculous,” Ethan said. “Really. Alice can’t be involved. She wouldn’t...”
“You told me you’ve only known her a few months,” I said. “And you married her.”
“So?” Ethan said.
“Yeah,” Raven said, his eyebrow up as he matched Ethan’s expression. “So what’s wrong with that? Sounds normal to me. In Russia, you could marry a girl the next day if you wanted. Happens all the time.”
I gave Raven the eye, for encouraging Ethan, for one, and for being weird. Russians married their girlfriends after a day? What?
“Exactly,” Ethan said. “So I’m not going to help you pin my wife for murder or conspiracy or whatever it is you’re planning. There’s no proof she’s done any wrong.”
Corey looked between the two men, looked at me and then gestured for me to be quiet. “How’d you meet her?” he asked Ethan.
Ethan seemed to calm down. “I ran into her at church. My father introduced us. I was working on my system in the steeple and while I was leaving, they were both there.”
“Had you ever seen her at that church before?”
“No,” Ethan said. “Although she said she’d been attending mass there for a while. She just moved to the neighborhood.”
“Kind of random, isn’t it?” I asked. “You bumped into her right after you were working on your project?”
Ethan scowled at me. “My father was talking to her first and introduced me. He was there to talk to the bishop in town. I was on a project that has nothing to do with underground networks like you said. I never even told her about the project and she’s never asked about it. I do a lot of work around the city and across the country. She’s never once asked about my work.”
“That’s kind of odd,” I said. I picked up a sandwich and started to eat. If I was going to argue, I needed to fill my stomach. “If I was with someone, I’d want to know about what they did for work. Especially if it was important to you.”
Raven reached over, grabbing one of the sandwiches and started eating with me. Avery shimmied over and took one from the plate.
Ethan frowned, and mumbled something. “That doesn’t mean anything. I liked that she wasn’t interested in my work.”
Corey quietly lifted his cell phone out of his pocket. He turned it on and then thumbed through the screen. After a moment of searching, he lifted it to show Ethan. “Is this her?” he asked.
Ethan studied the phone. “Yeah,” he said. “Her hair’s different, but that’s her. Is that an old picture?”
“That’s a security picture taken at an airport three months ago,” Corey said. “But the passport used to enter the country wasn’t for an Alice. It’s for an Anja.”
So Corey’s search for Alice’s face was working! I tried not to look impressed and happy we were on to something. Ethan wasn’t going to like this.
Ethan’s lips parted, and again he studied the image. “There’s got to be a mix up,” he said.
“No mix up,” Corey said. “She flew in three months ago. From Germany.”
It was my turn to stare. I dropped the second sandwich I’d started on. “Hold up,” I said, leaning against the counter. “Are you serious? Show me the picture.”
Corey turned the phone around, showing me the image. It was Alice, with the same cold eyes and the satisfied smirk that made me want to stab her in the face.
“She’s never been to Germany,” Ethan said slowly. “I don’t think so at least. She’s been here for the last six months or so. And before that she said she lived up north, somewhere near the Canadian border.”
“She doesn’t have a driver’s license,” Corey said.
“Yes, she does,” he said. “We just got married. She needed to show one to get the marriage license.”
“Did you see the marriage license?” Corey asked. “The national database didn’t show her having a driver’s license. It managed to get her passport picture, though, and then we discovered when she entered the country. It’s the only time she’s used the passport.”
Ethan fumbled for a moment. “Well, I…I don’t remember now about seeing the license. It’s probably at the house. We’ll have to get it turned in to get the certificate.”
“We should check,” Corey said. When Ethan opened his mouth to protest, Corey lifted his hand. “If you want to verify, one way or another, and clear her name, it’ll be better if we do it now, so we’re all in agreement when the police are called in. This could be mistaken identity, but if that’s true, then we need to get to the bottom of it before she’s pinned for murder.”
Ethan nodded abruptly. “That’s all I ask.”
“So,” I said. “If we’re okay with getting Axel and the others back in the meantime, I’ve got a plan.”
“I have one, too,” Corey said quietly, and turned toward the door. Raven did as well, and started walking away.
I dashed around the kitchen island, blocking the doorway. “Where are you going?”
“Out of the way, Kayli,” Corey said grimly.
“No,” I said. “You can’t just go after them.”
“I can,” he said. “This was my fault. I was the one that left my name in a security packet. They were looking for me, weren’t they?”
I nodded slowly. “But it doesn’t mean you run in and get yourself killed. If you go now, they won’t need Axel or Marc. They’ll kill them and use Brandon over your head to do what they want. Right now, they think Brandon is you. It’s the only advantage we have.”
“What advantage is that, exactly?” Corey asked. “So he gets killed in the middle of this and I don’t? How is that an advantage?”
I wasn’t sure, exactly, either. I was going on what Brandon had said. Keep Corey safe and out of the picture. Limited liabilities.
“Let me go,” Corey said. “I’l
l get them access to this...core.”
“There’s no access to get, “I said. “It’s not a real phone service.”
Corey blinked. “What is it? All the communication I read said it was.”
“She’s right,” Ethan said, stepping up beside us. “There’s no underground cell phone service. It’s a stingray interference experiment. It’s not even fully functioning. It’s to identify false tower signals. The Guard Dog security packet encrypts the signals so they bounce, or it basically double coats a phone signal in security code so it isn’t worth it for the bad guys to actually spend the time to decode. They might as well go after some easier signal.”
Corey’s jaw slackened and he stared at him. “So you weren’t creating the signals. You were borrowing them for testing your security features. Can the NSA listen in on it? Would it be illegal if the FCC and NSA couldn’t crack your code if something was masked in it?”
He nodded. “Maybe...I’m not sure. It’d be up to them to say something within the signal was illegal information and they would have to get a warrant for me to pull down the security encryption. But then, it wasn’t like anyone had access; it was in a closed beta test and only open to select people who agreed to be part of my experiment. They never knew which phone calls were encrypted and which weren’t. It would just randomly pick up a phone call signal from their line, and trace where it bounced off from, from different towers.”
“It’s why Randall Jones died,” I said. “I think… someone killed him to steal his cell phone, thinking this was that secret underground service.”
Corey scratched at his eyebrow. “It doesn’t matter now what it really is. It matters what this Eddie, and possibly Alice, think it is, and that they might be holding people against their will to gain access. We need to get the guys back before they discover it isn’t what they thought it was and kill everyone just to cover their tracks.”
