Dead Man's Switch
Page 8
So weird. Taking instructions from someone who was dead and had been waiting for King. Weird, too, thinking that if King hadn’t found this, Blake would have patiently waited for centuries to speak to the first person who opened it—like a genie waiting for someone to rub the lamp.
“You’ll see that I’ve got a couple of programs open on the screen,” Blake said. “Don’t rearrange the windows for the programs, okay? I’ll be sending you to different places, and you’re going to need to be slow and careful in each program.”
King found himself nodding.
“And be patient,” Blake said. Well, Blake’s video recording. “You’re going to be using the iPhone’s hotspot for the Internet connection. I’ve got it running through a proxy server so no one can get this physical location. It means you’ll be safe the entire time you’re on the computer. But it’s not going to have the Internet speed that I’d like.
“So first, go to Settings on my iPhone. Turn on personal hotspot. It won’t take long for this computer to detect the wireless and join automatically. While that’s happening, click pause on this video and click play on the video below on the computer screen. It’s a piece of surveillance video I found when I hacked into the prison’s servers. I think it will speak for itself.”
Blake hesitated. “And King, I’m sorry you have to see this. But I didn’t have much choice. And I knew you’d need to see it yourself to believe it.”
How many hours, King wondered, had Blake spent setting all of this up? And then there was the bigger question. Why? What had Blake known that made him think sending messages from the dead would be needed? What had even led Blake to checking out surveillance video?
King knew there was only one way to find out. By listening to Blake.
He put Blake on pause. Blake’s face froze in a distorted position.
King clicked play on the other video.
Because Blake had said it was from the prison, it was an easy guess that it was one of the corridors that led to prison cells.
For a few seconds, there was no movement except for the digital numbers that showed the time of the recording.
23:12:12.
23:12:13.
23:12:14.
Military time on a 24-hour clock. That meant the video King was watching had been taken at 12 minutes past 11 at night.
Someone stepped into the view of the camera, walking away from the camera so that the person’s face was not in view.
It didn’t matter to King.
He knew that person’s walk. Solid, with a very slight side-to-side action. And he knew that person’s silhouette. Also solid. Wide at the shoulders.
He’d known that person’s solid walk and solid silhouette all his life. He could remember riding on those solid shoulders as a boy, holding on to that person’s ears as if they were the reins of a pony. He could remember that person laughing along with King during those magical moments, during the years when his father laughed often and loud and without hesitation.
Mack.
King felt his hand move toward the keypad to click pause. Whatever was going to happen next, he didn’t want to see.
But how could King leave now? How could King snap the computer lid shut and wonder for the rest of his life why Blake wanted him to watch this video?
King let the video run, aware that he was breathing shallow and loud and in short gasps, as if he were in physical pain because of the dread that filled him.
In the video, King’s father stopped in the hallway at a cell door. He reached out and punched in a password to the cell door. Then he turned and walked toward the camera, not glancing up. Just walked and left the prison cell behind him.
The video kept running.
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.
A huge guy with a shaved head stepped out of the cell. The man hesitated in the doorway. Then, in prison coveralls, he turned and walked away from the camera, his shoulders twice as wide as King’s father’s solid shoulders.
King glanced at the digital numbers again.
23:13:02.
23:13:03.
23:13:04.
Then the giant prisoner was out of sight of the fixed camera position, and the hallway was empty again.
23:13:05.
23:13:06.
23:13:07.
That’s where the video ended.
From 23:12:12 to 23:13:07. Less than one minute had passed.
But enough time for King to witness that his father had committed a federal crime by releasing an unsecured prisoner.
CHAPTER 22
King listened to the thud-thud-thud of his heartbeat fill his ears as he stared at the computer screen. Both video windows were paused. Blake’s distorted face filled one. The empty prison hallway filled the other.
Those two squares were one above the other. A larger square filled the rest of the screen to the left of those two squares.
King expected the thud-thud-thud to lessen. It didn’t. He realized that his life had just shifted. Again. He’d lost his mother. Physically. But at least he had memories to cherish. He’d truly just lost his father. He’d lost his father in a way that was far worse than losing his mother. His father was still there physically, but King now saw him in an entirely different way and didn’t think he’d ever be able to recover the trust he’d just lost.
His palms hurt.
He looked down and realized he’d been clenching his fists so hard that a couple of his fingernails had cut through the skin.
King let out a long breath.
Then, with a coldness in his heart, he began to play the video with Blake again.
“Sorry, man,” Blake said. “I wish it wasn’t so. But it gets worse. Otherwise the dead man’s switch wouldn’t have been triggered. And you wouldn’t be here, watching a video that I set up just in case it got worse. King, you can’t walk away.”
“Yes, I can,” King said to the screen.
“Because if you do, everything on this computer is going to be released to the world in 24 hours. If you want to save your father, you’re going to have to keep going here. Because they are using your father. If you can stop them, the world will see he didn’t have any choice. If you walk away, it’s going to look like your father was and is responsible.”
Blake looked down and then up.
“So first thing you need to do is go to my website and enter a password. I had a code in place. A trigger. Once you hooked up this computer to the Internet, it sent that code to begin a 48-hour countdown, and if you don’t put the password into the website, it will leak everything to the media. Radio. Television. Newspaper. So run your mouse over the browser window that’s open to my right, which is your left. Click the mouse to bring the program to the front, then hit return. That’s all it takes.”
King felt like a zombie. He did as instructed.
The browser popped open. It brought him to a website: www.blakesdms.com. The browser window slowly filled, showing a place to log in with username and password.
“The username is your name, in lowercase,” Blake said. “L-y-o-n-k-i-n-g. That’s also the password. Once you enter it, you’ve bought yourself and your father 24 hours. Do it, King. You have less than 60 seconds on this browser window before it shuts automatically and starts the countdown.”
King’s fingers were shaky. But he managed.
“Good,” Blake said. “I know you did it because I’m still speaking to you. I’ve got this laptop set up for all of its software to self-destruct if you don’t follow my steps precisely.”
King knew he was being manipulated. Blake—or, more accurately, Blake from the past—was pressuring King to make decisions without having any time to think. But what choice did King have?
“Okay,” Blake said. “Now it’s time to tell you why I’m doing this. Forcing you to help.”
Blake leaned forward. His voice rasped a little. “I’ve been trying to outthink them, like a chess game. What I won’t know until it happens is how they might choose to g
et rid of me. It’s got to be an accident of course. Drowning is my bet. That’s how I’d play it if I were them. Make it look like I was trying to get off the island. It’s no secret that I fight a lot with my parents. Only natural that I’d run away, right?”
Blake kept leaning forward. “The people we’re dealing with are very careful. If they suspect me, then they know my computer skills. And they know what I found out. They’d be stupid to just get rid of me without finding out what I’ve left behind. They’d suspect that I’d put something in place to leak everything. And that’s why I don’t think they’d just snuff me without first finding out all that I know and what I’ve done with what I found.”
Blake smiled grimly. “The way I’d play it is find a way to get me off the island and then threaten to kill me if anything was released. But if that’s the case, I can’t trust them not to just get rid of me after they feel safe. If I tell them about the dead man’s switch, they’ll make me put in the code every 24 hours until they find a way to hack into my site and block everything. No, King, it’s got to be someone from the outside who puts together everything I put together and goes to them and tells them to release me if they want all the information. That’s going to be you.”
Blake leaned back. “Yes, King. I’m guessing there’s a small chance I’m still alive. So here’s the million-dollar question. Was there a body at my funeral? Because if there wasn’t, I promise you, they are holding me somewhere. And the clock is ticking. For you to save me and to save your father. Because half of your deal with them is for my life. And the other half of the deal is that they are going to protect your dad too from all that he’s done. So get ready to hack into your dad’s computer.”
CHAPTER 23
“Close the top browser window,” the virtual Blake said. “I don’t need to remind you, do I? The clock is ticking. I’ve got everything programmed and timed. You have 60 seconds to go to the next step, or everything starts melting here.”
King blinked a few times. He was on a roller coaster and feeling so overwhelmed that he couldn’t process it all. So it was easier to just do as directed.
“First,” Blake said, “under Applications, look for the program called Terminal. Open it now.”
Back to being a zombie again, King did it.
“Type this.”
Blake held up a piece of paper.
ssh user@[216.180.38.184]
“If you care to know,” Blake said with the paper still in view, “I’ve already tapped into your dad’s computer and opened up System Preferences. From there, I enabled Remote Login and established the authenticity of the host. To get your dad’s password, I just ran a program that rips about a thousand passwords a second until it finds a hit.”
A second piece of paper came up. Blake’s voice said, “Here’s the password.”
awsumday0810
Blake didn’t state the obvious, and it was a good thing, because quick tears flooded King’s eyes. King was born on October 8. Awsumday October 8. His dad’s password was a phrase of love for King. And now King was using it against his dad.
King forced himself to type in the password.
And suddenly he was looking at the screen that was so familiar to King whenever he saw his dad at the computer.
“You’re on,” Blake’s voice said. “What’s cool is that there is no way he can tell on his end. Even if he was on his computer right now, you can roam around like the computer is yours. I’ve set up a mirror on this end.”
King heard a flush of joy in Blake’s voice. The kid was a hacker. This was what he lived for.
“Now, open a finder window,” Blake continued. “You’ll see all his folders. Double-click on the folder marked Vacations.”
King groaned. Why did every step have to remind him of how bad it was to betray his own father? Vacations had felt like wonderful cocoons—times for just him and his dad and his mom in a special world that exactly fit the three of them. Why did every step have to remind him that he couldn’t trust any of those great memories if all along his father had been someone other than the person he appeared to be?
“All the way down inside that folder is one called Mount Rushmore. Open it.”
King did. He expected to find folders.
Instead, there were electronic bank statements.
“Open the top statement,” Blake’s voice said.
There it was. At the top. His father’s name. The date showing a 30-day period for the previous month. And a figure at the bottom of the statement showing how much money was in the account.
King had to look three times to believe what was in front of him. The amount was for $253,893.42.
CHAPTER 24
Back outside the abandoned prison, King let out a deep breath beneath the moonlight. He had felt claustrophobic inside, and his calf muscles felt strained from tiptoeing through the empty dark corridors.
When he reached the path that would take him home, a tall figure detached itself from the shadows, blocking the path.
King reacted without thinking. Flight, not fight. He spun and dashed back toward the road that led to the old prison building. Openness and speed seemed safer than trying to run through the trees and thick underbrush.
“King!” came a shout from behind him. King knew that voice. “Don’t!”
That’s when King knew who had been waiting to ambush him on the path.
His dad. Mack King.
King glanced back and saw that his dad wasn’t chasing him.
So King stopped. Forty yards separated them. At that distance, King had a good head start if Mack made a move toward him.
“We need to talk,” Mack said.
“You mean you need to lie to me?” King said.
“You were in the abandoned prison,” Mack answered. “Why?”
King was slowly moving away from his dad. He didn’t know whether he had enough distance to get away if his dad made a move for him. But really, where was King going to go? He was on an island.
“Something crazy and insane bad is happening at night. Trust no one. They will hunt you too.”
“No,” King answered. “Tell me why you followed me.”
“It’s night,” Mack said. He took a step toward King, out of some shadows, and his face became visible in the moonlight. “You snuck out of the house. Of course I would follow you.”
“Stay where you are,” King said. “Or we stop talking.”
King backed away two more steps.
“What has gotten into you?” Mack said. He took another step. “I’m asking why you snuck out and why you went into the old prison. Whatever is happening, I want to help you.”
“We are not going to have this conversation,” King said. His brain was working frantically. Where on the island was safe? He might be able to get to the road and run fast enough to find a place to hide. But then what?
The decision was taken away from King by a sudden beam of light from behind him that threw a long shadow down the path toward his father.
At the same time, another sharp circle of painfully bright light threw Mack into a silhouette, casting a shadow down the path toward King.
“Both of you,” a loud voice commanded. “Hands up and then freeze. Immediately. Or shots will be fired.”
King saw his father raise his hands. His father’s shadow looked like the outline of an elongated alien. King slowly did the same and formed a similar elongated alien back down the path toward his father.
The shadows at the ends of their arms touched as if their hands had been reaching each for the other.
When King saw that, he felt a moment of revulsion to be unified, even by a trick of light and shadow, with the man who had betrayed all that he pretended to be.
King dropped his hands. He didn’t care if he was shot for it. He wasn’t going to let that shadow mock him and his bitterness toward his father.
CHAPTER 25
“This is a serious breach,” Murdoch told Mack. “There will be some repercussions.”
“It was a lark,” Mack said. “Kids do stupid things. Ask King. He’ll tell you it was just a prank.”
“It’s not that simple,” Murdoch said. “Once you knew he was out after curfew, your responsibility was to call security, not follow him and break curfew yourself.”
“Tell him, son.” Mack was in the front passenger seat. He turned sideways to look back at King. “You were goofing around, breaking into the old prison.”
“Goofing around?” Murdoch said. He held up the closed Macbook Air. “I think it’s a little more than that. We’ll need to know why King had this with him.”
When the prison guards had frisked both of them, they’d discovered the Macbook Air that King had tucked into his belt at his back, hiding it beneath his shirt as he left the old prison building.
Murdoch also twisted sideways to look in the backseat. “We’ll need a little help from you on this, King. It’s got a password. How do we access the computer?”
King said nothing from the backseat of the Jeep. Even now, much as he felt bitterness against his father, King couldn’t quite take that last step to let the warden know what King had discovered.
“I wish I could tell you,” King said. “I tried a few passwords. And then something came up on the screen that said if the next attempt was wrong, a computer program would kick in and erase everything on the computer.”
There. That had just purchased some time. The warden was going to be very, very careful with that computer and would probably need to bring in some experts to see what to do next.
“Then tell me,” Murdoch said. “Whose computer?”
King didn’t answer.
“How did you know it was there?” Murdoch asked.