“Relax! I’m just trying to do my job,” Bailen said. “We get one tiny break, and everyone goes on high alert.”
I stifled another laugh. I loved Jake’s protective-big-brother routine. It was fun to watch guys squirm. The first time Harlow had taken me out, I’d thought Jake was going to make him wet his pants. He’d threatened to make Harlow’s life hell if he wasn’t a perfect gentleman. And Harlow had been ever since. Sometimes I wondered if that was the only reason Harlow was always a perfect gentleman to me, but such as ass with his friends.
Bailen sidestepped Jake and turned to his computer. Several black windows with green text popped up. Bar graphs shifted up and down. “Everything seems to be in order. I’m ready for you, Kaya.”
I tensed. I can do this… I think.
“Have a seat.” He pointed over the monitors to a padded lounger. His attention briefly flicked to Jake, whose gaze followed him like a tracking beam. Bailen moved around the table toward the chair. I slid into the lounger. It hummed as the upper half reclined until I was almost lying down.
Bailen pulled three circular discs out of his pocket and peeled off the paper backing. He placed one on each of my temples, and the last at the base of my neck below my hairline. The cold surface sent shivers through me.
He strung wires over me that weighed me down and shoved me deeper into the chair. A large group, not much older than me, crowded around the table and watched like I was a viral vid on the network. A few folks as old as my parents leaned around their monitors but didn’t gather like the younger Ghosts.
Peyton pushed through the crowd and plopped down in Bailen’s chair behind the monitors. I craned in the chair to see what she was up to.
“Come to watch the mastermind at work?” Bailen asked.
“Nope. I refuse to miss a potential opportunity to gloat.”
“What is this, Pick on Bailen Day?”
Peyton smirked at Jake, like she was in on the joke.
“So this is a regular occurrence with Bailen?” I asked.
“I’ll never tell.” But Jake nodded ever-so-slightly—his silent code to me that he’d been practicing the fine art of screwing with people even though I was rusty.
Peyton leaned back in the chair with a devious expression and then tapped on the keyboard next to the computer attached directly to me.
Bailen screeched and ran to his desk. “Stop it. You’re ruining my settings.”
Seriously? It wasn’t a joke. That stuff was about to scan my brain. There was a time and place to mess with people, and while I was hooked up to a ton of equipment wasn’t it. Jake certainly took things too far sometimes, but now I’d have to keep an eye on Peyton too.
Bailen shoved her out of the chair. “Go stand over there where you won’t damage anything. You wouldn’t want to break a nail.”
“The only thing I’m going to break is you.” She took a few steps to the side, crossing her arms.
Bailen sat in his chair, pounding on the keyboard. “Almost there,” he muttered in a trance-like state.
Jake pulled up a chair on my right, grabbed my pinky, and squeezed. “See? Nothing to worry about.”
“Just do something to make me laugh,” I whispered so only he could hear.
“Ketchup.”
I snorted, then watched Bailen examine his monitors.
“You ready?” he called from behind the desk.
I sucked in a breath and nodded, too afraid to talk. Jake patted our clasped hands. There was no way I’d be doing anything without him.
Bailen hit a single key. The discs hummed to life, vibrating my head. My teeth chattered to the rhythmic hum, but it didn’t hurt. A high-pitched whine buzzed in my ears—a minor annoyance. Hushed whispers of the crowd were drowned out by the tone in my ears. I closed my eyes and breathed in slow and deep, falling into a daze. The cushy chair pulled me in. I wiggled, fighting the wave of exhaustion. When the whine and vibration stopped, I opened my eyes.
Without moving my head, I focused on Bailen. His fingers flew over the keyboard while he fixated on the monitors. The computers beeped rapidly.
That couldn’t be good.
The crowd glanced between me and the monitors, confirming my worst suspicions. I had a faulty tracker, a stick of dynamite in my brain with an unknown length of fuse. It was a realization that should have terrified me, and yet the finality seemed infinitely better than the authorities’ tracker diagnostics. A broken tracker presented possibilities I’d never thought possible.
“Kai.” Jake’s quiet tone drew my attention. “Don’t think about them. It’s just you and me. Nothing to worry about.”
He was right. It was the two of us. That was all I needed.
When the keys stopped their rhythmic clicking, Bailen peered over the screens. “The data is still uploading, but I think we got what we need. If not, we can get more later.” He slid around the desk and began unwinding the massive tangle of wires. Even though the scan was harmless, I took a deep breath, relieved it was over. I didn’t have any answers yet, but I no longer had the uncontrollable urge to find them. Where the authorities created problems, the Ghosts were working toward solutions. What these tests might show was potential knowledge the network could never give me.
Jake stood up and released my pinky. “All right, show’s over.” He pushed his arms out, shooing away the crowd of people. One more thing to add to my growing list of reasons why I couldn’t be here without Jake. He knew exactly what I needed without asking.
Everyone cleared the area, whispering as they went—only Jake, Bailen, and Peyton remained. I sat up in the chair, letting my legs dangle over the side. The wires draped over me like a heavy blanket.
“Wait, Kaya. Stop moving.” Bailen waved his arms frantically then knocked me back into the chair with a surprising jolt. “You’re going to tangle the wires.”
“Oh, sorry.” As he untangled the wires at my feet, I sucked in a deep breath that seemed to last forever.
“Now you can sit up,” he said, removing the final one.
I exhaled, thankful that the hard part was done. “What about these?” I pointed to the disks still stuck to my skin.
“Let me get those.” He moved in so close, his warm breath beat on my cheek. I pressed into the chair, trying to put some space between us before my face erupted with color. He peeled them away from my skin, like a Band-Aid.
Clutching the tender spot on my temple, I noted Jake’s concerned-big-brother expression. “Are you going to be okay? I have some work to take care of, but if you need me, I can stay.”
“I’ll be fine. Go take care of your stuff.”
“You sure?” He eyed Bailen, who stood by Peyton behind the monitors.
“Yeah. I’m fine. Really.”
Jake tilted his head ever-so slightly, silently asking if I was afraid to say I was scared out loud.
I was thankful for the extra out but waved him off. “I want to see what they learned from my tracker. Besides, we need Bailen in one piece… for now at least.”
His lips curled into a half-smile, indicating he had ideas stewing on how next to catch Bailen in a gullible moment. “Okay. I’ll catch up with you later.” With a quick wink, he left me alone with Bailen and Peyton.
I hopped off the chair and joined Bailen in front of the screens.
“I can’t believe there’re two of you,” he muttered under his breath.
“What was that?” I didn’t try to hide the smile forming.
He grit his teeth. “Nothing.”
Bailen returned his attention to two monitors containing multiple black windows. Each one had scrolling green text, while a few others had maps of the city with numerous blinking red dots.
“So what’d you find out?” I asked.
“Unfortunately, nothing yet. It’s going to take a while for the data to process. We might get a preliminary view in a few minutes.” Bailen pointed to the screen with the black windows.
“What’s the rest of this stuff?” I asked,
indicating the four large monitors with the map and blinking dots.
“That is TROGS.”
“Oh, here we go.” Peyton rolled her eyes. “Kaya, I suggest you brace yourself.”
“For what? I don’t know what a TROGS is.”
Bailen rubbed his hands together in excitement and plopped in the chair. “Of course you don’t. It’s a secret. But one day, everyone will know who is responsible for this fabulous tech.”
“Oh, please. We’d be in serious trouble if the authorities found out about TROGS. But if it makes you feel better, I’ll make you a trophy out of cable ties.”
“Whatever, Pey. You’re just jealous you aren’t going to get any of the glory.”
“Ha! Don’t make me gag. Then again, the result of that might be more interesting than TROGS.”
“Not even close. But it would make you more entertaining.”
“You wish you knew the meaning of that word.”
“At least I know what a dictionary is.”
It was like a ping pong match as they hurled insults at increasing intensity. When the insults reached lightning speed, I yelled, “Hold on a sec.”
They both stopped mid-sentence.
“Who cares who invented it? What the heck is it?”
“This is important,” Bailen said with a hurt expression. “We should all care about it.”
He opened his mouth to continue, but I cut him off. “If it’s so important, then you can explain it.”
Peyton choked down a laugh. “She has a point.”
“Fine, we’ll settle this later.” His face lit up as he focused on the monitors. “TROGS is an acronym standing for Tracker Redirecting Off-Grid Ssystem.”
I blinked, trying to process the words.
“It’s phase one of our plans. All of the Ghosts are what we call off-grid. It’s how we hide in plain sight.” He paused. “Well, for our purposes, anyway. The authorities see something else entirely.”
“Why build all this? Couldn’t you just use a radio wave generator?” I asked.
“While a radio wave generator can block the signal, which is part of TROGS, there’s nothing to stop the authorities from being alerted due to the tracker signal being interrupted. We needed something to keep the authorities off our backs.”
“So you tricked them? How?” After everything the authorities had put me through, raising a little hell for them was something I could get behind. It was exciting to think that we didn’t just have to accept the pain because that was how things were. There was another way.
The right side of his mouth pulled up into a devious half-grin. “The tracker, under normal circumstances, outputs a signal anyone can track, right?”
“Yeah, that’s common knowledge.”
“I hijacked the signal and told it to report what I want the authorities to see.” I scrunched my nose, and he must have picked up on my confusion. “Take me, for example.” He pointed to a blinking dot on a map display on one of the monitors. “Right now, if the authorities were to ping my chip, they’d see I was at the gym.” He pointed to another blinking dot. “And Peyton is at the salon getting her hair done.”
“Fat chance.” Peyton whacked Bailen on the head before swiping an apple off the desk. “I wouldn’t be caught dead in a salon. Your snazzy code is just a tad unrealistic.” She repeatedly tossed the apple in the air and caught it. “And I hope you aren’t boring her with all your techno nerd babble.”
I couldn’t help but smile. Bailen had some serious genius level intelligence. He’d taken the authorities’ tech and had thrown it back in their faces. It sounded a little like something Dad might do—find a way to work the system to his advantage while staying within the laws. Of course, if Bailen got caught, he’d be executed for treason.
“No,” I said. “I find it fascinating.”
“Right,” spat Peyton. “There is absolutely nothing fascinating about my brother.”
“Brother?”
She rolled her eyes and continued tossing the apple. Bailen reached for it midair, but she beat him to it. Then, as if to rub it in, she leaned close to his face and took a giant bite out of it.
“Hey, that was mine,” he said with a slight whine.
“Not anymore.” She took another large bite, sidestepping his second attempt to swipe the piece of fruit.
“But—”
“I’m sorry, were you saying something important?” She waved the apple in his face but yanked it away as he made another grab for it.
“If I’m boring you so much, why don’t you leave? No one is forcing you to stay.”
“Good point.” She bent over him, took one more giant bite from the apple then, jogged from the room.
Stifling a laugh, I asked, “You going to let her get away with that?”
He shrugged. “It’s not worth fighting over.”
“But if you keep letting her get away with stuff…”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. You give a girl an edge, she’ll run away with it, but give her a rocket, she’ll fly to the moon.”
“Exactly. At least you know it.”
The poor guy had just been outplayed again. No wonder he was sick of Jake’s antics.
“When you grow up with a twin like Peyton, you have to pick your battles wisely. She’s stubborn as hell.”
“You guys are twins?”
“Yeah, I know. It surprises most people because we couldn’t be more different.”
“So who’s older?”
“She is, and she definitely doesn’t let me forget it.” He slouched in his chair, propped his feet up on the desk, and laced his fingers behind his head. “But I’m smarter, which is more dangerous,” he said, acknowledging all the technology around him.
It was becoming clear why Peyton gave him so much hell. She took pleasure in beating him down a peg or two. It was the same reason Jake jumped on the bandwagon. He liked to put people in their places.
I sat in the empty chair next to him. “So, where am I on your map?”
“Nowhere. You don’t need the algorithm.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” He focused on the screen with the black windows and scrunched his face. Several images popped up among the scrolling streams of data. He dropped his feet to the floor and inched closer to the monitor. “Hmm.”
An icy chill raced through me. “Is something wrong?”
“No, but this is going to be a lot more complicated than I originally anticipated.”
“What’s going on?”
“Even though your tracker isn’t working, you’re still sending out a signal.”
My gut twisted into a tighter knot, afraid of what that might mean. “I am? Does that mean they’re going to find me?”
“I don’t think so. This isn’t the normal signal. It’s extremely complex. Not like anything I’ve seen before.” He rubbed his face in his hands. “At first glance, it appears this signal is overriding your tracker’s function. But I have no idea how it works.”
“What do we do?”
“I don’t think we need to redirect your signal with TROGS. But we’ll keep a close eye on it. In the meantime, this code needs to finish analyzing. It could delay phase two of our plans. It’s going to take a lot longer to decipher this than I thought.”
“How long?” The faster they figured everything out, the faster I could start getting back to something that felt like normal.
He shrugged. “This will probably take us days to crack. Possibly a week. Depends on if we can get our hands on enough computing power to beef up our tech. Stuff that would allow us to slide into Global Tracking Systems during a small open window.”
“A week? What am I supposed to do around here for that long without seeing sunlight?” It had only been a few days and I was already stir crazy.
“We have a supply run tomorrow night. You want to tag along?”
Eleven
“She’s not coming,” Jake protested.
Inside the barn, I stood next to five
motorbikes in varying colors, wearing clothes that weren’t mine and a pissed-off expression. I’d borrowed boots, cargo pants, and a black T-shirt from Peyton. They didn’t hug me like my usual clothes, but I didn’t mind. At least I fit in with the others, assuming Jake didn’t throw a fit and get me kicked off the trip.
“Lighten up, Jake. I want to protect her chip too, but it’s a routine run.” Bailen squeezed Jake’s shoulder in an attempt to calm him, but Jake twitched ever-so-slightly. This would be harder than I thought.
Jake leaned in inches from Bailen’s face. “Don’t you tell me to lighten up.”
“Says the guy who turns everything into a joke,” Bailen spat.
“She’s my sister, not some anomaly tracker chip. It’s bad enough she’s on a wanted list. But that aside, she’s not trained to evade the authorities. And you know what they do to people they catch stealing.”
“My dad’s just lying low; he’ll be back soon.” Bailen’s voice quavered, like he was hiding something.
Jake nodded, but a glint in his eye said he didn’t fully believe Bailen, either. Their exchange aside, I didn’t know what it had to do with me tagging along.
“Don’t I get a say in this? It’s my life.” I hated when Jake talked about me like I wasn’t there.
“Stay out of this, Kaya. You have no idea what you’re getting into.” Jake sounded like Dad when he was about to ground me. “We’ve lost good people to less dangerous missions.”
There was something about the way he said the word lost that hung heavily in the air, but I scowled at him anyway. Pretending to be responsible was the part of the big-brother routine I hated. He couldn’t protect me from the world, but that wouldn’t stop him from trying.
“It’s an easy run. We know all the layouts and where everything is. A simple snatch and run. If she’s with us, she’s got to learn. Plus, it’s really her decision, not yours.” The edge of Bailen’s lips twitched into a half-smile, as if he were enjoying the payback.
Although Bailen treated me like some prized piece of tech, he at least respected my ability to make decisions. He really knew how to push people’s buttons. At least they weren’t mine.
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