Dead Man's Switch (7 page)

“That's perfect,” Johnson said. “After all, who would think to go to this computer?”

“Only if my theory is right,” King answered.

Johnson looked around, obviously nervous about getting caught. “Let's be fast, okay? I don't know how long we have until Mom gets back. She's not in good shape, and when she goes for a run, it's never that far.”

“I locked the door as we came in,” King said.

Johnson groaned. “And if I don't see her in time, I would explain that how? We don't have to lock doors on the island.”

Maybe now, King thought.
“Trust no authorities. They will hunt you too.”
He didn't say it though. “Your mother. Your problem.”

“One thing,” Johnson said. “I won't lie. Just so you understand. If we get busted, I won't lie. I'll tell them about the iPhone. I mean, it's killing me to hide it. We should have never bought it for Blake. We should have never—”

“The door,” King said. “Listen. Did someone try to open it?”

Johnson snapped his mouth shut and strained to hear.

“That's better,” King said. “Silence.”

“Ha, ha. Come on. Get going.”

King unlocked the phone again with 2855.

“Here's what I'm thinking,” King said. “Blake—if this really was Blake who set up the emails—was paranoid that somebody could track emails sent to me via my server. So he just sent the one original email and told me to trash it. Even if someone found that first email, they wouldn't get the rest of the trail. That's why he's now using this iPhone to get us the rest of his emails. Anyone trying to trace his original stuff won't know this new email account or that we have access to it.”

“With you so far. But he only sent us one email. Blank.”

“I want to forward that email to a computer that's not mine or yours.” King thumbed on the keypad, putting in Johnson's mom's email address. “Then we read it and trash it. I can't believe we need to be this paranoid, but I guess it won't hurt.”

“Unless my mom walks in and asks why we're at her computer instead of mine.”

“Locked door.”

“Which, as I thought I made clear, is going to be awkward to explain if—”

“Listen,” King said, holding up a hand. There it was—the woosh of an email sent by iPhone.

Almost instantly, the computer in front of them pinged. One new message.

“Open it,” King told Johnson.

“I shouldn't be in her emails,” Johnson said. “I hate this.”

“Not as much as you'd hate the world learning something about this island that makes our dads look like criminals.”

King wasn't feeling so bad about this lie to Johnson. Is that what happened to people? You just got used to doing wrong things? Is that how Mack was led to whatever crime Blake had found?

“Doing this means we half believe it's true,” Johnson said. “I hate that too. It's like we're betraying our dads.”

Johnson had read King's thoughts. “Yeah. I'm with you on that. So don't think about it. Open the email.”

King tried not to think about how he was lying to Johnson about this. Johnson's dad wasn't involved. Only King's dad. So King was betraying his dad and his best friend. But what choice did he have?

Johnson clicked on the email King had forwarded from the iPhone. As expected, the content of the email was blank. Just as it had been on the iPhone.

“Click on the contents,” King said. “Command-A.”

“Select all?”

“That's a rhetorical question, right?” King said.

“Like yours,” Johnson said. He clicked on the keyboard.

“Now bring up font styles,” King said.

Johnson did.

King pointed at the monitor. “Ha!”

“Ha?”

“The font is white,” King said. “Sometimes you use a white font against a colored background. But against a white background...”

Johnson whistled. “Like invisible ink.”

Without waiting for King to say anything, Johnson selected black for font color. Words popped up on the screen.

“Bingo,” King said.

“No, trouble,” Johnson said. He glanced over King's shoulder and out the window, and his eyes widened. “Here comes my mom back from her jog.”

“Print it,” King said, tucking the iPhone in his back pocket. Calm on the outside, feeling not so calm interior. “I'll get the door.”

King took a step then stopped. “And delete the email!”

King reached the door and unlocked it a full second before Johnson's mom turned the knob. He had just enough time to get back to a chair and pretend he was relaxing.

She opened the door. White cords dangled from her earbuds. Her face was flushed, her brown hair curled and wet at the edges. She was wearing a plain gray jogging suit.

King waved.

She pulled the earbuds loose.

“Hello, Mrs. Johnson,” King felt the iPhone in his back pocket pressing against him, a reminder of all his deceit, beginning with buying the device for Blake Watt. “I hope you're okay that I was thinking of raiding your cookie jar.”

She smiled. “For the Lyon King? Sure.”

It had never occurred to King before, but Lyon King sure sounded a lot like Lying King.

CHAPTER 13

“This really is insane,” Johnson told King as they stepped onto a small pier. McNeil Island had a reservoir in the center of it, shaped like a wedge of pie. It had been stocked with trout, and catch-and-release fishing was permitted. There were some monstrous fish.

“Extremely insane,” King said. “But isn't there a part of you that's having fun?”

Sun threw their shadows in front of them as they walked on the creaky weathered wood. Each carried fishing rods and small tackle boxes. The printed email Blake had sent told them to go fishing. And to keep the flashlight in the tackle box.

“Now what?” Johnson said. King noticed that Johnson didn't answer the question about whether this was fun.

“Well, this is the only place Blake ever went fishing with us. Once.”

“And squealed like a little girl when you told him he had to thread a worm on the hook. Remember? It freaked him out so bad he threw the worm as far as he could. Then he just watched us fish.”

“He learned the squealing part from you,” King said.

“It happens.” Johnson shrugged. “At least I was a good teacher.”

“I think that's the point,” King answered. “He set up a trail that only we can follow. If—and I'm just saying
if
—people really are trying to spy on our emails and learn what he's telling us, there's no way these clues would mean anything to them. I was able to figure out his invisible ink in the email because he had once played that joke on me. And if someone else had actually intercepted that email and then figured out the white font on the white background, how would
they know exactly where to go fishing? Blake only went once with us. Here.”

“He was a little girl,” Johnson sniffed. Johnson flexed a pitiful bicep. “Not manly like me.”

“You do know what the word ‘delusional' means, right?”

“Sure I do—” Johnson stopped. “Hey, were you just calling me—”

“Yes, Sherlock.”

They'd reached the end of the dock. Where all three of them had sat on the one afternoon that Blake Watt went fishing with them. “Check it out.”

A tiny arrow had been scratched into the wood. It pointed at the opposite side of the lake.

“Something is waiting for us at the other side?” Johnson said.

“Hmm.” King realized he was tapping his front tooth again. He stopped himself. It was like sending out a signal to other people. As a rule, he didn't like showing others how he was feeling. In this case, of course, he felt puzzled.

“How far across,” King said. “A half mile?”

“Maybe.”

“If the arrow was pointing across the lake and it was off by a couple of degrees, do you have any idea how much you could miss the target by?”

“Nope,” Johnson said in the tone of voice that indicated he wasn't going to strain his brain.

“Think of it like you were standing here with a rifle and tried to shoot at an empty can half a mile away. You might miss by ten yards, even if there was only a slight wobble when you pulled the trigger. And that's using a barrel a couple feet long to line up with a target. This arrow in the wood is only about an inch long. No way could Blake have meant that we needed to use it to align with something far away.”

King dropped to his stomach and peered over the edge.

“Never gets old being right,” he grunted.

He pushed himself up again. “There's another line scratched into the wood. Vertical. The arrow up here points at that vertical line. So whatever we're looking for is straight down.”

“The water is ten feet deep here. And the note told us to go fishing, not diving.”

King was already getting his fishing rod ready. A small lead weight was crimped to the end of the line. About four feet above the weight, a hook was attached to the main line with a shorter piece of line. And above that, a bobber. The method was to put a worm on the hook and let the lead weight take the line down so that the worm and the hook floated a couple feet above the lead weight. The plastic bobber—about the size of a golf ball—floated on the surface. If a trout took the bait, the movement of the bobber would show it.

King dropped the hook down without baiting it.

He made wide arcs back and forth.

“We're doing what?” Johnson asked.

“Sweeping,” King said. “Trying to snag whatever he has floating down there for us to find.”

“Does it get old being wrong?” Johnson asked. “Blake didn't go to all this work just so someone who really went fishing here would find it by accident. We're not the only ones to use this dock.”

“All right, wise guy,” King said. “What's your suggestion?”

“Hand me your fishing rod.”

King did.

Johnson shoved King off the end of the dock.

King came up sputtering and indignant. He treaded water facing the end of the dock. “That's your idea? Shoving me into the water?”

“Only part of it,” Johnson said. “From where you are, take a closer look at the line scratched into the wood.”

“Death shall be thy reward,” King said. “You're lucky the iPhone isn't in my back pocket.” King had hidden it in the woods.

“I thought of that,” Johnson said. “Really. Now tell me if the scratched line continues. You know, like maybe something is hidden under the pier.

King wasn't going to admit the water felt good. Or that Johnson had actually come up with a good idea.

King peered at the vertical line. He noticed it continued to the bottom of the wood as if the scratched line was wrapping around and continuing.

Was there something on the back of the strip of wood at the end of the pier?

King paddled closer. He reached behind. His fingers touched something cool and smooth. It swayed.

Swayed?

King swam beneath the pier and looked up. The sunlight was striped, knifing through the gaps between the crossbeams of the pier.

“Hey!”

There was Johnson, directly above. The wood creaked as Johnson shifted weight.

King ignored his friend. Hanging from a nail, at the end of a piece of fishing line, was a short, wide piece of metal. That's why it had swayed. Like a pendulum.

King clutched it and ducked into the water again to come out at the end of pier.

Johnson squinted at him.

“Something,” King said. Still treading water, he held up the piece of metal. It was a dull gunmetal gray.

“Never gets old,” Johnson said. “Being right.”

“Take it.” King reached up. “Put it in the tackle box so it's safe.”

King didn't say the rest.
Not only safe, but hidden.

Johnson was careful. He took it in both hands.

“Interesting,” Johnson said as King pulled himself onto the dock.

“What?”

Johnson lifted the piece of metal from the tackle box. Four fishing hooks clung to it.

“Unless I'm delusional, it's a magnet,” Johnson said. “A strong magnet. Those fishing hooks jumped right on it. Why would Blake give us a magnet?”

CHAPTER 14

“Got something!” Mike squealed like a little girl and raised the tip of his rod. He always sounded like this when he hooked a fish. Except this time, it wasn't a fish.

“No you don't,” King answered. “Keep the rod down.”