Fake: The Scarab Beetle Series: #3 (The Academy) (33 page)

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’ll 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.”

“Here’s a plan,” I said. “I say we go back to the house on Kiawah. We contact Eddie and tell him we’ve got access, and we all agree to trade him access to the room and drop the code in exchange for the others being released. They get what they think they want, then we walk away.” I turned to Avery. “Then it’s your job.”

“Name it,” Avery said, looking grim. “We need to stop these guys.”

“You said you knew a cop?” I asked. “Someone you’d trust?”

“I thought we weren’t calling any cops,” Ethan said. “I don’t want to drag Alice…”

“I just want a cop on board at the right time,” I said. “If we dangle access to the core out, the ones who want it will come get it. They can fight over it. We back off, they think they get what they want, and the cops can roll in and bust anyone who was really involved.”

Ethan started to talk, but I held up a hand to stop him. “And if Alice doesn’t come bulldozing in for your core, and we get the guys back without her around, and if she’s truly innocent, she won’t have anything to worry about. I won’t even mention her threatening me if it turns out I’m wrong about her.”

Ethan started to shake his head, but then his shoulders relaxed. “It seems reasonable,” he said in a low tone.

I got the impression he really didn’t like this plan and was just agreeing with me, but there wasn’t much else we could do.

Corey nodded slowly. “How do we make this trade, though? How do we get them to come to us? We don’t have a phone number, do we?”

“I’ll have to do it,” I said. “I can go to the house with Ethan, and Ethan can turn off the security packet thing. We just need you to maybe figure out a way to make it look like they’re getting what they want. By giving them access to a signal they can listen in on?” I looked at Corey, asking quietly if that would work.

“No,” Raven said. “We’re not targets. We don’t make ourselves into targets. If we are there, there’s nothing to stop them from shooting us all for knowing about it.”

“We just need to get them out long enough that they start fighting each other rather than us. They want this core thing. They can fight over it while we get away.”

Corey shifted on his feet. “We could rig something up so it just
looks
like we’re giving them access.” He looked at Ethan. “If I can get there before they do, do you think we can fake a cell phone tower signal? Maybe draw in some normal cell phone data from nearby towers?”

“I could show them the cell phone signals I’ve been working with,” he said, putting a finger to his chin. “But I’d need to contact my people to let them know to use their cell phones.”

“Or,” Corey said, “we could load more numbers into your system. Then it’ll look like more than just a couple of friends. It’d be an actual underground cell service.”

Suddenly, the floor shook. Glass shattered somewhere, it sounded like it was coming from the front of the house.

Raven ran to the kitchen door, opening it with his back, and peering out. “There’s three people at the front door trying to bust it in.” He closed off the kitchen door, hitting a latch on the lock. He lifted part of his shirt, revealing a belt across his waist, and lifted a gun from a back holster. He pointed the nose at the ground and steadied himself with his back against the doorframe. “Get down. Kayli, behind the counter. Corey...”

At first, I stared at the gun. I hadn’t noticed it before.

Without a word, Corey went to the windows and started shutting the blinds. Raven went to the table, and started pushing it in front of the door, blocking off access. Avery and Ethan moved to the counter, getting behind it.

“You’re barricading us in,” I said. “Let’s sneak out the back. Or tell them we’re going to give them access to the core if they’ll just…”

“They’ve got guns,” Raven said. “I saw them. They’re not here to talk to us. They’re here to kill us.”

“Then we need to get out of here,” I said. “Not lock ourselves in.”

“I don’t know how many there are,” he hissed. “They could be coming around the back, too. Kayli, down. Now.”

Corey peered out the window. “I don’t see anyone.”

Raven scanned the windows, as if he wasn’t sure, but then looked at Corey. Together, they nodded at the same time. “Take them out,” he told Corey.

I scanned the kitchen, not wanting Raven to play the hero and stay behind to ward them off. I spotted the microwave and got an idea. “Corey, go back out through the window. Go through the backyard and make a run for it. Take Ethan and Avery. We’ll meet you at the lake.”

“What are you going to do?” Corey asked.

I looked at Raven. “I heard a rumor about what happens when you put whole raw eggs in the microwave.”

Raven’s eyes lit up and his chest puffed out. “My little thief thinks the way I think. This is fate.”

Corey eyeballed each of us in turn and then groaned. “I know that face. We can’t...”

Raven moved over, shoving Corey in the shoulder toward the window. “Out. Now.”

Corey looked at me, pleading, but I shrugged. We’d provide the distraction as they ran off. We had to let Eddie’s people—or Alice’s—know we wanted to negotiate, but at the Murdock house.

Corey went to the window. Ethan and Avery followed. Corey surveyed the backyard, and then went out first. Ethan and Avery crawled out behind him.

Another crack in the house, and a slam of wood against thicker wood, like the front door bursting open. Raven kept his back to the doorframe of the kitchen and pointed to direct me. “Go to the fridge, and dig out as many cartons of eggs as you can. Don’t take the eggs out, just leave them in.”

“Is this how you blew up his yacht?” I asked, doing as he told me and finding five cartons stacked neatly in the fridge, all ready for blowing up.

“No,” he said. He pointed to the microwave. “It’s time to play Texas and load the microwave.”

I thought about what he said. “Tetris? The game?”

“Same.”

I was getting the gist that when he said “Same”, what he really meant was, ‘that was what I meant’.

I opened the microwave, and started stacking the cartons inside. The fifth one was a tight squeeze. Why did Blake have so many eggs? But then, his fridge and cabinets were overstuffed with food, more than he could eat. I assumed that’s how the rich worked. Overabundance.

There were footsteps in the hall outside. “What do you want?” Raven asked loudly.

There was a voice shouting, muffled through the wall, but then the crack of a gun sounded.

I ducked beside the kitchen island.