Fake: The Scarab Beetle Series: #3 (The Academy) (40 page)

“What is it?” Eddie asked. “It’s the data?”

“Yes,” Alice said. She pointed at the screen. “See that? Lots of it. This is better than I thought.” She stood up. “At least we know it is there.” She turned to Doyle. “So you’re saying you can’t do the rest?”

“I could puke on it and short it all out,” Doyle said. “Because it’ll be about as effective as anyone reaching in and trying to take out that encryption. Might as well pull the plug.”

“Not yet,” Alice said. She turned to Brandon. “I bet Corey could help us. Sorry, gentlemen. I’m afraid your services aren’t required after all.”

Blake stood up. Mack Truck pointed his gun at him, but Blake waved him off. “Hang on a second. We got you this far.”

“But you didn’t deliver what you promised,” Alice said. She looked once at the guards with guns. “Take them downstairs, put them in a room on the second floor without being seen by anyone on the first floor. Keep them contained.”

The two gunmen escorted Blake and Doyle to the door. Eddie, Alice, Mack Truck and one more goon were left. They were outnumbered, but with the guns, we couldn’t exactly jump them. At least they were splitting up. I wasn’t sure if Axel and Marc could take on two men with guns in their condition, but hopefully they had backup on the way, if not here already.

Brandon was alone now as a hostage. He glared at them, hate raging from his eyes.

“Well,” Alice said. “We’ve got a conundrum, don’t we?”

“Let’s bring one of his friends upstairs,” Eddie said. “We could shoot him once every time he stops working. I’ll start with the foot and work up.”

Alice looked at Brandon for the longest time and then shook her head. “No,” she said. “That won’t work. He thinks we won’t keep our promise about letting them go if they only behaved. So we’ll have to find him a little more motivation.”

“Maybe I should start shooting
him
in the foot,” Eddie said.

“He doesn’t really need his foot to work, I suppose,” Alice said. She sighed. “I’m afraid it’s come to this. Use one of the sofa pillows, will you? It’ll keep it quiet and then you can use it to keep the blood contained.”

Brandon started to shout, squirming, yelling and cursing at them, even with his mouth taped.

I saw a hand wave and then looked up. Raven was pointing at me, and then at Alice. I was supposed to distract her somehow?

And then suddenly across the room, Corey snuck around the corner by the door, and opened it, darting past it as people turned around. “Wait,” he said, standing to look like he’d just walked in.

Damn it. I bit back the urge to yell at him. Raven looked upset. I was supposed to be the one to stand, not Corey. I’d been too late. Corey couldn’t help but get up and protect his brother.

Guns moved from Brandon to Corey. Corey lifted his hands up in the air. His cerulean eyes fixed on his brother, though he spoke to the others. “Let him go. I’m the one you want.”

STRUGGLE

A
lice and Eddie did a circle around Corey.

“It’s his brother,” Eddie said. “It’s a trick. We checked. We’ve got Corey. He’s got the same cuts I gave him the first time we nabbed him from his room.”

“I’m Corey,” Corey said. “You’ve got Brandon. I’ve been trying to track you all for days.”

“How do we know you’re him?” Alice asked. “Prove it?”

“How do you think I found you?” Corey asked. He motioned to Eddie. “I remember you. From the park. I was there with my girlfriend.”

“No,” Eddie said. He pointed to Brandon. “He was the one I grabbed from the bedroom with the girl. I put a tracker on him and he still had one on when we caught him again. This is Corey.”

“I followed the encrypted cell phone signal,” Corey said. “I traced it here. Who else could do that? You didn’t give me much information to go on. Just a name: Randall Jones.”

Alice stood still for a minute, considering. She tapped a finger against her cheek, and then pointed to Corey. “If you say you’re Corey, you can help us with our little problem, can’t you?”

“Let my brother go and I’ll help,” he said.

Alice smiled coyly. “Such a hero,” she said. “But I think it’d be better if we kept your brother here, for now. It seems he’s having trouble walking on his own.”

“I can make it harder on him,” Eddie said. One of the goons raised his gun toward Brandon’s leg.

Corey’s eyes widened and he held his hands out. “Hang on. I’m not going to help if you shoot him.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Raven moving above. He quietly shifted, positioning himself above Eddie and Mack Truck.

Avery had stilled behind the couch that Brandon was still sitting on.

“What should we do?” Eddie asked Alice.

“Hmm,” Alice said. “I think we should let this new Corey take a stab at it. I’ll watch him and make sure he doesn’t do anything funny.”

Corey moved to the core computer. He looked over the information flowing in front of him. “I’m still catching up,” he said. “But I’m guessing you want the security removed?”

“Without turning off the core and alerting users that the system is down,” Alice said. “We want them to continue using their cell phones.”

I checked in with Raven. He held a fist out and then spread out his fingers and lowered them. Lay low. The game plan had changed. We’re giving them what they want.

I was bitter at the idea of letting them escape.

A wave of dizziness took over me. I clamped a palm over my forehead. Just a little longer.

Corey looked over the screens. “What’s to say you won’t shoot us both when I’m done?”

“I have no desire to deal with blood and dead bodies,” Alice said. She looked at Eddie. “But he will if he has to.” She turned back to Corey, her lips puckered and then she spoke. “Give us access to the core, and we all walk away. Ethan gets his home back. I will quietly disappear. Eddie will go home. Everyone will forget about us, or we’ll come after you. Our access to the phone system will go unnoticed. No one else has to get hurt for this.”

“Ethan will notice,” Corey said.

“It’s why I’m his wife,” Alice said and smiled. “I’ll keep him busy long enough.”

“I’d just like a little assurance,” Corey said. “Randall Jones died.”

“An accident,” Eddie said. “He fought us off, or tried. Doesn’t have to happen again.”

Corey lifted a brow. He smoothed out this Mario Bros. T-shirt and sighed. “Guess I’m not going to be given a choice. But I feel uncomfortable with my brother up here and a gun pointed at him.”

The gunman moved his weapon, pointing it at Corey instead.

I glanced up at Raven, who was mouthing curses.

We needed a way to motivate Alice and Eddie to walk out of here without killing anyone. Just giving them what they wanted didn’t guarantee that.

I looked at Raven for help, but he was focused on the gunman trained on Corey. He had his own gun out, aiming down.

This was going to turn into a blood bath quickly, if Raven lost his patience and temper. Maybe he was good with a gun, but he was still outnumbered and none of the rest of us had weapons.

Axel had said the goal was to give them exactly what they wanted, and to walk away. We could case them later when we got everyone cleared of harm. What we needed was for Alice and her team to actually leave the premises without any hostages.

I studied Alice, who was looking at the screen and then at Corey. She curled her fingers at him. “Come sit next to me,” she said. She sat near the computer. The goon guarding Brandon pulled him down onto the floor. Alice patted the spot near her. “We’ll do this together.”

Corey eyeballed his brother and then settled near the computer, checking out the screens. He pressed at the monitor. “The encryption is pretty integrated.”

“Can it be taken out?” Alice asked.

Corey tilted his head, thinking. “Maybe. It’ll take a few minutes to see.”

Alice held something in her hands, I saw a glint of something glass. She must have had more of that poison. She was going to give it to Corey somehow.

Avery moved then, quietly. He was right next to Alice.

He held something, a similar looking bottle. He was going to try to swap it out?

Avery the magician.

He needed a distraction though.

I was on the farthest side of the room. I considered what I had. The radio…

I pulled it from my pocket and fiddled with the buttons, but keeping the frequency. I pressed the call button, and rubbed my finger quietly over the mouthpiece.

A radio in the room went off. It crackled with noise.

Eddie pulled it from his pocket, adjusting the volume. He pushed the button and spoke into it. “Who’s that? Check in.”

When he released the button, he got more of the same crackling. I held the button down. If I kept the line busy, it meant they couldn’t communicate with people downstairs.

“Fuck this core,” Eddie said. “It’s messing with our signal or something.”

“Or something happened downstairs,” Alice said. She placed her poison on the sofa next to her to pat Corey. “Don’t pay any attention.”

There was a quick movement. Avery reached over the arm, replacing the poison.

I turned off the signal, and then pushed the button, sliding my finger across, trying to make different noises.

“Someone should go check on them,” Eddie said.

“No one moves,” Alice said. “We’re going to get out of here soon.”

It wasn’t much, but at least Alice didn’t have her poison. I was wondering if she even carried the cure.

She looked back at Corey, who was typing at the monitor. “Is it working yet?”

“I’m not taking out the code,” Corey said. “If you want him to be able to continue using it and not notice it’s been altered, you’ll need the security packet to stay in place.”

“Maybe you aren’t as smart as I thought you were,” Alice said. “I thought I made it clear that we want access to the data.”

“I’m not taking out the packet,” Corey said. “I’m changing it. It still secures the line, but it reroutes information to a single phone.” He looked up. “Tell me where you want the information sent to.”

Alice squinted at him. She looked at Eddie and then back at Corey. “What do you mean?”

“You’ll be part of the data collection,” Corey said. “You’ll get part of the information.”

“We don’t want
part
,” Eddie said. “She wants all of it.”

Corey shook his head. “How were you going to access the data, even if I simply left the encryption open? It only flows through here.”

“That’s why I married Ethan,” she said. “To stay here and collect data in pieces while I could, learning passcodes and secrets as I wished.”

“Look,” Corey said. He pointed at the screen. “You won’t have to do that. If I make a cell phone able to pick up chunks of data, you’ll be able collect some on the go. You don’t have to stay. To users, it’ll look like the service stalled a minute, but it’ll pick back up. They’ll just have to hit refresh.”

“And Ethan won’t notice?” she asked.

“Nope,” Corey said. He gave off a smile, a little crooked. He was forcing it. “You could walk away. Pick up the cell phone data from anywhere. You’ll just have to remember to clear your memory every once in a while. It won’t be everything, but it’s sacrificing all data for mobility.”

Eddie coughed and then shook his head. He nudged Alice’s arm. “That’s not what you wanted,” he said. “You can stay here and collect the data from the source. What’s to say he won’t just make it not work once we’re gone?”

Alice considered this, staring at Corey, as if weighing out his proposition. “We don’t need all of the data here,” she said. “A little at a time to make use of…And all directed to a singular cell phone.”

“Just tell me the number where to send the data,” Corey said. “The security dog packet will remove the encryption just before the last tower, and the final destination of the receiving call. That means you pick it up after the encryption.