Soulprint (15 page)

“You know what I mean,” she says. “The Alonzo-Carter Cybersecurity facility hasn't been compromised since June and Liam—not for lack of trying. So either she's leading us to a shadow-database she set up to mirror the original, or to some sort of instruction guide to hack it externally …”

“My money's on some sort of code,” Dom says.

“I don't know,” Casey says. “Security could change a lot in seventeen years, which she must've known. My money's on some sort of shadow-database.”

“Funny,” Cameron says, “considering neither of you has any money right now.” I laugh unexpectedly, but Dominic scowls at him. “Maybe we're just being led to the money,” Cameron says, but Dom waves him off.

“June was about more than money,” Dominic says.

June
. God, he's obsessed with her. “How would
you
know?” I ask. “She's dead. The only thing you know is what other people tell you about her.”

“And you,” he says. “I know you.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “You do realize June wasn't a programmer, right?”

“Oh, we know that,” Dominic says. “We know that she used Liam to get in. But after she got him killed, she still had access somehow. The blackmail continued until her death. So either
she knew how to get in or she had a shadow-database set up, copying the information remotely. Either way, she was
in
.”

“It's just a movie,” I mumble, but Dominic stops walking. We all stop walking.

“What did you say?”

“I said, it's just a movie. We've all seen it. But the only people who were
there
are June and Liam, and they're both dead, so how do we know what really happened? Maybe Liam set her up to take the fall. Ever think of that?”

“He had a
recorder
, Alina. When he was shot.
That's
how they know.”

The recording was actually released—I heard it in one of the documentaries on her life. There have been several. Some paint June as misguided, or at the very least, a reluctant villain. But this documentary was particularly harsh on her, painting her as borderline sociopathic. This documentary made it seem as if she didn't even have the potential for good.

That's another thing scientists have correlated as best they could with the data they had: sociopathic tendencies. It's not a chance—it's practically a guarantee, like left- and right-handedness.

Anyway, the recording was of June's voice, in the same voice I'd heard a thousand times before, where she said that she was not the threat, not the danger, but the message. The bell. Warning people about the potential criminals among us.

But in
this
recording, her voice was tight and desperate, and her words echoed off the walls. It was recorded in that
building where they were surrounded on Christmas Day. It's the message that landed me in a lifetime of prison.

I did not take any money
, she claimed
. I did not blackmail or bribe. The truth will not die with me. It will still be here, waiting for me. You cannot end me. I will be back. This is your warning
.

And then they left it recording, as they said their good-byes.
I would know you anywhere
, she says. The voice is hers but strained. Pained.

You can even hear the gunshots at the end of the recording, but then most everything is muffled, the recorder on the ground. Everything static and foggy—even Liam White's very labored breathing, until eventually that, too, fades to nothing.

“It actually makes perfect sense,” Dominic says. “We've both tried—we've
been
trying—for a long time.
I
can't figure it out.
Casey
can't figure it out, and she's incredible.” Casey looks shocked by the compliment, but I believe it. “We can't even come close enough to see what we're up against. It's impossible to hack. It was
made
to be impossible. June wasn't a hacker. She thought different …” He scans me quickly. “And so do you.”

They're insane if they think I'll miraculously see how to break into a database, when I know nothing of programming or code. They're insane if they think I'll be able to decipher June's life and find some hidden shadow-database that nobody else has managed to find. It won't be in these woods. Not functioning in the middle of a forest for seventeen years. They're wrong, and I'm terrified because I will not see what they need me to see. “I don't know if you realize this,” I say, “but it didn't end well for the people who hacked into it last.”

Dominic laughs. He really laughs, like I'm funny. But I was serious. “They were loud,” he says. “They were loud when they should've been quiet.”

Casey won't look at me. I stare at her, hoping to catch her eye. “You want to be like June, Casey? You want to be the villain and have your soul suffer for it forever? You want to end up like me?” When she doesn't answer I turn to Cameron. “And you would let her do this? So much for
anything
.” And he flinches.

“No,” Casey says, “I care about only one thing in there. A single thing.” I remember the news program. Her twin sister died. Of course. Basic human nature, refusing to let go.

“You want to find who Ava is in the next life?” I ask. “I'll tell you: an infant. An infant who deserves its own life. She won't be the same person,” I say, and for a second I think she's going to hit me. Instead she just shakes her head at me, like I'm a fool.

“You know what would be great?” Cameron asks. “If we can get on with it already.”

We start moving, and Cameron falls into stride with me for a moment. “It's not what you think,” he says. “I promise.”

But to take him at his word requires both belief and trust, and I am currently empty of both.

The GPS coordinates aren't specific enough. Dominic says the coordinates cover an area one kilometer in each direction. The area in question all looks the same as the rest of the woods. No particular paths, no cabins, just brush and roots covering
the soil, trees like every other tree in the forest. “Keep your eyes out,” Dominic says. He puts an orange stake into the ground and keeps walking, marking off the area as we follow.

“For what?” Cameron mumbles.

There's nothing here. I know it as we trace the potential area together, and I feel them know it as their breathing comes in short, desperate pulls. As they walk faster, their bodies become tenser. We finish the loop, and all we've seen are trees and dirt.

“She could've buried it,” Casey says, and Dominic nods, but everything's starting to take the tone of desperation.

“Right. Of course she did, otherwise it wouldn't survive seventeen years. I'm just looking for some sort of marker, but again, it's been years. It could be crushed, or eroded, or just … gone,” Dominic says.

“Check the trees,” I say, and they all look at me like I have some unexplainable insight into June's psyche. I roll my eyes and say, “Bark doesn't change as much over time. If she wanted a marker to last, she'd use that.” We all know June wasn't stupid. She wasn't going to stick a stake in the middle of the floor and expect it to last until the next generation.

I stop at a tree, running my fingers over the bark, imagining June's pale hand doing the same. “Cameron,” Dominic says. “Stay with her. Casey, you're with me.”

Why did she leave something? How did she know she would die? That she wouldn't just be put in jail where she could leave letters for real people? That she wouldn't just disappear forever? Dominic made it sound like this was June's blackmail.
A fail-safe. A reason for her not to be killed. So again, I wonder,
How did she know she would die
?

It's like she didn't trust the world. Didn't trust the law, or humanity, any of it. Like she knew what would happen when she left the woods.
God, June, why did you leave the woods?

“Do you really think there's something?” Cameron asks. He's close. I didn't feel him coming closer, but he's close enough that I can feel his breath on my shoulder as he tries to see what I am seeing.

“Yes,” I say, and it's the truth.

“What about this one?” Cameron asks, running his fingers along the bark of a tree. There's a diagonal scar across the trunk, and it's impossible to tell if it was put there on purpose or if it's just a naturally occurring scar.

I shrug. “Mark it,” I say, and Cameron ties an orange piece of tape around it. This is our fifth marker, and we're not even one-third of the way through our section. It's painstaking, checking each trunk, around and around, from base to branch level. Looking for discrepancies. At the rate we're moving—or
not
moving—we won't be going back to the cabin tonight, that's for sure.

We back down a row, and Casey and Dominic are coming toward us from the other direction. Cameron calls over to them. “I guess it's too much to hope that you found her initials carved in the side of a trunk inside a heart or something?”

“Ha,” Casey says. “So far, let's see, we've found three random lines, three circles, or circularish marks, and one arch, like a horseshoe.”

I stop moving. Stop breathing. “Show me the arch,” I say, and they look at me like I've lost my mind, and maybe I have. But suddenly I can see June walking this same path, her hair swaying as the wind comes, her steps sure and determined. “The horseshoe. Show me.” Dominic shrugs and gestures for us to follow.

He leads us to a thick tree in the middle of a cluster, next to a small clearing. The ends of the orange tape they've tied around the bark flutter in the breeze. I move closer, until I can see the marking. It's faint, and imperfect, but I run my fingertip through the indentation and close my eyes, and my breath leaves me in a rush. “She did this,” I say. I imagine June taking a knife in one hand, holding it steady with the other, and jerking the blade through the trunk, inch by inch, until this was complete.

“It's just an arch,” Casey says.

“Or a horseshoe?” Dominic says, coming closer. “Why a horseshoe?”

I shake my head, but my smile grows. “Not a horseshoe. A bell.”

I am not the danger. I am not the threat. I am the bell, tolling out its warning
.

I am delivering a message
.

We're all staring at the trunk, and then suddenly we're staring at the dirt under our feet. Dominic throws his pack to the ground and pulls out a shovel that's been folded up. But that leaves three extra people to continue staring without purpose. I am the first one on my knees. Something stirs inside me, and my fingers claw at the dirt at the base of the trunk. The earth comes up in tiny chunks, after a generation of weather and water and wind have compressed the dirt into solid ground. There are two pairs of hands beside me, digging into the dirt encircling the trunk now, and Cameron is the first to feel something other than dry earth.

“Rope,” he says. “There's rope buried.”

He pulls at his end while Casey and I continue to unearth it, scooping the dirt off to the side. The rope is looped through a partially exposed root, and as we free it from the ground, it disappears into a path that takes us farther from the tree. It's braided and fraying and off-color, but I know June's hands were
here, seventeen years earlier. We pull at the rope, all four of us, all completely focused on the task of unearthing it, and the ground cracks and disintegrates as the rope emerges. It stops suddenly, and I feel resistance just as I hear a clang of metal.

Dominic uses his shovel to move the dirt off the surrounding area, and a dark-green tarp emerges underneath, the rope disappearing below. I go to pull at the tarp, but Dominic points at me with the shovel. “Wait,” he says, and he continues to move the dirt off the top. I use my feet to brush aside the dirt that he has broken and softened, and Cameron and Casey do the same.

Eventually, all that remains is a pine-green tarp with remnants of dirt covering an area of the forest the size of my bathroom floor in the small clearing. My limbs are shaking.

Dominic nods at me and this time I carefully peel back a corner, heavy from the dirt that still remains. I lift it and shake it out, careful not to disturb the area below. I'm still removing the tarp when Casey sucks in a breath and Dominic lets out a laugh.

“Holy shit,” Cameron says.

I drop the tarp in a heap, forgotten.

In the middle of the forest floor, in the middle of nowhere, there's a wooden door. The rope attaches to a metal hook in the center of the panel of wood. Dominic pulls on the rope, and the door gives, just a bit. Dominic's hands tremble as he reaches his fingers under the splintered edge and pulls it back.

The hinges moan in protest, and the door scrapes against the wooden sides after decades of resettling. And then there is
a dark cavern. I can't see a ladder and I can't tell how deep it goes, and apparently neither can anyone else. “Flashlight,” Dominic says.

Casey drops her pack and rifles through it, pulling out two palm-size flashlights. She keeps one for herself and hands the other to Dominic. Both of them lie on their stomachs, leaning over the mouth of the entrance, their beams pointed below. We're all leaning over the opening, casting shadows, but I can make out a dirt floor not too far below and a wooden ladder lying across the ground.

Dominic crouches down, and for a second I think he's going to jump in first, but then he eyes me—eyes us—over his shoulder and says, “Casey, care to do the honors?” It's as if he's constantly holding Casey hostage, as if he doesn't quite trust any of us.

I don't blame him. For that split second, I considered shutting the top over him, of making a run for it, but the pull of finding out what's inside is too great. I wouldn't run right now. He's holding the information hostage. I'm completely in. He doesn't need Casey.