When I was done, Axel had already tossed my old clothes into the fountain. We were making a mess, but maybe some hobos could use some new clothes. I felt bad since they were Corey’s. I kept Avery’s business card, tucking it into my pocket. I still wanted to hang onto that.
Marc looked at me when we’d returned to the group, quietly asking if I was okay. I guess he knew what I’d been through. I waved him off, trying to tell him it didn't matter. We had to get out of there.
The fact that there had been bugs at all left me feeling creepy-crawlies all over even now. I was scratching behind my ears and around my neck, thinking there was one left.
The boys lead the way to a black car. Did it belong to them? I didn’t recognize it from the weeks I’d known them. Axel held the front passenger door open and looked at me pointedly, silently telling me where to sit.
Marc never said a word the entire time. He avoided my gaze, impossible to read.
We took off in silence with Axel driving and Marc in the back seat.
Kevin had split up from us, walking in the other direction. Had he parked further down the road? He was supposed to go to some hospital. I wondered why they were going there instead of some Academy bunker. Didn’t the Academy have a safe house or something? Some sort of fortress so kidnappers couldn’t just grab Corey?
Or was it that the hospital was a public place with security and internet and Corey could do his thing in relative safety? Maybe it was good protocol thing. I’d have to figure it out later.
It was only four in the morning, and only a fraction of the homes around us had lights on in the windows as Axel drove through downtown Charleston. Some people were getting up for the morning jog, the morning coffee, the morning commute. We were on our way to find Dead Randall, the only link we had to this core, whatever it was.
“Where are we going?” I asked from the front seat, tugging at my pants. They were too tight and kept sliding down over the underwear. “Are we going to check out Randall’s house?”
“We’re going to look in for a little while,” Axel said. “We’ll figure out where he worked. Maybe he had this core in a warehouse or somewhere else. First, we need to figure out what a core is. When we find the core, we’ll keep an eye on it. We find these guys getting close to it, and we’ll jump them.”
“That’s our plan?” I asked, smirking. “Jump them?”
“We’ve got to find it first,” Axel said. “Then we’ll figure it out from there. For all we know, this core could be a nuke. Or a code that breaks into National Security. We’ll have to be careful.”
“I’ve got Corey figuring it out,” Marc said. He sat in the back with his head bowed, staring at his cell phone. He typed into it. “I told him this was Murdock’s Core and it has his Guard Dog security packet. He’s going to fill me in when they figure it out what it might be.”
“If it’s Murdock’s Core, why aren’t we chasing a Murdock?” I asked.
Axel shrugged. “The email said Randall, didn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Marc said. “Randall Jones. The only thing in the email. No Murdock.”
That was kind of odd. Why call it Murdock at all? “How is Corey involved anyway?” I asked. “They said something about he wrote the security packet… doohickey thing?”
“He’s got some security software he wrote,” Marc said. “But it’s freeware. Free software. It’s a pretty sophisticated cryptic thing. Apparently whoever has this Murdock’s Core, they used his software for the security. So they assume Corey could hack it.”
“They said Corey could figure out the password, too,” I said. “They thought Corey could do it quickly. Can he really break into it if they’d gotten the real Corey?”
“Give Corey a few minutes,” Marc said, his eyes lit up and he lifted his head. “All I gave him was a name, and he’s already on the trail for what this thing is. He’ll be able to find out more. He might even be able to give us some good info about that cell phone once Kevin gets there with it.”
Axel took state road 17 out of downtown, crossed the bridge and headed north toward Mt. Pleasant. Old Historical Charleston neighborhoods cleared and we got into the suburban sprawl on the other side of the bridge.
Before we got too far, Axel’s phone on the dash lit up and he touched the surface to answer. “What’s up, Corey?”
“Hey guys,” Corey’s voice came through on speaker. “Looks like this Murdock’s Core is a burner phone service. Sort of.”
I sat up. He’d figured it out so quickly? I wanted to ask how he did it, but didn’t want to interrupt. I turned back to look at Marc, who only grinned proudly and mouthed something that I thought was, “Better than I thought.”
“What do you mean, sort of?” Axel asked.
“More sophisticated. It’s a service not even on the Feds’ radar. Includes an eight-hundred number you dial into that keeps track of your phone numbers and voice mails at a central server. Technically, you can use any cell phone you’d like. If you want to be super careful, you can switch out SIM cards and it keeps track of your business contacts and lets you keep the same number, it just changes your ID number on your phone regularly. Better for business if customers don’t have to keep up with new numbers all the time. There’s more to it, but that’s all I can get without looking either at one of their cell phones they use, or figuring out where the core is. But the core is a central server that keeps the usernames and passwords required for accounts and manages the service.”
“So it’s an illegal cell service they want access to?” Marc asked. “This is illegal, right?”
“All cell phones are required to be regulated and tracked, at least in the States. Whoever this Randall is, he might be the owner or something. Someone has to run it. But yeah, one-hundred percent illegal operation if the government can’t regulate it. What I’m not sure about is how exactly they’re hitting cell phone towers for service and getting away with it without being traced by the FCC or the NSA. I mean, I had to hack into some deep networks to even figure out this much.”
“Thanks Corey,” Marc said.
“Is Kayli there?” Corey asked.
“I’m here,” I said. Hearing Corey was good for me. He was safe. Had they told him what had happened to me? Or to Brandon?
“Just wanted to say hello,” he said. “You okay?”
Corey was being cute. “Yeah,” I said, my heart lifting at his concern, even if I wasn’t sure exactly how much they’d told him.
“We’ve got her,” Marc said. “Don’t worry.”
“Okay. Going to work on the cell phone when Kevin brings it. I’m tracking the messages I’ve gotten from them. Their emails are hard to trace because they’re from a different burner cell. Seems like they were all sent from the same phone, and it was bought here with cash, and these IPs don’t have any other activity. Their GPS signals that were stored are public places and random. They’re very careful.”
“Do your best. Call with updates,” Axel said before he hung up. “Let’s find this Randall Jones. That’ll get us closer to finding out where this core is.” He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t like that we’re looking for something illegal.”
“Maybe we should give these kidnappers access,” Marc said. “And then let them all go down with the Feds.”
“Maybe,” Axel said. “We need to get ourselves out of this mess, first. We may need to check out who is involved with this service. Anyone who needs an underground cell phone might be someone we’re interested in checking out.”
Marc smirked. “It’ll be like an Academy payday.”
My eyes widened, and I looked over at Axel, who was unreadable at first, but his eyes were shifting from the road, to the dash, to the mirrors and then over to me. When he met my gaze, he held it for a long time. There was a slight shake of his head. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”
“What am I thinking?” I asked, because I hadn’t made the connection yet. I only heard Academy payday and I was wondering how uncovering a core
would be that. I thought they didn’t get paid.
“The Academy won’t use the cell phone service,” he said. “But imagine who would use such a service? Someone who wouldn’t want to be overheard enough to risk possible jail time for a conversation over the phone.”
I hated to play Devil’s advocate, but I had to. “We don’t know why they would need one,” I said.
“So it’ll be better if the Academy investigates, wouldn’t it?” he asked.
I wanted to say it wasn’t our business what they were doing, but at the same time, maybe I was wrong. Simply having an illegal cell phone line, and buying into it, was a good indicator of corruption. I wondered if the Academy would keep such a service for themselves though. Or was it too great a risk to be discovered that way. I mean, right now there were bad guys looking to get access to this core they discovered. The Academy seemed, from what I understood, to operate in plain sight using everyday items that blended in. Anything sophisticated attracted attention.
The car was quiet as Axel drove on. Mt. Pleasant didn’t have a mountain on it at all, as far as I knew. The highest point in Charleston was any of the buildings downtown. Still, Mt. Pleasant was a collection point for the high-end middle class and wealthy who preferred suburbs over islands and couldn’t get one of the limited homes downtown. Mt. Pleasant homes and shops were newer, the roads well maintained and without need of historical permits.
After what seemed like an eon of staring out the windshield, Axel pulled into one of the ritzier subdivisions. These homes had garages at ground level, and the homes were built on top of the garages. Being close to the water, it served as protection against hurricanes and flooding.
He slowed through the neighborhood, gliding through the streets. A few blocks later, he made a circle, selected a house and parked in the driveway.
Was he insane? “Someone’s going to see us,” I said.