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“Wouldn’t it have satellite dishes and an antenna all around it? I mean, to send out a signal and act as a core for a cell phone service?”
Brandon did an eye roll, smirking. “Did you see an antenna in the picture? No, because it’s a secret phone service,” he said. “The core might just be a computer server inside. And an antenna could look like anything. It doesn’t have to have prongs sticking out all over. It could just be metal, reaching outward. Besides, we’re not one hundred percent sure it is here. I mean, this is a normal house. I’m not sure I’d keep a core in my home.”
“You don’t think Doyle could pinpoint the signal location?”
“I don’t exactly trust Doyle not to lie to us for free cigarettes and a microwave.”
I made a face at him. He squeezed my hand and stuck out his tongue, mocking.
He did have a point. I didn’t think I’d keep an illegal underground cell phone service at my house. Then again, a house on the beach would keep it from looking suspicious, but would it have enough range for locals in Charleston to use it? I didn’t understand how cell phone towers worked very well, but even I knew about cell phone bars, and the ranges from towers, and once you got too far away from one, you didn’t have a signal at all. “How close do you have to be to a tower to have it give you a signal?”
“Not sure,” he said. He used his free hand to rub a couple of fingers at his temple. “Corey would know. I wish he was here.”
I studied Brandon’s face then. His cerulean eyes had a particular depth to them now. The determination was there, the anger, but they were subdued by that sadness again. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
He stopped rubbing, and turned his head to look at me. The sadness subsided, but only a little. It was replaced by something unreadable and I wondered what he was really thinking. “I’m tired,” he said. “And sore. And we’ve only got so much time...”
“There’s something else,” I said. If it was important enough to think about now, he had time to tell me.
Brandon sighed and again tightened his hand around mine. “I honestly didn’t think I was going to make it out alive,” he said. “If it wasn’t by the team I was with, with Eddie and the other Germans, it would be with this new team, who seemed to be killing anyone standing in their way. I was sure Eddie would have sacrificed me to save his team by giving me up next. I would have never seen you again. Or my brother. Or any of the guys. And now that two of them are gone, and I haven’t seen my brother or Raven or Kevin or anyone, it’s like I don’t know for sure if I will ever.” He lifted my hand slowly, bringing it to his lips, and kissed the knuckle. “But I’ve got you, though. I’ll be hanging onto you for a while. I’m glad you seem to be out of your slump. I’ve not seen you look so alive. Angry, maybe, but alive.”
I bit my tongue, wanting to give a retort of some kind, but it was just an angry impulse to defend myself, even if there wasn’t much to defend myself from. I couldn’t blame him for saying that. I just didn’t like being looked at so closely that people could tell what I was thinking.
Funny how now I felt awake for the first time in weeks, and it was because I was busy saving people from getting killed.
Distracted in my own thoughts, I walked quietly beside Brandon. It’d been too long to actually answer anything he’d said. Brandon appeared to be back into his own thoughts, too.
I refocused on what we were there for. I expected this house to be covered with security and guards, even though from the real estate photos, it looked normal.
I mean, if it were easy to waltz in and get access to this core, Alice would have done it by now and wouldn’t need Corey to do it for her.
That meant it would be harder than it appeared to get to this core. Eddie’d had weeks to get access to this thing and failed. What made us think we could do it in a day? The house probably had radioactive laser security ready to hit a fly if it crossed into his yard.
I tried to put that thought out of my head. People at the mall didn’t allow me to take their wallets either. I found a way, though. Doyle had been right. People were the weak link. It was a morbid expression in a way. People aren’t generally stupid. They’re just vulnerable. Wasn’t I, after all, weak in a way? We were weak and doing what we were told to save our friends. We were putting other people’s security, people we didn’t know, at risk.
That didn’t sit well with me, either. I didn’t want anyone to have this core. I didn’t really want it to exist, either.
A few houses later, we found an L-shaped pool and the house that matched the real estate photos, just in a different paint color. The house was three stories, a Cape Cod style, bluish gray slate walls and white trim, with a balcony on the second floor, overlooking a small garden and pool and the beach. It all looked plain, like the other homes, except for the third floor, which was completely glass, gleaming in the sun. A third floor greenhouse? I couldn’t see in from the reflection. It must have been a hot box in the summer.
The extravagance of it seemed to even outdo the neighbors’ ostentatious homes. I imagined the owner could view far out into the ocean and around the island from all angles. That probably meant if anyone was up there, they could see us.
We stood on the beach together, looking at the house. I was trying to identify something that might be the antenna, but nothing stood out to me. It was just a big, fancy house. There wasn’t even a tiny satellite dish or weathervane. The sand from the beach was cut off by a low hedge from the garden and yard. The pool looked clean, with an unrestricted view of the ocean from it. I wondered how they kept local kids from getting in his pool. I guessed local kids probably had their own pools.
In fact, not a lot of the homes had fences at all. I could look right at the back porch. Most homes had hedges to block of sweeping sands, but that was it. Back doors were exposed. Did they really trust the one security guard in the front to be all the protection they needed? I suspected there were security alarms everywhere. I looked for cameras, not spotting any, but that didn’t mean they weren’t hidden somewhere.
There was a van parked on the driveway, near a side door. It had rolled up backward, facing the road, and the rear doors were open. The back of the van was empty now, so I couldn’t tell what was being delivered.
Brandon whistled, a low one meant just for me to hear. “That’s a big fancy house. Seems bigger than even Coaltar’s.”
“It is bigger than Blake’s,” I said, and then shut the idea of Blake Coaltar out of my mind.
“If this is the house, and there is a core here,” Brandon said, “then we should get inside and look for it. Maybe we can poke around and ask a few questions.”
“Ask questions?” I blinked at him, and took my hand away so I could rub at my tired eyes. “Sure. Let’s just walk in and ask the kids where the secret illegal core is.”
“I meant more like, ‘hey kids, which rooms are you not allowed to go in?’ or ‘which room does daddy yell at you if he finds you in it?’” he said, and smirked. “There’s ways to learn stuff without asking directly.”
“They teach you this in spy school?” I asked.
“You just said the spy word,” he said. He refocused onto the house. I did, too. Maybe Academy spy training taught him how to ask things without asking directly. Wasn’t my thing. I was more for waiting until people weren’t home and then breaking in a window and snooping around.
And exactly how were we supposed to deliver the
core anyway? It’s not like we could walk out with it and it’d still be operational. She said she wanted access. It seemed like she needed to give us more direction. But then, she assumed Corey would be able to do it. We needed a Corey.
“We can’t stay too long,” Brandon said. “They might not notice us now, but they will notice if we’re standing here, staring at their house from the beach. We’ll have to move on and come back.”
How were we going to learn anything and get this core if we were going to sneak around? I was about to point this out when a couple of men came out of the side door, returning to the van.
Brandon immediately encircled my waist, turning enough to make it look like we were embracing on the sand, rather than staring like we were. He ducked his head close to mine, his cheek pressed against my face.
I was the one left looking at the house over his shoulder.
“Tell me what you see,” he said quietly into my ear, his lips brushing at my skin.
I swallowed, trying to focus, and checked out the van. The men were in black jeans and long-sleeved black button up shirts, clearly dressed up to deliver to opulent homes rather than common ones.
They shut the doors and headed for the front of the van, keys in hand and ready to go. The sign on the back of the van read: A1 Party Supplies.
“They’re hosting a party,” I said quietly. “Or they just hosted one. It’s a party supply company. Could we sneak in that way if they’re having a party tonight?”
Brandon groaned, and buried his head into my shoulder. “It isn’t the best of circumstances, but we don’t have time to do this another way. More eyes means more chances we’ll get caught where we’re not supposed to be, but we don’t have much of a choice, and it might be our only opening.” He backed up, pulling away from me and then captured my hand. “We’ll need to get ready. And we’ll have to do some research. We still don’t know for sure if this is the right house.”
