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He straightened and pointed at Blake. “You could kill someone doing that. I nearly had a heart attack.”
“I just walked into your house without you waking up. If you actually put in a doorbell in this place, I wouldn’t have to. You also need an alarm system. Now come on. I need your help.”
“It’s not my problem,” Doyle said.
“It will be when this cell phone network is discovered and the FCC goes looking for secret signals and somewhere in the mix, finds your secret lair. Don’t you realize if this gets stolen, they will come looking for you, too?”
“No one knows I’m here,” Doyle said. He leaned over, picking up a pair of jeans and stepping into them. “My own mother doesn’t even know.”
“I’ll tell her where you are,” Blake said.
Doyle stiffened and stood fully with his pants still only halfway on. He narrowed his bloodshot eyes at Blake. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me,” Blake said. “But I won’t if you’ll get out here and tell me how to stop this Alice chick.”
“Who’s Alice?”
??????
Ten minutes later, I was sitting on one of the overstuffed sofas in the weirdly overcrowded parlor. Doyle, finally dressed, was typing into his computer, Blake stood behind him, looking over his shoulder.
“I can’t concentrate with someone looking over me,” Doyle said.
“Just tell us what you know,” Blake said. “And don’t skip the small stuff this time.”
“What do you want? Murdock’s Core is at that house on Kiawah.”
“I was there,” I said. I had my feet up on the couch, and yawned, wishing for a blanket. “I’ve gone through the house. There’s no an antenna there, or a big computer. If there is a secret cell phone service, the source isn’t there.”
“It is,” Doyle said. He leaned over until he was looking at me across his wrecked desk. “You checked out every closet? I’m telling you. There’s no mistake. The strongest signal is coming from that house.”
“What do you mean, strongest signal?” Blake asked.
“I mean a cell phone network isn’t going to have just one tower, is it? It’ll have a bunch in the area. You can’t just have one tower. The signal only goes so far.”
“Where are the others?” he asked.
Doyle made a face, and then reached into a desk drawer for a pack of cigarettes. He lit one, and inhaled as he responded. “Scattered all over the city. Duh. I don’t know exactly. I wasn’t paying attention before. I was trying to keep my nose out of it. I just looked up the core because she asked.”
“Is it possible there’s just a big tower signal coming from the house, but that’s not where the core is? To access it?”
“No,” Doyle said. “Trust me, the core is in that house. The service is just transmitted on it, but all the data gets pulled through there. It’s like any cell phone service, there’s a hub that collects all your data.”
“Are they piggybacking on other towers in the area?”
“No. That’s how they’re not getting caught. They’re using completely separate towers and a different frequency that changes randomly to keep separate from what legitimate cell phones are using so there’s no interference. It’s ingenious, in a way, but still obvious to anyone looking for signals in the air like me. The only thing stopping anyone from pulling data and deciphering it is that blasted security packet.”
“And you can’t break into that, by chance?” Blake asked.
Doyle made a face. “What do I look like? Someone who cares? No. Well, I could, maybe. But it’d take a while. And it’d be much easier to simply get to the house and check out their core computer.”
“Not if they don’t have a core computer,” I said.
“They have one,” Doyle said. “Trust me. I know. I can see it. It’s as clear as day.”
“There's got to be something else we can do,” I said. “I can’t just go back there, because Alice is there waiting. If she has Brandon, thinking he’s Corey, then she probably has who she needs, and is going to be there trying to work her way in. I just waltzed in and handed her the one person she thinks will give her access.”
That hit me hard, and I found it difficult to speak after that. Alice had been a few steps ahead of us from the start, and now I just gave her who she thought would open the doorway she wanted. She had access, because she was marrying the guy she targeted, and now she had a key. It was my fault for letting Brandon get that close.
“But she doesn’t have Corey,” Blake said. “Right? She has Brandon.”
I nodded and swallowed. It might be enough. I breathed in and then tried to focus. “What about these other towers. Could we find one? Is there something we could do? Maybe disrupt the signal a little? Cause a stir?”
The room went silent and Doyle looked at Blake. “She’s a bloody genius.”
“If we disrupt the signal,” Blake said, “by taking out one of the towers, it’ll bring someone out to fix the thing. Then we could kidnap that person and ask them questions.”
“We’re going to kidnap someone that works on this core?” I asked.
Blake smiled like a fox that’d pinned a mouse. “Sometimes you fight fire with fire.”
A FALSE LEAD
Blake asked Doyle for a pair of shoes. Doyle tried to trade them to get out of going with us, but Blake made a few more threats and suddenly we were all three in the car. I sat in the back and managed to grab another nap on our way. Doyle sourced a tower we could check out and Blake drove through the night taking Doyle’s directions.
I didn’t want to sleep through everything, but I was taking what sleep I could, knowing I was going to need to be alert soon enough.
It wasn’t really sleep, anyway. It was closing my eyes, and wishing I was back at the Sergeant Jasper, with Corey in his room asleep. Or even with Brandon pretending to be Corey, who I still needed to box in the head and ask him why he was sneaking in and letting me think he was his brother.
I’d even rather be back in the hotel room with Wil, fighting off my father after one of his drunken escapades. I’d face all measure of horrors just to have this terrorizing last couple of days over with.
To my surprise, we ended up on a corner block of residential neighborhood not a couple of miles from Kiawah Island, somewhere amidst the streets of John’s Island. Most of the island was asleep, as it was getting on to eleven in the evening by the time we got there.
If Alice’s story about the poison was true, then I only had until…maybe ten in the morning? Ten hours until she could give them the antidote, if there was one at all. I didn’t want to believe her, but I couldn’t risk not believing.
r /> Blake drove Henry Anderson’s car, and parked in a lot in front of a grocery store about a block away from where Doyle said the tower was.
“Why don’t we just drive there?” I asked, getting out of the car and stretching. My bones ached from tiredness and the chill in the air. We were on the southern end of John’s Island, with a lot more trees and a lot of rural sprawl. This particular block was home to two churches, a grocery store, a couple more outlet stores, and one nondescript four-story brick building that looked vacant but happened to have a satellite dish on top. It was supposedly defunct in the 1980s but Doyle said it could be used as a tower, if connected right. The rest of the surrounding buildings were small old homes with broken fences, some in severe need of new paint and repair.
“We should go on foot,” Blake said. He stretched and then cracked his neck. “If this is a tower, there might be security. Perhaps cameras or an alarm. We’ll have to inspect the building and then find a way up without getting caught.”
Doyle emerged from the passenger seat, rumpled and now donning a dark zip-up hoodie. He pressed his palm against his face and opened his eyes wide. “It smells. Doesn’t it?” He touched his nose and then pointed out toward the homes across the street. “How do these people live in such a smelly place?”
“It’s just outside, Doyle,” Blake said, shutting the door to the car and starting to walk off. “This is what outside smells like when you’re not smoking your lungs out.”
“Hey,” Doyle said, catching up with Blake and giving him a slight punch to the shoulder. “Smoking is one of God’s greatest gifts to man. How the hell else am I supposed to pass the time here?”
“I don’t know,” Blake said. “Exercise? Eat some fruit? Try not to kill yourself with carcinogens?”
“Fruit will kill you,” he said. He inhaled again and coughed. “Said so on the news. This smell will, too. You know what that is? That’s unfiltered smells of the world farting in your face. You need something to cover it up.”
