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“Yes.” Elle sounded awestruck. “That’s an embedded version of an RFID chip.”
“Dumb it down for the blondes in the room,” Megan said, and tossed her long hair.
“It’s a radio frequency identification chip.” Elle looked up at them. “You all have them. They’re in your credit cards. They store a small amount of information, like your bank details or the code to unlock a door. You know those cards they give you in hotels instead of keys? Those use RFID. That’s what this is, only instead of flat and sealed into a card, it’s in a tiny glass tube and can be implanted under the skin. I’m surprised it’s still in one piece.”
“I think the wires and the tape protected it.” Dimitri reached into his pocket, produced a Swiss army knife, pulled out the scissors and cut the piece of tape with the glass on it, off the messy heap of wires. He passed it to Elle. “I don’t think they knew that was there.” He looked at Callum. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“That this crew are all implanted with these things and that’s why they were so desperate to get the body back?” Callum stared at the chip, looking grim. “And why they took the guy I dealt with at Isobel’s house.”
“I’ve heard whispers about covert groups using these implants,” Elle said. “If no one knows you have them, then they’re a great way to keep information secure.”
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “No way for the enemy to get hold of your access key unless they cut off your hand and wave it at the lock.”
“And they’d have to know the implant was there in the first place,” Elle said. “It’s not the kind of thing you’d look for in a standard autopsy either. A tiny chip like this, implanted in the web between your thumb and forefinger would be pretty hard to find.”
“I would still want to pick up a team member’s body if I could, just to make sure the tech stayed secret,” Dimitri said.
“I don’t get it,” Isobel said. “If these chips are top secret and they were so worried someone would find it in the body, why leave him on the beach in the first place?”
“I don’t think they intended to be gone that long. I think they were planning on coming back for him,” Callum said. “But you moved the body before they could get it.”
She shook her head. “That’s an awful big risk to take.”
“Was it? You said yourself, no one goes into that cove.”
“I agree with Callum’s theory,” Elle said as she typed. “I checked all the photos of the beach. There was one set of prints other than the Sinclair sisters’ and the body. You saw two people get off the boat. It stands to reason that only one of them made it out of the cove.”
“So,” Dimitri said, “two people, carry something heavy off the boat. There’s an argument. It gets out of hand. One of them kills the other and has a choice: deal with the body right then, or get his cargo where it needs to be while it’s still dark.” He looked at Callum. “I would have taken the cargo and come back for the body.”
“But his plan goes to hell, because Isobel moved it while he was gone.” Callum looked back at her. “How soon after seeing them get off the boat did you go down into the cove?”
“I called my sisters as soon as I saw them with what I thought was a body, and we went down to the cove a few minutes after we heard their car leave,” Isobel said.
“And you were down there how long?”
“Twenty minutes, maybe.”
Callum looked back at Dimitri. “Not enough time for him to deliver his cargo and get back to the body before Isobel took it.”
“They must have been freaking out when they discovered the body was gone,” Ryan said. “If the cops had taken it, it would have been autopsied by now.”
Callum nodded. “And there was a chance they’d have found the chip. Elle, can you get the information stored on that thing?”
“If there’s any information on there, I can get it,” Elle said. “It isn’t exactly hard. You can buy an RFID reader from a local tech store. It’s just a case of finding the right one. But first, I can try my phone. It has tech in it that activates a passive RFID chip and transfers the information to the phone.”
“Does that happen with bank cards too?” Megan said. “Because my account increased dramatically when I married Dimitri, and I don’t want to lose any of it. It’s the best thing I got out of this relationship.”
“That’s my girl,” Dimitri said with a grin. “Always making me feel loved.”
She blew him a kiss.
“Yes, you can steal people’s bank information with a decent phone and a little know-how.” Elle dug out a piece of futuristic technology that doubled as a phone, and Jack actually whined at the sight of it.
“One day, I’m going to get one of those,” he said with the wistfulness only a
teenager could pull off over a phone.
“What the hell for?” Callum demanded.
