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  I started back between the two cars. I meant to wait on Axel since he was opening boxes still, trying to figure out which one he wanted to take.

  Marc turned his head when I got close, his mismatched eyes focusing on me. He glanced at the trash bag, seemed a little confused but then redirected his attention to my face and held. A stern frown and a wrinkle between his eyebrows told me so many things, none of them good.

  I stared back, narrowing my eyes, trying to relay how I hated this silence and dared him to say something right here. Want to stare me down like that? I’d send us all to jail just to knock that look off his face.

  At the same time, my heart was cracking badly. His look made me not care about dying by the Germans. It’d save me the heartache.

  Maybe he was upset because it was Brandon and I who were kidnapped, which meant we were sleeping in the same bed. Maybe he finally made that connection. Even if I hadn’t initially thought it was Brandon, maybe he thought...

  This was the problem with dancing between different guys trying to make a decision. The growing paranoia made every look appear to have a suspicious glint. Still, I couldn’t shake that something was wrong with Marc. He knew something and couldn’t tell me about it now.

  Axel found two boxes he wanted and then hurried back between the cars toward the door. He took one look at the bag in my hands, cocked an eyebrow, shrugged and then nudged me out.

  I followed him and Marc back to the abandoned house. This time, Marc opened the back door. He took my trash bag and stuffed it into the back. Axel dropped his findings into the back and got in to drive. Marc directed me to sit beside him in the back seat, with the stuff between us. Axel started up the car and we were off. We were quiet until we left the cul-de-sac and on the road again.

  “Boxes first,” Marc said. “Probably more important if they kept it.”

  I took one of the boxes and started sifting through it. It was tax records, over five years old. How long were you supposed to hang on to these? Apparently Mr. Jones made just over thirty five thousand dollars that year, and owned a small vacation house in Florida. He had retirement accounts in 401Ks, a few million dollars in various funds. That may or may not have increased over the last couple of years.

  I scratched a fingernail over my eyebrow, looking at the paperwork. Maybe it was my criminal intuition talking, but this made absolutely no sense at all. He was no different than any of the other people on this street, with nothing noteworthy. He had money, sure. Apparently he had an office in town and owned several rental properties. Vacation rentals. Business hadn’t been booming the last few years, but he was in the black.

  But his money was inside bank accounts and 401ks. Secured. Even if Corey could hack this account, why would the German go after this one and not someone who had even more money? If he owned the core, how was it his accounts seemed so average? How valuable could this core be?

  “What’s Murdock’s Core?” I asked quietly. I was still nervous since we were still in the neighborhood, as if someone could hear us. “What are we looking for? Tell me what that is? I mean, Corey kind of figured it out, but explain it to me.” I knew the answer, but I thought someone else spelling it out would help clear up what I was thinking. Technically, cell phone signals come from towers, but how would an illegal cell phone network operate?

  “Sounds like there’s an underground communication network,” Marc said. He was using his cell phone as a light in one hand and thumbed through files in the box.

  “Like in the sewers?” I asked, scrunching my nose and making a dumb face.

  “An underground cell service.”

  I stared at him blankly, waiting for him to explain the details because that totally wasn’t helpful.

  He only took a moment to notice I was staring and caught my eyes. “You do know what a cell phone is, right?”

  “Maybe,” I said in a sarcastic tone.

  He made a face, sticking his tongue out at me. “Where have you been living?” he asked, matching my tone.

  “I was living under a rock,” I said flatly. “Humor me. Pretend I don’t know anything about how cell phones work. Let’s pretend I’m an evil mastermind and wanted to create an underground cell phone service. Tell me what you’d need to run one.”

  He sighed, stuffing folders back into the box and leaning back. “Cell phone towers are built to not only keep you communicating, but also to keep track of you. So there’s signals flying through the air constantly. It’s not just cell phones out there though. There’s radio waves, satellite signals, wireless internet connections. The thing is, if it’s traveling through the air, it can be caught. Like picking up a radio signal by dialing into the right frequency.”

  “So if you have a cell phone, someone else can be listening. I figured. So how does this illegal one work?”

  “I’m having to guess,” Marc said. “What I figure is this works on a completely different frequency, or a deceptive frequency. This core keeps it all in line. But that means it should operate on completely separate towers, or operates on corporate-owned towers. The only trick is, if it is connected to corporate towers, it’s more likely to get caught.”

  “Okay, say I wanted to be completely anonymous. I’d need my own cell phone towers and this core to operate everything. How does the cell phone know not to connect to the corporate towers? And how do they keep others from picking up these open air signals?”

  “Every cell phone throws out a signal, looking for an ID number, cell phone towers throw back an ID number and if they match, the phone will make calls. It also can track where your cell phone is. The government can easily keep an eye on you this way. An illegal cell phone…maybe if it’s in a different frequency, those cell towers don’t know to pick it up?” Marc looked to Axel. “I’m talking out of my ass. I don’t know how it would work.”

  “The point is,” Axel said. “Corporations in this country are required to keep cell phone records for up to two years and the FCC is supposed to know about any communication system going on within the borders. It prevents terrorist activity from happening. They monitor for suspicious activity.”

  I raised eyebrows. “Like how you guys can track bad guys and keep an eye on people. Like we’re not supposed to.”

  “When does anyone do anything they’re supposed to?” Marc asked. “The government requires all cell phone services to keep tabs of your location, calls, text messages, everything. We don’t monitor individual cell phones. We look for unusual activity and then investigate in person to figure out what’s going on. And usually we’re only focused on family, or things that seem really odd, like with Coaltar. That’s how we trace people. Encrypted, invisible cell phone signals that the government doesn’t know about is something a whole lot more dangerous.” He shrugged. “I mean, I could be wrong. There could be reasons for keeping your phone service underground. Some people are just paranoid and don’t want any government access. That’s going to be the problem. Sparing people who maybe were just that paranoid and aren’t doing anything illegal.”

  I scratched absently at my eyebrow. As a thief, it was hard for me to consider anyone listening in on my phone calls. I couldn’t imagine normal people simply being okay with this, but then if you didn’t have anything to hide, you didn’t have much to worry about. I guess if I didn’t like it, I’d not use a cell phone.

  I also knew if people like in the Academy could listen in on cell phones, others could, too. Some of them might be like these German guys who discovered an even more secret cell phone service. What would they do with it if they had access? “So is this core worth money?”

  “The core is the data in the system,” Axel said. He focused on the road as he talked. “It’s all the data cell phone services normally keep, but they don’t distribute it to governments or anyone who asks. Or maybe they completely delete it after sending out the signals. Some gang trying to get their hands on it probably means they want to access the information. Either they want the list of names using the servi
ce, or they want the service to run and try to capture information on these people. If people want to be anonymous, those secret phone calls probably have to do with money and crime. Whatever it is, this gang is willing to threaten lives for it. This Mr. Jones may have already been a victim.”

  “How do you steal it?” I asked. “I mean, they’d need to access the core long enough that Corey could find a way to break in. But then what?”

  Axel sighed. “Imagine if you had even a minute of all the activity on cell phones throughout the city. How many passwords and access codes to bank accounts could you pick up? If you could listen quietly to cell phones, you technically have a key to thousands of passwords when people call their banks and so forth. Then they wait and use those passcodes to steal what’s in those accounts.”

  That made sense. That was still a lot of information to go through. There had to be millions of calls made throughout the day. For an elite and secret cell phone service, it’d narrow down the list to those with disposable cash. “So they only need to access this core for a minute. They don’t really need to take it.”

  “For as long as they could get away with,” Axel said. He turned his head, looking at me. “They either need access to the core directly, or they need access to the proper signals, pulling them out of the air, and then they can try to decode it as it flows. Apparently Corey wrote the code they can’t break through. Corey could probably give us more information on which would be the most likely way they’d approach it. I imagine gaining access to the core would be better…or rather, more profitable. Catching signals in the air limits the data. The core is where all the data flows.” He refocused on the road. “I mean, if I were going to steal this information, I’d prefer the core.”

  “But how is Mr. Jones related to all of this?” I asked. I pointed to the tax documents. “This family is upper middle class at worst, barely rich at best. If he made a secret underground cell phone service, wouldn’t he be really rich?”

  Marc shrugged. “The cash may be in an offshore bank somewhere. And if it’s only a local cell phone service, then it’d be a limited market.”

  It still didn’t add up for me. It was early in the morning and I was hungry. My brain wasn’t working. Or something about this didn’t make sense and I couldn’t put my finger on it. “Help me out here. He’s got some secret underground cell phone service and he never even spends the money he earns from it? That’s really far out there.”

  Axel let out a slow breath between his lips. “Whatever it is, we don’t need to worry about that just yet. We just need to find this core, and if that fails, we’re at least giving time for the others to work on our alternate plan.”

  “To do what?”

  Marc smirked. “You’re not as smart as I thought you were.”

  “Shut up, I’m still new to this.” I stopped a moment, thinking. “So the bad guys are looking for leverage to make Corey do the work they want. So they’ll be looking for me...so you’ve got me out there looking at stuff out in public.”

  Marc nodded. “Yup.”

  I thought about what an alternate plan could be and just started making it up. “So if you guys cart me around while we look for this core, some of your other people will watch to see who is tailing us?”

  “Bingo,” Marc said, his grin broadening. This was a good change. At least he was distracted from being mad. “Corey goes into a secure location so they can’t access him. So even if they think they’re looking for Brandon, they can’t get to him. So they’re left with you if they think you’re the girlfriend. If we can’t find this core, we’re hoping someone will still look for you and we might be able to figure out who they are and where they’re hiding out at.”

  I twisted my head, looking out the windows, trying to look for cars following. The sun wouldn’t be up for a couple of hours yet, but I didn’t see any headlights. “But Kevin and Raven are with Corey. So who’s following us? More Academy people?”

  “You don’t need to know anything about them,” Marc said.

  “How am I supposed to know who are the bad guys and who are the good guys if they catch up with us? If you don’t tell me, I’ll guess.”

  “Go ahead and guess,” Marc said. He crossed his arms, his eyes challenging.

  Despite the sparring between us, this was something of a relief. I was starting to wonder if my previous assumption of him being mad might have been a mistake. I admired a lot about him, even though at times he was chauvinistic. He was a street smart, ex-thug, now working for the good guys. His hair brushed to the front, the glint in his eyes; he looked like a rock star to me. Badass and smug, but despite my pushing him away at times, he was always right there.

  A random car rolled out from a side street, turning right a block ahead of us and driving on. “Is that them?” I asked. I wasn’t really guessing. I was just going to point out every car until he said who was who.

  “Let’s try to not talk about that so openly,” Axel said. “It doesn’t matter who is on our tail. Our job is to pretend they don’t exist. We shouldn’t be pointing them out. Talk about something else.”

  “Like the Academy?” I asked.

  “No,” Marc said.

  “Sure,” Axel said at the same time.

  Marc frowned and shook his head. “Not right now. Not yet.”

  “She’s ready for it,” Axel said. “If she’s asking, we should tell her.”

  “Why can’t you tell me?” I asked.

  Marc shifted in his seat, stretching and fiddling with the box. “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he said. “It’s that you don’t trust us. If I tell you certain secrets and you get pissed off at me, there’s nothing to stop you from going to someone like Blake or your brother and telling them everything.”

  I was going to say I wouldn’t do that, but the truth was, I’d already told Blake things because I was uncomfortable with them. Trust was hard to earn if someone kept secrets all the time. I folded my arms, sitting back, staring out the window.

  Marc returned to the paperwork, flipping through some of the files. “Maybe we should find a way to ask the wife. Maybe she knows about the cell phone service and hasn’t told anyone. She’d know where it was.”

  “Maybe he didn’t tell her about it,” I said quietly. “If there was a secret money account with a possibly illegal underground cell phone service, would you tell your wife? It didn’t look like she got control of a bunch of money even though he died. She’s still in the same house. If I got a billion dollars in a Swiss account because my husband died and left me an illegal cell phone service, I’d move at least to Isle of Palms, maybe Kiawah—probably out of the country.”

  Marc sighed. He pressed a palm to his face, rubbing. “Okay, I was just thinking maybe we should have a team keep an eye on her. Just in case they turn to her next. She’s got kids and all.”

  I wanted to kiss Marc right then for being so sweet, protecting a family he didn’t even know. He was right. This team might target the family, if they hadn’t already. “Can you get more Academy people to watch the house?”

  “We could do that,” Axel said.

  Marc started sending a text from his phone.

  “But now what?” I asked. “Isn’t he a landlord or something? Maybe he keeps this core at one of his properties. Or at least at work.”

  Marc nodded, but kept his eyes on his phone. “The most obvious is probably the most likely.”

  “So we break in and check out the place?” I asked.

  “Maybe. We need to scope it out, first. Go through that trash.”

  “Do we have to?”

  “Cover our bases,” he said.

  I dug through the trash, avoiding clear plastic bags that looked like they were for bathrooms and bedrooms. Two were stuffed with paper. I opened one, and noticed little Jones got a D on his spelling test.

  The other must have been from an office. Gum wrappers, old mail. I flipped through the mail, mostly ads, some for high-end credit card applications. Among the en
velopes, there were invitations to parties, some thank you notes. “Should we check out his friends? Wouldn’t one of them might know what he was up to?

  Marc lifted his head, read the address on one of the envelopes I held up and nodded. “First, let’s scope out the office. If we don’t get any leads from that, we’ll check out his friends.”

  We fell into a silence. I pretended to read documents, but my eyes were hurting trying to read in the car, so I opted for staring out the window and when that didn’t ease the headache, I sat back with my eyes closed. Marc quietly thumbed his way through the documents, learning what he could.

  After a few moments, I started passing out. I caught myself and sat up quickly, moving to stay awake.

  Marc pulled his attention from a file. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “If you’re sleepy, go to sleep.”

  “I don’t want to sleep.” I didn’t. I wanted to be awake. Last time I fell asleep, bad things happened.

  “Liar,” he said. He dropped the file and shoved the box to the floor. He snagged my elbow, and tugged. A few locks of his brown hair fell forward into his eyes as he looked at me. “Come on, Bambi. Relax a little.”

  I didn’t know what he was doing at first, and thought he just wanted me to sit back a certain way. Then he tugged again harder and I nearly face planted into his lap. I caught myself just before my nose knocked into his thigh.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Shush,” he said. He pressed his fingertips over my eyes so they would close. “Sleep.”

  “I’m going to get kidnapped by jerks and you want me to sleep?”

  “You’re not getting kidnapped,” he said. “Now shut up and get some rest while you can.”

  “But...”

  “We’re going to check out this office, but it isn’t open. We’re not going to break into it right now. We’ll wait until someone comes and opens up and check out the place. That’s probably a good thing. We’ll lay low and let these guys chasing you catch up with us. We’re executing both plans at once this way.” He dropped his hand onto my head, urging me to relax against his leg. “Sleep and I’ll wake you up if anything interesting happens.”