“What is going on?” Aiden asked.
“Just wait for it.”
Behind me, the lock to the door clicked and the front door opened a few inches. I smiled at the camera then walked inside.
Jace’s house was decorated very nicely for a guy who rarely left his upstairs gaming den. Two antique couches sat nearly side by side in front of an old wooden box style TV. There was a wooden coffee table in front of both of them layered with dozens of old vintage magazines. Mostly Time and Life, but there were a few issues of Sports Illustrated for good measure.
Along the back wall, two curio cabinets with hundreds of porcelain knick-knacks inside broke up the string of newer paintings, all featuring boats floating in the ocean. He’d told me he bought them from a friend of his anonymously, hoping to jump start her painting career.
We stepped carefully along the hardwood floor and started up the stairs. Once at the top, we turned to the left and entered the only room with the door still open.
Jace sat in a computer chair surrounded by dozens of monitors all stacked up around him to look like a large TV screen. The ten screens in the middle were all focusing on some video game where he was controlling little men around a few larger bases, two screens stacked on the right were split four ways, each split showing the view from one of the cameras positioned around the house, and the two on the left had flashing text he would glance at from time to time between other actions on the game.
“Take a seat,” Jace said without looking back. “Game’s about over.”
Thankfully, he was right. The game lasted about another five minutes before the word ‘Victory!’ popped up in the center of the screen. I’m not against video games, by any means, but I prefer watching people play games with pretty cut scenes and visuals. Even watching what seemed to be an action packed five minutes, I found whatever game he was playing hard to get into. He said something I couldn’t make out and pumped his fist before taking off his headset and turning around.
“Well, well. What brings the little tiger over to my den?” he said with a smile. Jace was slightly overweight and short, which made him look bigger than he was. He wore a Starcraft shirt and a pair of black boxer shorts that covered his thighs down to his knees. There was a thin layer of stubble on his cheeks though it was thicker in spots where he had been trying to grow a beard.
I lowered the collar of my shirt, exposing the metal collar around my neck. “I was kinda hoping you had a way to take this off,” I said with a wince as a jolt of electricity shot into me.
“Shock collar?”
I nodded, and he waived me over. I sat on the floor just in front of him and bent over, giving him a better look at the necklace. He twisted and pulled it around as he looked at it, jerking his hand back occasionally as a jolt of electricity shot into him.
“Might take me a while, but I can get it off.”
I sighed in relief. “How long do you think?”
“Depends. Do you need it in one piece when I’m done?”
“Might not be a bad idea. There might be a tracking chip inside. We might be able to use it to throw the owner off.”
“You need to find more trusting boyfriends,” he said, glancing over at Aiden. “I’d say about an hour, give or take.”
“It’s not that. It’s something more serious.”
Jace nodded, grabbed a small tool kit from a nearby desk drawer and got to work. That is why I liked the kid. He’d do anything to help a friend, no questions asked. Most people would assume I’m in grave danger and sweep me out the door just to keep from getting involved.
Nearly an hour later, I heard the click of the collar as Jace forced the locking mechanism open. I turned around and noticed him holding it up to the light to get a better look.
“What do you think?” I asked. “Is it chipped?”
“Definitely chipped.” He pointed to two small tabs on the inside part of the collar. “They wanted to make sure it still worked if one went out.”
“Wouldn’t the constant shocking damage the chips after a while?” Aiden asked.
“Maybe, maybe not. More than likely, whoever designed this collar cared more for the constant punishment instead of the tracking aspect. Probably thought the current would be enough to hold the person in place.”
I agreed. If it wasn’t for Greg, Aiden would’ve been dead and me right along with him. Other than making a break for it while they paraded us through the crowd, there really hadn’t been a chance to escape.
“Are they still working?” I asked.
Jace stuck a small screwdriver in both of the tabs and pulled out a small microchip out of each. He held both up to the light, one at a time and examined them closely.
“This one is still transmitting. The other is shot.”
“How can you tell.” Aiden took the broken chip and held it in the air, twisting and turning it in the light as if the answer would pop out of nowhere.
“It’s hard to tell if you don’t know what to look for, but it is vibrating slightly.” He placed the good chip in the palm of my hand. I stood still, trying to feel what he was talking about, but it must’ve taken some level of electronic mastery I didn’t dare to possess to feel whatever he was talking about. In the end, it didn’t matter if I could tell if it was working. Only that it did.
“Do you want me to destroy it?” Jace asked, taking it back from me.
“Hell yeah I do,” I Aiden said without hesitation.
Before Jace could follow through, I placed my hand on top of his. “Wait. Is there any way to tweak the signal to make it look like it is coming from somewhere else?”
“It wouldn’t be easy,” he said, scratching his head. “If the tracking is GPS based, there is a good chance it will continue to ping its actual location even if I tweak it.” He grabbed a small screwdriver from his top left desk drawer and worked on the chip.
We watched him for nearly another hour while he worked intently on it. He’d had it attached to his computer and was making some headway on tweaking the signal, judging by the slight movement of the red blip on one of the screens.
“I think I need some coffee,” I said stretching out with a yawn. “Anyone else?”
Jace nodded. “K-cups are in the pantry next to the fridge. I’ll take a cappuccino.”
“How about a bottle of water?” Aiden asked.
“Plenty in the fridge. Help yourselves to anything.”
I leaned in and kissed Jace on the forehead before leading Aiden through the luxurious house.
The kitchen was to my left at the bottom of the stairs. I flicked on the light, brightening the room. Unlike the living room, the kitchen was more modern. He had a stove with a fancy black cooktop surrounded by a beautiful granite countertop. The cabinets were all polished oak with golden handles. If that wasn’t enough, the fridge helped compliment the luxury. It was one of those wide split-top models with a freezer drawer big enough to hold a dead body on the bottom. This is the kind of kitchen my mother would die for if she were still around.
I pushed the thought aside and went to the cabinet next to the fridge and browsed his selection. From what I could see, he had a wide variety of coffee stashed inside. Most of it was of the flavored variety though he had half a dozen dark roast sitting off to the side. After a moment, I settled on caramel macchiato and grabbed his k-cup before shutting the cabinet. Five minutes later we were on our way back to Jace’s gaming pad.
“Any luck?” I asked, placing his cup of coffee on a coaster in front of him.
“Check this out.” He punched a few keys on his keyboard and brought up a GPS display of the area. In the center of the screen there was a flashing red dot I guessed represented the collar. But instead of being inside the house, it was showing the signal coming from the middle of the street. “I shifted the signal about three hundred feet to the east.”
“That’s still close,” Aiden said, slumping back into his chair with a defeated look on his face.
“If you give me more
time, I’m sure I could extend the range even further.”
“Three hundred will be good enough,” I said, taking a sip of my coffee. “Just tell me you have a way to shut it off.”
Jace nodded and pointed to a small switch where the bad chip had come out of. He flicked it with his thumb and the little red dot on the screen ceased to exist. “What do you have in mind with her?”
“Depends. What will it cost a sweet ole girl like me to have you track the signal for a while?”
“For you, I’d settle for Chinese takeout and a six pack.”
I smiled. “I can handle that.”
- 21 -
“You sure this will work?” Aiden asked as I pointed out a trash can on the outdoor patio of a restaurant.
“Do you have a better idea?”
“No, but what if the signal shifts again? It’s bad enough I got you involved in this mess.”
“Jace is the best electronics geek I know. If he says the signal is stable, there’s nothing to worry about.” I walked along the sidewalk towards the trash can, careful to keep the collar out of view. “Besides, it’ll be in the trash. What can go wrong?”
Aiden let out a reluctant sigh and followed close behind, keeping an eye on the road for anything suspicious.
As we got closer to the trash can, I switched the power on and held it behind my back. If Jace was right, the signal was now transmitting somewhere over on the next street. If they were still tracking the signal, they’d be searching there for it, sticking out like a sore thumb in the process.
The sign on the front of the restaurant read closed though I noticed two women inside working to get things ready to open in the next hour or so. It was one of those places that opened for a late lunch and dinner, serving mainly sandwiches, salads, and plenty of seafood. On a normal day, there wasn’t much of a crowd for lunch though dinner was a different beast. Around six in the afternoon, this place is always packed. If you don’t call ahead to set a reservation you are more likely to sit around all night waiting for a table you might get for an hour before they boot you off for the next reservation on line.
I hated risking anyone inside, but it was almost the perfect place to drop the collar. The outdoor patio was wide open, and usually empty this time of day. While that meant nobody would be around it, it also meant I’d have a clear view of the trashcan from across the street.
I took a quick look around, making sure nobody was watching, dropping the collar when I was sure the coast was clear. Before the people inside got suspicious, we both took off to get in position.
My spot was a table with a window view in the coffee shop across the street while Aiden’s was a bus stop bench the next street over. After ordering a grande cappuccino, I took my seat by the window and pulled out my phone. Aiden called me before I could call him.
“Everything good?” he asked.
“Nice clear shot. You?”
“Normal midday traffic.” That meant there were a handful of people wandering down the street shopping, but otherwise it was a lot clearer than it would be later in the afternoon when the kids got out of school and people got off work. “I’ll call if I see anything.”
“Same.”
I hung up and glanced through a new issue of People magazine sitting on the table while keeping an eye out front. From my seat, I couldn’t make out what the workers were doing, but I imagined they wouldn’t start setting up the outside for a few more minutes yet.
From here it was just a waiting game. All we had to do was hold our positions and watch for anyone who looked remotely suspicious. It might have helped if we knew what we were looking for, but felt confident enough they wouldn’t either.
The only way our plan could fail was if they weren’t watching the signal, which was unlikely. That or if the collar was no longer transmitting. We’d checked it three times at Jace’s place before leaving, so unless the signal was botched on their end, it was just a matter of time until someone came looking for it.
Within fifteen minutes my phone buzzed, so I slipped my ear piece in and answered the phone.
“Think I have something. Four door car. Tan. Dark, tinted windows.”
“How many inside?”
“I saw two in front. Was too dark in the back to make out more. The car just made a left and is heading your way.”
I put down the magazine and stared out the window. As if on cue, the car turned down the street and crept by, coming to a stop in front of the restaurant. I stood up and got ready to pounce. If these were our people, there wouldn’t be much time to take them down. It would be risky, doing it in the middle of the day, but I figured I’d be able to explain the situation to anyone who asked.
The driver’s door opened, and a woman stepped out looking like she was fresh out of the gym. She had on a pair of gray yoga pants with a matching tee shirt that had writing on it I couldn’t make out from my spot. She grabbed a large pink satchel from the front seat before walking to the back and opening the door.
The sight of two rear-facing car seats sent me back to my chair. The car may have looked suspicious, but it wasn’t what we were looking for. Not unless they’re resorting to sending moms out to look for the collar.
“Not our car,” I said. “Unless you think a mother and her children are looking for it.”
“You said to keep an eye on anything that looked off.”
“You did fine. Just keep watching for anything else.” We kept our phones on this time, hoping to get something sooner rather than later.
The woman held the car seat and met her passenger, a man, also holding a car seat, in front of the restaurant, right in time for the place to open. They took a seat not far from the trash can at a circular table with a folding cloth umbrella for shade. They got the babies secured before the man went inside, presumably to let the servers know they were there.
“Think I got our car.”
“For real this time?” I joked.
“Windowless, unmarked, white van. Driving by real slow.”
“How slow?”
“Slow enough to glare at anyone walking down the street,” he said. “Should we call the cops?”
“No. Just watch them for a while. If they stop, let me know.”
The other end of the line went silent, making me wonder what’d happened. I glanced down and noticed a status bar on the screen. My phone picked now to install some critical update, as if someone knew now would be the most inconvenient time to force the installation.
With my phone out of commission, and essentially blind, I took what was left of my cappuccino and stepped outside.
The traffic outside was not busy, as if the world knew what we had planned and were staying out of the way on purpose. Down the street I heard the screeching of car tires, which sent what little foot traffic on the sidewalk diving for cover. A white, windowless van sped down the street and came to a stop in front of the restaurant.
Shit. If that’s our guy, they can still track the signal even though we’d tweaked it.
In the front seat I saw a single driver. An older man with a bald head other than the smattering of gray whiskers scattered around the sides of his ears. On his nose was a pair of thick metal glasses and the Tom Selleck mustache and you had what I assumed to be public enemy number one. If for no other reason than Magnum PI had been off the air for decades now.
The back doors of the van popped open and two guys jumped out, both wearing dark clothing and ski masks to cover their faces. I watched in horror as the mother, stood up and walked to the trashcan to throw away a wipe she’d just used to clean off her baby.
Before I, or the father, had a chance to react, the two men grabbed her and ran her back to the van where they tossed her in the back and shut the door behind them.
I rushed forward and reached for the driver’s side door, but the driver pressed the lock and gave me a smile nearly masked by his gaudy mustache.
“Ignis!” I shouted as I flicked my lighter and drew the flame to my hand. The
driver, having seen my intentions, swerved at me before I could set the van on fire. The flame went out as I leapt to the pavement to avoid becoming roadkill and I watched the white van speed away.
An overwhelming sense of dread washed over me as I watched the babies’ father run down the street after the van, knowing full well he didn’t stand a chance in hell of catching it. What seemed like a great idea minutes ago turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life. Now, instead of just the two of us being involved, we’d dragged an innocent woman into the mix. The best I could hope for was they would realize they had the wrong person and let her go. But something told me Walt wasn’t the pleasant type. With my luck, he’d assume she was involved and do whatever it took to pull information of our whereabouts out of her.
Of course, she didn’t know we even existed. Even if she wanted to, she didn’t have any information of value to Walt. Once he figured that out, he would probably kill her like he wanted to to do us.
“Holy shit!” Aiden said, jogging down the street. He stopped in front of me and keeled over as his lungs begged for air. “What do we do now?”
“We have to get back to Jace. Hopefully he can still track the collar.”
“You think they’re taking her back to Walt’s?” He asked through labored breaths.
“I doubt it. They know we know where it is. Unless he has another house you know about.”
“We weren’t that close. I didn’t know about the one they had us locked up in. He probably has a few of them all over Georgia. I wouldn’t even know where to begin looking.”
I didn’t either. While we knew he was involved, that was all we knew. Our hopes fell on Jace still being able to track the collar by the time we got to his place.
- 22 -
Far Too Young To Die: An Astraea Renata Novel Page 14