“Really? When?”
“I work at the Incen building. I’ve seen you in passing. I’m sure you’ve never seen me.”
“Seriously?” Cheyenne asked.
“You were pointed out to me. We knew you worked at PASK. One of the elites.”
Cheyenne wasn’t sure how to take this, if it was a compliment or a critique. Both Jazz and Malek appeared confused when she arrived, asking about the man putting the plan in place.
“I thought the Reckoner was supposed to meet with us,” Malek said.
“I can’t speak for him,” Lucia said.
“It seems that nobody can,” Cheyenne said.
Lucia had brought the handouts they were looking over, the “grand plan” as Malek called it. As Cheyenne started going through it, she couldn’t help but laugh.
“He’s given us our own code names,” she said.
“I already have mine,” Jazz said.
“We gave ours to him,” Lucia said. “He told us to pick something to do with music. I picked a song my parents always played in our house.”
“I’m glad you picked a short and easy name,” Jazz joked.
“Guantanamera,” Lucia said.
Cheyenne read Malek’s name, “Vessel,” which surely referred to an obscure song he liked, and then she saw her father’s: “The Fly.”
“Nice one,” she said.
“I’m keeping a theme here,” Keith told her. “I gave him yours too.”
“It’s perfect.”
“Okay, Blackbird, pay attention,” Malek told her. “Let’s get on the same page. Literally, since we’re holding actual pieces of paper.”
“Clever,” Cheyenne said with sarcasm.
“I know, right?”
She had missed Malek’s sarcastic humor and couldn’t-care-less attitude. They went down a list of assignments Reckoner had for each of them. As she studied the document, she realized what they were about to do.
“This is crazy,” she said, stopping the conversation just as it started.
“What part?” Jazz teased.
“Um, all of it? Starting with the Incen Tower. We can’t get into those offices.”
“You’re reading ahead,” her father said.
She had a flashback to fifth grade, with an impatient Cheyenne trying to rush through her homework while her methodical father wanted her to take things slowly.
Cheyenne kept reading, skimming through everything. Finally she saw the big picture. She tossed the pages back onto the table. “There’s no way we can do this. Even if we were to actually break into the PASK offices and acquire the links necessary, even if we could break through the security codes, this is impossible. There is no system for SYNAPSYSes to retrieve the data sent to them. Whether it’s to one person or to ten million.”
“How do you think we spoke to you, Chy?” Malek asked.
“That was you?” she asked in complete surprise.
“I helped with the conversation.”
“I don’t know exactly how you did it, but I know one thing: that it’s—”
“Impossible,” Jazz interrupted. “I know. I thought so too. But they’ve figured out a way.”
“How?”
“Why do you think I was fired?” Malek asked.
“I always chalked it up to your sunny disposition,” she said. “But you said it was because of your faith.”
“Yeah, those things were in their list of complaints. But they also didn’t like my experimentations. They didn’t like how much I knew about the nature of the work we were doing with algorithms and that I knew they’ve been using them on SYNAPSYSes.”
“You’ve known that for some time,” Cheyenne told him. “What concern is it to them?”
“They don’t want the public to know the level and influence of those algorithms they’re using. And it was through that very level that I was able to drill into data, to figure out a way to get into the elaborate SYNAPSYS.”
“Yeah, I’d like to know how you did that,” Jazz chimed in.
Malek scratched his spiky hair. “To use a simple analogy, I didn’t have to scale some massive, impenetrable wall. All I had to do was swim in through their underground water system, so to speak.”
“The underground water system being the algorithms that are fed to the SYNAPSYS?” Cheyenne asked.
Malek nodded. She looked at her father, who seemed confused but remained silent.
“But still…how are we going to deliver a message to the entire country?” she asked.
“Approximately three hundred and eighty million people,” Malek said. “The Reckoner’s got it covered. At least that’s the grand plan.”
“A man most of you haven’t ever met is going to help us do this?”
All eyes were on her, seeing her complete lack of confidence in this.
Malek continued to explain things to her. “It used to be that everybody in the world could see the same thing just by going on the internet to view it. Until the government finally put regulations on that.”
“And what message are we delivering?” Cheyenne asked. “Videos of pop stars from the eighties?”
Jazz laughed, and Malek pointed at her as if to say “Nice one.”
“Again, it’s covered,” Malek said. “This time the Reckoner is pulling back the curtain and giving names and details. Up to now everything he’s done has been to get people’s attention. They’ve been movie trailers. Now he’s letting people see the final film. Except in this case it’s going to be documents and audio files and video clips.”
Before Malek and Cheyenne could continue their conversation, Jazz suddenly broke in. “No, no, no, no.”
Like Cheyenne, he had looked ahead in the pages.
“Wait a minute…I’m the what?” he asked.
“The driver,” Cheyenne read.
Jazz shook his head and laughed. “Come on.”
“What?”
“So someone’s gotta pull out that stereotype, huh? The brother’s gotta be behind the wheel.”
“Well, you’ve certainly been driving me all around,” Cheyenne said.
“Yeah, but that’s all? After all the work I’ve been doing, I’m a cabdriver? Why not get a public transportation Autoveh in Chicago?”
“Look ahead at the timeline of events,” Lucia said matter-of-factly. “Page five.”
All of them turned to the hour-by-hour breakdown of the plan. Malek was the first to understand why Jazz was the driver. “We need a segue,” he said. “That’s how the information’s gonna be transmitted. How all that data is going to be basically dumped into the stream.”
Now Jazz understood too. “Okay. That’s a little better. Now I feel a tad bit more important.”
“So explain a ‘segue,’ ” Keith said.
“Someone needs to be the center point that connects Cheyenne and me to the rest of us,” Malek said. “We can’t do it without a mainline server. So Jazz will be driving that process. His car will literally be a driver. It will serve as a transfer point for the data. That’s where those little black boxes are going to come in handy.”
Everybody paused for a moment and looked at each other with surprise. Jazz now nodded and then began grooving in his chair to a beat only he could hear.
“That’s more like it,” he said.
Lucia’s job, as far as Cheyenne could see, was getting them through security at the tower. Nowhere did it say what her father was going to do, nor did it tell them if they would actually be meeting the Reckoner.
“When is this all supposed to happen?” Cheyenne asked.
Malek smiled. “In five days.”
EIGHTEEN
State of Disrepair
1.
The shocks on his SUV seemed to be missing as Will’s vehicle rumbled down a road being rep
aved. The last time he had been in the village of Winnetka, fifteen miles north of Chicago, he was visiting his father’s property to attend the memorial service for his mother.
Twenty years ago.
The timing for Will felt cruel and anything but coincidental. As far as he was concerned, 2038 was turning into one hell of a year. It would be twenty years ago next month in April that his mother passed away from a sudden heart attack. Sudden being the key word since Melissa Stewart Heyford had been only forty-six years old at the time and in great health—except for the stress of having to deal with her ex-husband, who divorced her when Will was only ten.
Light snowflakes appeared out of the dark night as he headed to the Heyford residence. He didn’t call it a house, because there wasn’t only one structure on this property anymore. The primary home of the trillionaire sat on the edge of Lake Michigan with an immaculate view that grew bigger and better with each neighbor’s lot he acquired. In many ways Will was glad that it was nighttime so he wouldn’t have to see the monstrosity of the Heyford residence, something that had been discussed in the news for the last ten years.
Jackson and Melissa Heyford moved to their mansion off Sheridan Road back in 2001, three years after starting his company. By then the money was already starting to roll in, and he could afford the fifteen-thousand-square-foot house with eight bedrooms and ten baths on one and a half acres of land. Will had been eight when they moved to the lakefront home, and even back then it felt as cold and empty as his father’s heart. His mother had the same sort of sentiment, with their marriage already crumbling at the time of the move and officially over two years later. His father had been the one wanting the divorce, and since he had a mistress along with numerous other strikes against him, he ended up paying a lot of alimony. Enough that it threatened not only his new home but also his company, PASK.
As he drove down Sheridan Road well below the speed limit, Will remained silent and tried to contain his nerves and the hostility building deep inside. He knew the house he visited with his brothers on select weekends from ages ten to eighteen was no longer there. Now there were five houses spread out over five acres, all connected and all designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. And all stolen, as he liked to say to Amy. Each famous house had been brought in its entirety from its original location to the Heyford property. The houses were virtually plucked out of the dirt and transported miles, with two being hauled all the way from California. There had been two documentaries on Heyford’s obsession with Frank Lloyd Wright and how Heyford had managed to get the houses and transplant them to the Winnetka property.
Money can buy everything except eternal life and joy in this one.
Will knew several of the houses had been virtually stolen. Like Fallingwater, which was built in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, over a waterfall. This famous Frank Lloyd Wright house was one the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy refused to sell, yet after a yearlong campaign and a courting of the state, Heyford convinced them to allow him to buy it. There were many rumors about what had really happened, but speculation of this sort could no longer be shared and commented about online. Now such things could only be discussed in person.
Two well-known properties in Los Angeles, the Ennis House and the Hollyhock House, had been purchased, with large pieces of the homes transported more than two thousand miles. There were two other houses Jackson Heyford had been trying to buy but still couldn’t, not even with all the money and power in the world. There was the Frank Lloyd Wright home and studio where the architect had lived in Oak Park, and then there was Robie House. His father’s desire for the latter was the only thing of all this that didn’t make sense. Will still couldn’t figure out why his father would want this lesser-known and smaller Wright house.
The gatehouse up ahead was bright with both streetlights and spotlights. A stone wall stood on each side of it. There was a roundabout in front of the gatehouse, allowing sightseers to peek at the only entrance to the famous businessman’s home. Heyford owned four other properties in the world, including a castle-like chalet in Park City and his own island. But since Acatour was in Chicago, this was where he spent most of his time.
Two security guards stepped out of the gatehouse, the first holding out his hand to tell Will to stop. Not that he could have crashed through the wrought-iron gate that looked strong enough to stop a tank.
“William Stewart,” the guard said, staring at the black metal tablet in his hands that read Will’s SYNAPSYS.
“That’s me.”
The other security guard searched the car with a flashlight. He first looked underneath and around the tires, then opened all the doors and examined the interior of the vehicle.
“Sorry. It’s pretty messy,” Will said, trying to act as nonchalant as possible. “We have three girls.”
The first security guard held up his tablet and then moved it over the length of the SUV, the reader acting as a metal detector to check for any weapons.
“What’s with the bookcases?” the second guard asked when he saw the two wooden bookshelves stacked on each other and resting on the lowered back seat.
“I own a bookstore. Actually, owned a bookstore. Just went out of business. Those are leftover shelves I need to sell or get rid of.”
The man with the tablet looked back at the screen, surely verifying the information on Will.
“Yeah,” he said to his colleague. “Bookstore is listed here.”
The security guards shut his doors and then opened the gate to “heaven on earth.”
“You’ll drive for a few minutes, and then you’ll see a road on your right,” the uniformed man told Will. “Take that, and you’ll get to the next security unit.”
As Will drove down the wooded lane on his father’s property, he turned back toward the bookcases and whispered, “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s wonderful,” Hutchence’s muffled voice said.
Hutchence was curled up in the second, carved-out bookcase beneath the top bookcase. They’d put blankets down to provide a little comfort.
So far, so good.
“Midnight, right?” Will said in a low voice as he turned down what could be considered the main driveway for Heyford’s home.
“Yeah,” Hutchence said. He was silent for a few seconds, then added, “And if I’m not here, just leave. Okay?”
“I got it.”
2.
After being checked at another guardhouse with one man on security, Will drove down a long stone road leading to a wide circular driveway in front of one of the Frank Lloyd Wright houses. This one had a Mayan look to it and had a pool with a fountain in its middle. A man in a suit waited as Will stopped the car. He left the engine running and squinted to see if he recognized the stranger. He knew it wouldn’t be his father standing on the side of the driveway. Jackson Heyford would want a far more dramatic meeting place.
“Good evening, sir,” the elderly man said as he opened the car door. “If you follow that lighted sidewalk alongside the Hollyhock House, someone will be there to take you to Mr. Heyford.”
Will was going to say something about the car, but the man answered before he could get a word out.
“I’ll park your car, sir. We have a parking lot for guests.”
“Do you think it’ll be safe?” Will asked.
The wrinkles in the man’s face bunched together in the glow of the front drive. “I promise,” he said.
Will had done his job of getting Hutchence onto his father’s property. Now he was on his own. Whether or not he could get inside one of these houses was a whole other matter.
Maybe he’s not even going to break into a house. Perhaps he’s doing something else.
Hutchence hadn’t been specific, asking Will to trust him and to be okay with knowing less. As Will walked down a twisting stone path past one house and then alongside another, he shivered and let out a sig
h, his breath visible in the glow of the well-lit walkway. The walkway began to weave up a gradually rising hill, then turned into stone steps ascending a greater incline. At the top he found another house nestled in trees and could hear the faint sound of a waterfall. A tall, bald figure dressed in shirt and pants that flapped in the wind emerged from the warmly lit brick terraces at the front of the house. At closer glance Will was surprised to see it was a woman, probably in her midtwenties, with a completely shaved scalp walking barefoot on the multicolored stone.
“Cold night to be missing your shoes,” he told her.
Her chocolate-colored skin blended into the night, but the whites of her wide eyes stood out.
She grinned and then said in a British accent, “The stones are heated. Please follow me inside.”
Her flowing pants and shirt had a detailed pattern on them as if they were a formal uniform from an African country. With too many things all around him to take in and the absence of daylight, Will had stopped bothering to look around. He didn’t want to be impressed or awe inspired at any point during this meeting, yet it was impossible to ignore all the opulence surrounding him.
The last time Will had come to this property, none of these houses had been here. This obsession had begun in the last decade. The woman guided him through two pergolas at the entrance and into a small room and then into a large, open room with brown stone and long windows on all sides. The lights in this room looked like slow-burning embers. The woman stopped after entering the grand room, and Will looked at the fireplace and saw a dark silhouette in front of the flames.
“Thank you, Alika,” Jackson Heyford told the woman.
Will nodded as she left the two men together. As his father moved closer to him, Will could see a face that hadn’t changed much during the last two decades. Technology and wealth could help slow down the aging process without the use of surgery that made one look freakish.
“Welcome to Fallingwater.” Heyford’s eyes, shielded behind clear glasses, resembled the hard stone floor beneath him.
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