Crow - The Awakening (45 page)

"He was there. Maybe it's on the SIM card." Brandon switched from phone memory to his SIM card but found nothing but his music there. "I don't understand."

"Perhaps you deleted the contact before this meeting?" Laurence suggested, frowning at Brandon.

"I thought this was a performance evaluation. Why would I delete Steven for that?" Brandon exclaimed, frustrated by this guy's games.

"Maybe because you know Steven is up to something?" Laurence replied. "Would be pretty damning to have that on your phone."

"Up to what? Steven's just a kid." Brandon sat back down, putting the phone on the table. He was flustered now, and the missing contact didn't help any. He was sure he saw Steven put his number there. So where did it go? He wondered if he accidentally deleted the contact while the phone was in his pocket, but that was very improbable.

"And yet he's been hacking into government computers." Laurence watched Brandon closely, seeing a flicker of guilt there. Brandon does know something about that. He smiled amicably and sat back, putting his hands on the table.

"I know he plays on computers, but that's it. He is a good gamer," Brandon admitted. He really didn't know a whole lot more than that, but knew that Steven did get into places he really didn't belong and he wasn't surprised about the government computer allegation.

"I find it hard to believe you grew up with Steven and are his best friend and don't know details like where he lives, what he's been doing, or even his phone number," Laurence pushed, closing the folder hard enough to make Brandon flinch.

"Just friends, sir." Brandon enunciated each word. He decided he did not like this guy at all.

"Did he kill his therapist and librarian?" Laurence reached a little here, hoping to sow seeds of doubt and maybe pull out a surprise tidbit of information he could use.

"What? They died of heart attacks." Brandon was incredulous that Laurence would go there.

"On the same evening that Steven disappears?" Laurence tapped the table with his finger over and over again, annoying Brandon.

"Are you suggesting Steven made them have heart attacks? How?" Brandon found the whole line of thought extremely ridiculous.

"I'm just exploring all possibilities, Brandon." He looked down at his notes. "So, where did you take him when you left the station?"

Brandon sat back, rubbing his eyes. This is going to be a long night. "The bus stop."

“East, west, north or south?” Laurence asked.

"East," Brandon answered, fiddling with his fingers.

"The new bus stop?" Laurence perked up, scribbling something in his notes.

"No, the ratty looking one with the busted bench." Brandon saw through that ploy. Did Laurence think he was stupid?

"Hmm. Okay, let's go through this again." Laurence flipped back to the beginning of his file. "Brandon Williams."

Brandon groaned and looked at the ceiling.

Steven kicked back in his apartment, munching on a sandwich and thinking about the day's events and Dmitri. Sarah and Charley were outside by the potted orchard trees dancing to a friend's guitar playing. Normally he'd be out there with them, but he really needed to unwind. He had nearly all the ingredients he needed for his tea and was so close to getting the last ingredient only to have it ripped away. He tried to remember the way back to Philip's house, but it was deep in a big neighborhood that he wasn't familiar with. Short of walking up and down the streets for hours, he was at a loss as to how to find him. Chances are the apothecary had been ransacked by the police anyway. He pouted and took another bite.

Sarah called to him from outside. After a moment, he figured he may as well go out there. They were having fun and maybe that would help. He put his sandwich on the plate and joined them outside. Sarah and her friend were now dancing while Charley tried his best to play the guitar. Steven grinned as they all giggled over the goofs. As he walked up, Sarah grabbed his hand and spun him into the dance while the friend liberated his guitar from Charley, who then started clapping to the beat. Steven tried to keep up, remembering the numerous times he'd do this with Sally and Jonah. Sarah was a little tipsy, however, and giggling madly. She tripped over Steven's feet and almost fell until Steven caught her, "Careful, Sally!"

"It's Sarah, silly." She grinned at him as he helped her up to her feet. "Maybe you should give her a call," Sarah said, then yelped as Charley grabbed her hand and started dancing with her. Steven grinned and clapped to the music, but inside he was missing his family. Especially now that they were actually missing altogether.

Steven looked over at the greenhouse and saw Asherah standing in the door watching them, smiling and clapping too. She always loved music and found it irresistible. The others couldn't see her, of course. But he found it impossible not to stare at her. Even from across the roof, she looked stunning. Asherah waved timidly at Steven and he quickly averted his eyes. He had done his share of dancing with her over the years too and missed it greatly. They had so much fun together and those were the best years of his life. Why did she turn out to be nothing more than a figment of his imagination? Sighing, he sat down beside the guitarist who handed him the guitar and occupied himself by trying to remember the songs they were playing. It didn't take long before he was in the groove of it and everyone was dancing. Sarah stopped in front of him and bent over, brushing her hair out of her face as she whispered in Steven's ear, "Play your ballad." She backed up, grinning mischievously at him then grabbed Charley. Sighing, Steven started in on the ballad and he was shocked to hear her singing it in English. She had changed the wording a bit to make it fit better, but her rendition was still stunning. Charley danced with her as she sang, transfixed by her voice. Steven couldn't help but look over at Asherah, who had her hands over her mouth as she cried. Steven's heart ached and he looked away, playing the song until it was done.

"Best song ever!" Sarah said, giggling at Steven. She laughed and spun around under Charley’s hand as her husband tried not to let her fall. Steven smiled and he handed the guitar back and went to sit by the beehives. He really wanted to go to the greenhouse, except for the distraction that waited for him there. The song brought back memories he tried desperately to tuck back away, and seeing Asherah while the song was being played didn't help any at all. He pulled out his phone and looked at Brandon's entry in his contacts. He wanted to talk to Brandon badly, but his boyhood friend had said he was busy with homework. He put the phone down and looked at his friends still playing and dancing. He couldn't help but smile wistfully as he watched them have fun. Steven wished he weren't so tormented. He loved this sort of playing.

Brandon finally made it out of the interrogation and back out to his car. He was furious with Laurence for keeping him out this late. He needed to study and sleep, and now would get precious little of both. He sat in the car for a moment trying to figure out what was going on, then pulled out onto the street. At a stoplight he looked at his contacts on his phone again. He knew Steven was in there, but now he was gone. Could Steven have gone back in? Was he still hacking computers? The light turned before he could finish scanning through the contacts so he put the phone down to drive.

Suddenly, the phone rang and Brandon jumped, making the car swerve a bit. The driver in the car next to him looked at him nervously and Brandon smiled sheepishly at him. He was so startled he let it ring a couple of times before picking it up and glancing at who was trying to call him. He hoped it was his girlfriend. She would be curious as to where he was. But it was from an unknown caller. He answered it and could hear a guitar playing in the background.

"Brandon? This is Steven," the voice on the phone said. "I know it's late but I really need to talk to someone I know." Steven hated to be a bother, but he was really hurting, even while he watched the dancing as he leaned against one of the beehives. Everything was starting to come unglued and he was running out of people to turn to that could possibly understand.

"Dude, that ain't the half of it. We really, really need to talk. I just spent the past hour being grilled by this scary agent dude about you at work. They called me back in and put me in an interrogation room like I was some sort of criminal." Brandon tried not to yell at the phone.

"About me? What for?" Steven covered his other ear to hear better.

"I don't know, but he was way obsessed with you. He claims to be Homeland, but he's way too creepy to be one of those boy scouts," Brandon said as he pulled into a mall parking lot to park and talk. "I mean, this is over the top, Steven. What have you gotten yourself into?"

"Nothing! I promise!" Steven searched his memory. No one had been able to nail him, especially with his current networking capabilities, so he was practically a ghost on the network. "Okay, I may have cracked into some DARPA servers but they couldn't track me."

"Really? DARPA? Why not just walk into the White House with an AR-15!" Brandon was ticked off. A black suburban pulled into the parking lot and drove by Brandon slowly, before speeding off into the adjacent parking lot. Brandon wiped sweat from his brow. "These guys aren't messing around, Steven. You've got to button things up, and now."

"Brandon? Are you okay? Where are you?" Steven got worried, walking into the greenhouse to get away from the noise. He brushed past Asherah but was so focused he forgot she was, or rather wasn't, there. She followed behind him and sat on the potting bench while Steven went to his computer.

"I'm on my way to my apartment, Steven. But interrogators do not believe answers by policy, so I know he didn't believe a word I said." Brandon sat back. He had learned tracking techniques in school and some of them were fairly exhaustive. Was he being watched now? It occurred to him that they could be listening in to his phone. He looked at it but didn't see any sign. "They might be listening now, Steven. We need to meet."

"Hold on... " Steven looked at his phone and ran a program on it, sniffing anyone on the network that could be spying on them. He blinked. It looked like he was talking to two Brandon's. "Brandon, how many phones do you have connected?"

"One. Why?"

"I see two of you." Steven reran the trace and got the same result. "There's two of you, Brandon."

"Crap. Crap, crap, crap. They've cloned my phone. They know where you are." Brandon looked around trying to see if anyone had showed up yet. The black suburban was nowhere to be seen. He pulled out of the parking lot and sped down the street.

"No, they can't trace me. But they can trace you. Hold up." Steven worked on getting more information about the two phones he was detecting. He found the cell towers they were using and saw that it looked like they were using the same ones. "If someone's cloning you, they're close. If not, you're mirroring somehow. It could just be a glitch, Brandon."

"Too coincidental to be a glitch, Steven." Brandon made a quick turn, hoping to confuse anyone trying to track him.

Steven accessed the towers and forced both of the phones onto different towers that were further away and disrupted any triangulation. Engineering college wasn't a total waste after all.

"Okay, if you keep your head low, I think I bought you some time. Brandon, I am so sorry," Steven said, his adrenaline going ballistic. He looked at the triangulation and tweaked the towers again. The signals started to go different directions and Steven started breathing again.

"Alright, Brandon. You're going in different directions now." Steven sat back.

"Steven, if you have screwed up my career, I'm going to rip your head off!" Brandon fumed as he looked around to see if he was being followed.

"I'll fix it, Brandon. I promise," Steven insisted.

"No. Don't. No more hacking. Dad can make a few calls. Just back off, okay?" Brandon hung up. Then for good measure he turned off his phone. Brandon turned the car back around and headed toward his parents mansion by way of a more circuitous route, hoping to confuse anyone that may be following him.

Steven put the phone down. This was not happening. He could not figure out how they got to Brandon. Steven chewed his nails, deep in thought. He remembered meeting him at the jail. Could they have seen Brandon? Or recorded him. Steven sat up straight. "They must have recorded our meeting." He shook his head. He had kept his hacking really close to the chest. They didn't say a thing about hacking computers when he was there. It was all about trying to entrap Philip.

"I just don't understand. There's simply no way they could have associated me with this. Or Brandon." He noticed a shadow sitting on the potting bench. Sighing he turned around. He is going to have to come to terms with the Asherah thing. If she's in his mind, what does she represent? His loneliness? He hadn't really felt all that lonely in the girl way of things, though. Steven suspected that was because of Asherah, however. He remembered the last time he was at the meadow as they sat in each other's arms. His chest hurt and he squeezed his eyes shut trying to block it. "Ah, you're distracting me already!" Brandon is in danger because of him. The last thing Steven wanted was for Brandon to go to jail because of him, and here he was thinking about his fantasy girl.

His phone rang again and he looked at the screen. It was one of the phones that appeared to be Brandon he had been tracking. "Hello?" Steven was hoping that it was Brandon and the double was a glitch in the system.

"Hello, Mr. Crow. Can I call you Steven? You have been a really hard apple to pick, Steven," Laurence said, sounding very smug. Steven didn't recognize the voice and sat back, dismayed. This must be the guy that was following Brandon.

"Who is this?" Steven asked apprehensively, watching the icon of Brandon on his screen superimposed on a map traveling away from him. If the guy was using regular networks, he would never find him or be able to track him.

"Ah, forgive me. I'm Laurence. And I am very interested in talking to you." The icon appeared to have parked. "Hey, your friend's parents have a really nice house. Who woulda thunk it? He should have gone into real estate or something."