The Silence of Six (9 page)

8

Max exited into the hotel’s
parking lot.

Perfect.

He put his head down, hands in his pockets, and walked slowly past a row of cars. He glanced sidelong inside each vehicle, looking for a blinking amber light on the dashboard. After walking past one row and halfway up another, he finally found a dusty, blue 2002 Hyundai Elantra with the security system he wanted.

Not the fanciest wheels, but that was an asset when you didn’t want to attract attention. He slid his laptop from his bag and scanned the wireless networks in the area until he found one he could hack.
1 2 3 4
…nice password. Most people never changed the admin password that came as a factory setting on their routers.

Max created a new guest network called “Change Your Admin Password,” connected, then logged in to the cloud storage he shared with Evan. He searched for their old files on “war texting,” a way to hack some devices that connected to the internet just like cell phones, via GSM modules. So-called “smart appliances” used cellular networks to send updates or even be controlled remotely.

Only they weren’t that smart after all, because once a particular device was identified on the network, unauthorized users could send text messages to control it.

Inspired by a video showing how hackers used such a flaw in an alarm system to unlock a car and start it, Evan had spent a month war texting vehicles in his neighborhood. He and Max had left McDonald’s Happy Meal toys on dashboards all over the city. They never took the vehicles for joyrides or stole anything from them—they had just been doing it to see if they could.

That was about to change.

After Evan pointed out the exploit to car alarm companies, many of them had updated their firmware to patch it. But one budget manufacturer, Hedgehog, never responded to his e-mails.

Max ran the script Evan had developed and searched for GSM modules on the network in the range for Hedgehog’s devices. In three minutes he had located and disabled the alarm—he hoped. The telltale amber light was still flashing on the dashboard. He typed the command to open the doors and waited anxiously to see if the hack still worked.

“Locked out?”

Max jumped at the voice. He had been so focused on his screen he hadn’t noticed the man approaching on his left, jingling his car keys.

“Sorry if I surprised you,” the man said.

“I was just thinking about something,” Max said. His heart was racing. What if the car’s owner had come outside while Max was breaking into it?

Max closed his laptop screen halfway. The man was in his forties with graying brown hair. He was wearing a puffy black coat over gray sweatpants and Timberland boots. He didn’t look like an FBI agent, but without the dark suit and badge, they probably looked like normal people, even with potbellies like this guy’s.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” The man pulled a cell phone out of a pocket. To call the cops or snap a photo of Max?

Shit
. Max concentrated on staying calm.

“I have a free period,” Max said.

The man glanced back at the hotel and his brow furrowed, probably trying to understand why a high school kid would be hanging out at a hotel in the middle of the afternoon and not liking the conclusions he was coming to.

At that moment, the car’s interior lights blinked on and off and the door locks clicked open. Max hurriedly pulled his key ring from his pocket and pressed the unlock button on the fob for his dad’s car. Max was relieved that the hack had worked. Now came the tricky part—and he hadn’t anticipated an audience.

He opened the driver side door and slid behind the wheel. The seat was obviously adjusted for someone much shorter than Max. He closed and locked the door and hoped the man would leave him alone.

The man stepped closer and tapped on the window. Max couldn’t lower the window until the engine was on. He typed the command to start the car then rested his laptop on the passenger seat.

“Hey, is this your car?” the man shouted.

“No. It’s my teacher’s.”

The start-up command was taking too long to process. Max slowly adjusted the seat and mirrors then buckled in. He inserted his key in the ignition, pointedly ignoring the inquisitive man.

Max glanced over at the hotel. Through the sliding glass doors, he saw two men in suits talking to the concierge. They had to be FBI, and they were only a few hundred feet away from him. If they went out through the same door Max had, they would see him.

The man tapped on the glass again.

Jesus. Why was this guy in his business?

Max looked at him.

“Where is she? Your teacher?” the man asked.

Max jerked his head back toward the hotel. “
He’s
inside.”

“Is there something going on that you want to talk about, kid?”

Max shook his head. “I’m fine.” The agents were exiting the hotel. They were going out the front doors. They would see Max if they turned and looked to their right.

Max was not fine.

The car wasn’t starting. He unbuckled his seat belt then held a finger on the unlock button. If they noticed him, he would grab his laptop, push the door open, and run.

The man tapped on the glass again then jiggled the door handle.

The car roared to life. Max choked back a giddy laugh.

One of the agents turned and looked right at him.

Max pointed. “There he is! Tell him I’ll see him at school.” The man jumped back as Max pulled out of the spot. The only problem was: He would have to drive past the FBI agents in order to get to the highway.

The agents were standing by a black car like the one he’d seen earlier. They were not the same guys who had tracked him to Bean Up. If the search for him was widening, now was the perfect time to get out of Granville—if he could make it out of the parking lot first.

As the stolen car approached the black sedan, Max felt the urge to speed by before they identified him. Instead, he looked straight ahead and drove at what felt like a snail’s pace, willing them to ignore him.

When he was only two car lengths away, Max casually leaned over as though he were reaching for something in the glove compartment and turned his head away from them. Not a safe driving practice, but safer perhaps than getting arrested. He popped back up as soon as he had cleared their car and glanced in his rearview mirror. They weren’t paying any attention to him.

Max turned onto 18th Street and headed west, away from Lake Alhambra. He reached the highway and wiped the sweat from his forehead and the back of his neck. He lowered all the windows to let the cold air rush in. He whooped.

Once he was driving past the Los Medanos College campus, he relaxed his grip on the wheel. He’d gotten a rush both from the successful war texting and another close call. It felt wrong to be doing this without Evan; now he kind of wished they had taken a car for a spin after all, at least once.

As “gray hats,” they had hacked only for the intellectual challenge and to point out security flaws, like the ones they found in those car alarm systems. Max liked improving overall security and raising awareness of weaknesses that could harm the public, but Evan had wanted to do more. Instead of helping companies get richer, he wanted to change the world—even if he had to do it by leaking sensitive information or bringing down systems to make a statement.

Max should have suspected long ago that Evan was in Dramatis Personai—his philosophy was a perfect fit for their specialized brand of controlled chaos. That was where Max had drawn the line, but now he was edging over it into Evan’s world. Unlike Evan, Max was raised by a father who was a “hacktivist” before the term existed, so he knew what the risks were. And he also knew that the stakes had to be high for Evan to involve him. Evan’s death meant Max couldn’t wash his hands of this situation. As scared as he was of what had backed Evan into this corner, Max couldn’t go on as if nothing had happened. He had to understand, and maybe even finish, whatever Evan had started.

Burner phone or no, Max decided not to use its GPS for directions to his rendezvous point with DoubleThink. Now he had to worry about the other hacker’s safety as well. So he would have to do this the old-fashioned way. He would stop at a gas station and check a map once he had put more distance between himself and Granville. For now, he headed for the I-5 entrance ramp.

The brake lights of the cars ahead of him smeared into blurry blobs of color. Max blinked back tears. He could run from Granville, but he couldn’t escape his memories of Evan, or missing his dad, Courtney, and the life he was leaving. He wasn’t sure for how long.

Max switched on the radio and scanned for anything but the news. He couldn’t handle listening to people conjecture about STOP and the debate anymore. He settled in for a long ride, splitting his attention between the uncertain road ahead and looking for flashing red and blue lights and black cars behind him.

9

War texting was easier the
second time around, when Max traded the Elantra for a green Nissan Cube he found in the parking lot of the library in Redding, California. According to his map, he was about halfway to Roseburg. He got back on the road just after eight p.m., confirmed he still wasn’t being tailed, and decided to chance a quick call home on his burner phone.

Max was prepared to leave a voicemail because his dad rarely heard the phone. But he picked it up on the first ring.

“Hello?” Bradley’s voice was strained, the way it got when he was stressed out about work.

“Dad, it’s me.”

“Oh, thank God. Where have you been, Champ? You skipped school today?”

Max tightened his grip on the phone. He hated nicknames like “Champ” and “Sport” and “Ace.” Bradley only used them to tease Max.

Something was wrong. It was easy to imagine that the men following Max earlier were tapping the call, or maybe were even there at his house.

How long did it take to trace a phone call?

Max eased the car into the right lane and slowed down a little. “I couldn’t go back there. I was too freaked out about what happened.”

“I understand. But next time don’t leave my car at the coffee shop.”

Max sighed. His dad loved that car. He was probably legitimately pissed about that one. “Yeah, sorry. I just needed to run for a bit.”

Bradley was quiet for a moment. “Where are you now? I’ll come get you.”

“No need. I’m just hanging with a friend. He’ll give me a ride home,” Max said.

“Who are you with?”

It wasn’t like his dad to ask so many questions. Bradley Stein wasn’t the stern, overprotective type, and he had always trusted Max.

Smart, Dad.

It was weird knowing that someone was eavesdropping on their call, but this was an opportunity to explain away Max’s behavior today, if they played things right. But if they raised any suspicions, his dad could be arrested for interfering in their investigation.

“My friend Ming.” Ming was a forward on Monte Vida’s soccer team, and definitely not a friend. Max didn’t even remember his last name.

“You’re calling from his phone?” Bradley asked.

“Yeah. . . Why?”

“Because I have your phone right here.”

“How’d you get it?” Max started to move into the left lane when a car zoomed past from his blind spot. He swerved back over to the right and a horn blared. He bet the FBI would realize he was on the road and would be analyzing that recording for clues to his whereabouts.

“A federal agent dropped it off after school since you weren’t there to collect it today.”

“Great. I was starting to go into withdrawal without it.”

“I know what you’re going to ask. It’s working just fine,” Bradley said.

That meant the Feds had what they needed from the phone. They wouldn’t have returned it otherwise.

“Oh, and Courtney called the house looking for you. She sounded upset,” Bradley said.

“Yeah, we argued after the debate. Maybe we need some time apart.”

“That’s probably a good idea, Sport.”

So the Feds had gotten to her too.

“You sure you don’t want me to pick you up?” Bradley asked.

“Yeah. Thanks though. Hey, I should let you go back to work.”

“Well, it’s a school night, so remember your curfew.”

Max didn’t have a curfew, and if he did, Dad would never notice if he kept to it or not.

“Of course.” It felt like they’d been on the phone too long, but Max had one more important thing to say, and he wasn’t sure when he’d have another chance. “I love you, Dad.”

“You too, Ace. Be safe.” Bradley clicked off.

That was that. There was no going back. He would have to face this head-on.

Max switched off the phone and pulled out the battery. He checked his map and made a quick change in plans: He would take a short detour away from his true destination and ditch the phone at a service station, in case the Feds had managed to get a fix on him.

What were they after? If they just wanted to talk to Max about the text message and his connection to Evan, they were going about it in a shady and aggressive way. Granted, Max running at the first sight of them had probably convinced them they had good reason to pursue him.

Unlike at Evan’s place, the FBI wouldn’t find a shred of evidence of Max’s past as a hacker. It might be unusual for a teenager to own three laptops, but he was the son of a computer geek. There was nothing more incriminating in his room than porn and some pirated media on his hard drives. When Max made a clean break from hacking, he’d never looked back. Until now.

Max grabbed a quick bite and a replacement phone at the next rest stop, then he pushed on, mulling over the call and the strange turn his life had taken the rest of the way to Roseburg.

He reached the Denny’s several hours early for his meeting with DoubleThink, so he parked in the lot beside a row of cargo trucks and napped as best he could manage in the compact car—which wasn’t well, even as exhausted as he was. He finally dragged himself into the restaurant at seven, in search of a more comfortable seat and a cup of coffee to wake him up.

The inside of the Roseburg Denny’s looked exactly like the one in Granville, where Max and Evan had spent countless late nights eating pancakes and chicken fingers to fuel their online misadventures. Even the picture placemats were identical. The resemblance was oddly comforting; after driving north 450 miles, it felt like his home was still close-by, even though he’d never been farther from it. The restaurant was nearly empty aside from a few big guys who were older, hairier, and wearing way more plaid than Max. They didn’t set off any alarm bells. He didn’t think any of them were undercover government agents, but no one looked like a hacker, either. Max must have arrived before DoubleThink.

He squeaked into a slightly sticky booth by a wide window facing the parking lot where he would see everyone who arrived.

He yawned. God, he was exhausted. He was also famished. All he’d had on the road was a two-liter bottle of pop and a package of Twinkies. He might as well eat while he waited for DoubleThink.

He looked around for a waitress. There were two women in matching black blouses arguing by the register, a short woman with brown hair styled in a pageboy cut, and a blond girl with a ponytail. He couldn’t hear them, but the brunette glanced over at Max not once but twice.

Why would they be talking about me?

Nervous now, Max pulled out his new phone and connected to the restaurant’s free network. To his relief, his absence hadn’t made the news yet, but he had missed a significant update during the night: All the media sites were buzzing that STOP had been identified as Evan Baxter.

Even though he’d known this was coming, it was still a shock. With this break in the story, more pieces would fall into place quickly. Max would have to keep moving, and he would have to keep looking over his shoulder.

“Good morning,” a woman said. Max slapped his phone facedown on the kids’ maze printed on his placemat. He looked up. The brown-haired waitress smiled at him—Jessica, according to her nametag.

“I’m Jess, and I’ll be your server today.” She handed him a wide plastic menu. “Can I get you started with a drink?”

“Coffee, as much as you can spare.” Max returned the slimy menu. He was just going to get his usual. “And I’ll have the Ultimate Omelette and the Lumberjack Slam with sausage, scrambled eggs, and wheat toast.”

“An Ultimate and the Lumberjack with sausage, scrambled eggs, and wheat toast.” She repeated it without writing it down. “I’ll put that order in and be right back with your coffee.”

“Thanks.”

Max waited until she had gone to the kitchen before picking up his phone. He wiped his hands on a napkin before scrolling through the top news article.

There wasn’t much personal information about Evan yet, but that would certainly change. Right now, all they were talking about were basic facts: Evan had been a seventeen-year-old student at Granville High School, diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. He was described as a computer wunderkind who kept to himself.

Max was more interested in the glaring omissions: how Evan had died, where his body had been found, and how the FBI had ultimately figured out his identity.

Jess came back with a mug and a coffee pot. She filled his cup and Max gulped the coffee black.

“Can you leave the pot?” Max asked.

“We aren’t supposed to.” She refilled his cup. “Just ask when you want more. Your food should be out in five minutes.”

A rusty green pickup truck pulled into the lot outside. Max propped his elbows on the table and held his coffee cup up to hide the lower half of his face as he watched a man in his thirties with long, tangled hair approach the Denny’s, a camo backpack with a broken strap slung over his right shoulder.

The man entered and shuffled past Max’s booth to a table in the corner behind him. Max shifted to keep an eye on him. The man pulled a battered laptop from his bag and plugged it into an outlet. DoubleThink?

The man started typing on his computer, paying no attention to Max or anyone else in the restaurant. When Jess tried to hand him a menu, he waved it off and ordered a coffee and cherry pie without looking away from his screen once.

The sky was turning gray. Distant clouds were tinged with a soft, rosy glow. Max stared out the window, searching the parking lot for anything out of the ordinary. But it looked exactly as it should: boring. Peaceful.

He kept looking at the man with the laptop in his reflection in the glass until Jess brought over his food. For the moment, Max was content to scarf down his meal and let DoubleThink approach him when he was ready.

By the time Max had polished off his second plate of breakfast and ordered a slice of cherry pie, the truckers had left and the local morning crowd was filtering in. A couple sat in the booth across from Max, holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes. Max turned away and kept watching the vehicles coming and going outside.

Jess brought over a thick wedge of cherry pie and a receipt.

“My shift’s ending. Do you mind if I ring you out? You don’t have to leave or anything. Lorraine will take care of you if you need anything else.” Jess nodded toward an elderly woman with curly white hair.

“Thanks.” Max’s phone showed it was just before eight. He didn’t know how long he should stick around. The man in the corner was still working intently on his computer, and none of the other customers seemed like hacker types. Maybe DoubleThink was a no-show.

Max paid his bill with a generous tip, mentally revising the amount of money he had left.

Just when Max was gathering his things to go, a young woman slid into the booth across from him. The first thing he noticed was her hot pink ski jacket, followed by the black knit cap pulled down low over her forehead, covering the tips of her ears. She wore a pair of those yellow-tinted glasses favored by programmers and gamers who spent a lot of time staring at screens.

“Good morning, sunshine,” she said.

“Um,” Max said. “Can I help you?”

“I’m here to help
you
.” She turned her head to survey the parking lot.

“
You’re
DoubleThink?” She looked about Max’s age. She looked like a she.

“Bingo.” Satisfied with what she saw—or didn’t see—outside, she looked at Max.

He looked over her shoulder at the older guy still tapping away at his laptop, oblivious to everything around him.

“I thought he was DoubleThink,” Max said.

“Nah. He’s writing a screenplay.” She sniffed. “It’s terrible.”

Max turned to the girl. “How do you know that?”

“I was curious, so I grabbed a copy. You know, public Wi-Fi. He’s on page 223, with no sign of getting to any kind of point. And his Panjea password is ‘mommy.’ I can’t make this crap up.”

Max stared at her. She had dark circles under her eyes. Of course, she’d had a long overnight trip too.

“I can’t believe it,” he said. “You’re . . . ”

“A girl?”

“A teenager,” Max said.

“So are you. So was Evan.”

“Okay, yeah, now that you mention it, I’m surprised by the other thing.”

“Why is it a surprise that I’m a girl? Did I seem particularly masculine online?”

“No, but . . . you didn’t seem particularly feminine,” Max said.

“What does that even mean?”

He massaged the corners of his eyes. “I don’t know. Forget it.”

“You didn’t seem particularly sexist online, but here we are.”

Lorraine swept over to their table and deposited a second coffee mug on the table in front of DoubleThink. The waitress filled her cup, refilled Max’s, and left the pot between them.

“Thanks,” DoubleThink said.

Lorraine winked at her and bustled off.

Max stared at the coffee pot.

“I’m sorry. Does the rest of Drama—” He lowered his voice. “The group know?”

“They never asked, I never volunteered. And why should I? It’s your problem if you automatically assume that I’m a man just because I don’t say otherwise. And, let’s face it, our crowd isn’t big on sharing.”

She wrapped her hands around her coffee cup. She was wearing frayed lavender fingerless gloves. Her fingernails were painted white with a black letter on each: A on her left pinky, followed by E, O, and U on her ring, middle and index fingers. Her right hand had H on her index finger, then T, N, and S. Her thumbnails had no letters.