Chapter 46
Chapter 46
E ddie waited until Ashley had finished speaking. “Sir, one problem we might encounter is something akin to a scrambler. Something programmed to bounce the phone’s Wi-Fi or cell connection off other servers around the world, thereby—”
“Not letting us confirm the location?”
“Yes, sir. Most hackers do this for obvious reasons.”
“What makes you think this person is?”
“Well, sir, we don’t know what we don’t know, but if they are holding your daughter, and if they are smart, and if they don’t want to be found, they’d scramble the signal simply as a precaution.”
“Which begs the question why they would allow my daughter to play in the first place.”
“They probably don’t know she’s playing you. If it is, in fact, your daughter.”
“Explain.”
“Sir, the fact that she’s not sending you a direct message could very well mean someone is looking over her shoulder and she doesn’t want to tip them off. The game is designed to encourage interaction between players. Direct messaging is built into the platform.”
Jess this time. “Could it be they’re using one phone?”
Eddie considered this. “It could mean exactly that. If someone is holding her, and that person is, let’s say, bored, or passing the time, he or she could use their phone and pass it back and forth.”
“But wouldn’t that person know she could simply turn on the Wi-Fi, play the next move, as well as play you, then turn it off and pass the phone back?”
Ashley again. “Any other possibilities?”
“Her holder could be asleep.”
Ashley considered this. “I like option one better.”
“We do too, sir.”
“But why would he risk giving her the phone?”
Ashley spoke up. “Because, if he did his homework, he’d know she had no social media accounts, didn’t watch TV, and didn’t play electronic games. None of our girls have an electronic footprint.”
Eddie looked confused. “May I ask why, sir?”
“Because Esther and I felt that my job and their innocent beauty would make them a target. So we worked hard to invite our girls into an adventure outside the world of the screen. Rather than scroll and post, they read. Our library has over five thousand books. If this person came into our house, he’d have noticed we don’t have a TV. It’s difficult to miss.”
“What about her phone on a bedside table?”
He shook his head. “Our girls charge their phones in the pantry.”
I spoke next. “May I ask why, sir?”
Ashley paused. “We had a little incident with a boy and climbing out a window at night.”
A few smiles cracked around the room. “Yes, sir.”
Eddie offered his next thought. “If her holder thinks she’s just some innocent homeschooler whose folks have shielded her from the world, he might be inclined to pass the time with a ‘harmless’ word game, having convinced himself that she has no experience with it.”
“Any one of my three daughters could convince someone of that. They can be persuasive when they want to.”
Another word appeared. “SIS.”
Silence blanketed both the room and the speakerphone. Other more obvious words would have produced two to three times the points, so someone playing to win this game would not have chosen “SIS.”
Ashley again. “I don’t know if it’s anything, but when Sadie was little, she called Ruth ‘Sister.’”
Ashley’s new rack of letters appeared: EOENYSP.
We each read the words the app produced. Someone on the other end suggested, “SEE.”
Ashley again. “Murph?”
“Sir, I don’t think what you say here is as important as what returns.”
“Agreed.”
Ashley tried to attach “SEE” anywhere on one of the other words but there was no fit. “Option B?”
I said, “How about ‘COP’ starting from the C in ‘CASE’?”
“That works.” Ashley dragged the two letters and constructed the word. The word fell into place, and we waited.
Ten excruciating minutes passed. Camp, who’d been quiet the entire time, hovered over a laptop. He spoke next. “The signal’s coming from Alaska.”
Jess was quick to follow with a nod while staring at her screen. “Anchorage.”
“How do you know that?”
Camp looked at me. “We need to get on a plane.”
“You sure?”
He closed his laptop. “Positive.”
Jess clarified, “I doubt they’re in Anchorage, but the extent to which that server is receiving and transmitting suggests they’re within a few hundred miles.”
I spoke to the speakerphone. “Mr. Vice President, I’ll call you from the air.”
I tore out of the command-and-control center, ran through Freetown, descended into my safe room, grabbed three rifle bags and two duffels, threw them over my shoulder, and began bounding back up the stairs, Gunner at my heels. Clay slid to a stop in the truck out in front of the house. I climbed in, Gunner jumped into the back, and we sped to the runway. Seven minutes later, we were shutting the cabin door when the end of a cane prevented me from doing so.
“Mr. Murphy?”
I pushed open the door, pulled him in, and shut it. Sixty seconds later, we were on our way to breaking the sound barrier. I turned to Camp. “You do realize the state of Alaska is twice the size of Texas and much of it is not populated.”
“Yes.”