all.
Yeah, but nothing goes down between us if we’re killed. Gotta get outta here first and in one piece.
She examined the back of her neck for the source of the blood. The stitches where Rod’s man had hit her with his baton when she got off the plane in Chicago had reopened.
“Shit, that hurts.”
She sat up on the mattress and looked at Drake.
“That guy did stuff to you,” Drake said. He appeared to be on the verge of tears.
Now she was fully awake. “What kind of stuff?” she asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.
“He used a knife and cut into the back of your neck.”
“Oh, that’s it? Nothing else?”
“What do you mean, nothing else? He fucking performed an operation on you, and I couldn’t do anything about it.”
“But he didn’t… you know, touch me?”
“No, nothing like that. He operated on you, and then went upstairs mumbling to himself, pissed off about something.”
The lock clicked on the door above. It slid open and Elmore’s footsteps came down. Sarah ran her hands all over her body checking for anything that may indicate Elmore did more than just cut into her neck. Everything felt fine, except she needed to pee bad.
He could’ve waited another minute.
“Sarah, you’re up,” Elmore said. “Glad to see it. We need to talk. Things have changed.”
She got off the mattress and stepped to the cage’s door. “Tell me what you drugged me with. Then we talk.”
“Ketamine. I call it Special K. It’s a human tranquilizer. Perfectly safe. Now, I have a question. Are you willingly working with Rod Howley?”
Sarah looked at Drake and then back at Elmore, confused by the question. “No. He wants me to work with him, but the more I refuse the more difficult he makes my life.”
“Are you saying you’re not in collusion with him to take me down?”
“Take you down? You’re deluded. I’ve never heard of you before. I came to Toronto for Drake.” She stopped and looked at Drake. His eyes widened and his mouth moved up a little. She was happy to see his eyes had cleared. She turned back to Elmore. “What I mean is, I heard Drake was in trouble. That’s why I’m here. Rod tried to keep me in the states.”
Elmore moved his armchair within three feet of her cell door and sat down. “So I’ve been thinking. How did Rod find you so fast?”
“I’d love to know that too. The bastard feels attached to my hip.”
Keep him talking. Listen. Evaluate him. There has to be a way out of here and I will find it.
“I know you don’t have a hidden cell phone that you could’ve called the police on because of this.” Elmore held up a small black device. “This is what they call a Spy Wireless, WiFi Bluetooth Signal Jammer. You can buy one of these babies for just over a hundred American.” He turned it in his hands, examining it like he would appraise a diamond ring. “It’s frequency range blocks anything for up to thirty meters, which to you Americans is about a hundred feet,” he said this last part sarcastically and laughed at his own joke. “It’s great for my business because it’s portable. I can take it with me to the photo studio. If anyone sends a girl in to record a conversation of mine, or open a line on a cell phone to an outside listener, they’ll get nothing. I’m free to talk at my place of business without being recorded. This means even if you brought a cell phone with you to your little cage, you wouldn’t have been able to call out as I’ve had this plugged in down here since you first arrived. I forgot to grab it in my haste to get downtown yesterday.” He shrugged and raised his eyebrows. “I fucked up and totally forgot it. That’s why I had to toss Drake’s cell out of the car.”
He set the jammer down, steepled his fingers and looked back at her. “So I figured they picked up a signal of some kind all the way to my door. That means they had bugged you or had some kind of tracking device on you. When you were unconscious, I asked Drake and he told me about the tracking bracelet that you managed to remove at the Rogers Centre. It didn’t make sense at first.” He stopped and looked at the cement ceiling as if he was thinking.
You are the weirdest man I’ve ever met.
“In case I’m ever electronically bugged,” he continued, “my phones, my office, whatever, I have this little baby.” He held up a different device. “It’s a TagFinder. This device searches for and locates things that are emitting a radio signal. And voila. Wouldn’t you know it? In the back of your neck, I found a VeriChip.”
Sarah reached up to feel where the stitches were. She put it all together instantly.
So that’s what Rod did. He pulled my hair to cause pain and had his henchman hit me so I wouldn’t ask why the stitches were in my neck.
“What’s a VeriChip?” Sarah asked.
“The VeriChip is a human transplantable tracking device. Although yours was modified for GPS tracking. Quite genius, really. That led me to believe you were working with Rod. How the hell could he have gotten that thing in your neck without you knowing about it? I mean, come on, you’re Sarah Roberts. You are fast becoming a legend in the media.”
She remembered waking in the interrogation room and feeling that maddening headache and having to chew Advil. Then she felt the stitches.
That bastard.
Now she knew what their plan had been from the beginning. And the tracking bracelet for her wrist was like some childish decoy.
She looked at Drake. The understanding of how Rod had tracked them so well was on his face. She nodded with her eyes, ever so slightly that only Drake could notice it.
“The look on your face tells me you’re surprised by what I’m explaining to you. Well, let me tell you, I know people. I have a keen sense of what people desire and how emotions play across their faces. Don’t worry, the VeriChip has been destroyed. Now Rod will never be able to track you again.”
Her stomach dropped. For the first time since she had met Rod in that hotel lobby in Budapest, she really wanted him to track her now. More than ever.
“How did you destroy it?” she asked.
“The VeriChip is just a little bigger than a grain of rice. They’re quite the modern invention really. I looked it up while you slept. The one that was in your neck is a RFID transponder encased in a silicate glass.”
Sarah held up her hand. “What’s RFID stand for?”
“I’m getting to that. Don’t interrupt. We have to discuss this and then I will tell you how I’m going to kill Rod Howley.
Sarah nodded, not liking any of what she heard.
“The PositiveID Corporation, previously known as the VeriChip Corporation, got preliminary approval from the FDA to market its device. It was later revealed the implants could cause cancer. So be happy I’ve removed yours. It wasn’t in long. You still had stitches.” He adjusted himself in the chair and leaned back. “The PositiveID Corp stopped marketing their implantable human microchip by mid-2010. But it’s still used today. For instance, the VeriChip implant is offered for identifying VIP guests at the Baja Beach Club, a nightclub in Rotterdam, Netherlands, among other places. Theoretically, you can physically locate a person by latitude, longitude, altitude, speed, and direction of movement with one of these modified babies. The mindset is you could track your kids going to school. Courts could order them implanted into sex offenders to track their whereabouts.” He laughed at what he thought was a joke. “And what about missing persons?” He laughed again. “Funny how we’re discussing sex offenders and missing persons.”
“You didn’t answer my question. What does RFID stand for?”
It seemed like Elmore had just stepped into another headspace. He looked at the floor, scratched at something on his head and zoned right out.
Sarah saw that Drake was wondering what had happened too.
“That little fucking chip brought the cops to my door,” he mumbled to himself, still staring at the floor. “Now I’m on their scope. After all these years… never making a mistake… and now… I have to kill to stay free.”
Kill? Rod or us?
