Fifteen

A Chapter by Darius Greeves

Lee shows Sarah his secret

As Lee led Sarah into the lounge, his preferred thinking spot, he wondered why he had decided to tell her what he was about to. He had yet to tell James and had a certain sense of guilt. Almost as if, by some unspoken code, it should have been him to know first. But Lee didn’t want to tell anyone without having the information with him. He had been too worried to have the laptop delivered to him in hospital and so had decided to keep quiet about the whole thing. That was until that moment.

‘As you can imagine’ he prepared, ‘I haven’t looked at any of this since I went into hospital’. He said this, he realised, before explaining what this was. Sarah picked up on that fact,

‘But what is it?’ she questioned, becoming tired of being strung along.

‘Before we sent the chest off to storage I knew I couldn’t just let it go. There was no way they were just gonna throw it in some cage somewhere and leave it, I just knew. So I stuck something on it �" in it’. Sarah seemed disappointed at the revelation.

‘A tracker? But surely…’ Lee knew what Sarah’s question would be. He also knew interrupting her would annoy her but couldn’t help himself jump to the answer.

‘No, not a tracker. As you know they’d have the chest searched, and probably find a way of deactivating any tracking device even without finding it. No I couldn’t track the chest itself’, Lee opened up his laptop, and re-opened the last window he had used. Watching the several white dots appearing on the screen, before a list popped up. Lee couldn’t believe it. Had it worked?

‘What then?’ Sarah pushed, releasing Lee from his transfixion with the screen.

‘Couldn’t track the chest itself’ he repeated, ‘So I’ve tracked their phones’, he pointed gleefully at the screen.

‘What?! That’s Impossible?!’ Sarah said astonished. She squeezed her face in next to Lee’s to get a better look at the screen. Lee looked back at her sheepishly, his mouth trying to run off the left side of his face.

‘This is where I need to trust you’. Sarah said nothing. She only nodded. ‘Stay here’. Lee jumped up and ran back in his room. Sarah could hear him rummaging about. Eventually the rummaging stopped. Sarah could imagine him holding aloft whatever he’d found, like some awkward recreation of that famous Lion King scene. Eventually he emerged from the bedroom holding victoriously a small black round object, about the diameter of a nickel but around a centimetre deep. Sarah stared at the object patiently awaiting an explanation for the strange entity facing her.

‘I’ve earned a lot of favours in my life, from all sorts of people’ Lee began, ‘Some from knowing secrets, some from doing favours of my own. I haven’t been a detective for long but I did plenty of investigating in my spare time which earned me all these favours. Anyway this in particular’ Lee held up the device for Sarah to view again, ‘Is courtesy of a favour owed by someone who works for DARPA, and technically it doesn’t exist’. Sarah waited a moment, disapprovingly understanding what Lee was telling her.

‘That’s illegal’ she pronounced finally,

‘Very illegal’ Lee replied, ‘This is one of three I managed to acquire. One of them is in that chest’

‘And what is it exactly they do’, Lee pointed at the computer screen,

‘They gather all the mobile phone data from devices within a given range, allowing me to track said devices. That’s what you’re seeing on the screen.’ Sarah looked from the screen to Lee, trying to hide a smile but failing.

‘It’s brilliant’ she let escape, ‘I mean completely outrageous and, if anyone knew this existed the whole world would go mad but… it’s brilliant’. Lee nodded. Sarah’s statement utterly summed up his own feelings on the device; that it could be extraordinarily dangerous in the wrong hands but for this assignment, it was nothing short of perfect.

‘So now all we have to do is wined back the clock and see the last time all these phones’ he tapped the screen, ‘were in the same place. It’s a long shot, but it’s the best we’ve got’. Sarah nodded, choosing not to repeat her disapproval. She watched Lee as he tapped away, almost elegantly on his laptop, setting up the software to find what they were looking for. They waited a number of minutes, then finally Lee slammed the “space” bar on the laptop, stopping the little lights from moving around the screen. ‘There’ Lee said in astonishment. It occurred to Sarah at that moment that he probably hadn’t thought it would work, and now he’d seen it did, it was like being given a second chance. Lee sat back and linked his hands behind his head, admiring his achievement.

‘You did it’ Sarah said, resting a hand on his shoulder. She thought she could see the first hints of a tear, appearing beside his glazed eyes, then with a blink it disappeared.

‘Yeah’ Lee replied, ‘I did’.

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