Splinter (The Machinists Book 2) (7 page)

“Get it?” Jaxon emerged from the other side of a weathered cedar fence.

Allyn held up the computer.

“Good,” Jaxon said. “This way. We found a place to hide out.”

Jaxon had chosen a new house still under construction. With a stone and vinyl siding exterior, the modern and elegant house didn’t fit in with the style of the neighborhood.

The temporary front door, a plain white door without a knob, swung open without resistance, and Jaxon ushered them inside, keeping a watchful eye on their surroundings. Nails and pieces of scrap wood covered the unfinished floors, and the walls were framed and sheet rocked but weren’t mudded or painted. The air smelled sweet, and their footsteps echoed as they made their way into what would eventually become the living room.

Exposed wires hung out of open electrical sockets, and empty snack bags and soda cans littered the floor, mixing with sawdust and footprints from the day before. It wasn’t an ideal hideout, but it would keep them dry.

Perhaps it was the loss of the car, or maybe it was the exhaustion from again having to run, but once they were situated, a gloom like an Oregon winter fell upon them. They didn’t talk. They didn’t plan. They didn’t do
anything
. Jaxon found a place upstairs where he could keep a lookout, and after checking on Nyla’s condition, Leira joined him.

Allyn sat in the living room, leaning against a gas fireplace. He wished he could turn it on and feel the warmth on his back—his damp clothes would never dry in the cold, moist air. Nyla sat across the room from him. She had her eyes closed, and her breathing was steady. He couldn’t tell if she was sleeping or just resting. He slid the computer in front of him. Unlike the rest of them, he was still burning with curiosity. He opened it, and his insides tore apart when he saw the screen.

A large crack ran from one corner of the monitor to the other. He laughed bitterly. Laughing kept him from crying. From taking the computer and throwing it out the window. From jumping and stomping on it like an angry Yosemite Sam. It kept him from walking out the door and turning himself in. From walking away and disappearing.

He pushed the power button, knowing deep down that it was pointless, and was shocked when the monitor glowed with life. Hope flared briefly in his chest, warming him to his bones, and was almost immediately dashed when the screen dimmed and went black. It took him a moment to realize the computer had gone into power-saving mode. The battery was dead.

He slammed the laptop closed and slid it out of his immediate reach.

What do I have to do?
Sometimes, he felt like the world’s punching bag, always taking its blows and unable to fight back. Whatever he touched, whatever he did, he only made things worse. He was a fraud, someone who jumped at random noises and saw ghosts of death and misdeeds everywhere he turned. He didn’t belong. The McCollum Family was better off without him.
Why can’t they see that?

Stop
, he told himself.
Just stop.
Complaining is only good for one thing—identifying the problem.
You’re dwelling on it.
Move on.

Carrying on a one-sided conversation was crossing farther into Crazy Town than he was willing to venture, so he didn’t respond, but he did lean forward and slide the computer back in front of him. He couldn’t stop himself from jumping at shadows or becoming nauseated at the smell of burning meat. He couldn’t answer who had uploaded the video or why. And he didn’t know what to do about the McCollum Family or the police.

But he could push forward. He could keep trying. Because when it came right down to it, he had only two options. Give up or keep going—and he wasn’t the giving-up type.

He ran a finger around the edge of the computer, touching the various ports, until he came to a small rectangular one with five small prongs. Not a USB, HDMI, or Ethernet port, this was for the AC power adapter. If the computer’s battery was dead… Allyn wielded, projecting the energy into his hand. He tried to hold back and keep the power as low as possible. The computer wouldn’t be able to withstand more than one hundred watts.

The red coils didn’t dim, but there were fewer of them; only one or two circled from his hand to his fingertips in a figure-eight pattern. He extended his index finger and pressed it against the five prongs of the AC power port. A click was followed by a high-pitch spinning noise. Allyn nearly withdrew, but the light on the front of the computer glowed to life, and then the monitor a second later.

The monitor flickered, and Allyn smelled something burning. It reminded him of the smell an old baseboard heater made when it was full of dust and hadn’t been turned on since the previous winter. Something popped. The monitor sparked. Allyn jumped, cutting off the power as if he were unplugging it from a wall. Smoke curled out from the thin vent along the backside of the computer.

He pushed the power button. Nothing. He tried again. Still nothing.

He inspected the port. The silver casing was blackened where it had been burned, and the copper-colored prongs were melted. He didn’t know how much power he had supplied, but it had obviously been a lot more than the port could handle.

He shook his head, cursing himself.
What was I thinking?

Just because he
could
do something, didn’t mean he should. He should have waited. He didn’t have enough control of his abilities yet to try something as precise as that. Liam surely had a power adapter that would have worked with the computer—now even if he did, Allyn had ruined their chances at recovering anything.

Oddly enough, though, a part of him was satisfied that he had made an attempt. Being proactive felt good. And maybe Liam
could
still do something with the computer. Instead of wallowing in his failure, Allyn focused on what he would do differently next time. He could learn to limit the amount of power he projected.

He heard the first sirens a short time later. Their car had been found. If they weren’t already, the police would soon be combing the area and talking with neighbors. Roadblocks and barricades might be set up. They would search backyards and parked cars, bars and restaurants.
But will they search the unfinished homes half a mile away?

If the way things had been going were any indication, Allyn wouldn’t have been surprised if they did.

Chapter 8

M
addox approached the remains of the black Continental. From what he could tell, it was a mid-nineties model, long, boxy, and
ordinary
, the kind of car that would blend in anywhere. When he got a look inside, though, the modifications became apparent. The blacked-out windows were made of reinforced glass, not quite police grade, but nearly half an inch thick. The rear passenger-side window had shattered only because it had taken a direct hit from a small four-wheel-drive pickup with an aftermarket front winch attached to its bumper.

Maddox slid on the second of his latex gloves and ducked inside the vehicle. An additional bench seat similar to that of a limousine had been added behind the driver and passenger seats, allowing for three extra occupants. Something wet dotted the carpeted floorboard. He borrowed a flashlight from a nearby officer then dabbed a gloved finger in the spot and held it in front of the light.

Blood.

Maddox returned the flashlight to the officer, strode toward the nearest squad car, and removed the evidence collection kit from the trunk. Inside were plastic evidence bags, sterile cotton swabs, cuticle sticks, combs, tweezers, and transfer pipettes. He returned to the Continental, opened the kit, removed the cotton swabs and two evidence bags, then set to work. He started with the bloodstain. Since it was still wet, he was able to soak it up with a cotton swab instead of cutting out a section of carpet. He bagged it, tagged it, photographed the area he’d taken it from, then moved on.

In the span of only a few minutes, Maddox had filled the evidence bags with blood samples and two different strands of hair—one black, maybe nine inches in length, and another longer, lighter-colored strand.

“What color do you think this is?” Maddox asked, holding the second hair strand in front of his face with a pair of tweezers.

Nolan drew closer, squinting in the soft light as he looked at the hair sample. “Blond?”

“Blond?” Maddox asked. “No. White, maybe?”

“I meant platinum blond.”

What the hell is platinum blond?
“Silver?”

“I’ll go with that.”

Silver hair?
Maddox could always count on Portlanders to find a way to be strange. Tattoos. Piercings. Hair color. He’d seen worse.
But still…
“Who walks around with silver hair?”

“I don’t know,” Nolan said. “But it should make them easy to spot.”

Maddox dropped the hair sample into another evidence bag and took a deep breath. It had been a long night, and it wasn’t even close to being over. They still needed to dust for prints and get the samples to the lab. Then came the paperwork and reports. Part of him wondered if it was worth the effort. What new leads would fresh DNA provide? The dozens of samples collected from the manor hadn’t led to anything. No matches. No dental records. It was more than odd, more than abnormal. It was impossible.

That didn’t mean he could stray from procedure. He sealed the evidence bag and stepped away from the car, surveying the scene. Police cars surrounded them, blocking off the street from all directions. Officers leaned against their vehicles—talking, laughing, and joking—their faces clearly visible even in the night.

“What’s going on through that giant head of yours?” Nolan asked.

“Kaplan has help,” Maddox said. “We need to put a face to his accomplices.”

The first step to tracking any suspect was to build a list of known associates—friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, anyone who might have a connection with the suspect—and expand the search from there. But Kaplan’s few friends had refused to believe that he’d had anything to do with his sister’s disappearance. They were loyal, devoted even, and fervent in their defense of him.

Adding to the problem, Kaplan’s sister was his only remaining family. His mother was deceased, and his father had walked out on them years ago. Wherever Kaplan had disappeared to, he hadn’t sought asylum with family. Even his coworkers had distanced themselves from him, and they were lawyers who weren’t about to talk. The list had stopped growing before it had ever begun.

Time to change tactics.
If they knew who had been in the car with him, they could build a new network of known associates. They had the DNA, the prints, and the car. But it wouldn’t be enough. It hadn’t been enough at the manor, and it wouldn’t be enough now.

A camera flashed.

Maddox turned back to the car. With his business complete, a plain-clothes officer had stepped in. He was taking pictures of the interior of the vehicle, cataloguing the scene before he began dusting for prints. The camera flashed again.

The camera—pictures!

If they hit on the DNA, they could identify Kaplan’s help, and he would have driver’s license photographs, social media pictures, high school photos—whatever he wanted—to send to every news program, newspaper, and concerned-citizens group in the Northwest. He could let the public run the investigation for him. But if they didn’t get a hit, they would remain at square one. And they were running out of time.

“Maddox?”

He blinked.

Nolan was watching him, as if Maddox had been ignoring him.

“We’re doing this backward,” Maddox said. “We don’t know where they’re going, but we know where they were.”

“I’m not following.”

“Every bridge in Portland is monitored by a series of traffic cameras,” Maddox said. “We know Kaplan left his house roughly two hours ago, and we know what they arrived in. A black, mid-nineties Continental may not stick out like a Ferrari, but it’s not a Honda Civic, either. Track them back far enough, and it’ll lead us to where they came from.”

“That’s a lot of cars,” Nolan said. “We’re talking evening traffic.”

“Slow-moving traffic,” Maddox corrected. “It’ll make them easier to spot.”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m not asking you to know,” Maddox said. “I’m telling you what we’re doing.”

Allyn awoke cold and stiff and curled into a ball to preserve his body heat. His aching joints popped as he stretched and rolled onto his side. He ran his hands through his hair, feeling more of it than he was accustomed to, and brushed off the sawdust that clung to the side of his face. Already, the dark figure that had stirred him awake was looming over Nyla.

“It’s time,” Jaxon said after Nyla’s eyes popped open. She was instantly alert. It was still dark outside, and rain tapped steadily on the unfinished roof.

“What’s going on?” Allyn asked.

“We’re leaving.” Jaxon’s voice lacked urgency, suggesting it was by choice, not necessity.

Allyn stood with a groan. He’d been restless over the previous couple of hours. He’d slept—though he supposed it was more of a series of short naps than a restful block—and it left him feeling heavy and slow. Before he could ask where they were headed, the front door opened and Leira entered, followed by another slender figure.

Liam brushed aside the hair on his forehead and strode toward Allyn with a broad smile. “You found it? Let me see it.”

“Found what?”

“The computer!” Liam scanned the room. “Where is it? Is that it?” He pointed toward the silver laptop sitting on the counter. He brushed past Allyn toward it.

Jaxon reached it first and slid the computer under his arm. “Not until we’re in the car.”

“Oh,” Liam said, failing to mask his disappointment. “Right. Of course.”

The car, an early-nineties full-size Cadillac, was parked beside another vehicle in the middle of the street with its emergency lights flashing. They had bought it as a way to transport the remaining members of the McCollum Family to the cabin. It was meant to blend in, but compared to the Mercedes and BMWs populating nearby driveways, it probably had the opposite effect. They needed to move quickly.

Allyn felt a spike of annoyance when he saw Mason behind the wheel. The short man aggravated him. His shrill little voice irritated him. Most of all, Mason’s distrusting attitude galled him. If Allyn had wanted to betray the Family’s trust, he would have done so. He’d had multiple opportunities.

And yet, just a few short hours ago, he’d questioned why he remained with the Family. The revelation irked him more than anything.
Sometimes nothing’s worse than admitting you’re wrong, and that the person you can’t stand is right
.

Though larger than the Continental, the Cadillac lacked the additional bench seat, and four of them had to sit almost on top of one another. Fortunately, Jaxon rode up front with Mason, leaving Allyn sandwiched between the slender women and the scrawny Liam. It was far from comfortable, but it was still better than being cuffed in the back of a squad car.

Once the car was moving, Jaxon handed Liam the computer.

Allyn started to warn Liam of the computer’s condition, but Liam was too quick. He opened the computer and saw the crack across the monitor. Frowning, he pushed the power button. Nothing happened. He turned to Allyn, his mouth agape.

“We were in an accident,” Allyn said. “It almost took my head off.”

Liam looked back at the computer in disbelief.

“I saw a little of what was on it,” Allyn said. “Folders, maybe two dozen of them, each named after a specific city.” He hesitated. “One was named ‘Portland, Oregon.’”

“What was in it?”

“Me,” Allyn said simply. “Photographs, school records, information about where I worked, where I lived. Newspaper articles about me and about Kendyl’s disappearance. It’s like they were building a profile. A biography.”

“And the other folders?”

“Were the same,” Allyn said. “From what I could tell, anyway. But they were from all over the world. Europe. Asia. South America. I only glanced at a few.”

Liam ground his teeth. Allyn understood, and he couldn’t help but feel responsible. If he’d fled his condo a little faster or read the files in the car, they might not have been spotted, and the computer would still be intact.

“I might be able to recover the files,” Liam said.
“It looks like only the monitor was damaged. If that’s the case, then we can transfer the files from this computer to mine, or if need-be, pull the hard drive and install it in another computer. But I hope that’s not the case—laptops aren’t really designed to be disassembled.”

Allyn felt a surge of excitement. “You can do that?”

Liam shrugged. “Of course.”

“That would be…” Allyn trailed off, remembering his failed attempt to power the computer. “There’s something else.” He pointed at the damaged power port.

“What happened?” Liam asked, eyes wide. He traced the blackened port with a finger.

“The battery died,” Allyn said. “I tried to power it back up.”

“You what?”

“Don’t look at me like that. I was curious.”

Liam shook his head.

“Do you think I ruined it?” Allyn asked.

“It depends on how much power you used. You could have melted the circuits together. We won’t know until I start the transfer.”

“I’m sorry, Liam,” Allyn said. “It worked for a second.”

Liam pursed his lips, clearly disappointed.

“If you are still able to transfer the files,” Allyn began. He thought about how to explain. “The desktop was empty, except for that one master folder, but even before the accident, the computer was pretty beaten up. I have a hard time believing that the one folder was the only thing ever on the computer.”

“You think someone wiped the hard drive?”

“Yeah,” Allyn said.

Liam sat back, a contemplative look on his face. “Then we found only what they wanted us to find.”

“Exactly,” Allyn said. “But I’m just as interested in what they
didn’t
want us to find. It might tell us whose computer it was and lead us to who’s behind all of this.”

“Unless the computer was stolen.”

“I hadn’t thought about that.” Allyn’s budding enthusiasm soured a bit. “But then again, if it was stolen, why go through the trouble to wipe the hard drive?”

“I don’t know,” Liam said slowly. “I can still try to recover the lost files, but it’s going to depend on how they wiped the hard drive. If they did a quick delete, then there will be fragments and archived information, but if they did it right, we’ll be lucky to find anything more than crumbs.”

“And if it was stolen, the information will lead us nowhere.”

“True.”

Allyn shrugged. “Anything is better than what we have at the moment.”

Liam nodded and sat up a little straighter. Allyn had given him a project, and more than that, they still had hope. Allyn felt a little better, too. The tension in his shoulders was melting away. If anyone could salvage the computer and recover its information, Liam could.

As Allyn’s pressure and anxiety eased, the lack of sleep threatened to catch up to him. He leaned his head on the window and looked out. It was the darkest kind of night, where the moon and the stars were hidden behind a thick mass of clouds, and even the streetlamps were off or burned out. They followed the river; its slow moving water looked like shadowed glass. Their car was the only car on the otherwise lonely highway.

Allyn pulled away from the window abruptly. The river was on the wrong side of the road. “Where are we going?” he asked.