FIRST THING THE NEXT morning we got in the car and drove. We mapped out the rest of our trip and if we were able to keep stops to a minimum, we would make it somewhere in Washington late tonight. We were aiming for Seattle, but we would figure it out along the way.
To pass the time, we played just about every car game imaginable. Regardless, it was the longest thirteen hours of my life.
Finally, night started to darken the sky and the sun retired behind the horizon as we pulled into the outskirts of Seattle. We checked into a lesser known, but not nearly as bad as the motels we had been staying at the last few nights. I was happiest about the laundry room and finally taking care of things that needed to be taken care of. After we checked in and made it to our room, Jack ditched our bags on the bed and took out his laptop.
"Now that we are here we should figure out where to find the author of this website," I said, sitting down on the edge of one of the beds.
"I'm not tech savvy enough to do that so we'll need to find someone to do it for us."
"Can we afford that?" I asked.
He nodded. "I'm sure we can find someone to do it." He opened the lid of the laptop and pulled up a browser.
While he worked on that, I went to the bathroom to freshen up. I still felt like I had travel on me. I felt slightly more relaxed than I had in more than a week. There was something about being a city that had millions of people in it that made me feel like we had some sort of a buffer. That and the entire drive to Seattle, I saw nothing that raised red flags. I knew it was only a matter of time before we faced them again, but I planned on making that time as long as possible.
When I walked out Jack had a website pulled up. He motioned me to come over and I looked at it. The webpage was for a store that supplied technical help and sold electronic parts. Jack mapped it and it was in the outskirts of town and they were open suspiciously late. That exact kind of sketchiness that should make me turn around, but now only made me want to pursue it further.
I scribbled the address and website down on the hotel's complimentary pad of paper and ripped the sheet off, folding it and shoving it into my pocket. Jack only muttered a "let's go" as he grabbed his jacket and keys. He locked the door behind us and we got back into the dreaded car. I hoped that it would be at least a little longer before I had to get back in here, but this was important. Whatever we would find out here would determine our next move.
The address led us to a sketchier part of town. The buildings stopped looking so new, more vacant, and graffiti painted the sides of plain walls. I told Jack to stop in front of a narrow white building with two windows and a door facing the street. Above the door in black numbers was the building number: 603. There were bars on the windows and an OPEN sign flickered weakly against the glass. The walls were covered in various electronic accessories and against the back wall behind the counter were electronic consoles and computer towers. One man sat behind the counter and a severly outdated register.
A bell rang as we walked through the door. The man looked up at us. He had dark brown skin and eyes with buzzed hair. His eyes followed us suspiciously, hesitantly, as we walked through the store and straight to him. Jack lingered closely behind me.
"Good evening. How can I help you?" he asked. His voice was smooth and pleasant enough not to send me the other way, but I could still tell he had his reservations about us.
"We need some..." I paused, searching for the right word, "technical help and your website said you could be of help to us."
He leaned forward, placing his elbows on the counter. "That depends on what kind of help you need."
I looked behind me to see if anyone else was in the store, even though I knew there wasn't. I caught a glimpse of Jack before I turned around. His face was stoic and staring straight ahead, eyes firmly on the employee. We were in less danger here from the government agents than the heart of the cit, but that fear was always there. And I thought that I saw a hint of it on his face. I turned back to the man. "We need help locating the origins of a website."
The man nodded. "I can help you with that."
"Good. What do you charge?"
He shrugged, standing up from his stool. "Depends on how high security the website is." He motioned for us to follow him. He pressed his hand against the wall and, shockingly, it moved revealing a hidden door. He stepped through the threshold and we followed behind him.
The room was decent in size and it felt slightly like a headquarter of any spy movie ever. Just not as modern as most. The entire back wall had flatscreen monitors covering it, each screen showed a different angle of the empty store we just walked out of. In front of the monitor wall, was a large desk with a keyboard and mouse resting on it and a leather swivel chair in front of that.
The man sat down in the chair facing the screens and ran his hand across the keyboard, clicking keys as he went. The screens changed to technical coding-like templates with the exception of one in the middle. The one in the middle remained to look like a desktop screen.
"So, Miss, what website are you wanting to learn more about?"
I reached for the folded slip of paper in my back pocket and handed it to him. He took it gingerly from my fingers and unfolded it. He scoffed as he read it.
"This website? Seriously?" He looked at both of us incredulously.
"Yes," I said. Why was he laughing?
He shook his head with a little laugh and started typing the website name into the browser. "Just by the looks of you two I thought I'd have a challenge. Something a little more dangerous than a teens website that's updated in his free time." He hit one button and the website I stumbled upon a couple nights ago was pulled up on the middle screen.
"Regardless of the challenge or not, can you get us the location of the creator of this website?"
The man raised an eyebrow at me. "Of course." He turned his attention back to the screens and started typing again. "May I ask why you want this information?"
"May I ask why you want to know?" I deflected his question. He may be helping us, but that didn't mean I trusted him to spill anything about what we were doing or who we were. For all I knew the government had people planted to look for me.
He shrugged, eyes glued to the screens. They flicked from screen to screen as he delved further into his hacking. "With a job like this you get curious." His fingers were flying across the fingers faster than I thought possible.
"Our reasons are not really any of your business," I finally said after a moment filled with the sound of keys being hit.
His eyes slid over to me through the corner of his eyes for a brief second. "Cryptic young lady, you are. Peculiar, too."
I cocked my head, crossing my arms across my chest. "What do you mean?"
"Your eyes. They aren't contacts. I can tell by the way your eyes dialated when you walked into this room. Not to mention the defensive state of your..." he hesitated, gauging the situation, "boyfriend behind you. You are hiding something or running from something. Am I correct, or am I not?"
I pressed my lips together. I was not about to give him the benefit of a confirmation or even a denial. He might have been extremely observant, but he couldn't read minds.
"I'll take that silence as a yes," he said.
"You are quite observant for a computer hacker," I commented, turning the scrutiny on him instead of us.
"It comes in handy. Especially when determining who to help... and who to not." He tapped one key on the board and sat back in his chair with a smile. "Voila. There you go, kid."
I narrowed my eyes at him. What he didn't know was that I was old enough to be his mother, if not grandmother. Instead of commenting back, I looked at the address on the screen and on the screen next to it was a satellite map. It looked like an apartment complex, or something with multiple buildings or one huge building. I couldn't be sure.
I scribble the address on the crumpled piece of paper below where I had already written on it, stuffing it into my pocket when I finished.
"Thank you for your help. What do we owe you?"
He stayed relaxed in his chair while pivoting it around to face us. With those same analytical eyes, he looked me up and down. But it wasn't in a way that made me want to hid behind Jack. No, it was more like he was sizing me up, weighing how dangerous I was. How dangerous we were. I could bet that either way he would guess would be wrong.
"For you guys," he said after a minute, "nothing."
"What?" I asked.
"Free of charge for you and your boyfriend here." His dark eyes looked over at Jack and he grinned. Jack didn't return the gesture, though. Instead he tightened his eyes.
"Why?" Jack pressed, speaking for the first time.
"Let's just say it's for an old friend. When you get where you're going tell Anya that Blade says hi."
We walked out of the store shortly after that. I could feel his eyes still on us as we climbed into Jack's car.
"What the hell was that?" Jack asked as we pulled away.
"I have no clue. The guy gave me the creeps after that."
He nodded. "Tell me about it."
I thought back to what the man (was he Blade?) said. "I wonder if he knows what we're doing. What if he knows who I am?"
Jack shook his head. "Maybe he was trying to throw us off." He gestured to the slip of paper in my hand. "Maybe that's false information. After all it was free."
"Maybe," I said. But if there was one thing we both knew without having to say it was that this was our only lead and no matter how much we doubted it, we had to at least try.