The Innocents, Nathan Senthil [best life changing books .TXT] 📗

his presence at Calabria, he had been keeping an eye on the rearview mirror. No one had followed him, but now Gabriel was sure that he had a tail.

How?!

An avid fan of shooting and espionage video games, he arrived at a possible answer in a beat. He sat up straight and whispered, “No freaking way.”

Pocketing his gun, he got off the bed. Then he ran down to the parking lot in the basement, taking two steps at a time. When he reached the Camaro, he dropped to the floor and rolled under the car.

Five minutes later, his hand groping above the right rear wheel, he found a plastic box the size of a Lego.

* * *

Bill lay on the bed, watching TV and eating Pringles, and Gabriel sat at its edge. An hour past midnight, a fifty-year-old lanky man carrying a briefcase knocked on his door. He introduced himself as Special Supervisory Agent Morgan from the Detroit field office. Gabriel wondered why the SSA would be personally involved, and Morgan said that Conor was a friend and he had requested him to help Gabriel in any way he could.

Morgan specialized in computers, both hardware and software. The briefcase was actually a device that resembled a laptop. It had a keyboard but also a myriad of slots and loose wires.

Gabriel passed the GPS transmitter he found under the Camaro to Morgan.

Inspecting the device, he asked, “You guys didn’t switch it off, right? Your trackers would have known if you did.”

“We didn’t tamper with it.”

Morgan took out a small Swiss army knife from his pocket and pried the case of the device open. A red and green wire ran through it; he plucked them out. Then he connected their copper tips to a pair of wires in the laptop and began typing.

When he stopped, the screen read Initializing, and a status bar appeared under it.

Ten minutes later, the bar was at 37% and Bill got bored and became inquisitive. He asked, “Now that we transferred it from the basement to our room two levels up, won’t they smell that something’s fishy? I read that these GPS things can calculate height, too.”

“Nah… I’m sure your car is parked only a few dozen feet below, not more than hundred feet. Altimeters in GPSs are known to give off wrong readings, sometimes by 400 feet.” Morgan regarded the plastic device. “This is cheap. Your trackers did not have altitude in their minds when they bought it.”

“So, basically, what you’re saying is,” Bill took out a chip from the Pringles tube on his stomach and put it in his mouth, “they won’t know? We’re fine?”

“Yes. You are fine.” Morgan sighed, evidently regretting having provided Bill with a comprehensive answer, when a few-word response would have been sufficient.

“What’s happening in there?” Gabriel pointed at the laptop screen.

“Doubling back.”

“I don’t understand.”

Morgan looked uncertain; Gabriel could see the cogs inside his brain going off. He was wondering if he should share his in-depth knowledge again. Apparently, he decided he would give them another chance. “Alright. You know how GPS receivers work, right? Trilateration?”

Gabriel said, “At any time of the day, you have at least three satellites hovering over your head. They always broadcast their locations in space in relation to Earth. The GPS receivers collect that data to compute their locations in relation to the satellites, and give us longitudes and latitudes.”

“Correct.” Morgan’s face brightened. “Then the GPS chip sends the coordinates to some output device that’s attached to it, generally an LCD.”

“Like in cars.”

“Yes. But since GPS trackers don’t show the location to you on an LCD screen but to someone else, they constantly transmit information by cell phone towers, which is then saved on the cloud.”

“Oh,” Gabriel said. He almost didn’t understand but when he pictured the process, he got it.

“Usually, there is a third-party company that stores the data from the GPS trackers. And this baby,” Morgan touched the laptop, “can find out to which company the data is being transmitted. Once I zero in on that server, I can hack into it and trace who is constantly viewing your location.”

Bill kept his face blank, while Morgan continued.

“… Ironically, whoever is tracking you would have used the Internet to connect to the cloud. And I’ll phish their device’s IP address or IMEI number from that server, and then their location.”

“So, basically, what you’re saying is,” Bill took out another chip from the Pringles tube on his stomach and put it in his mouth, “we can track them because they are tracking us?”

“Yes.” Morgan deflated, the animation his face had been reflecting when he talked about computer stuff evaporated.

The status bar was finally at 100%.

“We found the device that’s accessing the data from the GPS tracker,” Morgan said. “It’s a cellphone.”

“Who does it belong to?”

Morgan played his keyboard some more. Then he said, “Roman Marino.”

Honestly, that didn’t surprise Gabriel.

He walked over to the window and peeked outside. Calabria was closed.

“You have a location?” Gabriel asked as he returned to them.

“I do. Roman’s GPS is turned on,” Morgan said.

“Where is it?”

Morgan pointed at the zoomed in section of a map on his laptop. When he read the address, Gabriel skipped a heartbeat. He knew that place; he’d just been there, having mint tea.

Roman was in Iris’s house.

Chapter 38

May 12, 2019. 12:31 A.M.

 

Iris was woken by a peculiar noise that didn’t belong: a wet crunch, like someone breaking a tree branch. Pushing the blanket aside, she got off the bed. As soon as she left the comfort of her room, a cool breeze swept her gown and sent chills across her skin, giving her goosebumps.

The cold wind was blowing from the direction of her front door. Wondering if she had forgotten to lock