Shadow Code: A Brock Finlander Novel (Coastal Adventure Series Book 2) Page 3

  Wesley started up his boat and headed back toward the island. It was a few hours away, through illegal waters, and on a deserted patch of land you couldn’t find on a map. He set up scrambles within a 10-mile radius of the island to mess with any boats trying to seek him out. Only those sailors who knew the old ways to sail, who didn’t rely on GPS to get them from point A to point B could find them. And in the age of technology, those men and women were few and far between.

  By the time he made it to the compound, all questions surrounding the crab’s reemergence festered into a gnawing paranoia. He wasn’t sure why it was important, only that it signaled the start of something disastrous.

  It didn’t matter. Wesley was ready. He would reclaim his life. He would have his revenge.

  One day. Soon.

  And by God, it would be glorious.

  6

  I blinked hard and refocused my eyes on the digits. What the hell?

  It was a NASA property number, one used to catalog items belonging to them the same way we recognize VIN numbers on a car. After working as an astronaut in the space program all those years ago, it was a surprise I forgot the sequence at all. Those types of things were drilled into your brain.

  The only question was, what did NASA have to do with the giant crabs? Were they connected to Rook Sugar and their involvement in unleashing these monstrous creatures out into the world? It didn’t seem likely that a government agency would have such a role in the destruction of its own people. Especially when it had been the government who swooped in to clean up the mess.

  Still, it forced me to question everything I believed, everything I thought to be real up until this point.

  Was this whole ordeal bigger than we thought? Worst still, was it not even over?

  Katie emerged from the house with a headset containing a series of magnifying glasses and gadgets I couldn’t identify. She sat down in front of the crab, freezing as she noted my expression. “What is it?”

  “The code.” I swallowed tightly. “I think it has to do with the NASA property coding system.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What does that even mean? Are we dealing with the same kind of crab? What would NASA have to do with all of this?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Do you think there could be more in there?” she asked, glaring at the crab as if it might spring to life at any moment. Her chest hiked upward on a labored breath. “Do you think the government left some behind on purpose?”

  I remained motionless. How do I answer that? One mystery solved, and I was even further from having the answers than I was before.

  She leaned over the crab and examined the numbers under her magnifying glass. After a few minutes, she leaned back. Her palms flattened over her mouth. Whether suppressing a gasp or merely out of habit, I could not tell.

  “That’s interesting,” she said finally.

  “What is it?”

  “The numbers.” Each word ground out past her lips on a watery tremor. She sounded hoarse as if she was holding back tears or a cry of pain. “There’s no etching, no abrasions. Nothing to suggest those numbers were actually cut into the side of the crab.”

  “What do you mean? It could have just been done in one clean swipe right?”

  She shook her head. “Not likely. Scientists found man-made weapons that were thousands of years old made from animal bones. They concluded the bones were picked clean by the people who created them because they could identify teeth marks from where they tore apart the flesh from the bone. A machine would make cleaner cuts into the shell, but it would not leave them without any indication of ever being made to begin with.”

  “So what are you suggesting?” Though part of me already knew the answer.

  “The numbers must have grown like that,” she said. “They weren’t added to the shell, they formed that way from birth. It’s kind of like a thumbprint, a unique etching formed as part of the animal’s genetic makeup.”

  “This isn’t an indentation in the skin, Katie. How can it grow with a number on the shell?”

  She flipped the magnifying glass upward. Her eyes pleaded with me, as if I was the one who created the crab in the first place. “I know it doesn’t make any sense. But I’m going off of what is right in front of me. If we can see something as simple as teeth marks in an ancient bone, then we’d certainly be able to see evidence of these marks being created.”

  “So what are we talking about here? These crabs were bioengineered?”

  “Yes.” Her voice cracked. She swallowed, sliding her eyes closed as the revelation of her findings took hold of her. “Someone weaponized these crabs for a reason. Not just Rook Sugar. And if the government left this one in the bay, whether intentionally or not, there’s no telling how many are still out there.”

  7

  Examining the crab on the jetty behind Katie’s house left me with more questions than answers. Where I thought it might give me further insight into what we were up against, I realized the battle was now only partly won.

  Were there more of these monsters in the bay? On the planet?

  What if we weren’t the only place in the world experiencing an influx of gargantuan creatures with a taste for the slaughter?

  And if they did belong to NASA, what did that mean for us? Rook Sugar had not been the sole contributor to bringing these monsters to life. In fact, they were likely another set of pawns in a grander game of chess. Which meant we needed back up.

  Hell, we needed all the help we could get!

  It was time to get some answers from some old friends down at NASA.

  Luckily, I still had one connection at the agency that might get me the answers I needed. Jules Cartwright, the daughter of an old Navy pilot I once worked with. I hadn’t seen her in a few years, though I made a regular pilgrimage to check in on her mother. Her father died on duty while Jules was only ten years old. The transition hadn’t been an easy one for her or her mother. Though it certainly didn’t hinder Jules and her learning ability.

  Even before her father died, the girl operated on an entirely different level. By the age of nine, she’d completed all 12th-grade level coding and started taking supplemental college courses by the end of middle school. She joined NASA around the same time I was leaving as one of the youngest computer analysts to come aboard.

  The hire had nothing to do with me and everything to do with her ability to hack into almost any database in the world within a matter of minutes.

  Though that wasn’t what NASA hired her for, according to her mother. Either way, Jules was a necessary asset I couldn’t ignore. She had access to well-guarded information. Even if she didn’t have access to it, she soon would.

  “Can you trust her?” Katie asked me before I left.

  I wasn’t sure who I could trust anymore. There was no guarantee Jules would even help me. I was a friend of her father, her mother, and even mentored her for a time. But that was a few years ago. People changed.

  I know I had.

  Killian Harris was the man assigned to give me the tour. I had finagled my way into seeing Jules purely by the last lingering remnants of my reputation. One the new generation of scientists practically forgot.

  “Jules is one of our shining stars,” Killian said. A warm smile illuminated his face. It was a strange combination when coupled with his over-toned physique and business suit. The man did not look like a scientist. He certainly didn’t look like a man in charge of scientists and genius-level computer analysts.

  Killian’s broad shoulders formed a rigid box-shape, a clear indication of time spent in the marines. Those shoulders swelled into two matching biceps that were near-Herculean, even encased in the confines of his sleeves. Add an Armani suit, and the man couldn’t have looked any more out of place than he did at that moment.

  My thoughts compelled me so far down a train of thought, I didn’t hear him speak. Instead, I looked up to see him staring at me, blankly, anticipating a response to an unknown statement.


  “Come again?” I said.

  “How do you know Jules?” Killian asked.

  “She’s an old friend of the family. I was in the Navy with her dad.”

  “Ah.” He winced as if recalling a painful memory. “He died several years back, didn’t he? In service to his country?”

  “He did.”

  Killian cast his eyes to the floor, absently shaking his head in a moment of quiet contemplation. “As a soldier, it is always expected but never an easy thing to face. I don’t know what’s harder: dying or living with the loss.”

  A twinge of pain struck at the center of my chest. These were things I asked myself every day, especially when it came to Jules’s father. He was my best friend. And in an instant, one reckless, unfair instant, he was gone.

  We stopped before a series of computers, all encircling one young woman. The grainy sounds of heavy metal music vibrated through a set of headphones, bringing life to an otherwise serene office. The woman in the chair bobbed her head in tune with the music. She paid us no attention as we stepped up behind her.

  Killian tapped on her shoulder, and she jolted upward. Jules ripped the headphones from her ears, straightening, and swiveling about in her chair to face us. That same pinch of irritation lodged itself between my ribs, this time more insistent, more unsettling.

  God, those eyes. It was just like looking at her father.

  Guilt seized me, and I quickly dashed my eyes to the ground to recover. I had a mission to think about. These were uncertain times with the potential threat of a government cover-up. Not to mention the lives that were at stake if we didn’t get a handle on this situation quickly.

  I steeled myself against the sea of memories washing over me. The one brought on by eyes that looked as if they could peer into my very soul. “I’m…”

  “Uncle Brock,” she said, with a smile. “I remember you. What are you doing here?”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Killian stood with his hands clasped in front of him, observing the entire exchange without any hint of suspicion.

  Damn. I hadn’t thought this all the way through. He had to escort me over here. I couldn’t just be left to roam around as I pleased. But how was I to convince Jules to help us, to smuggle State secrets of all things, while someone loomed behind me?

  I shrugged. “Just a friendly check-in.”

  She squinted. A small corner of her mouth crooked upward as she raked her gaze over me. Could she tell why I was there? I hadn’t seen her in years. She had to know something was wrong. Her overactive mind likely played out a million scenarios before arriving on the best response.

  “It has been a while.” She leaned around me to stare at Killian. “This might take a little bit. I’m going to take my lunch and then show him out.”

  Killian glanced at his watch, his hands still clenched together. “Fine. But be quick about it. I need you and Ryan to hop on that meeting in an hour.”

  She nodded and collected what few things she had around her desk. “We can go to the breakroom or outside. It doesn’t really matter, either way. The whole place is bugged.”

  I shifted uneasily, checking back over my shoulder. God, the girl was blunt. The last thing I needed was to raise suspicion. “What are you talking about?”

  She brushed back a piece of hair behind her ears. The short length of each strand fell just below her chin in pin-straight lines. Despite both her parents being blondes, she kept her hair dark, with hints of bright blue peeking out from underneath the bottom.

  “I’ve seen that look a few times,” she said. “You need something. Something only I can get. But now is not the time to bring it up.”

  “You don’t even know what I’m asking for.”

  Jules rolled one shoulder upward. “I know if you’re coming here, it requires hacking. Or something to do with computers that no normal human can figure out on their own.”

  “What if you aren’t interested?”

  Jules closed the distance between us in two short steps. She leaned forward and whispered, “Is it illegal?”

  How did I even answer something like that? We were hacking into a government agency, breaking into encrypted data that not even half of the military knew about. All for what? To prove that we’d seen the last of the monsters who nearly destroyed our home last year.

  It would be worth it. Anything that saved lives was always worth it.

  My lips pursed as I considered the best answer to give her. Only one fled past my lips, far too quickly for me to restrain it. “Yes?”

  “Good.” Her eyes twinkled with a mischievous lilt. She was even more like her old man than I thought. “I’m interested. I sent a link to your phone. Call me at that time. No later. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait until the following morning.”

  “Agreed.” I peered down at my phone, feeling somewhat violated. How the hell did she do that? She didn’t even have my number. I didn’t even see her touch her phone. Clearly, I came to the right person for the task. Though whether I could trust her or not was still yet to be seen.

  She was eager, hungry in a way her father had been for adventure and justice. Even if it meant bringing in one of our own and standing up to a corrupt system. The parallels were uncanny. The only difference was I knew I could trust her father. The jury was still out on Jules. Sure, she knew me since she was a child, but there were plenty of honest men and women who would turn their back on a friend to save their own skin.

  Only now, I didn’t have time to worry about whether or not Jules had my back. I didn’t have time to wonder how deep into the lion’s den I had wandered by asking her for help.

  She was all I had. All we had. The only person standing between us and the truth.

  8

  It was getting pretty hard to distinguish between reality and science fiction in this town. No matter which way he looked, Finn constantly found himself in more trouble than the average human being. And definitely more death-defying scenarios than the average middle schooler.

  Much to Finn’s surprise, he actually liked it that way.

  It was hard to get the taste of adventure out of your mouth once you’d already taken a bite. It was an addictive sort of habit and not something he found very easy to accommodate in the otherwise sleepy fishing town of Claw Island.

  This was the first bit of excitement he had encountered all summer. A crab still floating around in the bay.

  His family didn’t want him to know about the crab. That didn’t stop him from finding out anyway. When his mom told him to go to Jessa’s house, he stuck around in the backyard, in a special spot where his mother would never find him. Of course, it wasn’t in the most ideal location as far as space and comfort went. Though it did place him in the perfect range and viewpoint to see and hear everything he needed to know.

  The real trick had been keeping Chum away. The dog had nearly blown his hiding place three times over the course of 10 minutes. The only thing that distracted him in each instance was when Chum ran off in search of some more “treasures” to bring home.

  These treasures were usually dead things, which is how Chum earned his name in the first place. What would have made more sense was for Chum to go after the giant dead crab lying there in the middle of the dock. How much more intriguing could something be to a dog who loved dead things than a dead thing the size of a boat?

  But, no. He wasn’t interested. Mainly because it was already being poked and prodded by Finn’s mother and grandfather.

  It was nice to see the two of them getting along. It was nice to feel a part of a family, a real family. One that consisted of much more than just him and his mom.

  He loved his mom. There was no one greater in his eyes. But Brock was someone Finn could go to for advice. Someone who wouldn’t turn all goo-goo eyed on him any time he mentioned a girl. Plus it was just nice having another man to look up to in his life. His mother had dated some real winners there. The last guy turned out to be a power-mad, homicidal maniac who unleashed a hoard of savage
crabs on Claw Island.

  The good news was, she could only go up from there.

  Finn watched them from his hiding space. They exchanged a few words in hushed tones, pointing toward a spot on the crab’s stomach.

  They were up to something. Adults were always up to something. Especially when they wanted to keep kids out of the picture.

  It was a strange twist of fate, Finn supposed. One minute, his mom was practically begging him to spend time with her, refusing to let him go to his friend, Jessa’s, house. The next minute, she was pushing him out the door. And how did he repay that kindness, the one gifted to him by the gods themselves?

  He stayed home.

  All for the sake of curiosity. It was totally worth it. Not only did it look like the giant crabs were back, but it also looked like there was more information about them that they hadn’t previously uncovered. Information that was enough to upset both his grandfather and his mother.

  Finn wasn’t entirely sure what all the fuss was about. Something to do with numbers and NASA. He wasn’t sure. His perch was a great hiding spot, but it wasn’t foolproof.

  All he knew was that his family would be leaving soon. Brock and his mother had that special look in their eyes. That faint glimmer, a sparkle even, that spoke of hope and adventure.

  Finn missed that look. He missed that feeling. These past few months had been torture compared to the excitement of battling the hardshells. Nothing quite compared to that feeling, that rush of contributing to something bigger than themselves. Of holding the fates of others in their hands.

  Not to mention he looked totally badass in front of his girlfriend.

  Well, Jessa wasn’t technically his girlfriend. They hadn’t really made anything official. They were in middle school, after all. There was no reason to rush things. They had their whole lives ahead of them, and it was still just enough being friends.

  Whatever the problem was with those numbers, Jessa would be the one to figure it out. There was no one quite as smart as Jessa. The girl was a genius, unrivaled for academics in almost every field. Even Finn stood no chance against her. If they could only get two seconds alone with the crab, he was sure she would know what to do with it.