Please look under my coat before she sees you!
The knowledge of the collar’s thermal safeguard was a heavy weight. I couldn’t risk Maya. The physical approach was out. I needed a technical solution, something beyond my limited expertise. I felt like I was back to square one, only now with the added horror of what a wrong move could do.
Rachel was patient, but her leads on the financial fraud were also hitting walls. Without the specific signal frequencies, her evidence was circumstantial. Evelyn’s legal team was too good at burying things.
I needed to clear my head. The walls of my small house felt like they were closing in. I hopped on my motorcycle, the roar of the engine a welcome distraction, and headed east on Highway 71, away from Austin, away from the pressure cooker.
Sixty miles later, the sun was setting, casting long shadows over the scrubland. My stomach rumbled. I pulled into a dusty parking lot outside a truck-stop diner in Bastrop. The neon sign flickered, promising “Home Cookin’.”
Inside, the air smelled of stale coffee and fried onions. The place was mostly empty, a few truckers hunched over plates, a couple of locals sipping lukewarm soda.
I slid into a booth, pulling out my battered notebook. It was filled with scribbled notes, Apex Titan schematics, the useless frequency data I’d gathered. My mind kept returning to the thermal lock. How did it disengage? There had to be an override.
A man sat alone at the counter, stirring his coffee. He wore a faded denim jacket, the kind with patches. One patch, barely legible, read “Municipal Radio Tech – Retired.”
He glanced over at me. His eyes were sharp, observant, even as his movements were slow, deliberate.
I didn’t think anything of it until I accidentally knocked my notebook off the table. Papers scattered.
“Need a hand there, son?” the man’s gravelly voice asked.
“No, I got it,” I mumbled, bending to gather the sheets. One of the Apex Titan schematics, depicting a detailed diagram of the collar’s internal wiring, lay face up.
The man, Dean Kowalski, as the name tag on his jacket read, chuckled softly. “Well, I’ll be. Haven’t seen one of those in a long time.”
I looked up, startled. He was looking directly at the schematic for Maya’s collar.
“You know this?” I asked, my voice tight with sudden hope and suspicion.
Kowalski pushed his coffee cup aside and slid off his stool, moving toward my booth with a slight limp. He picked up the schematic.
“Know it?” he scoffed, a wry smile on his lips. “Kid, I *designed* the initial RF receiver prototype for Apex Titan. That’s my handiwork, right there.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. This was too much of a coincidence.
“You worked for Apex Titan?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even.
“For a time,” he said, handing me the paper back. He settled into the booth opposite me, uninvited. “Back when they were still ‘Texas Integrated Communications.’ Before the big defense contracts. Before they got… well, before they got too big for their britches, I suppose.”
He gestured to the collar schematic. “That particular model, the ‘Guardian V.2,’ had some rather… unique features.”
“The thermal lock?” I pressed, leaning forward.
Kowalski nodded slowly, his eyes narrowing slightly as he studied me. “Nasty bit of work, that. Designed to be tamper-proof. But every lock has a key, doesn’t it?”
“You know the bypass?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
He took a long sip of his coffee. “I was abruptly terminated two years ago. Didn’t like the direction things were going. Said my ‘ethics’ were getting in the way of ‘innovation.’ But I keep meticulous records.”
He pulled a worn, leather-bound notebook from his own pocket, flipping through pages filled with technical jargon and complex diagrams.
“There’s a specific frequency sequence,” he murmured, tracing a finger over a series of numbers. “A digital key. It disengages the thermal safeguard and releases the clasp without triggering the charge.”
He looked up, his gaze direct. “But you’d need the right equipment to transmit it. And you’d need a reason to risk getting involved with Apex Titan. They don’t take kindly to old engineers poking around their secrets.”
A reason. Sarah. Maya.
“I have every reason,” I said, meeting his gaze.
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