“If it was booby-trapped, you’d see a wire crossing right here,” says Steve. “It would have to come from the battery, which is here. But I could see through the slot between the phone halves that there was no wire like that. Lucky for us, the phone’s been opened and altered so I could see in past the opening seam. I wouldn’t have tried it otherwise.” Steve’s beatific, frozen smile never falters.

“You were sure?” says Zack. Catching his breath. Recovering.

Steve shrugs. “Pretty sure.” And then he gestures to Zack to come close. Zack is afraid to. Steve points and explains anyway.

“See this little silver sliver here? It’s a tiny little transmitter that’s been shoved in there pretty cleverly. A transmitter to set something off. And I don’t think it’s to turn on Christmas lights or the toaster. If you go to certain sites on the dark web, you see exactly this kind of transmitter in the instructions on rigging a detonator. It’s set to detonate something, presumably a bomb, by dialing a certain code. That’s how ISIS and Al-Qaeda were setting off lots of their IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan. With old cell phones.” He turns the open phone over carefully, almost reverently. “I bet they use one of those six-digit confirmation codes, like companies send you for security. That’s typical for communicating device to device.”

After his intense concentration on the electronic elements, Steve finally looks up. “So where’s the bomb?” A pause. “And what’s the code?” The two key questions.

But Zack has a simpler question. “You’ve got the thing open, Steve. Isn’t there a way to disarm it right now?”

“If there is”—Steve frowns—“I unfortunately don’t know it. See, if I snip this wire here, which I think would disarm it, it might also set off the bomb…depending on the range of the signal and wherever the bomb is right now. Two big unknowns.” He slowly, gently leans away from the open phone on the bed. “It could be waiting in the trunk of some bad guy’s car in the middle of nowhere but it could also be hidden next to a hundred innocent people.”

They all look at the open phone.

“And here’s the other thing.”

What? There’s more?

“If I cut this wire and somehow it doesn’t set it off, I’m pretty sure whoever rigged this is going to know immediately it was tampered with. I think it sends a signal to some other phone somewhere that periodically checks the circuit. That’s how it’s usually done.”

Just the kind of feedback loop Zack had been speculating about.

“In which case,” says Joey, “they’ll know I was messing with it and come kill me and find a new errand boy.” He says it as plainly as that.