He wouldn’t give up. And if he wouldn’t, I wouldn’t. I wasn’t on my own. Danny and the team wouldn’t let themselves be sent to jail. They’d find a way out. I just had to believe in them. And find a way to let them know where I was.

I opened my eyes. Dug into the first aid kit and bandaged my foot. There were painkillers in the kit, too, and I dry-swallowed some so I could think.

I checked the door but it was solid wood and firmly locked. I limped around the whole suite just in case Becker had missed anything, but he hadn’t. I stood in the center of the bedroom, thinking furiously. If only he hadn’t taken the phone! I stared at the ragged ends of the phone cable that hung from the wall. Down that wire, somewhere on the other end of the network, was Danny. All I needed was a $10 phone from any electronics store and I could just call him!

Then my eyes narrowed. I didn’t have to call him. I just had to dial him.

These days, phone calls are mostly just streams of data: your voice goes over the internet like everything else. But before that, numbers were dialed with tones: beep boop beep as you pressed the buttons. And before that, you dialed with clicks. That’s how old rotary dial phones worked: you turned the dial to four and released it, and it made four little clicks as it sprang back. And that system’s still there, it’s just barely used anymore.

I sat down next to the broken cable. I didn’t have wire strippers, but the first aid kit had scissors. I didn’t have electrical tape, but I had sticking plasters. And I found a pen in a drawer that had a springy metal pocket clip. It took me about half an hour, but I managed to wire the pen to the phone cable. By pressing down on the metal pocket clip, I could complete the circuit and make a click. In theory, I could dial out.

But who to dial? I didn’t have the number of the burner phone Danny was using. Or any of the team, or the base back in Mount Mercy. But there was one number I had written down…

I pulled out Luka Malakov’s business card. Better than nothing. I took a deep breath, then carefully tapped the pen clip ten times: that was a zero. Then a pause, then seven taps to dial a seven. It took forever but, finally, I tapped out the last digit. And then I waited. Somewhere, hopefully, a phone was ringing.

The problem was that there was no way to know if it had worked. I counted off thirty seconds, then dialed again. I’d just have to pray that Luka understood.

71. Danny

71

DANNY