Page 13 of Lethal Sins

She could almost hear his voice: “Break it down, Paige. One step at a time.”

“Can you disable it?” she asked, forcing herself to focus.

Mason shook his head. “No way to tell. And even then, they’ll know we’ve found it.”

Bridger exchanged a worried glance with Tai. “So what do we do?”

“We could go back and put him in the dumpster,” Fenn suggested with a grin. “Two birds, one stone.”

“Not helping, Fenn,” Tai sighed, though Paige caught the ghost of a smile on his face.

Graham leaned against the wall, his expression grim. “We’re sitting ducks here. We need to move.”

“And go where?” Mason countered. “They’ll run us down eventually.”

Paige stared at Cody’s unconscious form, her mind whirling with possibilities and dangers. Even out cold, he was causing problems. But beneath that was a current of worry.

What had driven him to join the Consortium? And why had he sought her out?

If he’d wanted to capture her or the team, he could have set that up in Croatia. Maybe he did need her help. Or at least he wanted her to believe that. For now.

Suddenly, a thought struck her. Her father’s voice echoed in her mind: “Sometimes, the solution is hidden in plain sight.”

“Wait.” Her voice cut through the team’s debate. “Cody was babbling on about a Faraday cage. He wanted to jump into that dumpster in the alley. And the casino vault ... it was essentially a giant Faraday cage, too.”

The team fell silent, realization dawning on their faces.

“He knew about the tracker,” Tai said, eyes widening.

Paige nodded. “He wasn’t trying to lure us into a trap. He was trying to block the signal.”

Graham pushed off the wall. “An excellent idea. Let’s do this.”

Mason ran a hand through his hair, his mind racing. “Okay, we need to think this through. We could try to jam the signal, but without knowing the exact frequency, it might not work.”

“And it’ll take too much time,” Paige pointed out.

Tai jumped in. “What about improvising a Faraday cage? We could use aluminum foil to line a small room.”

“That could work,” Mason nodded, “but we’d need a lot of foil, and it’d take time to cover everything properly. Plus, his peeps will already know he’s here.”

“What about water?” Fenn suggested. “I remember reading something about water blocking signals.”

Mason shook his head. “It does, but we’d need a lot of it. Like, submerge-Cody-in-a-pool levels of water. Sort of a nonstarter.”

“The van,” Tai said suddenly. “The utility van has a metal body. If we line the interior with conductive material, it could work as a mobile Faraday cage.”

Mason’s eyes lit up. “Good thinking, Kaholo.” He jogged to the break area behind them, pulling open cupboard doors and rooting through the trash. He rose, grinning, hands full of old fast-food wrappers. Their metallic paper gave off the stench of old fry grease.

Paige swallowed hard, clamping down on the urge to throw up.

“Grab that roll of tinfoil,” Mason ordered Fenn. “It’s not much, but combined with the van’s metal body, it might be enough.”

“We need to move fast,” Paige said. “The van’s a poor conductor. They would have had trouble following his tracks, but now that he’s out of the vehicle?—”

“Copy that,” Bridger cut in. “Pedal to the metal, guys.”

The team worked with focused urgency, transforming the utility van into a makeshift Faraday cage. Mason and Tai lined the interior with tin foil, while Fenn sealed any potential gaps with the used food wrappers.

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