Forsaken by Dean Murray Read Free Book Online Page A

in New York even more than
the rest of the stuff I'm sending. I'm sorry. I would have just sent
it right to you, but I didn't know how you'd feel about that. You
seemed pretty determined to cut all ties with us when you left.
    If
you see this then I guess that means you and Isaac are getting along
better than I'm afraid you will. I'm sorry about all of this. Alec
wouldn't even talk about his decision before he sent Isaac to you.
I'm sorry the pack is intruding on your life again, but I'm glad
you'll have someone there to watch over you.
    The
handwriting was unmistakably Rachel's, and for a few seconds I almost
broke down into more tears, but I managed to hold myself together, if
just barely. I'd forgotten about the trip that Alec had planned on
taking us all on over Christmas. It took everything I had to
keep myself from imagining what the trip would have been like, but I
sternly kept my mind in the present as I put away a dozen incredibly
soft sweaters and other assorted articles of clothing.
    I
wasn't sure what to do with the boxes, so I wandered through the
house looking for Isaac's study. The rest of the place was just as
incredible as what I'd seen so far. The floors all seemed to be a
combination of lush carpet or heated stone, and the furniture had the
simple elegance that you only got when you were ready to really open
up your wallet.
    Again
and again my gaze kept coming back to the huge windows that seemed to
occupy every single exterior wall. I'd started to feel
almost...claustrophobic since we'd moved to New York. That
wasn't quite the right word, but more and more I'd begun feeling like
there wasn't any way to get away from all of the people around me.
There were too many of us packed in much too small of a space, but I
didn't get that feeling here. Looking out over Central Park with the
light dusting of snow that covered all of the trees, I felt for the
first time like I could deal with living in the city as long as I had
access to a place like this.
    The
study proved to be a massive room that had gigantic bookshelves on
two walls and a desk with the biggest leather chair I'd ever seen.
Isaac had a large antenna rigged on one edge of the desk and was
typing commands into a terminal.
    "What
do you want me to do with the boxes now that they are empty?"
    "Just
pull them out into the hall and the maid service will take care of
them sometime tomorrow."
    "You
have a maid service, too?"
    Isaac
nodded absently. "Yes, a very exclusive, bonded service comes in
four times a week to keep everything tidy."
    Yet
again with the whole bit about blowing my mind.
    "So
what are you doing right now?"
    Isaac
pushed himself back from his desk with the air of someone who was
having to make a conscious effort to bring themselves back to
reality.
    "Sorry,
I was in pretty deep there. In short, I'm trying to create a more
secure route to use for communications back to Sanctuary."
    "What,
like encryption?"
    "Yes,
but that's only one layer of what I'm doing. The encryption piece is
pretty easy. The hard part is making sure the communications can't be
tracked back here. In Sanctuary I've already got a pretty bulletproof
system in place along with hacks into a few key bits of telecom
equipment that allow me to monitor when someone starts getting close
enough that I need to rework the paths. That isn't an option here, at
least not in the time I'm willing to spend on it."
    My
head was already starting to hurt. Isaac was going to get way over my
head, but after the way that my mom had rocked my world earlier that
day, I really didn't want to just hide out by myself in my new room.
    "Can
you use less tech speak?"
    Isaac
smiled like I'd just issued a challenge and then pointed to the
antenna. "Essentially, I'm going to hack some of the nearby
wireless routers. I'll bounce our traffic from one wireless device to
the next so that there is a long trail that the Coun'hij or the
police would have to unravel in order to trace everything back