Page 34 of Secrets and Lies
I click on yes, and a folder opens up on my screen.
“What the hell?” I mutter.
It’s full of more folders, but the names on them look like a random mix of letters, numbers, and symbols.
Curious, I open the first folder and find about a dozen MP3 files with the same nonsensical labels.
Instead of opening any of the files, I exit out of that folder and check the others. They’re all filled with MP3 files. Some of the folders only have one or two files in them, but others have dozens of them, and none of the labeling makes any sense.
Opening the first folder again, I click on the first file.
The quality isn’t great, and there’s a bunch of background noise that’s making it hard to hear what the speakers are saying, almost like the scrape of something moving over the microphone.
I pause the file and dig my earbuds out of my pocket. Once they’re connected to my laptop, I play the file again.
The headphones cut down some of the background noise, making it easier to hear their voices, and from what I can tell, the recording is of two guys discussing something to do with a cabin.
The clip is only about twenty seconds long, and there’s no context for it, but it sounds like one of the guys is using a cabin for something and the other guy is telling him to not get caught.
When the recording ends, I play the next one. The quality is a bit better, and there’s no scraping sounds on this one, but there’s way more background noise, like they’re in the middle of a party or something.
One of the voices sounds like it could be the same guy as the last recording, but he’s talking to someone different, and this time they’re discussing a job of some sort and how one of them is in too deep or something like that.
The recording stops, and I open the next one. But instead of listening to it all the way through, I only play enough to see if oneof the voices is the same as the others, then move on to the next one.
I can’t be sure because of the quality of the recordings, but it sounds like all the files have the same person in them; he’s just talking to different people.
I chew on my lip as I try to make sense of what I’m hearing.
There’s an entire folder of recorded conversations of the same person, and I have zero context for any of them, and they’re under a labeling system that looks like gibberish. Is the entire drive like that?
It takes almost thirty minutes to go through the rest of the folders, and when I’m finally done, I’m even more confused than I was before I started.
Every folder on it is exactly like the first one, so the drive is essentially filled with snippets of conversations that, from the sound of it, were taken when people had no idea they were being recorded.
But who are the targets? And why were these particular conversations recorded? It sounded like these recordings were pulled from longer ones and cropped down to these particular soundbites, but why? None of the files I listened to all the way through had anything crazy or earth-shattering in them, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s nothing interesting in the others.
Toeing off my shoes, I slide up the bed and settle against my pillows. Dinner service at the dining hall doesn’t start for another hour. I might as well listen to more of the files and see if I can figure out what the hell they are and why they’re important enough for someone to not only record them, but keep them.
6
ANTHONY
“Are there any objections?”Declan asks as he looks around the room. “Then the matter is closed.”
“Awesome,” Hazen mumbles. “I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it through another day without knowing if we’re switching to a different brand of TP.”
I roll my lips inward so I don’t snicker and gently kick Hazen’s shoe.
“What?” he whispers, his expression the picture of innocence. “Having the status of our tushie paper up in the air like that was really stressing me out.”
“There’s one more order of business we need to go over,” Graycen says from the front of the meeting room. “Then we can call it a night.”
A low murmur filters through the room, but a hard look from Graycen is enough to make everyone stop talking before they’ve had a chance to really start.
Leadership always schedules a house meeting the night we come back from any sort of break or vacation, and tonight is no different. Only instead of having a few housekeeping issues to go over like usual, we’ve spent the last two hours going over whatfeels like every single line item on the house maintenance list and voting on the stupidest things like if we want to switch to a different brand of toilet paper, like we just spent the last ten minutes discussing.
No one gives a shit about any of this stuff, but we still have to vote on it, and I’ve spent most of the meeting trying to look like I’m engaged and listening while they go over the pros and cons for each item we’re voting on.
