There's an Invisible Man Sleeping in My Bed

Chapter 43

            “Seriously though, why do you even have a bug detector just lying around your house?” William asked, shaking his head.

            “You’ve met my sister. If it wasn’t her bugging me, I was pretty sure the school administration was going to, in an attempt to stop my activities. Cause we all know their weekly meetings have done nothing,” Ruth said. Kneeling in front of the coffee table that stood in the centre of Liam’s family room, she popped fresh batteries into the grey box she held.

            Thalia watched her friend snap the back of the detector into place. Feeling a bit like Colt, and being more glad than ever that he wasn’t there because she thought he would have said it before her, she asked “How does it work?”

            “Easy. I only tried it out once after I got it. First though, we’ve got to turn off anything that has wireless. This thing’ll pick it all up. I’m setting it to sound, so it’ll beep if there’s anything, and the faster the beep, the closer we are to the bug. Some of them are wicked small, so we’re going to have to keep our eyes sharp if we want to get them all.”

            “Our router’s the only thing that should be giving off wireless. I’ll go turn it off,” William said, hopping off the grey couch.

            “Phones count too! Your land line’s fine as long as it’s not being used, but you’re going to have to turn your cell off,” Ruth called after him.

            Thalia frowned. “Is this really going to work?”

            “Of course! It’s simple. We sweep the house and get rid of any and all bugs we find. Liam’s privacy is protected, and we win this round,” she said, before raising her voice and continuing with  “And in case any of you bastards are listening to us now, we’re on to you! Good luck bugging this place a second time.”

            “Thanks for daring them to come back,” William said sarcastically, his phone in one hand.

            Ruth stuck her tongue out at him. “Whatever. Let’s get going. I’ll do the sweeping, you two can do the actual finding. Your eyes are better than mine anyway.”

            “Only because you won’t wear your glasses half the time,” Thalia said.

            “Hush. No bringing logic into this. Now, let’s get this baby going.” Smiling, Ruth pulled the antenna all the way out of the grey body of the detector. Flicking the on button, she checked the light on front, making sure it was properly calibrated. Only then did she push herself into a standing position. Holding the box in one hand, she slowly moved it from left to right.

            It remained silent. Shrugging, she moved forward a few feet and repeated the process. Again, nothing. Frowning now, she took another couple of steps forward and tried again. This time she was rewarded with a faint cricket sounding chirp from the machine when she had it to the right.

            Grinning, she moved to the table that lay to her right, the other two following her, and swept the detector along the top of it. The beeping reached an almost continuous stream when she held it over the phone.

            “I think we have bug number one,” she said.

            Will frowned while Thalia reached out and pulled the phone out of its cradle. She examined the whole of it, ignoring her cousin as he studied the phone’s base. Unable to find anything untoward, she was about to put it back when she remembered the first thing Ruth had done. She popped the back off the phone, revealing the battery, label, and a tiny microchip. “Got it!”

            “Ooh! Give it to me,” Ruth said, reaching out with her free hand. She took it from Thalia and lay it onto the table. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a tube of lip gloss. Thalia was about to ask Ruth what she was doing, but her friend was quicker. With an overhead swing, she slammed the plastic cylinder into the chip, smashing it.

            Seeing the stares the other two were giving her, Ruth grinned. “I’ve always wanted to do that. Let me get this baby fired up, and I bet you we can find a mess more.”

            It took two hours, but in the end, they found over a dozen tiny listening devices, planted all over Will’s house. They had been hidden in spots that ranged from easy to find, to nearly impossible. Thalia thought privately, that the one in the couch cushion and the one glued to the ceiling of the inside of the kitchen cupboards had been ingenious hiding places. The others, which had been everywhere from behind books to inside light fixtures, hadn’t been quite as hard to discover.

            As discussed the day before, they’d left Will’s room for last. All three of them had pretended not to notice the two hits they’d gotten there, ignoring the faint one, and eventually destroying the one in his closet. Thalia hoped with that the Builders really wouldn’t notice that they’d deliberately left the other bug. If they caught on to the deliberate misinformation they were planning to feed them…

            She shook her head. It wasn’t the time for those kinds of worries. This was the beginning of their counter-attack, so she had to be confident if they were going to pull this plan off. For Colt and Will’s sakes. She didn’t want to think about what would happen if they couldn’t get rid of the Builders.

            Thalia collapsed into one of the armchairs and sighed. “Well, at least that part’s over.”

            “You’re telling me. I thought we were going to find like five of them,” Will said, rubbing his neck. “I hope we don’t have to do this again.”

            Ruth nodded, a smile still hovering around the corners of her mouth. “We shouldn’t. Not unless they’re really stupid,” she said, before lowering her voice, eyes dancing. “But just think about what it’s going to be like when we pull this off.”