I Told You, Eli Oxley

Chapter Forty

Well, that didn't go as planned, did it? Remember this, kids: rarely does anything in life go according to plan.

So where did all of that leave me? Still no money for college, and no one to go to college with, or even stay behind with. I had also, in my eyes, lost my father. Oh, and I had no place to sleep. Maybe I should have waited to break it off with Al or Kara until I knew if I could stay at my old house or not.

So it was going to be my first night of many sleeping in my car. Or so I thought.

I drove around town, trying to spot a decent, safe place to sleep for the night. You know, where I could sleep in my car without fear of being carjacked or worse. Before I found a place, though, I got a call from Brett. I was surprised to see his number pop up on my phone, and was wary of what he may want for some reason. But I answered anyway.

"Hey dude, what's up?" Brett said.

"Not much. You know, the usual," I said.

"Well, how about we get into the unusual."

"What do you mean?"

"Change your mind about that hack yet? I'm assuming things didn't go so well with your dad."

"How'd you know?"

"I had a hunch," he said. "So . . . you want to get to Colorado, or not?"

It had been the longest day in my recent memory, and my brain wasn't functioning at full capacity. Or at least that's the excuse I'm going to give for my decision to break some serious laws without any fear of consequence. "I'm in," I said.

"Good. Meet us back at the house," Brett said. "We're starting in an hour."

***

Do you want the long or short version of this part of the story? What's that? I can't hear you. Of course not – we can't communicate over time and space via ink-infused paper. Not yet, at least. I'll just assume you want neither long nor short, and I'll give you a blend of the two. I'll summarize the boring parts, and slow down a bit during the more exciting parts. What say ye? Good to go? Alright – let's do this.

***

I kissed and made up with Gabe. Well, I told myself that I would play nice for this job, but dump him after this whole thing was over.

The plan was set:

1. I was to stay behind and run the main hack from the house using burner computers with fake i.p. addresses. I was also to communicate with the others via walkie-talkies so that no one could trace anything back to us through our cells.

2. The others were to post up outside select ATMs across the city and wait for me to give the go-ahead to hack on their end, which included disabling the video cameras right above the ATMs.

3. After the cash retrieval, each member was to take their cash to a different "dead drop" location to be retrieved by me. The point of this was to not have everyone conspicuously meet up and us have thousands of dollars on hand.

4. After confirmation of their drop-offs, I was to drive to each dead drop to retrieve the cash. One car driving around town is much less suspicious than five meeting up in one place.

5. The final part of the plan was to meet back up at the house, count our earnings, destroy any real or virtual evidence and celebrate.

One other note: We were going to take extra money – commission, if you will – for each member, as well as enough money for Al. No matter what she said, she wanted to get out as much as I did, and deserved it more. Even if we weren't together, I was still going to help her get out of Chattanooga.