Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 146392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 732(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 732(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
TJ shook his head, a chill coming over him where he’d been so warm mere moments before. “No. You should be able to hear him clearly. I didn’t see his face, but he spoke openly to me. He was the guy giving instructions and leading the interrogation. Almost certainly German. There was someone else. I’m sure of it. He showed up late the first day I was held.”
“I think the man who interrogated you is Huber,” Lou said, her eyes on the screen. “The accent is German, and the tape even catches him ordering security around in German. If I could find another tape of his voice, I could confirm it, but that feels right to me. He absolutely acts like the boss until the second man shows up.”
“I’ll contact some friends of mine at Interpol,” his uncle offered. “I suspect someone in that part of the world has taken him in for questioning. The good news is German police know how to document. If they have tapes, we can get them and put aside all doubt.”
“You could reach out to Damon,” his mom prompted.
His uncle’s eyes narrowed. “I’m still not sure if I’m killing that son of his.”
His dad sat back on the couch with a smile. “Oliver is still hitting on Charlotte. And Genny Rycroft.”
“And me,” his mom added. “The boy seems to have a thing for older women. Mommy issues.”
His dad frowned and looked to his uncle. “Maybe we should talk…”
Nope. He wasn’t letting the OGs devolve again. His dad and uncle could sit around for hours talking about how to torture a dude they didn’t like, and they would throw around fantasies like drawing and quartering and evisceration. His mom would toss in her two cents. No way. “I’m almost certain there was someone else there, someone asking questions in the background. I know this sounds weird, but he was the one I was afraid of. I could barely hear the man, but something was wrong with him. He was…felt…I hate to use this word, but he felt evil.”
“I think I’ve managed to isolate what TJ is talking about, but the language isn’t German,” Lou was saying. “I’m using a program I worked on with Tristan that identifies background sounds. The AI behind it studies the sound and attempts to reconstruct it if it can’t simply amplify it. It couldn’t in this case, so what we’re going to hear isn’t the actual voice but what the AI decided is its best guess about what’s being said.”
“Yes, we used it recently on a corporate case,” his mother explained. “We couldn’t use it in court, but it gave us the right account numbers to prove the CEO was stealing from the shareholders. It’s a good piece of work, babe.”
Lou’s lips curled up. Praise. She flourished in it.
He wanted to make sure he understood. “So the computer can pick up stuff the human ear can’t hear.”
She nodded his way. “Yep. It’s all there on the tape in some capacity, but at a level we can’t make out. The AI can usually identify what it is. In this case, I’ve isolated what it thinks is a voice, and from there it uses logic and what it can hear to extrapolate what’s being said. In other cases, it would simply tell me what it thinks the sound is. Like this one.”
She hit a button, and he heard the sizzle of the taser coming on. Then an artificial voice came over the speakers.
This is the sound of some dude getting hit by a taser, and I don’t think that was the way he planned his day.
“Sorry,” Lou said, flushing slightly. “Tris programmed the AI to sound like a surfer guy. He thought it was funny.”
“It’s annoying, and that was his point,” his uncle said. “He is so like his father.”
“Well, it’s right. I did not put get tortured via cattle prod on my daily schedule, so that point goes to surfer guy,” TJ snarked. “What does it think that voice said?”
“This is what I was able to pull off the original recording.” Lou pressed some more keys and then something like scratchy humming came out. “That’s the isolated sound. If you listen closely, you can hear a word every now and then.”
His mom nodded. “It’s not English.”
“No, it’s not,” Lou agreed. “It’s not German either. Here’s what the AI came up with.”
Demande-lui s’il connait le fabricant de bombes.
“Fuck,” his uncle cursed. “It’s French. He wants to know if TJ knows who the bombmaker is.”
Lou nodded. “That was my translation as well. I also picked up on this.”
Tue-le s’il ne sait rien. Ça pourrait être un piège. Il pourrait être envoyé par le Jester.
“He says the whole thing could be a trick from The Jester and to kill TJ,” Lou announced.
His uncle nodded. “That’s what I got, too.”