Dead Man's Switch Read Online Free PDF Page A

can get on the servers and find a copy. So this will be the last email you get from me this way. Everything else will be untraceable. To get the next messages, you’re going to need the iPhone. The coordinates are 47° 12’ 4” N, 122° 41’ 20” W. The tree will have a long wide gash on the north side, about head high. The tree is in the forbidden zone. Once you click on the link in this email, there will be three short windows of time when the infrared scanners will be blocked by a program that I slipped into the prison mainframe: 9 to 11 the morning after you click the link and 9 to 11 each of the two mornings after that. After you get the iPhone, go to Johnson. MJknows the password. Just ask him about The Room. I’ve rigged the phone. Four wrong tries and all data is gone. You will get further instructions from the iPhone after you unlock it.
    As King folded it, he was too aware that the bottom of the page was torn. He’d done it, not daring to leave the remainder of the email anywhere in existence.
    A more cautious person would have burned the paper after finding the iPhone in the tree. But King wanted to be able to show it to his dad if he was caught in the forbidden zone. He didn’t care about anyone else on the island being mad at him. Just his dad.
    But King couldn’t leave the remainder of the email on the piece of paper for his dad to read. The next part detailed how King and Johnson had smuggled an iPhone to Blake for $2000. That part of the email would have disappointed his dad, and King hated disappointing his dad.
    And King didn’t want his dad to see the part that really scared him, now that everything else in the email had been correct. It was the part that said if King didn’t retrieve the iPhone from the tree and unlock it within 72 hours, another set of emails would begin reaching the websites of every local radio and television station and newspaper with information about a serious crime that involved King’s father—the crazy and insane bad thing happening at night on the island.
    Johnson asked King to read the email aloud twice more. They were now less than five minutes from the cluster of picture-perfect farmhouses on the picture-perfect island. The last of the sunlight was glowing warm, and fingers of shadows seemed to caress them as they walked down the road.
    â€œWhat I don’t get,” Johnson said, “is why you’d take the chance that the email was right about the infrared scanners being blocked? Yeah, you can believe it came from Blake after you learned about a dead man’s switch. But why believe the rest of it? Like that the infrared scanners had been blocked? I mean, really, you think Blake could have arranged something like that?”
    â€œI had my reasons.” Like, King thought, the threat to expose whatever crime his father had committed.
    Johnson stopped and put a hand on King’s shoulder. “Sorry, Kinger. I’m not going any further on this. You asked me to listen to what the email said, and if I did, you said you’d get rid of the phone. I listened. Get rid of it.”
    â€œI didn’t tell you everything about the email,” King said. “There’s a part I tore off the page. And it’s the reason I went into the forbidden zone. It said if we didn’t continue, the media would find out that my dad was part of the crazy and insane bad thing happening at night on the island.”
    â€œIt’s a bluff,” Johnson said. “Your dad? Ha. Everyone knows he’s rock-solid honest.”
    King wasn’t prepared to test their friendship. He wasn’t prepared to ask Johnson to help him prove whether it was a bluff. He didn’t want to know if their friendship was strong enough for Johnson to risk all the danger that might be ahead of them just for King and his father. So King prepared himself to look squarely into Johnson’s face and lie. He would tell Johnson