Chapter 51

"I finally got enough of my memory back to work a little on my old projects." Alex said. "Part of it was building websites. I could do it in my sleep apparently. From what they tell me. Now I can do it awake at least.

"I figured I'd put up a website to make contact with other people that've been in there, get some of them to work together."

"How's that going?" Harry asked.

"I should have something up in a week or so, enough to get started. I'll get a basic site up, make a contact page so people can contact us and we collect their contact info, maybe get something going there."

"Good idea," Harry said, "but of course you're effectively putting a sign up, advertising what you're doing. At this point they probably think they're under the radar. If they see someone is after them, they'll probably try to shut you down."

"Probably so," Alex said, "but I don't believe they can. We'll need a lawyer to deal with them, let them know they're not dealing with powerless people. You know someone that can help."

Harry grinned.

"Yeah, I know a lot of lawyers. Don't have much use for most of them, but they'll do what you want as long as they're paid."

"We mainly need someone to deal with whatever they throw at us. Restraining orders, threatening to sue us, whatever. Mainly delaying tactics while we collect information and potential victims."

"Yeah, we can get that done. I'll make some calls, get someone on it. You're just paying them by the hour to write letters, make a court appearance if necessary. Pretty trivial."

"I'll get it up and see what happens." Alex said. "We should get some use from it."

"You will be a target though," Harry said. "Once you're on their radar, like I said, there's a lot of money. And these people, they may be pretty ordinary small-town operators, but they can be as nasty as the big boys. How're you doing with your physical conditioning? And weapons?"

"I've started working out with guns again. I seem to be getting back into it all right. Jessica says I was pretty good once."

"How are you, physically and mentally?"

"Mentally? Still have memory problems. Some things seem to be coming back. Physically I've got a ways to go. But I'm making progress."

"I'm starting to get some bad vibes." Harry said. "We have to be careful. I'm going to have a couple of my people keep an eye on you. Karen, what's your situation? Are you married?"

"No. My partner and I stay at my place sometimes and sometimes at his. We both work in town. Most of my friends and acquaintenances are local."

"Where's local?"

"Cave City. About an hour from Jonesboro. Middle of nowhere, as they say."

"I know the area. Pretty sparsely populated. Couple of guys I work with know it pretty well, we did some operations in that area when I was with the state CID. You'd be surprised at what goes on in the middle of nowhere. Or maybe not."

"I'm learning not to be." Karen said.

"I'm going to have a couple my contacts keep their eyes and ears open." Harry said. "I'll brief them on the situation, let them know who you are so if they pick up anything they'll get it to me quick. Alex, you should get back in shape quick. Jessica, Karen, how are you on self-defense?"

"Josh, my partner," Karen said, "is pretty good with guns. He hunts and practices with handguns a lot. I feel safe with him."

"I've got quite a bit of experience," Jessica said. "Alex was into prepping for years before we met, and I've been working with him for close to ten years. I'm pretty good."

"Karen, how you handle this I leave to you," Harry said. "If you and Josh spend most of your time together, you should be good. How you let him know what's up is up to you, but this is pretty serious. And when you're alone - Arkansas is a constitutional carry state, you don't need a permit to carry a concealed weapon as long as you aren't in certain places, like government buildings - so if you aren't carrying regularly you might want to look into carrying some kind of small, easily concealable gun. But the best defense is not letting anyone you don't trust get close. Alex, Jessica, how are you with knives, improvised weapons?"

"We've done some hand-to-hand practice in our prepper group," Jessica said. "We're both pretty good at dirty tricks, if you know what I mean."

"I like that." Harry said. "You two should be in pretty good shape. Karen, as long as you aren't part of the public face of this, and there's no reason you should be at this point, you won't have much to worry about. But be careful anyway.

"I'm going to get started on the security angle. Like I said, some bad vibes here. I don't want to scare you unnessarily, but I don't want to take any chances.

"You said there were some other cases." Jessica said.

"A couple of others, besides Karen's case. I'll contact them and update them. This is close to being something the right lawyer, if there is one, might want to take on as a mass tort case. But from what I know about these people so far, I'm seeing crazy. You never know where it'll turn up. I learned a long time ago you can't be too careful. Too many of what looked like cut-and-dried cases turned out to be anything but."

"Where do you see crazy?" Alex asked. "You mean the hospital people?

"Once a man decides to go down that path," Harry said, "decides he'll take what he wants whether he has a right or not, not caring about anyone else, I don't know if they're crazy already or if it makes them crazy. Shrinks have all kinds of words - narcissist, sociopath - they may be some of those already, and just got into a position where it can hurt other people. And they don't care.

"And when someone gets in the way of what they want, what they believe they're entitled to, they get mean. And dangerous."

"As in violent?" Jessica asked.

"Generally the big dogs, the ones got rich already, won't risk personal violence. To begin with they're cowards, as I said. But they also don't want their fingerprints on anything. Fraud and other financial shenanigans they can handle with lawyers. Usually the worst thing happens is they get sued and have to pay up, but rarely as much as they stole. Once in a while someone goes to prison, but even then they can often throw out a minor player as a fall guy.

"No, if they come after you it'll be most likely be some of those backwoods mafia types I was talking about. I've run into that before, white-collar criminals trying to discourage people from talking about them, and if necessary eliminating witnesses. And those people are crazy. And mean, most of them.

Harry seems to slip into a backwoods talk himself sometimes. Wonder what all he has experience with.

"As I said, I don't want to alarm you unnecessarily. I have the manpower and connections to stay on top of it for now."