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"Harry got everything lined up with Jen and Liz," Jessica said. "Monday morning. We close Friday, so the weekend's free. What do you think about spending the weekend with Scott and Michelle if they're going to be around?" "Sounds good. We can spend some time exploring our new place." Alex continued looking at the server logs while Jessica called. The site was getting considerable traffic, and he was tuning some scripts to research the visitors. Bunch of hits from down in Texas. Wonder if the headquarters is gettin' interested. The contacts were mostly spam, and a lot of it. This one ain't. Alex read the message carefully several times. "Michelle said come up any time," Jessica said. "Scott's ready to go fishing." "Cool. Take a look at this." Alex used the mouse to highlight the message, watched as Jessica read it. "Wow," she said. "Think it's legit?" "Good question. Whoever it is is using a Protonmail account to hide his identity. Seems to know a bit about the local situation. He mentions St. Bernards, and there's no mention of them on the site. So I'm guessing he knows something about the setup here." "He does reveal he's in Florida," Jessica said. "That doesn't seem like a slip." "Nope. Says he knows Copeland, wonder if it's from medical school. Young as Copeland is. Or they worked together, but Copeland only worked at NEA before. And he doesn't mention NEA." "That's interesting too," Jessica said. "NEA has only been here a few years, but..." "Maybe he doesn't think they're dirty. Or as dirty as St. Bernards." "Yeah, maybe. Or.. where'd Copeland do his residency? Maybe they met there." "Dunno, let me see." Alex opened a file, scanned it. "University of Tennessee. Maybe this guy met him there, or in college, but he seems to know about his history since then." "Where did he email from?" Jessica asked. "Can't tell. Mail servers are in Switzerland. Why you can't track them." "Of course. Is there any..." "Wait," Alex said. "Let me get the timestamp. Might be something..." Jessica watched as opened files in two windows and scrolled through them. She had always been amazed at the way he seemed to become one with the machines and the software. As if an intrinsic ability. "Well," Alex said after a while, "this is about as close as I'm likely to get. Eliminating the spam, I get someone looking pretty close at the site a couple of hours before the email. Someone looked at Copeland's dossier a half-dozen times in an hour. And about two hours later I get that email." "Where is this someone?" "Garland Texas," Alex replied. "As far as the IP locator knows. They're not all that accurate, especially with mobile devices. But Texas for sure, I'd guess." "Community Hospital Corporation." What? Alex looked at the map. Where was it? "Garland is in the Dallas-Fort Worth area," Jessica said. "So is Plano." Damn. Somebody in their backyard? Or inside the house itself? "He says he's in Florida though. Wonder he's being careful. If he's a doctor he may not be all that up on tech stuff, know I can correlate the data." "He seems to know quite a bit," Jessica said. "That would suggest he's still aware of Copeland's activities." "One thing's for sure," Alex said. "Harry needs to know." "Definitely. He seems to be expecting a reply. What do you think?" "I think we need to see what Harry thinks." "I agree. What do we do with the rest of the day?" "How about we go up and make sure nobody's dug up the gold?"
They walked along the fence, looking for signs of digging around all the posts. "Now I know the stuff's there," Alex said, "I worry about someone finding it. It sat there for two years, no one to check on it." "It would be hard to find. Only if someone suspected it was here would they look." "Yeah, I'll put up some monitors, keep an eye on it. Anyone starts snooping around, we'll know." They walked over the place for a while, then went back to the house. "I guess I'll have to move some of this equipment up to the new place," Alex said. "Or should I buy some new stuff?" "Money's no problem," Jessica replied. "In fact it's the least of your worries." That's for sure. "Probably would be easier. We need to think about building a house, if you want to live at the new place. Should we keep this one?" "That's up to you. You always did like having more than one place, separated by some distance. So if there was some sort of disaster, or anything that made your place unusable, you'e have somewhere to to. Part of the prepper thinking." "That makes sense. I can hire someone to look after it, if I need to." "You might have someone live here, a caretaker," said Jessica. "If you find someone you can trust." "That's the trick, isn't it?" It was getting dark by the time they finished their inspection. They stopped in Jonesboro and had a quiet dinner at the Olive Garden. "Things seem so normal," Jessica said. "At times like this. But then I think about what's ahead of us. I don't see this thing being resolved without some unpleasantness." Neither do I. "No," Alex said. "You asked me if I could walk away, if it was just me. I could to that, leave the world to go to hell on its own. But Jennifer and Karen are just the tip of the iceberg. But you already know that." "I do." |
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