His wife nodded, still taking in the horrible news.
“Okay. Give me five minutes to check something, then I’ll be back out.”
He left the room and used the remote desktop application on his phone to access his terminal at the office.
Everything checked out — servers were up and running, intranet cabling didn’t appear to have any glitches, and the inbound internet connection was functioning properly. He scanned through the list of configuration files, finding no problems.
Lastly, he clicked on the email server link and browsed the inbound and outbound connections. Through this portal, he could see every email sent and received by every member of his access group — twenty-five people in total. It was a security protocol, one that had required him to maintain a level of security clearance to remain employed. He browsed the list, reading the names of the senders and receivers of each email.
He saw names of other employees sending and receiving emails from other members of the staff regarding the current state of affairs at Yellowstone. He saw emails from Stephens sent to Julie’s email address, and he saw emails to David Livingston.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Except…
He didn’t see any received emails with Julie’s name or email address. Though Stephens had sent them, they seemingly had never reached her inbox.
Randy was immediately concerned. This was his area, his responsibility. If there was something wrong with the mail server…
Then he saw something even more puzzling.
For every sent email from Stephens to Julie, there was a duplicate received email with Livingston’s address on it.
Definitely puzzling.
He opened the configuration file for the mail server, just to see if there was anything strange going on with the routing. Everything checked out. He found nothing wrong in the name server settings, either.
There was one more place to check. Randy opened the forwarding section of the SecuNet admin portal and read down the list. Most entries were auto-responders set up for staff who were on vacation, working remotely, or otherwise wanting to receive their email through another provider’s account. But one was a specific forwarding address that he recognized.
Benjamin Stephens.
Randy saw the man’s name as an address that was being forwarded, and he clicked through to see exactly to whom his emails were being forwarded.
He was shocked when he found the answer. David Livingston.
The forward was also set up by Livingston. For whatever reason, Livingston had set up an email forwarder on the SecuNet server for all of Stephens’ mail. Anything the man sent out was received by his boss.
It was done poorly, as well. Randy couldn’t find any sort of encryption on the forwarding record, nor was the address masked in any way to a vanity email address. It was as if the man didn’t care who was watching, or more likely, didn’t care why anyone was watching.
It was certainly like Livingston to be so distrustful of his staff that he’d set up an email forward on an account, but why Stephens? And why not just ask Randy to monitor it for him?
Randy knew why: because Livingston wanted the power trip. He wanted to feel in charge, and letting Randy into his little game was like letting someone else drive the train. Randy was immediately disgusted, but he was now faced with a bigger dilemma: should he remove the forward?
If he did, Livingston would know soon enough that the forward was no longer working. But if he didn’t, Livingston could just log in to SecuNet and see that ‘rbrown’ had recently logged in and seen the forwarding page.
It was a tough decision, but he had a little time to think through his options. There was, however, one decision he’d already made.
He closed the remote desktop application on his phone and dialed Julie’s number.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Seems like all we’re doing is driving,” Julie said from the passenger seat of her truck. The road they were on had narrowed to a two-lane highway surrounded by farmland.
“You mean all I’m doing is driving,” Ben answered. They’d left the hotel that morning, heading toward Mud Lake, Idaho, after Julie received the tip from her computer guy, Randy Brown.
“I told you earlier I don’t mind — just let me know when you want to switch.”
Ben laughed. “It’s fine, really. I like driving, and I like the scenery.”
“You mean cornfields as far as the eye can see?” Julie snickered. “I could go for anything else.”
“They’re soy beans, first of all, but yeah. I like it. It’s open, and there aren’t buildings everywhere. And I told you earlier you can fly wherever you need to go. I just prefer driving.”
They came to a cross street and turned right onto a farm-to-market road that apparently led farther into the great expanse of fields and farms. According to Ben’s map, they were about ten minutes from Mud Lake. Julie had chided him for almost an hour about the map — a Rand McNalley road atlas he’d purchased at the hotel’s gift shop — but he was the one laughing now.
Never one to trust technology, Ben bought the map “just in case,” having a hunch that neither of their cellphones would pull a decent enough data connection to get them to Mud Lake, and then to Charlie Furmann’s parents’ place outside of town. As of about thirty minutes ago, he was proven correct.
“I don’t mind driving, especially when I’m not, uh, actually driving.” She turned and grinned at him, then continued. “The CDC isn’t huge on flying, since it happens to be one of the best ways to spread airborne diseases, but they’ll opt for that when we need to set something up in a hurry. By the way, what’s up with your fear of flying?”
“It’s not a fear of flying,” Ben shot back. “I just don’t… like it.”
“Oh, right, and people who ‘just don’t like’ heights say they’re not ‘afraid’ either.”
“It’s different. I swear. I just don’t like feeling so… helpless.”
Julie thought a moment, looking out the window. “I get that. Makes sense — all those tons of metal, breaking the laws of physics —”
“Hey, I don’t need to be reminded of it.”
“So you are afraid of flying! I can’t even mention flying without you getting all bent out of shape.”
“You’re relentless, you know that?” Ben said.
“I do. How much longer?”
“About ten minutes, I think. Check the map.” Julie grabbed the open atlas spread out on the center console and frowned at it for a few seconds.
“What? Haven’t had to go tech-free in a while?”
“Shut up. I can use it. I just need to get my bearings.”
“I literally outlined the route we’re on. Just look at the red line — we’re toward the end of it.”
Julie contemplated the map for a few more seconds, then threw it back down and looked back out the window.
“Well?” Ben asked.
“Yeah, about ten minutes.”
Ben laughed.
Ten minutes later, they saw a lone silo stretching out over a field of deep green, leafy plants. As the silo grew larger, they could see a few smaller buildings spread out over the expanse of soy fields, including a yellow farmhouse. But it was the vehicles in front of the farmhouse that made Ben’s skin crawl.
“Are those police cars?” Julie asked.
“Yeah. Four of them.”
“Oh, man, this just keeps getting better.”
Ben navigated down the road a little farther until he saw a dirt road leading to the farmstead. He started to slow the vehicle, preparing to turn, but Julie stopped him.