Emma had to agree. “Okay, but I better go change.”
Lana grinned at their back-and-forth, relieved they got on so well. Don was lucky to have reentered his daughter’s life when he did. Another year or two and he might have missed the boat entirely.
Missed the boat? She wondered whether he did miss his forty-four-foot sloop on which he’d plied the Caribbean. She was deeply grateful to have him back — and felt just the opposite about the undeniably disturbing presence of Robin Maray.
She didn’t even think about the agent again until she backed her Prius out of the garage and saw him parked in front of a neighbor’s house in the Charger.
With a quick wave she acknowledged him as she drove down the sunlight-dappled street, making an effort to put aside any intrusive memories. She had far too much on her mind with the workday looming ahead.
Lana pulled into her spot in CyberFortress’s underground parking garage and hurried to the elevator. An armed security guard stepped in behind her and pushed the button for the lobby.
“Good morning,” Robin said, slipping in as the doors began to close.
Lana replied in kind with an effortless smile, then remembered her guilt.
For what? she challenged herself. It’s not going to happen again.
But the fling two years ago felt as near as yesterday when Robin had walked into Holmes’s office.
Robin let her exit the elevator first. She felt peered at from behind and acutely aware of her body. She’d dressed modestly, as she always did for work, but after brushing out her shiny black hair she’d dabbed on Byredo’s Seven Veils, a scent she adored. She hadn’t even thought much about it till now. She’d just done it. Like a few other things that you’re now regretting.
“Ask Maureen Henley to come to my office,” Lana said to Ester Hall, her new executive assistant, an amateur tennis champion at fifty who smiled when Robin came into view.
Lana closed her door to him. He understood that he would not have access to her office or the war room, while young Maureen Henley was escorted in moments later by Ester.
“Have a seat,” Lana told the MIT grad whose senior thesis on the economics of scale in the development of macro cybersurveillance systems had landed her a prestigious position at CyberFortress.
Maureen settled and shifted her silky red hair off her long graceful neck.
“This is a first,” Maureen said.
“A first what?” Lana replied with her eyes on her inbox.
“The first time I’ve been in your office for a one-on-one since you interviewed me for the job.”
“I think I’m about to disappoint you. What I need will call less on your cyberskills than your analytical ones. I want you to systematically review the posts of Steel Fist’s followers. Hack where you need to, but you should start with the public sites because they’ll be the most heavily trafficked. I’m guessing they’ll also be on private sites, on social media, in chat rooms, all that stuff. I’m not interested in the threats against my family and me or Sufyan Hijazi, unless they depart from the usual fare. I want to know what’s the story here, and, more importantly, I want to know when the story changes.”
Maureen read at more than one thousand words a minute, even faster than Lana who clocked in at about eight hundred. So while the assignment was daunting, given Steel Fist’s ten million subscribers, Maureen could race through the cyberclutter faster than anyone else in the war room.
“The first idea that strikes me,” Maureen said, “is to construct a filter to screen out the typical neo-Nazi stuff. The n-word, Jews, kill, murder, gas, that kind of stuff.”
“That might work. I’m not going to micromanage you. I just know we can’t overlook the most easily accessed info.”
“I’m on it.”
Before Lana turned to Steel Fist’s website, she knew she had to look as closely as possible at Tahir. She was back to triaging terror again.
And hack where you need to, she thought, echoing the advice she’d just given Maureen.
Don and Emma headed north in the old pickup. She busied herself texting Sufyan until school started, then bemoaned her boyfriend’s unwillingness to stay in touch during class time. “He’s so serious!” she complained, putting aside her phone.
“You are, too, taking all those AP classes. Does he take any?”
“All of them, including AP physics.”
“No kidding.”
“He’s really smart, Dad.”
“I guess. That’s all college-level stuff, right?”
She nodded. “And I’m guessing you weren’t like Mom in school.”
“If you mean 4.0 and all that, you’re right.” He shook his head. “I’m a terrible role model.”
“Not so bad now.”
“Thanks, Em. That’s generous. My biggest regret was missing so much of you growing up.”
“Better late than never.”
She put her earbuds in and propped herself against the passenger door.
Don looked over to make sure it was locked, then glanced at the road ahead before checking the side- and rear-view mirrors. He’d been keeping a discreet eye on them while he and Emma talked, though he expected no problems today; by heading north to meet the dogs they were breaking all the driving patterns Steel Fist had put up on his website. And Don’s pickup hadn’t gained any notice yet. Nevertheless, he had the compact Glock in the door pocket next to him. It was far less cumbersome for travel than the shotgun.
Once they escaped the grip of morning traffic, the trip took less than two hours. The kennel was about seven miles southeast of Hagerstown, Maryland, not far from the Pennsylvania border, marked only by three numbers on an eight-foot steel gate. It closed off a formidable stone wall that might have hailed from colonial times.
Don had to call the kennel to announce their arrival. Then Emma and he waited a few more minutes before a dusty SUV pulled up and the gate opened.
A portly middle-aged man in a Baltimore Orioles cap checked Don’s driver’s license.
“I was kind of surprised there were no guard dogs to greet us,” Don said.
“They’re too valuable. I had one killed in a drive-by shooting about five years ago, and that was the end of that.” The man stuck out his hand.
“Ed Holmes.”
Don introduced himself and Emma.
“You can follow me in,” Ed said.
The kennel grounds spread out over more than a hundred acres. As Don drove they heard gunshots. Emma tensed.
“They’re training dogs, Em. Dogs for the military and police work are exposed to gunshot sounds from a pretty young age. You don’t want them freaking out over live ammo.”
“How do you know that?” she asked.
“Google.”
Ed led them to an open, large white barn with cyclone fence kennels along both sides. Don could see that each kennel extended indoors via a dog door.
The breeder and trainer walked up to the pickup as Don and Emma climbed out. “How much experience do you have with dogs? You grow up with them?”
“I did,” Don said. He glanced at Em, who shook her head.
“Security dogs?” Ed asked.
“No. Just an old mutt,” Don replied.
“Time for a primer then. Our home security dogs are very different from the ones we train for the military or police. They’ve been socialized a lot. My wife has personally taken Jojo into Hagerstown from the time he was six weeks old. We wanted to make sure he was comfortable around people, unusual sounds, alarms, all that city stuff. So he’s good that way. But he’s still very much a guard dog and we’re going to show you just what that means.”