Chapter Seventeen
It only took an hour of poring over maps to work out where they were going and how they would get there.
“When you said, ‘middle of nowhere’ you weren’t joking,” Sam said when he first saw their destination. “How the hell does someone like your friend survive in a place like that. Surely there’s no internet?”
“Actually,” Drew corrected, “he chose it because there’s a nearby commercial warehouse housing servers, so all the infrastructure that he needs is in place.”
“And he needs all this stuff because…” Sam had an idea but he needed Drew to say it. The other man was even more reticent about Diego than he was about Russell and that put Sam on edge. He wasn’t walking into this guy’s territory blind. If he was a survivalist or something like it, they could be walking into anything from the guy holding a loaded weapon to the place being booby-trapped with explosives.
“How did you two meet?” he tried instead when Drew stayed silent.
“Gaming and chat rooms when I was a teenager. We both had an interest in programming and security networks. I guess you could say our interests were divergent.”
“Meaning you were interested in internet security and he was into what… hacking?”
“I was hoping to leave the h-word out of it. But yeah, I guess you might call it that. He’s mostly legitimate now though.”
“Do I even want to know what that means?”
“Probably not.”
“And your own interests, did they start with… less legal adventures?”
Drew blushed. “I dabbled but never anything serious. I was more interested in the how of things than causing chaos. I used to watch for people boasting about hacks on the forums and try to find out how they got in and how you’d change the firewalls and systems to stop them. That’s how I landed my job with Russell.”
“I’m not following.”
“There was a guy on one of the private forums I was on, bragging about how he’d hacked their corporate systems through their retail interface and was blackmailing them. Either they paid him a lot of money or he’d start wiping their files. I figured out how he’d done it and worked out a way to kick him out of their system.”
“Then what, counter-offered?”
Drew made a face. “That would also be blackmail. And I’m pretty sure it’s a felony. So no, I offered my services for free, gave them all my information so they could save their systems. They set up a meeting with me. Then Russell asked to meet with me alone. I thought it was a restaurant in a hotel, it turned out it was his private penthouse suite. He was offering me a job in one breath and telling me how sexy I looked in another.”
“He does know how to turn on the charm,” Sam agreed, causing Drew to stare at him in confusion. “I watched a video interview he did. The interviewer was falling over herself by the end trying to please him. I can imagine having his full attention on you was a lot to handle. Not to mention the mixed messages; personal, business.”
“I was hoping they’d maybe offer me an entry-level position in their IT section and I could do night classes and work my way up. Instead, Russell offered me a consulting contract, at rates you’d normally have to be a decade in and highly qualified to attract. I guess the fact that he’d come on to me so strongly kind of got lost in the surrealness of the whole thing. What they were paying meant I could go to college part-time and start my degree. Plus save enough that I could study full-time or put down a deposit on an apartment.”
“But you didn’t take that money with you?”
“The first time, I went to the bank and withdrew the maximum daily amount, which was a few thousand. Enough to lie low and set myself up somewhere cheap for a while. One of Russell’s stipulations, when I returned, was that he have some control over my finances. He had to co-sign for amounts larger than a thousand.”
“And he still has access to your accounts?”
“No, his name wasn’t on them, he can’t get to the money. It just meant I couldn’t withdraw enough to leave the country and live elsewhere. The plane ticket alone… Besides, his security were keeping a close eye on me. I was afraid to even go to the bank without telling him why.”
“So you have money, you just can’t access it.”
“Not without Russell’s signature. He also took the keys to my car. I had to ask him if I wanted to go anywhere, tell him where and when. I’m pretty sure he put some kind of tracker on it. I found this thing under the back of the car, soldered on so I couldn’t remove it.”
Even just the fact that Drew was worried Russell was tracking him pissed Sam off. He should have been enjoying life, working and studying, and not afraid of a controlling asshole who liked to wield power just a little too much.
“So no car, no money—”
“And he replaced my phone with one that recorded messages and calls. Told me not to interfere with it or he’d know. I left it on one of the buses I’d bought a ticket for, going nowhere near where I was going.”
The extent of Russell’s actions was both worrying and reassuring. He’d thought he had Drew under his thumb and cared enough to want to keep him around. He also believed Drew didn’t have any actual evidence of his wrongdoing. As soon as that changed, so did the game, and Drew’s life would be in real danger. Sam intended on him being somewhere very safe before that happened.
“Okay,” he said, turning his attention back to the map. “We’re looking at a two-day drive, factoring in a short stopover tomorrow night for us to get some sleep. We’ll take the most common route out of the city, so anyone following us won’t get an inkling of where we’re going. We’ll do a few short loops, to check if we’re being followed, then we’ll take this route here.” He traced it with his finger. “Stop somewhere around this place, Bolton Falls, for the night, then we should reach Diego’s place by late afternoon. We might have to crash in the car that night if we can’t stay there. Or take turns driving and sleeping. Preferably, I don’t want you driving. If we’re pulled over and they run your driving license, well, all it would take is for Russell to have a few well-placed friends for that to lead trouble right to us.”
Drew shuddered at that. “That’s part of why I didn’t want to report the assault. Russell might have reported me missing or something like that. If they searched the system for my name and it came up, there’d be questions.”
“He still found you, anyway. Any idea how he managed that?”
With a shrug, Drew said simply, “Resources. One person alone probably couldn’t have waded through the mess of transport I used to get here. But half a dozen could. And I guess there’s a chance he found out I’d communicated with Logan. The military base keeps logs of incoming and outgoing calls. I called Logan, Logan called you. Not a hard trail to follow, if you get access in the first place.”
“They don’t give out that information to just anybody.”
“Russell’s not just anybody. He has lots of friends and knows plenty of people he can put pressure on when he wants things his way.”
“All the more reason we need to make a move before he does. First thing tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay. How exactly am I getting out of the apartment unseen with Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee watching?” They had nicknamed the two men who were taking turns watching the place. Sam had toyed with calling the local precinct and reporting them but decided against it until after Drew and he were gone.
“Vex is giving us a hand with that,” Sam assured him. “It’s all ready to go, trust me.”