Page 48 of Nave
“Lot of screens. Several computers. An entire wall full of external drives.”
And another full wall of pictures of Lolly, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. They’d shown the progression of his obsession with her. From a dewy-faced temp at his tech office to a woman clearly starting to catch feelings. But from there, it went darker. She seemed less confident, more confused. Then, there were the images of when he got her alone in his glass prison. All the fucking light left her eyes.
“You don’t have a last name for him?”
“I can ask Lolly. But his name was Ben, and he ran some sort of tech business. Maybe he still does. I don’t know. I just know he became, mostly, a recluse once he built the glass house.”
“I’m sure he still does. Good way to appear legit to the IRS and shit like that. Though if he’s as good as you say he is, he probably doesn’t need help laundering his money.”
“Is it really possible for him to follow her via CCTV and shit like she thinks?”
“I think if anyone knows what he’s capable of, it’s her. She lived with him for years. Saw what he could do. And, yeah, I guess. If I were obsessed enough, I could probably do it. All you need is one sighting. Then you just… hop. And when you runout of CCTV, getting into people’s doorbell cameras and indoor cameras is alarmingly easy if you know what you’re doing.”
“That’s horrifying.”
“Why do you think the club has never put cameras inside, except for short spurts when there were known and active threats? It’s not worth the wrong person getting their hands on your private conversations. Or, worse yet, church meetings.”
“Never thought of that before.”
“And the cameras everyone does have are not those name-brand ones that connect to any sort of cloud. Most of them have old-school wired systems that connect to DVR or closed networks. I’ve floated the idea of creating an app for them so they can check when they’re not home, but they’re even paranoid about that. Which is fair.”
“And if Ben is even more tuned into the risks of security systems, chances are that his cameras are just as closed off.”
“Right.”
“And his laptop or computer would be unhackable.”
“Exactly.”
“Damn. Alright. It was worth asking.”
“I’ll look into the guy. See what I can find. Suss out what his skills really are. Just so we know exactly who we are dealing with here. But, until then, I agree with Lolly; she should stay as hidden from cameras as possible.”
“What if I had her change her hair or something?”
“Come on, man. This isn’t the nineties. Most CCTV footage has facial recognition software. She’s better off with sunglasses and a hat when she is leaving the homestead or the clubhouse.”
She’d been insisting on just that since she came to Navesink Bank. We’d left the homestead twice in the past two weeks. Once, to hit a big box store to load up on more clothes, stuff for Edith, and pantry supplies, since the girls kept her pretty full on fresh stuff. The second time was to take Edith to visit my cousinAndi to get a full work-over on Edith—going by an alias and listed as one of Kit’s dogs.
“Yeah, sounds like a plan. Alright. Well, let me know if you do find anything, yeah? And be careful.”
“Will do. Off to go see her?”
“Yeah. Just gotta pop over to pick up her fake ID first.”
Then we had our next outing planned.
A trip up to Hailstorm.
It was time for her to finally get some prenatal care.
It’d been a bit of a process trying to explain the concept of Hailstorm to someone who wasn’t from the area and hadn’t glimpsed the long, winding structure, the solar panels, the dogs, gardens, and obstacle courses.
But she was about to see for herself.
When I got to the homestead, Lolly was already waiting near the driveway, wringing her hands and breathing a little too fast and shallow.
“It’s just a doctor’s visit,” I reminded her as she climbed into the SUV. “An hour and we’re out of there.”
