Damon turned toward Terk, but he was unplugged for the moment. “This is temporary. And we will set it up all over again.”
She shot him a look, knowing he wasn’t telling her everything. “I get that it’ll probably be much safer and faster to set up a second time, but it still feels like a waste right now.” She immediately walked over to the table, where the food was still sitting out. “We need to get a fridge.” She sniffed the air. “Coffee?”
“Terk made some.” Damon grinned. “I didn’t really connect it at the time, but he must have known you were waking up and put on a fresh pot.”
She nodded and looked over where Terk was, sitting cross-legged in a corner. “What’s he doing? Recharging?” The fact that he could do that just blew her away, but she’d seen him do it time and time again.
“Yep, we’ll always have one on patrol.”
“Oh, in that case, he’s down, and I’m up, so you can go down.”
“I plan on it, but I wanted to check in with you first.”
“I’m fine.” She gave him a wave of her hand. “Go on. It’s all good.”
“You sure?” He hesitated.
She nodded. “I’m very sure.”
She watched as he headed to where she had just gotten up from, then crashed, pulling the blanket up over his shoulders. Satisfied that he would stay down, she went over to the coffeemaker and poured herself a cup. Over half a pot sat here, waiting for her, something that she was really grateful for.
As she stood here, sipping her coffee, she studied how much they had done. She checked the to-do list on the pad of paper. All the top items she had left had been crossed off, and they’d added three more things to the bottom. She studied them, realized what they were, and nodded happily. “Wow.” She sat down and started setting up log-ins. “This is great.”
She was almost back to feeling like she had the world at her fingertips. She checked in on a couple of her emails, even though she no longer had government access. Then she thought about it and wondered further. She checked her log-ins, the old ones, but they were defunct. She’d always kept all the log-ins for all the team members in her head, just in case somebody got shut down, and she needed to bring them back online. She quickly ran through them all, testing to see if they were inactive too. Only Wilson’s was active.
She frowned at that, immediately changed the password, and logged in. From there, she set up a new persona and routed it through Africa. She wasn’t exactly sure she should be doing this, but she needed a way to get government data access via the back door. And this was one of the few ways to do it. From there, she logged back in through that persona and headed over to a couple colleagues who she knew stateside. Checking that they were still around, she then logged out and logged back in as them. And then she smiled.
“Good enough.” She noted that she was in under their names. One was off on sick leave for a few months, which was interesting, probably from an accident, and that meant using that email would trigger an alert. Tasha frowned at that, then headed over to the admin side and set up a brand new one. She quickly filled in the back history, having done this time and time again when Terk’s team needed to create fake backgrounds.
She set it up using a different name, then picked a picture off a stock photo site, set that up, and proceeded to erase her tracks, sending the email off for this new person to set up her own account. Having filled that out, she went back in, set up a password, then made it all incognito and shut it down.
With that complete, she walked over to a different computer, brought it up, and checked that she could log in. With that done, she headed back to the first machine and completely wiped it of her most recent activity. Then she logged in under the newest persona, checked that nobody was watching or tracking her movements, and set up a few more safeguards, so she could access it from any location without them tracking her back. And logged out.
By the time she had done that, she was pouring a second cup of coffee. She thought about all the other databases that she needed to have secure access to.
She frowned at that, then headed back into the one database, tricked the computer system into seeing her as an admin, and gave herself access to multiple databases. She couldn’t go too high up into data protected by serious security clearances, otherwise the government would become suspicious. But, if she had access to everything she’d already been used to, that was a different story. It didn’t take long before she was sitting once again, feeling like everything was good.
Beside her, Terk opened his eyes, looked at her, and asked, “Did you get in?”
Surprised, she looked at him and slowly nodded.
“Did you erase all your tracks?”
She nodded again. “Yep, and added extra safeguards.” She smiled. “I do know what I’m doing.”
He smiled at her. “I’m glad to hear that because we have to trust you right now.”
“Not a problem. Now go back to sleep so I can get to work.”
With that, he closed his eyes, and she leaned forward and started the hunt.
*
Damon studied the boxes with joy.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Tasha said.
He nodded. “And it’s work I love.” He rubbed his hands together. “I’ll get started in here, unpacking the security gear.”
She nodded. “Make sure you guys have new trackers on, so I can code them and can keep track of where you are at all times.”
“Yeah, as soon as we get them unpacked.” Damon looked over at Terk. “Is this everything?”
“It should be. According to Merk, it was all delivered.”
“And you didn’t even see your brother.” She stared at him. “How can you stand that?”
“Because I love my brother,” he stated, “and keeping him away from me right now keeps him alive. That’s the most important thing.” And, with that, he turned and walked to the other room.
She looked over at Damon. “I guess I said the wrong thing again, huh?”
“You never say the wrong thing. Terk won’t take it the wrong way. He’ll always appreciate honesty over anything else.”
She pondered that as they started opening the boxes. “I just don’t want to upset everybody. We’re all on edge right now.”
“We are,” he agreed, “and the sooner we get answers, the better off we’ll all be.”
“Answers are good, but answers don’t track down people,” she argued, “and you can’t go alone.”
He looked over at her, and she saw the hard glint on his face. “Just watch me.” He didn’t mean to be quite so fierce and realized he was when he saw the fear that moved across her face. He tried to give her a brighter smile. “Don’t worry about it, Tash,” he murmured. “Just know we’ll hunt down whoever did this.”
She nodded slowly. “I’ll need information on Celia from Terk, so I can track why everybody has gone to his brother.”
“I wondered if you would notice that.” He smirked. “I’ve started some searches, but we really don’t have a whole lot to go on.”
“No, but I now have equipment, and we can’t keep letting Terk ignore this.”