Lynn woke up slowly the next morning, disappointed because Jack hadn’t joined her in her sleep. She put her jogging shoes on and went for another run – this time to locate the perimeter security cameras that Jack had installed. She had a map of their locations and photographs of where they were mounted in the trees, but it took her awhile to find them. She moved around in front of each of them so she could make sure they were all working when she got back to the cabin to check the computer. She stopped at a spot directly across the lake from the cabin and tried to imaging her and Jack sitting together with coffee mugs warming their hands. The thought made her smile. With the morning mist rising off the lake, she started humming John Denver’s song, Almost Heaven.
As she got ready to continue her run she saw something on the forest floor. She knelt down to have a look. It was some aluminum camping cookware that someone left behind next to some burnt pine logs. She immediately froze and looked around. She saw no sign of shoe prints, but it had rained heavily two days ago. Just to be sure she felt the remains of the fire to see if there was any residual heat, but the wood was cold. Someone had spent some time at this spot . . . two days ago, or two weeks ago, or even months before. It was an ideal spot to keep a surveillance watch on the cabin. Was someone watching for her? Or was it someone who was watching Jack back when Alexei and his men were after him? Lynn stood up, looked around once more, and jogged quickly back to the cabin.
After making a cup of coffee she sat down at Jack’s master computer and checked the security system cameras. She was relieved to see that they all still worked. Jack had the foresight to place small solar panels in the top of each tree to keep the batteries charged. After paging through the file directory she found one called ‘Jack’s Journal’ and looked for an entry about some people he had caught across the lake in the camping spot. She had to go back almost a year, but there it was.
Jack had spotted two men watching the cabin with binoculars just about the time he started his work to discover what Charles Winston was up to in his quest for the White House. She read the account and burst out laughing. Jack had sneaked over to their camp while they were in town for lunch and planted dead fish in their rolled up sleeping bags. By mid afternoon two bears had followed the scent to their camp and ran the men off before ripping their bedding and tent to shreds to get at the fish.
She read through some of the other journal entries and decided to copy them to her computer in case she wanted to learn more about how Jack got involved in the Winston thing . . . and with her. “I wonder if he has some entries about me in there. She started to look for some but glanced at her watch. “Damn. It’s time to head back to Philly so I’ll be fresh at work in the morning.” That thought brightened her mood when she remembered that on Tuesday she would be headed up to New York City to start a six-week term at Hacker School.
She set up an encrypted link between Jack’s computer and her laptop so she could access his files whenever she needed to, then went back upstairs and closed the heavy trap door behind her. Jack had built the door into the wood flooring so skillfully that it was impossible to spot. To open it, she had to take the cover off the thermostat and press a miniature button that activated the motor to lift the door.
She packed her things, took one last look around, activated the alarm system, locked the front door, and headed for her Miata in the garage. When she got there she saw Jack’s dusty Sport Trac and decided to drive that and leave the Miata here. The small pickup truck would be more sensible to drive to New York City for hacker school. As she drove off she thought When I get back to CDC after the Hacker School, I’m going to spend a lot of weekends here.