Page 134 of False Flag

It was the alarm system equivalent of a heist movie in which security monitors showed a quiet vault that was really a video running in a loop. Meanwhile, the bank was being robbed blind while security guards ate nachos and watched sports.

Jake had told her that at midnight tonight, Vicki was planning to text Staci photos of Fezzik, which would have served as a heads-up that the signal blockers were down briefly, and then they’d have given her an update on the plans to disable them permanently as soon as they were able.

When that happened, she’d have unfettered internet. Hopefully, in time to monitor the signing of legislation that would force Casper to pay reparations, which everyone expected to happen on Friday afternoon.

If she hadn’t run into Jake in the forest, he would be performing the task she was now, but much later, when the island was cloaked in darkness.

Task complete, she took a meandering trip through the woods, emerging in the area closest to Orca House. The final signal blocker was in an outbuilding near Orca. She took the path that ran along the eastern shore of the island, then crossed a manicured lawn edged with shrubs to the tree line.

She came up on the backside of the outbuilding and braced herself for difficulty in gaining entry. But there was no one around, and it was unlocked. She doubted Gerard’s security team even knew about the signal blockers. They had no reason considering they weren’t part of Casper’s tech or physical security.

She was surprised to find there were two devices in the outbuilding. But then, the proximity to the tech team might have required it. The second blocker could be a failsafe. She reprogrammed both faster than she had the first one, then searched the shed again to make sure there wasn’t another device hidden among the yard-maintenance tools.

If anyone asked why she was here, she would claim to be curious to see if tools or other artifacts from when Osborne’s great-great-grandparents settled on the island were stored anywhere on the property. This shed was clearly older than the others and was as good a place to explore as any.

As it was, she did find several old tools: shovels and buckets that might have been used by Osborne’s ancestors to loot sites. The thought made her a little ill, but it was par for this course.

She didn’t know if she’d ever feel clean again after taking Gerard’s money, but consoled herself with the fact that he was paying her to bring him and Osborne down.

She left the shed and flipped the rusted latch just as Beau approached from the road. He’d probably spotted her on one of the security cameras and got curious when she stayed inside for so long.

“Hiding from Gerard?” His voice crackled with anger. In other words, his usual tone.

“No. Should I be?”

“Don’t play innocent.”

“I’m not playing anything.”

He grabbed her arm when she tried to pass him. “Gerard knows it was you. No way would Dahlia screw up that bad.”

Her brow furrowed. “Dahlia? What does she have to do with anything?” Staci had uploaded her own recording, not one that belonged to Gerard. Dahlia couldn’t be implicated, not when Gerard knew Staci had been alone in the control booth.

“How did you do it? How did you hack into the podcast after Gerard approved the edits and replace it with the original?”

Staci’s stomach dropped. This was not at all what she’d expected.

Dahlia had taken a side.

Chapter Forty-Eight

Thirty minutes. That was all she got. A window of connectivity before the world shrank to nothing again. But at least she had thirty minutes now. One thousand eight hundred seconds to connect with the world.

She stared at the last message from Jake.

Jake

Stay safe, Anastacia. I love you.

She took a moment, closing her eyes and envisioning the words, taking a mental photo. There would be many more texts like this in the future, ones she could keep. But not this one.

She deleted the full conversation.

She kept the photos of Fezzik from Vicki. He was living his best life, sleeping in patches of sunlight and being lavished with cat toys by Vicki’s elderly neighbor. She studied the happy cat photos and felt the sting of missing him, then set the phone aside. She’d received a data dump from Vicki and had work to do. She had multiple transcripts of Truther chats to read.

Between Lloyd’s Rosetta Stone screenshots of Truther chats and the files Jake copied from Gerard’s computer, they had multiple chat groups with active users and at least two dozen screen names to identify. She knew the expedition team personally and would likely have an easier time of it than Vicki.

She opened the transcript for the chat Vicki had identified as being the Archaeological Truther master group. Likely the first group, from which the other groups had sprung.