changes were going to affect her brother. He didn’t take change very well. Kids like Stephen needed routine and structure; in fact, they demanded it.
She looked from her brother to Tony. Still in his T-shirt and sweats, he was engrossed in the many machines that covered one wall of his tiny apartment. Three monitor screens, several powerful system units and a whole lot of multimedia equipment—scanners, fax machines, telephones, modems, printers and cell phones—all sat like dominoes, leaning here and there, arranged in and on each other, just waiting to set things in motion with the touch of a button.
Dana had never understood computers. Her father had bought her one years ago, at Tony’s insistence, and she had used it to keep up with the farm’s business. Other than that, gadgets didn’t impress her much. They did Tony, however. He was almost like an appendage of his many machines. A walking, talking computer, programmed and ready to run as soon as he saw the blinking cursor. He didn’t even know anyone else was in the room.
“Tony?” she called.
His long fingers danced across the keyboard in front of him, his thick glasses reflected the bright green lettering on the screen he was studying so intensely. His hair seemed to be glowing, as if the entire process demanded that the energy flow directly through his fingers into his brain, bypassing his heart and soul. “Tony?”
“What? Huh?” Absently he held up one hand.
How many times had Dana seen him do that? How many times had she left him in his room back in Prairie Heart, with his machines and his programs? They’d start out studying for a test, and he’d invariably wind up at the computer, under the pretense of typing up some study sheet. Before long, Dana would be left with her textbooks and Tony would be lost in the vast world of a tiny one-inch microchip.
A girl couldn’t compete with that kind of power.
“Tony?” she said again. “Is there any way we could pull up my bank account? I don’t know how much cash I can get my hands on.”
Now she had his attention. Next to setting up computer systems, Tony loved nothing better than hacking into one.
“Sure,” he said, his eyes already back on the screen before him. He was in a chat room on the Internet, and apparently the conversation was lively. “Just give me the name of the bank and your account number.”
Dana dug through her purse and handed him her checkbook. She stood over his shoulder, waiting for him to take the information. “Here.”
Tony stopped typing, then pushed his glasses up on his nose. “I got the funniest message on e-mail. Wanna read it?”
This was part of the routine. Tony loved sharing his e-mail.
“Okay.” Dana took the printout he handed her, not really interested, but needing something to focus on. The words on the page brought her head down. With both hands clasping the sheet of paper, she brought it closer to her face, so she could be sure of what she was reading.
“‘What’s more precious than rubies and gold?’”
Somewhere in the tired recesses of her mind, Dana connected on the familiar, but it slipped away in a pool of cold fear. She didn’t like the tone of this message.
“Who sent this?” she asked Tony, her eyes shifting from the words to the back of his head.
“Don’t know,” he admitted. “They didn’t sign it and I couldn’t trace it. Got jammed out on the first try. Whoever it is, they’re good. They don’t want to be found. But it’s pretty obvious they’re using a forged e-mail address. Their IP numbers are way off and they used a single cap in the address for the Received heading—Uareit.” Still keying in information, he added, “Pretty weird name, though, huh? Almost as if they’re saying ‘You are it.’”
Dana sank down in an old overstuffed beige plaid armchair. “Yeah, too scary. I think this message was sent to me, Tony. I think I am it.”
Tony’s head peeled around. “You? How? Who knows you’re here?”
“Only Emma and Frederick,” she said. “And they don’t know a thing about e-mail.”
“That’s for sure.” He went back to his typing. “Hey, maybe you’re just tired. Getting a little paranoid?”
“Maybe,” she said, her eyes automatically going to Stephen. “And maybe not. Have you ever heard of the Universal Unity Church?”
Tony frowned, squinted, scratched his head. “Rock band?”
“No.” Dana smiled in spite of herself. “My threatening neighbor is Caryn Roark. She’s the leader of some weird church group—a cult, maybe—and she’s been my neighbor for three years now. They have a big compound over there, behind closed gates and tall stone fences, but I’ve never bothered them and up until this week, they’ve never bothered me, other than constantly making me offers to buy my land.” Shaking her head, she added, “I did sort of threaten her the other day, since I’m sure someone from her compound shot my bull. They claim I have something they need, but I don’t have a clue what that might be. And if that’s true, why would they go to all that trouble—destroying my house—when they could just as easily have confronted me and asked for whatever they think I have.”
“Let’s do a little search,” Tony said, his fingers already doing the walking across his keyed-up keyboard. “See what we can find. If this church lady is as high and mighty as you make her out to be, there should be plenty of information about her online. Especially if she tries to win over recruits to her way of thinking.”
Knowing that would be the only way Tony would be impressed or willing to help, Dana shrugged. “I would like to know more about her. I just don’t trust the woman. But I can’t understand what she wants from me, other than my land. I guess she decided since I was so angry, she’d run me off, even if it meant nearly killing Stevie and me.”
Tony grinned, then rubbed his hands together gleefully. “Well, if this Caryn is on the Net, I’ll find out everything we can. I’ve got sources in places where no source would dare show up.”
“What if they find us first?” Dana asked. “I think they know I’m here.”
“What can they do, but send a few hits on the e-mail?”
“They might send more than messages,” Dana replied in a whisper. “They might come after us.” Her eyes centered on her brother. “They might come after Stevie.”
The day progressed without any more excitement. Much to Tony’s dismay, Stevie ran around in his Ruby Runners, practicing sprinting. Her friend and her brother had always irritated each other.
“Hey, watch the cords, kid. One trip and you’ll unhinge part of my system. My clients wouldn’t like it if I lost part of their records.”
Dana realized they’d already overstayed their welcome. Tony bit his nails and worked—drinking massive amount of black coffee as he tapped into Dana’s sparse bank account and informed her that she had about ninety-eight bucks in her checking account and about five hundred dollars in her savings. Not much.
“If someone’s tracing you, they’ll know the minute you withdraw any money,” he explained. “Better just let me loan you some cash. What are you going to do, anyway?”
