Revenge, Inc.

by J. D. German

  Chapter 10 – Jack?

  Lynn stepped out of the shower the next morning and, after drying herself off, she turned to the full-length mirror on the bathroom door. “Oh my, is that me? I’ve lost so much weight I can see my hip and rib bones, and things are starting to sag. I have to start eating again.” The depression had taken away her appetite and even her motivation to fix a meal. She quickly reached for her robe and headed for the kitchen and some coffee. Her hand shook as she measured out a heavy dose of coffee grounds into the filter basket, poured in the water, and waited for machine to deliver it’s healing elixir. She waited several minutes before she realized she hadn’t turned the switch on. The machine seemed to take forever as Lynn stood over it and waited.

  As she drained the last mouthful from the cup something pushed its way into her memory. Something from last night. Was it another nightmare? . . . Yes. She was banging her head against a brick wall. Maybe that’s why her head hurt so much this morning. What else was in my dream . . . Jack! He came back. He sat in a chair and talked to me. She couldn’t remember what he said to her, but she felt an urgency to get dressed and go into work.

  As Lynn walked into the lobby of CSIC the receptionist got her attention. “Lynn, you have a visitor waiting in your office.” Lynn wondered about who it might be as she walked through her office door . . . and stopped dead in her tracks.

  “Jack! What are you doing here! You never show up at the office.”

  Just then Dave’s assistant stuck her head in the door and asked the visitor “Would you like some coffee, sir?”

  “You . . . you’re real. I thought you were . . . were . . .”

  “I’m Jack’s son, Jackson Junior.”

  Lynn slid into her chair, put her head on the desk, and started crying. Jackson shook his head slightly at Donna and she quietly backed out and closed the door. He waited patiently for Lynn to recover from the shock of seeing him. Everyone had always told him how much he looked like his dad, but Lynn had never met him.

  Lynn excused herself to go freshen up and returned a few minutes later. “You look so much like Jack – a little younger, of course – but you have the same build, the same face, and the same warm blue eyes. It was such a shock to me.”

  “I should have phoned before I came, or at least sent an email, maybe with a photo attached.”

  Lynn stared at his face, feeling the painful longing for Jack return full force. She looked away and asked “What are you doing here? How did you know where to find me?”

  “Dave called my employer when dad was killed, but I was out of he country and couldn’t return immediately. When I completed my assignment I returned to the states and called Dave to ask about you. When he said you were working here I grabbed the first flight and got in late last night. Dave put me up in a spare bedroom and brought me in to work with him this morning.”

  “Your voice is familiar, where have I heard it?”

  “You called me several months ago when you were looking for the email address of an old high school boyfriend – my father. Jack kept his contact information held closely because of his job with the Agency, but when you searched on his full name, Jackson Joshua Preston, you found me instead.”

  “That’s right. You’re Junior. What do they call you, Jack or Junior?”

  “I go by Jackson. Back in grade school I beat up anyone who called me Junior.”

  Dave came through the door and said “I remember Jack telling me about that. He was angry at you for fighting, but secretly proud that you could handle yourself in a fight.”

  Lynn lit into him. “Why didn’t you tell me he was coming, Dave. I nearly fainted when I saw him . . . I was sure it was Jack.”

  Dave and Jackson gave each other a quick look of concern. Dave told him last night that she was having trouble letting go of Jack, and often dreamed about him. After several seconds of silence Dave spoke up with a smile. “Take some time off, Lynn, so you two can get acquainted. I know you have been struggling with the Great Eastern investigation. You need a break.”

  Lynn looked at Jackson. “Why don’t you come back to my place. It’s just a couple of blocks away. We can pick up some pastries at the bakery and I’ll make some coffee. I want to hear all about Jack in his younger years.”

  “That sounds good, Lynn. My stomach is still on Iraq time and I’m hungry.”

  Lynn gave Dave a smile on the way out and thanked him for bringing them together. He felt a sense of relief about the way she rebounded so quickly. He was worried that meeting Jackson might throw her back into depression. That could still come later, though.

  Lynn unlocked the door and showed Jackson into her apartment.

  “Wow, this place is beautiful. Dave must be paying you big money.”

  “This is the guest suite he uses to keep his clients happy. He’s letting me use it until my own apartment on the floor below is available. Even so, I think he’s paying me more than I’m worth to him.”

  “I doubt that. Dad and I didn’t talk often, but when we did, he bragged about your quick mind and your willingness to jump into action without fear. What has Dave got you doing?”

  “To be truthful, I’m a hacker. I’m not very good at it yet, but Jack taught me enough to investigate financial issues for Dave’s clients. I’m on a case now that has me frustrated. There’s some embezzling going on, and I think I have identified the culprit, but when I tried to sneak Jack’s IP bug into his computer his firewall shut me out. It was like a brick wall. When I tried another of Jack’s invasion programs the computer shut down. Now that he knows I’m trying to break in he’ll throw up new defenses that I don’t have any idea how to penetrate.”

  “Maybe you should go around the brick wall, not through it.”

  Lynn froze. “What did you just say?”

  “I said that maybe you should go around the brick wall. Hack into the corporate accounting computer files and find how he’s siphoning off the money.”

  Lynn just stared at him.

  “What’s wrong? Did I say something that upset you?”

  “N . . . No. It’s just that last night, J . . . someone else told me the same thing in my dream.”

  “That’s amazing. You must be clairvoyant or something.” Jackson said with a laugh.

  As Lynn recalled the rest of what Jack had told her she wondered again where the software code Jack promised was to be found.

  “How do I get into Great Eastern’s accounting system and locate the leak?” she asked him.

  “That’s easy. I can write you a few lines of code that will solve that problem.”

  Lynn just shook her head slowly and smiled. “Lets have some Danish and coffee and maybe you can start on that.”

  Lynn pulled out her laptop and opened it up for Jackson to see.

  “Wow, that’s the Rolls Royce of laptops.” Once he got a look at the installed software he revised his statement. “No, it’s the Lamborghini of laptops. There couldn’t be more than a couple of dozen in existence. Did Jack get this for you?”

  “Yeah. He got one the entire team – the Forseti group – when we were trying to keep Winston out of the White House.”

  “That’s a story you’ll have to tell me sometime. Jack was very secretive about what he was doing.”

  “He had good reason to be. Our lives were on the line constantly.”

  “Okay, let’s get started. Show me the Great Eastern web site.”

  Thirty minutes later Jackson’s new computer code – spyware – was scanning through all of Great Eastern’s financial transactions identifying the transfers of corporate money into an offshore bank account. When the spyware scan was complete it reported back to Lynn’s computer a total of $489,792 transferred to a bank in Dubai.

  “Well, now we know where the money is going so let’s find out who is sending it there.” With a few more keystrokes Jackson found the secret Dubai account number of the embezzler and the password needed to access the account. He logged in and pulled up the ac
count profile.

  “There you have it, Lynn. You were right; the money is going to an account in the name of George Henry Davidson.”

  “Wow you’re good. I wish I could create my own hacking and spy software. I’m a pretty decent hacker using the tools Jack developed, but I don’t know how to write my own code for specific tasks like this.”

  “There are places you can go for a crash course in writing this kind of computer code. Ask Dave to send you to one of them. For now though why don’t you email this information about the embezzler to Dave so he can turn it over to the company lawyers.”

  Later that afternoon, Lynn and Jackson were sitting in her living room talking about memories of Jack. Lynn asked “Tell me about your relationship with Jack as you were growing up. Was he a good dad?”

  “Dad was away on business a lot. His job at the Agency took him all over the world. But when he was home we spent a lot of time together. He taught me sports, computers, electronics, and self-defense – and he made sure I was better than him at all of them. That background has been invaluable in my job.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking, what is your job?”

  “If I told you I’d have to shoot you. That’s what dad always said about his job.”

  “So you followed him into the family business – a secret agent man?”

  “Yes, but my work is a little different. I’m an expert in covert surveillance for a three-letter Government agency that must remain nameless. We use everything from eyes-on stalking, to hidden cameras, to satellite imaging to find out who’s doing things they don’t want us to know about. Our recent work has been focused on tracking middle eastern terrorists so our drones can neutralize them.”

  “That sounds more exciting than what Jack said he did before he retired. Actually, I think he got involved in a lot more exciting things after retirement. We were being chased around the country by some Russian thugs who were following Charles Winston’s orders to shut us up any way they could. That was definitely the most exciting time of my life. I kind of miss it now.”

  After a pause, Lynn asked, “Tell me about Jack’s first wife – your mother.”

  “She was an angel. She knew her role was to support Jack in every way she could. She ran the household, raised me, did the family accounting, and welcomed Jack home with loving arms whenever he returned from an assignment. The only cross words I ever heard between them was about treatment for her cancer. Jack wanted her to get chemo and radiation, even though it would only prolong her life for a few months. She told him that it was her life and she would die the way she chose to, without the misery of useless treatments. When she died dad wrapped his arms around me and bawled like a baby. It was the only time I ever saw him cry. . .”

  “He cried with me sometimes, especially when he talked about Helen’s death and his depression. He said he wasn’t able to cry for most of his life, until God opened up his heart. I guess most men are like that. How about you Jackson. Can you cry?”

  “Not often . . . it has to be a really powerful feeling to make me cry.”

  “Work on that, will you? Your wife and family will love you for it.”

  “I’m not married. With all the travel my job requires I didn’t think it would be fair.”

  The question Is he gay? passed through Lynn’s mind, but he quickly erased it with his next comment. “I have a close woman friend that I spend time with when I’m back in states, but we each have our own lives and priorities. That makes our limited time together more enjoyable.”

  “That sounds like my relationship with Jack. We were two married people living together, but with no claim on each others’ time. It was wonderful.”

  “I’m happy to hear that his life ended in so much happiness. After Mom died I didn’t think he could ever be happy again.”

  Lynn’s eyes teared up again at the thoughts of her happy times with Jack. After a moment she changed the subject. “What powerful feelings make you cry?”

  After a little thought Jackson cleared his throat. “It was at a restaurant with Louise, my woman friend. The Italian restaurant was one of those with a singing waiter who, on this particular night, was an older retired opera singer. The date was September 11th, 2001. The country was in shock after the terrorist airliner attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The restaurant was only half full because so many were still in shock. At 8:30 the waiters passed out candles and a pack of matches for each diner. 8:46, exactly twelve hours after the first plane crashed into the North Tower, the old gentleman stood on a chair, asked everyone to light their candles, then sang the most moving rendition of God Bless America I have ever heard. Everyone in the restaurant was crying after that. I still choke up whenever I talk about it.”

  [Note from author: This event actually happened to me at the Macaroni Grill in Albuquerque, N.M., and I’m choking up as I write about it. JDG]

  “Wow. That’s a reason to cry if I ever heard one, Jackson. You’ve got me crying about it.”

  “Yeah, but it takes something like that to break through my protective wall. Most of the time I’m cold, clear, and calculating. I couldn’t do my job well if I wasn’t – I couldn’t survive if I wasn’t.