by Alec Peche
“Mom worked when I was seven or eight. We were outside of the United States, and I had a nanny because both of my parents were working. I think we were in an Asian country.”
“How soon did your mom quit work before you moved to Shepard Canyon?”
“Maybe a year or so.”
“You wouldn't by chance remember the name of the company she worked for?” Damian asked.
Hermione thought for a moment and said, “No, though I think I would recognize it if I saw the name.”
Damian mentioned the company name that owned the yacht and Hermione thought about it for a moment then said, “Do you know what the company's logo looks like?”
“I remember mom bringing home something from the company with a design on it.”
Damian typed away on his cell and brought an image up. Hermione studied it and then nodded.
“Mom had an umbrella with the company's logo on it, so she must have worked for them. Are you telling me now a company that my mom used to work for is after her? I thought they were only after my father!”
“Let's hope this is it, that there is only one company per parent that want to kidnap or kill them,” Damian said.
“So what are you doing now?”
“Where would you go next, Hermione? What would you look up?” Ariana asked.
Hermione thought for a while and then said, “I guess the question is what has changed? Mom stopped working for the company five or six years ago. Why come after us now.”
“Brilliant. You ladies are brilliant!” Damian exclaimed. “I hadn't thought of a new angle yet. When I get back to the island tonight, I'm going to look for news on the company and specifically for any lawsuits against the company that your mom might serve as a witness for. Do you remember what your mom's role was for the company?”
Hermione shook her head no.
“That's okay, I'll search an old company directory and see what I can find. Did your mom use her real name for her job?”
“I don't know. I didn't pay attention to those kinds of details.”
“Do you remember your parents telling you to call them something different? Like maybe your father went from Stephen to Jason?”
“Let me think about that question, I don't remember a name change.”
“Okay I have work to do. Ariana, how's the contract going with Pete for his restaurant.”
“We've actually already signed it. He's so excited to get this restaurant up and going. He's had the plans of what he would like for like five years, and your warehouse fits his vision, so he has an architect submitting them to the city for approval and he's already interviewing contractors. You need to move out of the way perhaps as soon as the end of next week, as he could begin demolition even though the plans aren't approved yet.”
“Yikes, that fast? I had Lily sit down and do a project timeline with him because she's so good at that and to help him stay organized, but she never mentioned we needed to move out of the way that quickly,” Damian said.
“Probably because she thinks you're planning just to move your modular furniture upstairs and there's already an office up there.”
“Actually I was going to upgrade the space in terms of safety, so I guess I need an architect quickly. I want to add a ventilation hood for whoever works on the green GPS goo and a glass shield for Haley so that her drone can't crash into her and any other safety enhancements that people think of. Guess I'll be working on that tomorrow. We can still get out of Pete's way, but I'll take some time to upgrade the space upstairs. It will be a work in progress.”
“I've got a paper due tomorrow so can we go home now?” Hermione asked. “Besides I'm getting texts from my teammates that I want to respond to. We're all relieving the glory of the game.”
Damian nodded glancing at his watch as he got up to leave. They all had a lot of work to do over the next few days. He was glad Hermione didn't have another game until next week.
Chapter 21
Damian headed back to his island with a head full of things to follow up on. He was busy thinking about Pete's restaurant and Hermione's parents' problems, and then he remembered that he and Ariana were going to go on a date! How weird was that? It was nearly two decades since he tried to date a woman and man was he rusty. He didn't know how people did it today going on first dates with virtual strangers that they met online, yet that was the source of some one-third of all marriages in the United States. At least he already knew that he liked Ariana's looks, brains, and moral fiber which was likely more than most internet daters knew on their first date.
He might drive himself nuts obsessing about where his relationship might go with Ariana, but at least he felt alive and human, full of expectation and contradictions. He shook his head to clear his mind and hunkered down to work.
As Ariana suggested, he did a search on the pharmaceutical company that owned the boat concerning court proceedings and saw the problem for the company. Apparently, they were the manufacturer of a mesh used to repair the sagging of bladders that caused incontinence in women. The company supplying one of the chemical components of the mesh started to worry about the long-term consequences of using that particular compound inside the human body and cut off the supply. The manufacturer searched for the product around the world to replace the original chemical and found a company in China that had a supply of that compound. That company told the pharmaceutical company that their product contained the compound they were looking for and they had purchased a large supply – tons of the material from a company in Texas that bought it from the original company but had lost the import paperwork. Some people working for the mesh manufacturer were pretty sure that they didn't have the right chemical to make their mesh, but someone higher up hid all of the documentation and went forward with implanting the mesh in upwards of one million women. Now that substitute compound was causing the mesh to crack inside the human body leading to pain and other problems for the women who had it implanted.
Damian leaned back and thought wow, now that's a motive! If Hermione's mother was involved in that chain of trickery about four to five years ago, and one million women want to sue your company for using a bad chemical, and this bad corporate news tied up a company in lawsuits, then maybe the company might want to silence some of the staff that were involved in the original search for the product.
Sad how both of Hermione's parents ended up with pharmaceutical companies that wanted to silence them about the terrible practices they had that affected real patients' lives. Now Damian understood why Hermione's father had extorted his pharmaceutical company as they were both done working in their respective fields, yet they were probably brilliant scientists based on Hermione's smarts – she had to have gotten her brains from somewhere.
So where were Hermione's parents hiding? Damian was convinced they were alive and hiding. If they were in the United States and that was likely as that was where the class action suits were filed in the courts, then probably some branch of the Justice Department was hiding them or the team of lawyers that had filed the class action lawsuit. How could he reach out and figure out if they were in protection of the government? After they got off the boat and swam ashore, they would have had to contact some law enforcement agency that put them in protective custody.
He did some quick research on the internet about witness names and found that they were called 'discovery' and were not included in jury transcripts, so there seemed to be no database he could legitimately use to find witness names. So he had two choices, hack into the Department of Justice documents looking to discover notes kept on the part of their attorneys, or he could hack into the United States Marshal Service which would be charged with keeping her parents safe until the trial. Damian could see a billion dollars at stake from the class action lawsuit, and some people would find that was worth killing for.
Damien cracked his knuckles, leaned forward, and began hitting the keyboard. It was time to hack into the Department of Justice computer systems. Somewhere in ther
e was a list of people they were protecting. He spent a few hours trying to navigate his way through the various departments and their computer files. Over the next few days, Damian searched for a list of people that the Marshal Service was protecting. He saw names likely in code at one point. Somewhere there had to be a legend that matched people’s original names to their code names.
He continued searching off and on over the next week. It was slow going because the Department of Justice and US marshals service were big servers and he didn’t want to be caught looking into their files.
He met up with Ariana and Hermione for another soccer game. It was becoming apparent that Hermione might be the best goalkeeper in all the local high schools. Her kicking skills were average, but her ability to guess where the ball was going made all the difference between winning and losing. While Damian and Ariana were watching the third match she gave him the details of their date.
“I’ve been thinking about our date and where to go. How about if we stroll through the art galleries of Sausalito and then have dinner in that town somewhere. There are many good restaurants so we can just pick one at the moment that suits us,” Ariana suggested.
Damien smiled, “That sounds like a plan. I don’t need to purchase any art but I’ve always been curious about the galleries in Sausalito and you're right about them having many good restaurants.”
“OK how about this Friday? Hermione has a sleepover with some girlfriends. It’s not that I worry about leaving her alone, rather as we figure out the relationship between you and me, I’d rather not have a complication of her expectations,” Damien nodded in agreement with the plan and they finish watching Hermione's soccer game.
“So how’s the search for my parents going?” Hermione asked after they sat down at a local restaurant.
“It’s more complicated than my usual hacking job. I’m looking into the servers at the Department of Justice, and I have to hide who I am and where the computer is located that I’m using and I can’t spend much time inside there. I’m trying to find a list of people that the US Marshals Service is protecting hoping that your parents might be on that list. But if they were wise, they wouldn’t keep a list of their protectees by their names just anywhere. If I were them, I would have a legend where you call a certain person or persons in protective custody by a code name rather than the real name.”
“How do you stay safe from the government when you’re accessing their computers?”
“Good question. You have to start by bouncing your computer to various satellites around the world. Then you have to make sure you never spend more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time. So each time I access the server, I use a random generator to generate a name consisting of letters and numbers, and I use a different one each time.”
“Is there a chance of you getting caught?” Hermione asked.
“Of course there is! That’s why am taking so many precautions and why it’s going so slow. If I were to get caught, it means spending time in a white-collar prison.”
“Is there any other way to get the information on my parents?”
“If there is, I haven’t figured it out. Perhaps you could put your thinking cap on and think of something else I can do to find your parents.”
“Could you just call the head of the Marshal Service and ask him if they’re protecting my parents?”
“I could, but the risk is that we might lose custody of you and we might even go to jail for taking care of you with no legal basis as the Marshals Service tries to figure out what our connection to you is. There are many in this world including the police who would see how we have taken care of you as criminal behavior.”
“Oh. Okay. Don't call them directly!” Hermione exclaimed. “Don’t take this wrong, but you guys have been better than my real parents at raising me. It’s not that my parents weren’t kind and loving, but you couldn’t find a more unstable lifestyle then what I had with them. I feel like my entire childhood was spent hiding from someone and moving a lot.”
“Oh sweetie!” Ariana exclaimed. “I understand what you’re saying, but let me just say that Damian and I are thrilled to be your fake parents, and I think I speak for both of us when I say that even if we were your real parents, we wouldn’t do anything different in caring for you.”
“Well, I think we would do fewer computer searches about the evil people chasing your parents, and I would sneak into fewer houses,” Damian said smiling.
With a group hug, they went their separate ways, Hermione to work on homework and Damien to head back across the bay.
After a few more days of looking for a list of people in protection at least and perhaps a legend with everyone’s name, he gave up. Instead, he decided to focus on a person on the email server through which a lot of communications presently flowed. Maybe that person would be willing to say whether Hermione's parents were in protective custody. As he told the teenager, there was a massive risk in contacting them if her parents weren't in protection. Maybe he could think of a strategy to keep the three of them hidden behind a wall until the Marshals Service revealed whether they knew the whereabouts of her parents. Then he got a surprise email in his inbox.
Chapter 22
'Are you looking for the parents of Hannah Sherwood?'
The email arrived in his inbox overnight. It was the account he used to report the details on the splash he'd heard when James Spinnaker was thrown overboard. He'd left the account live in case the SFPD had any questions that he was willing to answer. He'd meant to close it as it had been a few weeks since Mr. Spinnaker's murder, but he'd forgotten. Now someone was trying to contact him. He sat at the keyboard for a while thinking through his options.
He could type 'yes' and nothing more.
He could ignore the question.
He could give a few more details like, 'yes we are'. 'We' implying there was more than one person behind the email.
He could give a quick response to let someone know that he was indeed looking, but then close the account as it represented a danger to Hermione, Ariana, and himself.
He could research who sent the email and how they knew James Spinnaker was searching for 'Hannah Sherwood'.
First, he'd tell Ariana, and then they would tell Hermione after school.
He was down in his watercraft garage preparing to head to Richmond and work, when he dialed Ariana, “Hey, how’s it going?” He knew at this hour she was likely driving toward a meeting with one of her start-ups located in San Francisco.
“What’s up?” She asked knowing that Damian didn’t call just to shoot the breeze.
“I got an email on the account I set up to correspond with the SFPD about James Spinnaker’s death. I left the account live in case they had some question I was willing to answer and then I forgot to shut it down. An email arrived this morning asking if I was looking for the parents of Hannah Sherwood.”
“What are you going to do, research who sent it?”
“I debated what to do and then settled on that option. I should have just called you and saved myself the thinking time.”
He heard her laugh on the other end of the phone and she replied, “Woman’s intuition made that my first choice. You have the day to research, and then we’ll tell Hermione after school, right?”
“Now you're scaring me since you're currently predicting my plan for the day. Besides women's intuition, what are you, a mind reader?”
“Yes, you're the genius, but I read minds, so we're a good combo.”
“That we are. I'll give you a call if I turn up anything interesting.”
“Thanks,” Ariana said before ending the call. She liked that he now volunteered information rather than her having to ask for it.
Once Damian reached his office he spent a few hours working through problems that each of his projects were causing, as well as collecting any special space needs now that they were going to embark on a remodel. Fortunately, except for having a cleaning service clear the dust from the third floor, they c
ould all very quickly move out of the way of the impending demolition for Pete's restaurant.
After lunch, Damian settled down to research the email. He'd sent the information about James Spinnaker to a specific SFPD detective he knew was assigned to the case. Damian assumed that detective contacted Homeland Security about James Spinnaker to notify them of his death and his illegal side hustle. So perhaps Homeland Security got his phone and email records and was able to trace that he was looking for Hannah Sherwood in an unofficial role and that person happen to contact the U.S. Marshals. It really could be that random. They inhabited the same building and at times had overlapping duties. Surely some of the agents crossed over to the other division in friendship. He was going to assume that was how the connection was made. So what to do with that? How did he make contact without losing custody of Hermione to someone other than her parents?
Should he respond 'yes' to the email and see what the next question was? He decided to check in with Ariana as they all had a stake in this.
“I'm thinking of responding to the email with a simple 'yes' and see what happens next,” Damian said after she answered her phone.