In the last chapter Ohmie’s father managed to get the yacht. They made it to Newport News where Grandma Westlake shows Ohmie affection. Grandpa Westlake made sure the house was clear.

Dad gave me a copy of his thumb drive. He worked in his and Mom’s office, and I worked in my bedroom. We decided that instead of moving my room downstairs, converting the dining room, or the formal living room, and then in a matter of weeks having to change it back, we decided to put a chair lift on the stairs. And it would be handy if the next time Mom broke her leg instead of her arm. Hah! They didn’t laugh when I said that.

When Mom got back from having her arm x-rayed and re-cast, she worked with the files some, too.

Dad told me to forget about the spyware and ransomware stuff, the Company already had that and had experts on it. He didn't want to give up the political stuff yet for a few reasons: one, it was explosive. Some people might get hurt, some get mad, and some take actions that would compromise our investigation. Two, heads might roll. Maybe appointee heads, maybe elected heads. And that might affect our investigation. And three, we didn’t know who was who. I’m sure Mom and dad had some guesses, but….

So, I went through what I’d copied in Minsk line by line. I tried to show Dad where the stuff was that came from the locked office, the pass-coded computer, but whether he got it, I don’t know. But I knew. The trouble was that I didn’t speak Russian, or Belarussian. But I knew patterns, and I knew numbers. And I could use simple translation website programs. I did that once, just once, before catching myself. After that once, I bought a translating program that I could do the same thing, but off-line.  Referencing a Russian alphabet, I wrote an extra simple substitution program.

I did searches of U.S. politicians’ names, both candidates and elected, all I could think of. Names from both parties showed up. It was easy enough to see which were viewed positively by the data author, and which more negatively. It struck me odd. From what I’d learned in history classes, fifty years ago I would expect opposite sentiment expressed.

Then I searched for Dortch. Nothing. Not one time. But neither was Dad’s name mentioned anywhere. What I did see, was a word that should have been a name, but translated dutch. I showed it to Dad. After all, we were a team. Dad’s fingers flew over his keyboard. His monitor displayed a chart with dutch at the top of a list of names. Right of the names were series and columns of numbers. Not every name had an entry in the middle column, but dutch did.

“Those are off-shore bank account numbers, Ohmie. And the next column are amounts in U.S. dollars.”

I saw that dutch had 100,000. The column to the right of that had 2,985,500, probably cumulative. “They’re paying Dortch?” I exclaimed.

Dad called toward the door of his office for Mom. I ran as fast as a one-legged horse could for my chair lift, willing it to go faster. I heard Dad talking to Dale on the phone, asking him to get to his encrypted line to call Dad back. My bet was that Dad wanted Dale to go to the Company and get them to see if that number was really a bank account, and was it really Dortch’s.

I was going to go a more direct route. On my computer, I wrote, and printed out, entries for every one of the social media sites, all with relevant tag markers and detailed notifications. Of course, I would get Dad’s approval, but my plan was to draw Dortch to 1010 Rocky Waters Avenue, our house.

We had our answer the next day. Yes, Dortch owned that account in the Bank of Singapore.

It didn’t take much debate. Why traipse all over Europe where you couldn’t very well watch your own back? And it was highly unlikely that Dortch could get his hired assassins to America, very quickly, anyway.

They tweaked a couple of my posts, but most they left what I wrote. I think out of curiosity, but Mom followed me up to watch me post them. I’d opened the accounts days ago, a couple I opened years ago, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. I posted them all, and hashtagged as much as I could. Some of the hashtags were fake, just designed to make Dortch mad enough to make a mistake. Like #FatDortch, and #DortchTreason.

Dad double-checked the house’s defenses, the fence, the camera locations and performance, and the security system. He thought about getting a big dog from the pound, but didn’t want Dortch to just kill it.

I didn’t either, life being kinda precious.

“Dad, don’t you think I should have the Berretta?”

“No, he doesn’t.” It was Mom from the other room “Ohmie, you’re thirteen years old.” Mom came into the dining room where Dad and I were having a snack. I think it was part of Mom and Dad’s plan to eat a snack, getting me to have one too. Mom wasn’t done. “Honey, I know what you’ve been through. I know you are capable. I just can’t have anyone taking shots at you because you have a gun. Your father and I are trained for this.” She looked to Dad for support. He gave it to her with his silence.

We kept working on the data. Mom kept up with medicating me every couple hours. Believe it or not, I felt well enough to bypass the chairlift once in a while, at least halfway up, to where I wished I’d used the lift.

Mom and I called Mme Benoir. She was fine. No one had bothered her. And yes, she would like to come visit us. Maybe soon, before the skiers arrived. I thought soon… before I died.