CHAPTER FIVE-1
528 Words
CHAPTER FIVE
Both the police and an ambulance were summoned to Maddie’s home.
“I’m all right,” Maddie protested weakly. “I just... got overwhelmed, is all.”
“You went down hard, Mad,” Kathy retorted. “Please cooperate, let them check you out. Okay?”
“Okay,” Maddie whispered.
The emergency tech taking her vitals chimed in. “You have a pretty nasty bump on your head, ma’am. It wouldn’t surprise me if you have a concussion.”
***
* * * *
“I have some news,” Mason said through clenched teeth as his project team and upper management waited expectantly. “Some of you may have noticed that the server seems to be acting up. Can’t access project files this afternoon that you could this morning, right?”
Several team members nodded.
“That’s because they’re gone,” Mason announced solemnly. “All of them. Wiped clean. And Toby Mitting is MIA.”
“That son of a b***h,” Allen, Mason’s business partner and VP of Operations, muttered loudly, then said, “Sorry, Mason.”
“Don’t be,” came Mason’s answer. “Because right now, I feel exactly the same way.”
“What do we do now?” one team member asked.
“I’ve got some older copies of all those files on my home unit,” Mason revealed. “But they’re two weeks out of date, at least, and as we all know, the last twenty or so days we’ve really been moving and shaking on this thing. Tons of new stuff, good stuff, that we need is now history.”
His accounting manager raised her hand.
“Mason,” Jennifer said. “I know it may not help very much, but we recently enabled server backups to the Cloud, remember? So hopefully, at least part of what’s missing is still intact out there. And, we also have coverage for this type of activity in our insurance policy. I think it would be a good idea to make some calls, file a claim.”
“You’re right, Jennifer, I’d forgotten about all that. Yes, let’s get together right after this.” He cleared his throat.
“Okay, so, if any of you have any file copies saved somewhere other than the main server – like your desktop – then I need to know as soon as possible. If you do, we might be able to salvage at least part of all this.”
***
* * * *
Meanwhile, at the Nibless residence, Detective Kenney was pulling on gloves before he picked up any of the pages Maddie had received in the mail. A member of Flower Mound’s crime scene processing team was already sliding the manila envelope into an evidence bag.
“Pictures of each page, then bag them, please,” Kenney directed, and the tech nodded.
Kenney stepped over to Chase and Deborah.
“Walk me through it,” he said simply.
“There’s not much to tell, really. We came back from the funeral home, and Kathy went and brought the mail in,” Chase told him. “Maddie opened the package, turned white as a sheet and showed us the pages, and we called you.”
“All right. We’ll need fingerprint samples from each of you, to compare against any on the pages,” Kenney told him, “so that we can eliminate them. Hopefully, there will be at least one good print somewhere in all those that won’t match any of yours, and we’ll have something to go on.”
When the tech had bagged the last page, Kenney nodded. “I’ll be in touch.”
***
- Writer
