“A breach?” Reid pressed his foot to the gas pedal, and the vehicle climbed in speed.
“Not an actual breach. Let me look deeper.” Colin dug into the log files. “Someone tried to disable the east gate camera.”
“So they could breach undetected,” Dev stated.
“No other reason to disable it,” Colin said. “Unless we’re talking about one of the class participants who wants to go AWOL without us knowing about it. But they could just ask to leave so that doesn’t make sense. Unless, of course, they didsomething wrong, and they didn’t want us to discover it while they were still present.”
“Do we need to get Russ over there?” Ryan asked.
“Will probably take him as long to get there as us, but you never know,” Reid said. “Call him.”
Ryan made the call.
“I’m sure Micha got the alert, but I’m calling him, too,” Colin said. “No way I want him to head out to the gate and leave Brooklyn and our mom alone.”
“Eryn’s still with them,” Dev said.
“True, but not sure I’m good with that. I know her computer skills, but I don’t know her defensive skills.” Colin tapped Micha’s number. He wished he could trust Eryn to be capable, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t one to trust without evidence. Probably the reason he was struggling with his faith. He couldn’t trust God that everything would be okay with his mom when he had no evidence of it.
“I got the alert,” Micha said in way of answer. “What’s going on?”
Colin told him.
“Want me to check it out?” Micha asked.
“No. Stay with Brooklyn and my mom. Get them into the bathroom. It’s in the center of the cabin and doesn’t have windows.”
“Way ahead of you. Eryn already moved them in there and is standing duty outside the door.” Micha sucked in a breath. “I’ll take the front door, but would be better if we had someone at the back.”
Colin wished the same thing, but it was better to keep Eryn at the bathroom door where she could stop an intruder who got in from any direction. “Barricade the back door if you can. We’re five minutes out. Until then, I’ll monitor the camera feeds and let you know what I see.”
The many cameras covered most of the property but not the back side of his cabin. Still, he could see most of the property and would be able to tell if the gate was indeed breached.
“Hang on,” he told Micha. “I’ll pull up the feed now.”
He put Micha on speaker and switched over to the video feeds. He took some comfort that Micha was the guy back at the homestead, as he served as a weapons tech in the Army with Russ and was a top-notch marksman. If only he could clone Micha for the next four minutes.
He entered the security program, and the small screen filled with multiple camera angles. Too bad he didn’t have a larger screen so he could see them all at once. He would just have to go through them one at a time.
He started with the east gate, spotted movement. “We’ve got action outside the east gate. Someone running away. Wearing camouflage. Ski mask. Headed for the road.”
“Armed?” Reid asked.
Colin zoomed in. “Yeah, and looks like a closed laptop under his arm.”
“So likely the person who tried to hack the system,” Reid said.
“Likely.”
“Any way you can trace him if he skates before we get there?” Dev asked.
“I might be able to get some data on his IP address. He would have to be using cellular data out here, and that could lead to his account and an address.”
“I don’t like this.” Reid careened the vehicle around a curve and looked at his brother. “The lodge is too close to that gate. Get Megan on the phone. Tell her to be on alert.”
Colin felt Reid’s concern for his wife and daughters clear in the backseat. Like a physical cloud. The same cloud enveloping Colin for Brooklyn and his mom. And he wasn’t married toBrooklyn. He barely even knew her. So how much more was this eating at Reid?
He shifted to the next camera and caught additional movement. “Vehicle driving off at the road. Looks like a jacked-up pickup. Oversized tires. High up. I’ll try to get the plates.”
