Page 69 of Insidious Threats

“Good.”

He ruffled the cat’s fur and rubbed the sleeping dog’s head, then let himself out into the cold night. As he pulled up the flight itinerary he groaned. Pittsburgh to Philadelphia to Denver to Sun Valley. Two stops and a plane change. The trip would take eight and a half hours, assuming no delays. He’d be dead on his feet when he met this red hat hacker.

35

Sasha had filled Poppy in on her guest’s flu and had received a mask and a bottle of hand sanitizer for her troubles. She was crossing the dark courtyard to Cinco’s cabin, when Maisy called.

“Can you talk?”

“Yes.” So long as she kept one eye on the path so she didn’t trip over a root or rock and go flying across the gravel lot.

“So there was a call to a number in San Jose. Deanne didn’t think it was important. Landon worked in Silicon Valley for years. He knows a lot of people there.”

“I hear a but.”

“But, I did an Internet search and this San Jose phone number belongs to an outfit called Pinpoint Partners.”

“Okay?”

“Which is a fully owned subsidiary of NTI, Inc. NTI stands for Norse Technological Innovations, a privately owned company that lists Leith Delone as its sole shareholder.”

“So, Delone owns Pinpoint Partners.”

“Seems like.”

“Huh.”

“There was another call, right after that one. This one was to a number in Sun Valley, Idaho.”

“Ski resort?”

“Another tech company. As far as I can tell, Delone doesn’t own this one, but it specializes in providing third-party solutions to cutting-edge emerging technologies.”

“Wonder what that means in English?”

“Helping fix a crappy racist artificial intelligence program, maybe?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“The first call was pretty short. The second one to this outfit in Idaho was longer.”

“Is that all you have?”

“Yes, and no. Remember I started to ask you to find out about Thor during the meeting with Mickey?”

“Sure. But then ATJ threw her fit, and we never finished the conversation.”

“Right. So the name Thor just keeps coming up.”

“In what context?”

“Well, Gabe said Thor acquired WACB. The money that was wired into Landon’s account the day he died was from something called Thor Trust International.”

“That’s funny. ATJ compared Delone to a Norse god last night.”

“Yeah, so when you put it all together, it’s obvious that Delone has been behind all of this the whole time.”

Sasha’s breath caught in her throat as she recalled the fear on Amanda Teale-James’ face when she begged Sasha to appease the billionaire.