During his few hours in NYC and before heading to Albany, Jak had bought a second-hand iPhone and a PAYG SIM card at a shop near Grand Central Station. His old phone was wrapped in foil in his backpack in an attempt to stop his father from tracking it and, by implication, him.

Danny Moeller was sending regular messages explaining what Jak’s father was doing. He’d just passed the northern tip of Lake George when a message said,

“G5 landed in Albany 10 mins ago. Three black Suburbans were waiting for him and his party of six. They are all ex-military and are armed with a variety of long guns. They mean business.”

Jak replied with a simple ‘Thumbs Up’ emoji.

News that his father had reinforcements was no surprise to him. He’d had time during his transatlantic flight to organise some help in ‘bringing him home’. On his way north from the Albany area, Jak stopped at an outdoor store and purchased some clothing essentials. A nearby supermarket and a gas station provided the rest. He paid for the gas with his credit card, knowing that his father would be tracking his purchases. Everything else was paid for in cash. Luckily for him, he’d been up that way while he was a student at MIT with Danny and two others. Danny’s cabin was only going to be what crime writers call a ‘red herring’.

The plan was that Danny would reluctantly divulge the location of the cabin and how to get there from the place where he’d park the truck that he’d borrowed. What Danny was not going to say was that he was sure that Jak was at the cabin. It didn’t matter in the long run.

[at Danny Moeller’s home near Troy]
“Jak is my friend,” said Danny Moeller to an angry little man who’d said that he was Jak’s father.

“I let him borrow my truck, and that’s it. He didn’t say where he was going, and knowing him as I do, I didn’t ask. It was clear to me that he had a place to go because he didn’t even stop for a coffee. He did not divulge that location, and because of your arrival, I am glad that I didn’t ask.”

“You know more than you are letting on,” said Jak’s father.

One of the ‘support’ personnel showed them that he was carrying.

“Mr McGee,” said Danny’s brother Erik, who had been brought in for moral support.
“I’d think twice about trying to use force on my brother.”

Erik went on to say,
“Smile, Mr McGee. You are on camera and have been since you came through that door. The video is being sent to a safe place in another state. If one of us does not erase it, then it will be sent to the FBI. It was clear to me from what Jak said that you want to take him, an adult male, against his wishes, across state lines. That is felony kidnapping. With the video evidence that shows that you have come here uninvited and armed, you will be, as they say, ‘bang to rights’. Then, with all your ‘hired help, ’ charges of criminal conspiracy will be added to the felony kidnapping. That’s twenty-five to life in this state.”

Just then, the P.I. came into the room. He whispered something into the ear of Jak’s father. He smiled.

“It seems that Jak is, as you say, on the run north. He stopped for fuel at a gas station in Indian Lake. We have discovered that you own a cabin up near Lake Placid. That’s where we’ll head next.”

Danny didn’t react. He was a good poker player, and fooling Jak’s father was easy. He was all stoked up with the thought of finding his son. Danny wasn’t certain what he’d do if he managed to find Jak, but he would send his fears to the FBI as if Jak was kidnapped by his father; he’d take him across state lines.

The men left Danny’s house, climbed into their back SUVs and departed. Calm descended on the street once again.

Danny updated Jak about the departure by text message. Jak was nowhere near the cabin but didn’t reply. Danny was a good friend, but he was not sure how he’d react to Sarah and everything else. He needed the right time and place to update him, but being a good friend, he had not demanded chapter and verse before letting him borrow his truck.

After getting fuel, he’d headed east, back to I-87, and went north. With every mile that passed, he was closer to his destination, Hyde Park, Vermont.

Mr Donald Mackay, his lawyer in Edinburgh, had booked and paid for a cabin in a quiet part of the Hyde Park area. Jak had been skiing nearby when he was a student in Boston. As a result of that previous visit, he had some knowledge of what the area offered in terms of accommodation. It was quiet because the summer season had ended, and the first snows were yet to hit the peaks of the nearby Green Mountains and ‘quiet’ was what he needed right now.

Jak was leading his father on a journey. After turning off I-87, he crossed over into Vermont at a place called ‘Chimney Point’. That was a turning point in his trip. Until that point, he’d been using his US Bank-issued credit card. He knew from past encounters that his father kept tabs on his spending. He guessed that was how he’d found out that he had gone to Europe.

It was past being useful except to lead his father, as Sarah said when they planned his return to the USA, ‘up the garden path’. With all the available ‘evidence’ pointing towards Lake Placid, Jak was miles away and preparing to hunker down for a week. The cabin had been booked and paid for out of the funds that Calum had left for him. By using the Edinburgh Solicitors’, he could not be tracked, unlike his US-issued credit card.

His father arrived at the Lake Placid Cabin late that evening and was dismayed to find that it was all closed up. Jak had not been there, and there had been no further use of his credit card. No one in the area had seen Jak, which pissed him off no end. Jak had not used his debit card to draw cash from an ATM. Jak had over $500 in cash, which he’d obtained from a bureau de change at Glasgow Airport using the cash that Calum had provided for him. By using his borrowed truck sparingly and then only paying for things with cash, it would be hard, if not impossible, for his father to find him.

Once he was settled into the cabin and the truck was parked well out of sight of the nearby road, Jak fired up a laptop that he and Sarah had bought for cash from a second-hand shop in Edinburgh. He connected to the internet via the phone’s ‘hotspot’ and fired up a VPN. He chose Miami for his location and began to post messages on Facebook and Twitter, slagging off his father. He posted only the truth. Everything that he posted was backed up with evidence.

Jak had been slowly collecting ‘dirt’ on his father for years. After a while, he changed the location to Maui. He posted things that he should have never known about his family, let alone made public, were now out there. It would not be long before his father became aware of these posts. He’d blow his top big time. One of the bits of dirt was about the deal that his father had done with the operator of a coal-fired power station. Jak had obtained the information on his last visit home just before he told his father yet again that he was not going to work for him. He posted the contract on the Internet. Because the power station was in a different state, the deal had broken all sorts of interstate commerce regulations. To Jak, the more dirt that he could dish, the better.

His last action was to send an email from a throw-away account to the editor of the local newspaper in his hometown. The editor was no friend of his father. All the email did was provide links to the dirt that he’d posted. He didn’t leave a name. It was now up to others to act… or not.

Jak signed off and immediately wiped both the software and data from the laptop. Then he booted up a copy of ‘Ghost’ and restored a clean image of the system that he’d created for the trip. All that was missing was the VPN software. Only a very deep forensic investigation at the FBI deep dive level would discover what he’d done.

He hoped that the posts would, while making his father very, very angry, eventually get through to him that Jak was not messing about.

His final task for the day was to call Sara using Zoom.

While the connection wasn’t great, just seeing her face made him very happy. Her trip was going well, and she should be on a plane home in three days. He signed off by saying,
“I miss you lots.”

Jak’s father and his entourage spent the night in an overpriced hotel in Lake Placid. He was a typical rich person, also a skinflint. He watched every penny that he and his company spent. His staff hated it and accused him of being a micromanager, but his father had been like that and had drummed those habits into the son who was running the business. Jak had been like Calum, often away with the fairies and thinking about the world rather than making as much green as possible.

His staff alerted him to a range of very unflattering posts on social media. As he read them, his anger towards his son only increased. It was only later that he began to understand what Jak was doing.

He only cared about money. The posts could hurt him financially, at least in the short term. For once in his life, he raised his bedtime glass of Kentucky Bourbon to Jak.

That praise was only temporary.

If Jak had walked into his room right then, Jak would soon be dead. He read the posts again and again. It hurt him all the more because not only had his son collected the data from right under his nose, but it was 100% accurate.

After raising his glass again, he called his team together.

“My son has been spreading a lot of dirt on me. We have been played as fools. The search for my son is not over. I have to fly home ASAP and deal with this bad PR. My lawyers will be sending out defamation lawsuits to everyone who even liked his lies.”
It was all bluster and bravado, but he had to appear to be strong and in control.

The ‘team’ didn’t look happy.

“I have paid you all for your time for another ten days. In that time, I want you to spread out and look for my son and especially that truck. By spreading out, I mean even to Vermont and New Hampshire. I know that he went there on stupidly expensive skiing trips while at MIT. If any of you find him or the truck, there is another five grand in it for you. Just don’t go overboard on the expenses, ok? At the end of the six days, send all the receipts to my office as before. You will get paid by the end of next Friday. Your flights back home from Albany are all paid, so return the SUVs there, and we will be good.”

“Boss,” said one of them.
“If we find him, what do we do?”

“Keep well away. I don’t want him running again. Call me, and I’ll fly back, and we can confront him. Please, no violence unless he uses it first. Agreed?”

One by one, they all agreed.

Jak’s father returned to Albany by taxi, which hurt his wallet and pride before flying home, angry with himself as well as his son. The posts that Jak had made about him and his business hurt him hard. He’d been foolish to let him in on how he worked now; he was using it against him. He’d been played for a fool, and that hurt. No one had done that to him before and lived to tell the tale.

Jak had no idea that all that dirt would be used when it was. It was just his get-out-of-jail-free card. The jail would be working for his father in a business that was, in his opinion, going down the tubes. He would not have used it if his father had not come to Scotland after him. The words he’d said to Sarah hurt him, and he was trying to do the same to his father. She was not the ‘hired help’ nor a ‘blackie’. Her colour and race didn’t matter to him. She was… He was lost for words. If that was love, then… then he knew that she was the only thing that mattered in his life.

He kept a very low profile for two days; meanwhile, his father’s team spread out far and wide as instructed. Two men to a vehicle. One was driving, and one was looking for their target. Jak never knew if they had travelled along the road or not. He didn’t care that much as long as there was no threatening knock on the door.

Jak used the time to look at a lot of sites for transgender people. He’d resisted doing it before but with Calum’s challenge looming, he felt that it was time. To his dismay, many of the stories were depressing, especially where the trans person ended up taking their own life. They made him even more determined not to let that happen to him. What soon became apparent was the sheer number of laws being passed in the USA aimed at literally exterminating all Trans people. Why politicians were spending so much time legislating against a group that made up such a small part of the population was very sad. In his opinion, they looked like they had nothing better to do with their time on the public dime.

After a period of reflection and re-evaluation, he began to realise that it was probably the precursor to banning Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual people from the society that they wanted to create should the GOP get re-elected. Jak wanted nothing to do with that sort of world. Scotland looked like it could be the sort of place where he could be himself, or rather herself, and if Sarah was alongside her, then all the better.

He spoke with Sarah almost every day. Her trip was going well, and she was about to wrap it up and leave a local NGO running the programme to help refugees from the DRC. Then she dropped a bombshell.

“Jak… I have a new project to get up and running.”

“Eh?” he said.
“I thought that you were about to fly home?”

“I was, but I was talking with a family of refugees from Uganda. They fled the country because their fifteen-year-old son is gay. They are making it a crime to be LGBT there. You know what that means?”

Jak thought for a few seconds. He knew exactly what she meant.

“I know very well what that means. Some of the more loony-tunes Republicans here are talking about doing the very same thing. It really irks them that Biden appointed a gay man as Transportation Secretary. He was accused of taking time off from work to chest feed his child by one of Trump’s cheerleaders.”

“Ouch,” said Sarah.
“It sounds like we should think about organising something in the US. If you are right, the number who left for Canada to avoid the draft for Vietnam will be tiny if they go after all who define themselves as LGBT.”

“Darling, Uganda first, ok? You can only do so much at a time.”

Sarah laughed.
“Yes, Boss!”

“Any news on your Visa?” she asked, changing the subject.

“I’m hoping to hear tomorrow.”

“What about your father?”

“He’s been grovelling on several cable channels. He is telling the world that an agent of a competitor infiltrated his organisation and that the stories are full of lies and half-truths. He’s not saying what bit of dirt he thinks is a lie, fake news, and spread by the ‘deep state’. That is typical of his messiah, Donald Trump. Anything to deflect the media from the real news.”

“Is it only on Cable TV?”

Jak shook his head.
“A few progressive YouTube channels have been giving him a lot of stick. One site has racked up well over a million hits on one article about his disregard for safety in his coal mine, in just two days. There is talk of a class action lawsuit being filed in the next few days. It could wipe him out.”

“Ouch.”

“I miss you,” said Jak.
“You are good to me.”

Sarah laughed.
“I miss you too. I should be home this time next week.”

“I’ll be waiting for you, visa permitting.”

Jak was starting to go a bit stir-crazy, staying in the cabin all day and night. He only ventured to the local gas station early in the morning to buy some overpriced bread, milk and other essentials. He was able to walk through the woods, in which the cabin was located, right next to the gas station. It was that fact that made him remember it as a place to hide.

On the day of his third visit, he arrived so early that it hadn’t opened yet. Jak thought about going back to the cabin but decided against it. Instead, he crossed the road and walked into the bit of the wood that was on that side of the road. The trees were not naturally planted. These particular trees were all in neat rows. It was a plantation. He watched a squirrel feeding on a pine kernel for almost ten minutes. After a quick look at his phone, Jak wandered back towards the road.

As he neared it, he heard the sound of a large engine coming up the road. Jak stopped, and more out of fear of the unknown than anything else, he ducked down behind a tree.

A black Suburban pulled up at the gas station. Two men who could only be described as ‘Heavies’ got out. One pumped some gas while the other man went inside. Jak could see him talking to the cashier. The man was showing the cashier a photo.

Jak’s heart almost stopped when the cashier pointed in the direction of the cabin where Jak had been staying. He breathed deeply until his racing heart calmed down. He’d been found.

The man who had gone inside the gas station paid for the gas and hurried outside. After a brief discussion with the other man, and a lot of pointing in the general direction of the cabin.

Jak tapped his left pants pocket. His passport and wallet were there. He sighed. Luck. He needed a lot more than that if he was going to get away from here in one piece. His laptop was there and a few clothes. After a little dithering, he decided to let his father have whatever was there.

Then, the sound of the engine of the suburban being started brought his mind back to reality. The vehicle drove off back the way it had come. It didn’t go far. Less than half a mile down the road, it pulled off the road and backed into the entrance to a field. Jak could see the black roof of the Suburban from his vantage point.

Jak could visualise the phone conversation that was going on between the men in the Suburban and his father. No doubt his father would be firing up his G5 jet and heading north very soon. Jak had to get away from there. Luck, for once, was on his side. The men would expect that 1) he was still at the cabin and 2) they didn’t know that he knew that he’d been found. They would be relying on the element of surprise when they entered the cabin.
Jak would not be there, but his advantage was only temporary.

At the moment, he had an advantage. That might not last very long, depending on his father. It was up to Jak to put as much distance between the cabin/gas station and him as possible while he could. The trees of the plantation would provide some cover, but nowhere near as much as a natural forest. It was his only choice.

Slowly, Jak backed away from the road and walked deeper into the plantation. He had no idea how large or small it was and what, if anything, lay on the other side. He blamed himself for not having an exit plan. That was something that his father had droned on about ad nauseam when he took Jak hunting for deer every October. There were lots of black bears in the area, but Jak had never seen one in the eight years that he’d been dragged along, covered from head to foot in dayglow orange. His father had never let him shoot anything but pigeons. Yeah, Jak, the big game hunter… not!

After some twenty minutes of walking a bit and then looking behind him for a tail, he reached the edge of the plantation. Large fields of grass and recently harvested maize greeted him. In the distance, well over a mile away, there was a house, and given that there was smoke rising from the chimney, he guessed that there was someone home.

Jak looked at the scene for several minutes. Nothing was moving. After deciding to keep to the edge of the plantation and not visit the small farm, he walked away.

He’d only gone a few steps when something he’d seen but had not registered came into his mind.

He turned and looked back at the group of buildings. Just beyond them, there was a cell tower. That changed his mind. He’d risk getting shot for trespassing just so that he could make a phone call. The worries subsided when he saw a muddy brown UPS delivery truck disappear behind the buildings. There must be a road on that side of the property.

He’d reached about halfway across the open space when another thought panicked him. As there was a road, wouldn’t the people in the black Suburban be patrolling the road looking for him?

He decided that he needed to find cover close to the farm and the cell tower. He could wait there until nightfall before moving on under the cover of darkness.

No other vehicles had travelled along the hidden road by the time Jak reached the cover of an old and very dilapidated outbuilding. There was just space for him to crawl inside and become invisible to anyone but someone standing less than 5 feet from him.

He made a call to Edinburgh and ‘young’ Mr Mackay.

“I’ve been made,” he said after the normal greetings had been exchanged.
“Two of his goons turned up at the gas station where I’d been buying bread and milk. The cashier identified me and pointed towards where my cabin was. I only escaped them because I was early and walked away from the gas station until it was open.”

“I’m about two to three miles south of the cabin and near a small farm.”

Jak listened to Mr Mackay call his associate in New York City and patch him into the call.

Jak told the associate the same story before Mr Mackay said,

“Can you check your location on the ‘Map’ App?” asked the associate.

Jak sent the lat/long of his location to Mr Mackay.

After a slight delay, Mr Mackay said,
“I’ve sent you the location of where I’m hiding. Jak needs the cavalry to come ASAP. Those men are probably armed. Who knows what Jak’s father might order after the dirt that Jak had been exposed to the world?”

“The latest on that is that the IRS is looking into the taxes paid by Jak’s father and the company,” said the Associate.

Jak swallowed hard and said,
“If there is one thing that is guaranteed to get him angry, that is an audit by the IRS. A few years back, he was escorted out of the local IRS office when he tried to pay his taxes in pennies. They refused and called the cops.”

The associate said,
“Jak, I’ll get a few of the agents we use for evicting squatters on the road in a couple of hours,” he said,
“Sit tight. It may be a long afternoon and evening. Put your phone on silent, but keep it close. I’ll get my people to SMS you with a passphrase when they get close. What do you suggest?”

Jak thought for a moment. He remembered his trip to the west of Scotland with Sarah and the name of a port where one of the ferries they’d used had docked.
“Tarbert. Tango Alpha Romeo Bravo Echo Romeo Tango.”

“Good,” said the associate.
“When you get the message, call him back.”

“Thanks. I’ll lie low, but I’ve not got any water or food with me.”

Jak ended the call and tried to make himself comfortable. All sorts of theories, mostly bad, rattled through his brain. Most were about how those agents of his father happened to call at that very gas station. The only thing he could think of was that because the truck was made by GM and was less than ten years old, it might have been fitted with the ‘’OnStar” service. With his father, money talked, and the PD back home might have been in his pocket. It would have been simple for them to flag the truck as stolen or a vehicle of interest in a crime and add some $$$ into the mix; the people who run OnStar would reveal the location of the truck. That was his reasoning before he drifted off to sleep.

A sound woke him. A glance at his phone told him that it was after three in the afternoon. He tried to move and found that his left leg had gone to sleep. After some gentle massaging, he was able to stand up.

Through a crack in the wooden door, he saw the very sight that he’d been dreading. A black Suburban was in the yard of the farm. The occupants were questioning a grey-haired woman. She was shaking her head as if to say, ‘No, I have not seen this person.’

These men were different from the two who visited the gas station earlier. He guessed that his father was probably not that far away.

The two men took the woman’s word for it and got into their vehicle and, after making a six-point turn, left the farm. From another crack, Jak saw it turn onto the nearby road and accelerate away. He breathed a sigh of relief and sat down again.

He was dozing off again when a voice startled him.
“It is ok, they have gone. I checked, and they are at the Anderson place, almost two miles away.”

Jak looked up to see the same woman as before.

“Sorry. I’ll get going,” said Jak.

“No, you won’t. Those men will be back after dark; I’m sure of that. I know their type.”

“I can’t put you in danger,” said Jak.

“I think that it is a little too late now. I saw you crossing the field and guessed that you’d find your way in here. Come into the house, and I’ll get you something to eat and drink. Then perhaps you might feel like explaining to me why those armed men who are not part of any known form of law enforcement want to skin your hide?”

Reluctantly, Jak nodded. Her directness impressed him. That marked her out as a woman not to be messed with.

Jak followed her inside the house. It took a moment to get used to the relative darkness of the place. Then, he got the shock of his life. All along one wall, there were pictures of the lady posing with all the Presidents, dating from Clinton up to and including Trump.

“I was in the Secret Service for more than twenty years. Before that, I was in the FBI, ending up as a close combat instructor at Quantico.”

Jak turned to see the woman grinning. She was proud of her service.
“I… I’m Jak McGee. Jack without the ‘c’.”

“Pleased to meet you, Jack, without the ‘c’ McGee. I’m Stella Hawkins.”

“There is a bathroom through there,” she said, pointing at a door.
“Why don’t you wash up and then join me in the kitchen, which is at the end of the corridor?”

“Thanks.”

A few minutes later, Jak went into the kitchen. He got another surprise. There on the table were two pump-action shotguns. He stopped dead for a second. Then he saw that they were not loaded.

“Have you ever used one of these?”

He nodded.
“A long time ago, I used a 12-gauge shotgun to murder a few pigeons.”

“Good. One of them is for you. If they come back and set foot through that door or any window, they are dead meat. Armed intruders can be shot. That’s the law, and I intend to do it if they step over the threshold. You point, pull the trigger, and they hit the floor. Are you with me on this?”

Stella saw Jak’s hesitancy.
She smiled and said,
“The shells are birdshot and rock salt. Unless you hit them in the face, that won’t be fatal. Are you in?”

Jak gulped.
“I think so.”

She smiled.
“Right. Now on to other matters. I’m guessing here, but the grumbling coming from your stomach tells me that you haven’t eaten much today. Would a plate of Ham and Eggs with some home-baked sourdough bread go down nicely?”

Jak nodded.
“With some tea, if possible. Make that lots of tea. I’m parched.”

Stella laughed.
“I can see that we are going to get along just nicely.”

[to be continued]