Meet At Joe's

7 Circling the Wagons Part 1 The Gun is Out

POV: Joe

Since John and Julie had started dating, John was spending all his free time at Joe's, when Julie was working. Apparently, he was on some sort of work-study sabbatical. He fit in quite well with our gang and most of them were quite fond of him. Even if they had known or understood what he was up to, they were not going to be convinced he was anything but a good guy. Our gang was quite tight, and we took care of our own; so, what happens next should not come as a surprise.

Pixie, with some urgency, took Julie and I into the office and told us she had just heard from Agent Lee. They had analyzed the code Pixie had photographed. Apparently, that code used the same techniques as code the FBI had detected in what they believed to be a Russian cyber-attack. The techniques were quite unique and have never been seen anywhere else. Even sections of identical code were found in both. Pixie had tried to convince Agent Lee that it must have been leaked or sold to the Russians by someone in John's group acting on their own and that John couldn't possibly be in on it. Or perhaps someone in John's group was a Russian agent that planned to use John's group to get the Russian code more widely distributed. Lee told Pixie to expect an Agent Patent Fink who would be coming up to investigate further.

Pixie couldn't be sure, but she suspected Agent Fink was coming to arrest John. Agent Lee had asked Pixie to try to keep an eye on John until Patent got there.

"What kind of name is Patent Fink?" I asked saying the first thing that came to mind while I tried to process what Pixie had told us. "Do you really think he is coming to arrest John?"

"Lee would never tell me if he was, but I would bet money on it. We've probably got several hours before he arrives depending how long after he left down there before Lee called me."

"We need to warn John," Julie said. It was half question and half command.

We all agreed and went to get John.