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Abby's Gift
The Prank

The Prank

Reversing my route from earlier, I reached Mark’s house by 9:30 and put the bike away. I could hear that some people were already up and about, but I avoided them and made my way up to my room as quietly as I could. Eva was still asleep and I left her like that while I took a shower. Even though I’d barely entered reality during my visit to Serpentine’s offices, I felt unclean for having seen the things there. I gave myself a good scrubbing and covered up my bathing suit with another pair of shorts and a tee.

Eva and I went down to a light breakfast before taking our place by the pool once again. When all of the kids had joined us, Eva and I started to tell them about the special project that they’d all agreed to work on. They loved the idea, especially Connor and Rose, and within minutes they’d all pulled out their phones and were doing their research, quietly shouting suggestions to each other. I couldn’t wait to see Mark’s reaction.

With twelve of us there by the pool, Eva decided that we needed some exercise and she got everyone to join her in doing a Zumba class. At first, I was surprised that the older boys were participating, but I soon took notice of how they were taking notice of Eva and all became clear. In her skimpy bikini, Eva was worth looking at. I grabbed my phone from the side and took a short video of the class, focusing mostly on Eva, and sent it to poor James in freezing cold Montreal. “This is what you’re missing. Just sayin’” was all I wrote. He sent me an angry face emoji and a picture of snow-covered streets.

We lazed away the rest of the day and planned to head to the beach tomorrow. For dinner that night, Stacey and Andrew took us all out to the Olive Garden and we put our special project into action. Connor started us off when his soup arrived.

“Gadzooks, Mark! This soup is scorching, but quite savory.” I was very impressed that he managed not to break out into even the tiniest of smiles and that none of the other kids let out a peep of laughter. Mark immediately turned to me and shook his head in resignation.

“Verily Connor, that has the appearance of a very fine broth. Don’t you find it so, Mark?”, Rose chimed in. A few of the kids pompoused up their voices and cried out, “Quite so. Quite so.” By this time Mark was trying hard not to laugh and Andrew and Stacy were wondering what the hell was going on.

“I adore a splendid repast in such a gracious establishment.”, Eva added. “Imbibe some of Adam’s Ale, Mark. You looked positively parched.” Eva’s eyes sparked maliciously at him.

Mark face-palmed and groaned. “How long is this going to last?”, he asked.

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“In sooth, I cannot say. Children can be quite capricious. It may be that this ends on the morrow, but alas it may persist indefinitely. Years at the very least, I would hazard to guess.”, I answered.

To this, several of the younger children gave out loud harrumphs and banged the tables in mock solemnity. That’s when Eva and I lost it and broke down in fits of giggles of our own. The children continued with the fun throughout dinner and I had a feeling Eva and I had created a new family tradition. Mark was never going to live this down.

The next morning was a repeat of the previous morning, in that I woke up at the same time and made my way to Serpentine Logistics in the same way. This time I only hung around long enough to make sure that my two drives had copied the contents of Daniels computers and to see if there were any prisoners in the basement. The drives were full and the cells were empty, so I unplugged the drives and headed back to spend the day with Mark and Eva at the beach.

Over the next several days, in the late afternoons and before bed, I slowly plowed through the data that I’d stolen from Serpentine’s computers. The IT administrator’s password got me past all the roadblocks. There was a lot to go through, but I focused first on Daniel’s computers. The one that was on the small desk held very little on it, but what it had was incredible. It seemed that this computer was used exclusively to make banking transfers and so it had a file on it with all of Serpentine’s bank accounts, including several offshore accounts. The amounts were staggering. Too bad I didn’t have the passwords to those accounts.

Daniel Larimar’s computer was full of videos from his hidden room. I couldn’t stomach to watch them, but I did copy the first fifteen seconds of a few and put them on an anonymous Dropbox site that I’d be sending to the chief of police when the time was right.

Besides the videos, Daniel also had the schedules of his special ‘shipments’ going back for years, along with the date of this next shipment, next Saturday at 2am. Twenty-four women and sixteen children between the ages of five and thirteen. The prisoners were collected in ones and twos from all over the coast and beyond and were smuggled into the port at Wilmington, where they were put on a truck and brought to Serpentine for holding and redistribution to their buyers or to other holding facilities all over the United States. Sometimes, prisoners were brought to Serpentine directly, as in Len’s case, and were then shipped off.

I spent hours putting the information together in a summary form, with surveillance camera footage from previous shipments of prisoners. I made sure to include still pictures from the cameras of every guard that was involved and of every employee of Serpentine that came in contact with the prisoners, such as Daniel and his IT guy, along with Daniel’s assistant and his head of finance. I uploaded all the information onto the Dropbox account that I’d created for Daniel’s videos and scheduled the entire file to be available to the chief of police and his three captains next Saturday at 2am. I didn’t intend for the information to reach them in that way, but just in case anything happened to me, I wanted to make sure that Serpentine went down hard.