mental note to sell him. He could tell that this little guy would turn into an ornery bull. The taste of grit suddenly clouded his tongue and he looked up to see the sky darkening directly above him.
The calf suddenly sprinted to the barn. Dafoe followed close behind, finding most of the herd milling outside their stalls and looking dazed. Hell, he snorted to himself, cows looked dazed all the time. They’re nature’s stoners.
He got them into their stalls—and just in time. The barn shuddered as the dust storm descended on the farm. The cows raised another chorus.
Dafoe pulled out his cell and saw a text message from Jenna saying she missed the cows, and him, too! Ha-ha. It milked a smile from his frowning face. He called Forensia, who’d headed into the farmhouse an hour ago to pay bills.
“You okay in there?” he asked her.
“We’re fine.” The “we” meant that Sang-mi was still by her side. “We got all the windows shut before the storm hit. I’m just glad we’ve still got power.”
Dafoe glanced at his milking machines and touched wood. A window near him shook visibly from a gust. The air outside looked as dark as the sky had minutes ago. It was only noon.
“You need to go home and close any hatches?” he asked. Forensia kept a garden and a compost pile, and hung all her laundry on an outdoor line—the country Pagan maiden in every regard.
“We’re fine. Where are you?”
“In the barn. I’ll be heading over to you in just a moment.”
Dafoe snapped his cell shut and looked around, thinking that the gnarly dust storm would have excited Jenna. If a weather front of this magnitude were approaching the city, they’d be breaking into regular programming so she could provide constant updates.
As he eased out of the barn, the cows were still making a hell of a racket, like they could moo away bad weather. Squinting, he bolted to the house. Forensia threw open the door as he reached for the handle. Behind her, Dafoe could see Sang-mi on the couch, seemingly mesmerized by the Weather Channel on TV. For a young woman who’d grown up watching nothing but the numbingly boring speeches of North Korean political leaders, the Weather Channel proved riveting. It even grabbed Dafoe’s attention with a report about more than a dozen wildfires eating up Northern California and the Pacific Northwest.
“What a day,” he said, darting into the bathroom to rinse dust from his face and wash his hands.
“Hey, there’s the dust storm,” Forensia exclaimed from the living area. Dafoe rushed in as the screen switched to aerial views of a dark cloud blanketing much of central New York. As a farmer, Dafoe couldn’t help but consider the wind a sticky-fingered thief for lifting away tons of dry topsoil, like a pickpocket working a county fair.
Dafoe strolled over to his computer. “Billing’s all done,” Forensia said.
“I’m just checking e-mail.”
“Oh, that’s right. You’ve got a big time girlfriend now,” Forensia gently teased. “You got to keep up with her.”
“I’ll never be able to do that,” Dafoe laughed. “But she just texted me.”
“A good one?” Forensia teased.
“Yes,” he said patiently. “A very nice one.” His smile vanished quickly when he saw his e-mail security system’s warning: UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY ATTEMPT. The bright-red stop sign noted that the attempt had come earlier this morning.
“Forensia, would you come over here?”
She tore her eyes from the TV and casually draped her hand on the back of his chair. “What’s up?”
“Look at this.”
“Wow. What’s that all about?” She sounded genuinely puzzled.
“I’m working on that.”
Dafoe had drawn on his considerable experience as a hacker to design his security system. This warning had come up once before, but within hours GreenSpirit’s murder had been discovered, and his attention had shifted to other safety concerns. That first attempt had failed, and Dafoe had figured some kid in Singapore or Paris had chanced on the wrong guy and given up when they saw his formidable security.
Once burned, twice cautious, he told himself. He didn’t believe that coincidence could explain two attempts to penetrate his e-mail in less than a week. He was a dairy farmer, not the Department of Defense.
“I would never go near your private stuff, Dafoe.”
He believed her, and nodded to assure Forensia of this. But his system was telling him that the most recent attempt had taken place just an hour and a half ago, and had originated on his own computer.