Junior Year Box Set

“Cassidy Hope kicks my butt four days a week. She trains me at a local dojo. If I tried to manhandle her, I’d be walking funny for a very long time.”

“What about the pictures?” he asked.

“The last time I saw Pam was Friday night at the football game. When I saw her, the whole cheerleading squad was present. You know how you can verify that she was fine when I left her? Call Jeff Delahey at the newspaper. He had one of his photographers take a picture with Pam, all the cheerleaders, and me. You’ll see she was fine.

“After the game, I rode the team bus back to town and then came straight home. We were all going to my farm to go hunting. Turkey season had started, so we had to drive straight there. I had Halle James, Zoe Pearson, and Brook Davis in the car with me, while my brother and parents followed us in their car. Saturday morning, we went hunting. My agent, Frank Ingram, had video shot of the hunt.

“That afternoon I did a photo and video shoot for Range Sports. Sunday morning, I was home and went to church. During the afternoon I picked pumpkins with a Mennonite youth group. At no time did I see Pam, other than the football game.”

“Can you get me names of everyone at each event and a timeline?” the detective asked.

“Detective, it sounds like there have been some grave allegations made. We’ll get you the information you asked for, and I expect you will verify it. I think there’s reason to believe that the claims made against my client are baseless. I understand you have to do your job. What I want you to consider is that David is not the average person. Every day you allow false claims to hang over my client, it does damage to his image and reputation. We would ask that you work quickly,” Ms. Dixon said.

After the detective left, we all sat down, created a timeline, and noted who could corroborate it. Ms. Dixon wouldn’t let us send it over to the detective until she verified it herself.

Personally, I was ready to kick Cal’s butt. If I found out he’d laid a finger on Pam—as I suspected he had—I would lay him out.

◊◊◊

After meeting with the detective, we made a plan for school. Mom would go in and get my assignments and smooth things over. I called Coach Hope and gave him an update. He wasn’t happy when I confirmed that Pam had taken out a restraining order on me, or rather, I suspected her dad had. Coach was even more upset when I told him to get my backup ready because if Pam was a cheerleader at the game, I wasn’t allowed to be there.

I quickly scanned my mental checklist of what was going on this week and remembered Halloween, and not just Halloween, but also the dance. Brook Davis would not be happy when she heard I couldn’t go. I figured this was a great place to start Operation: Get the Community Behind Me. Was it mean to hang Pam out to dry? Maybe. Like I warned her new shark, they wouldn’t like how this turned out.

◊◊◊

Frank had arranged to have the press conference at a local hotel. I was surprised when he had several people there to help him. They had press packets with my prepared remarks, and someone had written up a bio about me. There was also a thumb drive with video and pictures of me. It was all part of the plan to spoon-feed the press our side of the story. I even noticed a whiteboard in the corner with a handwritten notice of free Wi-Fi. I knew from staying in hotels that that was above and beyond the norm.

“How much is the hotel charging us for the free Wi-Fi?” I asked.

“It’s not the hotel’s Wi-Fi,” Frank said.

I looked at my phone and saw ‘Hotel Lincoln Conference Room’ as one of the links for Wi-Fi access, without any security. My phone had automatically linked to it because it was set up to switch to Wi-Fi to save on my data usage—which was dumb because I got unlimited data.

“Send me a text,” Frank said.

I did, and he took me to a laptop at a desk staffed by one of his people. On the screen, it showed my text message. Then she made a few keystrokes, and all my recent text messages and emails appeared.

“Is this even legal?” I asked.

“Sure, why not? It’s our network. Everyone knows they shouldn’t use free Wi-Fi in a hotel,” he said and saw the concern on my face. “I promise we won’t do anything malicious, like clear out your bank account. I can do that just by sending you our bill.”

“I guess I don’t understand. And why does it look like it’s the hotel’s Wi-Fi?” I asked.

“Does it? I told them to name it by the location so we’d know where we captured the information,” Frank said, and then smiled. “Look. It’s one of our dirty little secrets. What it allows us to do is get a better feel as to who’s on our side or not, and why.”

“I don’t think I need to know more. I’m in enough trouble as it is,” I worried.

“That reminds me, I need to get you a VPN to protect you. There are both software and hardware solutions. I think you need the software.”

“A what, a VPN?” I asked.