Resistance: A Prepper's War Read Free Page B

barked.
     
    Once Chase was out of the parlor room and into the hallway, he began the walk down to his office. His footsteps echoed off of the finished oak floors up into the high ceilings of the house. He passed paintings, sculptures, and elegantly decorative furniture. The house looked more like a museum than a home. When he reached his office he opened the door to find Derrick sitting in the chair across from his desk typing away on his laptop.
     
    “Where are we at with Kearny’s widow?” Chase demanded.
     
    “Still looking for her,” Derrick responded.
     
    She was the missing link for him right now. Out of all of the people that disappeared he needed to find her the most.
     
    Derrick looked up and noticed the frustration on his brother’s face. “Why are you so convinced that Matt would have sent it to her?” he asked.
     
    Chase sat down forcefully onto his char and he leaned back as he bit his thumbnail. “Because,” he said, “we should have received his back up code by now and if his instructions weren’t to send it to us, then he must have sent it to her.”
     
    Derrick closed his laptop to focus his attention on his brother. “We’ve had our contacts watch all possible avenues. If Matt had instructions for a delivery then we would know about it.”
     
    “Keep an eye on the Congressman for me. He seems to be losing his nerve,” Chase said.
     
    Derrick nodded and reached for his phone. He instructed one of the guards to tail the Congressman and then dialed over to his staff’s office to confirm that he reached out to Furth and Wessick.
     
    Chase powered on his computer and opened up a file labeled ‘Matt Kearny.’ He browsed through pictures of Matt with his wife Samantha and daughter Annie. Birthday parties, vacations, it was all there in front of him. The sum of one man’s life that had worked for him compressed down into one gigabyte of data. He clicked on a subfolder labeled ‘Work’ and it opened up files of code and projects that Matt was in charge of.
     
    Chase never really interacted with Matt directly, but he was always impressed by the diligence in which he processed his work. Matt never missed an assignment, failed to hit a deadline, or showed any sign of disloyalty. The fact that he hadn’t received Matt’s final code sheet raised some concerns.
     
    “Wessick and Furth are good to go,” Derrick said getting off the phone.
     
    “Good,” Chase replied. “Where are we with San Diego?” Chase asked.
     
    “Everything’s on schedule. You were right in anticipating the President to bring home troops to help stabilize the country after the attacks. There’s over a quarter million soldiers in the southern California area right now,” Derrick said.
     
    “So predictable,” Chase drawled.

“Do you need me for anything else?” Derrick asked.
     
    Chase looked at his brother and smiled. “No, you can go,” he said. Derrick folded up his laptop and headed out the door; just before Derrick left, Chase called out to him.
     
    “I love you, Derrick.”
     
    “I love you too, Chase.”
     
    Derrick shut the door behind him and Chase listened to his brother’s footsteps fade down the hallway. He around in his chair and looked at a family portrait of himself, his brother, mother, and father taken when they were children. Chase had to have been eleven and Derrick was six.
     
    They fought all the time when they were younger. Derrick had tried to beat him in everything, but always fell short. Chase was smarter, faster, and stronger at everything they competed in.
     
    He remembered one time when he was fifteen and was playing his brother in a game of one-on-one on the driveway of their parents’ home in Indiana. Chase had just hit his first growth spurt and was a good foot taller than his brother at the time. He had just won his third game in a row when his father came out and pulled him aside.
     
    Chase’s dad was never one for backing down, but he told Chase to let