The three had gone through security to enter the building, but they were put through it again before entering the jail. The room they were shown to was plain. It looked like a very small version of their school lunchroom with six green plastic picnic tables bolted to the floor, overhead tube lighting, and lots of acoustic tile.
Wanda looked older than Finn remembered. She wore an orange jumpsuit with orlando city jail written across the front. Her hair was stringy. She’d been crying.
Finn, his mother, and Charlene sat on the bench facing her. A guard stood just outside the door.
“So, how are you?” Finn asked.
Wanda smirked, her twisted smile telling him more than he wanted to know. “Been better,” she said.
“We’ve posted bail,” Mrs. Whitman said. “Tomorrow sometime, I’m told.”
“Thank you so much, but I wouldn’t count on it. I’ve been told by the attorney they appointed that they may try for Homeland Security charges. That’s probably why the delay.”
“What did you do?” Charlene asked.
Wanda lowered her voice. “My father has me monitor bandwidth usage on the DHI server, the same way Philby sometimes does.”
Finn nodded. If bandwidth usage surged, it meant extremely large data packs were moving in and out of the DHI servers. That, in turn, meant someone was crossing over or Returning. Wayne watched for unusual or unexpected bandwidth usage as a warning sign of possible Overtaker interference.
Wanda said, “There has been some unusual activity: data surges late, late at night. A spike at one point from the Animal Kingdom server. Others as well. We knew something was going on, we just didn’t know what. So I hacked one of Disney’s multi protocol routers. If the Internet is the information superhighway, I hacked a major intersection, a truck stop. That’s probably why the Homeland Security charges. It’s kind of like hacking Google or Microsoft.”
“But you work for Disney,” Finn said.
“That just makes matters worse. I look like a disgruntled employee.”
“Oh, my,” said Mrs. Whitman.
“I came away with more questions than answers. What seemed to be happening couldn’t possibly be happening. I needed more data, more time to drill deeper. That was when I was arrested, in the middle of all that. It was only then I realized that I’d probably been set up. That I’d walked into a trap.”
She looked each of them in the eye, making sure they understood the earnestness of what she was about to tell them. “Our friends,” she said, meaning the Overtakers, who weren’t their friends at all, “knew that if they made enough noise on the DHI servers it would attract our interest. Mine. Philby’s. Someone’s. They could then alert the authorities, who would follow the data mining back to its source and arrest whoever was messing around—in this case, me. That would then mean that I’d need to be bailed out, and who would bail me out?”
“Wayne,” Finn answered. “Wait a second! Are you saying it was all a way to make Wayne show himself?”
“To draw him out,” Wanda said, nodding. “That’s my guess. A father’s first instinct is to save his children. My dad nearly came here. If he had, he’d never have made it through the doors. They’d have had him out front. I’m sure of it.”
“So he contacted Philby in order to not come here in person,” Finn said. “I made him promise not to come,” Wanda said. “Was the Internet stuff you turned up for real?”
Charlene asked. “We won’t know without more tests,” she answered, “more investigation.”
“Do you know where your father is?” Charlene asked.
More questions, Finn thought. He said, “That’s none of our business!”
“It is, if the police are going to torture her or something,” Charlene said.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Charlene,” Mrs. Whitman said. “That kind of thing only happens in movies.”
Wanda and Finn exchanged a questioning look.
“We’ve got to get you out of here,” Mrs. Whitman said.
* * *
As the bus from the Transportation Center rolled into Epcot, Finn spotted a pair of crash-test dummies—CTDs—on Segways patrolling the parking lot and pointed them out to Jess. Moving her dark hair off her face to get a better view, Jess’s features reflected off the bus window. She had a teardrop chin with full lips and wide-set eyes. She changed her hair color—which had turned horse-tail white after an encounter with Maleficent—several times a year. She pointed out the Segways to Amanda.
The overhead monorail line divided the enormous parking lots; the lane beneath it was used for the parking lot shuttles and as a pedestrian walkway leading to the Park’s front gates.