Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
Axel’s phone buzzed while he had the brewery’s new door controller spread across the workbench. He set down his screwdriver and read the alert.
NEW LISTING DETECTED. WALKER, REESE M.
He reached for his mouse and opened the page on his monitor.
Reese M. Walker. Twenty-six. Current location: Fate Mountain Village, Oregon. Previous location: Spokane, Washington.
Below that was a button promising current address, phone numbers, relatives, associates, and property history for $9.95. Axel stared at the current location field. Fate Mountain Village was a small town. All Wade would need to do was drive to town to find her.
Axel started working. The site’s opt-out form claimed removals took seven to ten business days. Axel wasn’t waiting that long. He saved the page to Reese’s case file and checked the domain.
The registration was only two weeks old and hidden behind a privacy service, but the site used the same template, the same privacy-policy language, and the same contact address as four people-search sites he already knew.
He sent the demand directly, with the screenshot attached and the prior case numbers in the subject line. Then he filed the search-engine removal request so the cached version wouldn’t keep serving the page after the site complied. But he couldn’t make either disappear on command.
So, he did the part he could do immediately. He searched for Reese Walker and Reese Sutton through every service and search engine he could access. Nothing else appeared.
The new site was the problem. It hadn’t existed when he built her protections. It had copied old data from somewhere else, posted a teaser page, and sat outside the list he was watching until his broader sweep caught it today.
His first instinct was to take Reese into hiding. He picked up his phone and typed.
The monitoring caught something today. I started the takedown, but I need to explain what it means in person. Is now okay?
Her reply came quickly.
Of course.
A few minutes later, he was knocking on her door. When she opened it, she invited him inside.
“What happened?”
He sat down and folded his hands on the table.
“A new people-search site posted a listing for you,” he said. “The public page showed your current location.”
She gasped.
“I sent the takedown demand and filed the cache request with the search engine. But that doesn’t make either one disappear immediately.”
“How did you miss that?”
“The site is only two weeks old. It wasn’t part of the broker list I was already monitoring. My broader sweep caught it today.”
“So, someone could’ve seen it.”
“Yes.”
She sat across from him, her face blank.
“The threat assessment has escalated. I’m meeting with Dom in the morning to bring you under protection. I’ll request access to one of our safe houses until the issue is contained.”