Jeff pointed his index finger towards the car, thumb cocked, and quickly drew a circle in the air with the moving car roughly at its centre. His contacts responded by projecting a bright pastel circle against the dark outline of the mountain slope, moving along with the headlights despite the intervening trees, while retrieving whatever public information might be available about the vehicle’s occupant or its registration. Nothing came back, but he hadn’t really expected it to.

The best thing to do was not to take any chances, so he hurried back inside the cabin and grabbed hold of the backpack. He could always hide out somewhere nearby until he saw who got out of the car. He hoisted the rucksack over his shoulders, remembering to pick up the car-jacker chip only at the last moment.

The fireplace still glowed fitfully in one corner. He’d added wood to it in just the last hour. If there was anyone inside that car looking to hurt him, they weren’t going to have too hard a time figuring out he’d only just departed. There wasn’t much he could do about that, so he quickly pulled on his gloves and ordered the cabin to turn its lights off, before stepping back out into the frigid evening air.

Jeff jogged along the gravel path fronting the cabin until he reached a flight of steps leading towards the summit of the hill. After ascending the first few dozen steps, he stopped and looked back in time to see the vehicle pull into the driveway.

As two figures got out of the car, Jeff felt a tension at the base of his spine. He reached out again, drawing a circle with them both at its centre. This time he enlarged a single frame of the two men at maximum magnification, until he could see their faces more clearly.

It took a second for his contacts to process the data, and he studied the faces of the two men, who were now approaching his cabin. He recognized neither. One had sandy hair that flew about his forehead when the wind caught it, while his taller companion, thin as a rake, clutched a lightweight suit jacket around his shoulders. Neither of them was dressed for the freezing weather.

Jeff’s teeth chattered, not entirely from the cold. He watched them confer for a moment, before they stepped up to the door of his cabin. The shorter one held in one hand what might be a weapon of some kind.

Jeff continued watching as they stepped inside, light flooding on to the gravel a moment later. With a sudden terrible lurch, he remembered that the contacts containing the stolen database were still hidden in the tool shed behind the cabin.

He gripped the wooden hand railing running alongside the steps, and swore quietly. How could he have been so stupid?