“This is our control room and through the windows there, you see what we call the ‘front forty,’ ” McGinnis said. “All of our colocation services are centered here. This is primarily where your firm’s material would be held. We have forty towers in here holding close to a thousand dedicated servers. And, of course, there’s room for more. We’ll never run out of room.”

The man in the suit nodded thoughtfully.

“I’m not worried about room. Our concern is security.”

“Yes, this is why we stepped in here. I wanted you to meet Wesley Carver. Wesley wears a number of hats around here. He is our chief technology officer as well as our top threat engineer and the designer of the data center. He can tell you all you need to know about colocation security.”

Another dog and pony show. Carver shook the suit’s hand. He was introduced as David Wyeth of the St. Louis law firm Mercer and Gissal. It sounded like crisp white shirts and tweed. Carver noticed that Wyeth had a barbecue stain on his tie. Whenever they came into town McGinnis took them to eat at Rosie’s Barbecue.

Carver gave Wyeth the show by rote, covering everything and saying everything the silk-stocking lawyer wanted to hear. Wyeth was on a barbecue-and-due-diligence mission. He would go back to St. Louis and report on how impressed he had been. He would tell them that this was the way to go if the firm wanted to keep up with changing technologies and times.

And McGinnis would get another contract.

All the while he spoke, Carver was thinking about the intruder they had been chasing. Out there somewhere, not expecting the come-uppance that was speeding toward him. Carver and his young disciples would loot his personal bank accounts, take his identity and hide photos of men having sex with eight-year-old boys on his work computer. Then he would crash it with a replicating virus. When the intruder couldn’t fix it he would call in an expert. The photos would be found and the police would be called.