by Dale Mayer
*
Joe’s face had been lit with a happy surprise at seeing her, but it turned to fear when Eton stepped in behind her. Eton stood in the doorway, trying not to crowd the man, who looked like he was about to explode. When it seemed like he had calmed down a bit, Eton asked, “Do you want to explain why you tried to get me killed?”
Joe stared at Eton in consternation, but immediately Sammy stepped forward and talked to him in his native tongue. Eton understood just enough to know that Joe didn’t want to talk.
She came closer to Eton and whispered, “I don’t want to be the one who tells him.”
“Joe,” Eton said, looking at him. “I know your son was in the middle of all this. Unfortunately the people who did this to you killed Harry tonight.”
Joe stared at Eton in shock. He looked at Sammy, back at Eton, then shook his head. “No, no, he was working with him.”
“But Harry failed,” Eton said quietly. “Anybody who fails in that world doesn’t survive another day.”
“He didn’t fail,” Joe said. “We got you there.”
“Is that why you helped him? Because otherwise, something like this would happen?”
Immediately Joe’s head nodded. “They said that nothing would happen if we got you there.”
“Well, something did happen. They blew up my vehicle, and your son was in there with me,” he said.
“No, no, no, the bomb was for you, not for him.”
“No, Joe,” she said smoothly. “They detonated the bomb remotely, and they would have known Harry was inside.”
“They were getting rid of a thread they didn’t want to deal with,” Eton said.
Joe looked at her with tears welling up in his eyes; then he sank back and started to cry. She reached over, grabbed his hand, and said, “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really very sorry.”
He tried hard to speak, and then he just gave up.
Eton leaned against the door and waited, wondering how long to give Joe to regain his composure. Finally, after a few moments, Joe used the sheet to wipe off his face.
Sammy gently but firmly took the lead. “Joe, we need to know who was involved in this,” she said. “Obviously you turned Eton here over to the bad guys, and I want to believe that you had a good reason for it, but the bottom line is that you have now suffered a loss, and Eton is still alive. He is trying to save his own life and that of his team. They’re all being targeted,” she murmured.
He just stared at her and shook his head.
She nodded. “Yes, we need to know what’s going on.”
Joe looked at Eton, and the fear was back.
Eton asked him, “You think something will happen to you now?”
Joe pursed his lips, as he thought about it. “It’s possible.”
Eton stood with his arms across his chest, making no move to leave, until he got the answers he wanted. He looked at Joe and said, “You set me up and prepared to have me killed, for whatever reason you’d reconciled in your mind,” he said. “Now your son is dead, and you’ve been attacked, and you yourself are likely the next target. I’ve always been a target, but this is new for you. What will you do about it? Save your life so you have a chance to help this other family of yours? Or was that all BS too?” he asked him, with absolutely no attempt to lighten the harshness of his voice.
He’d leave it to Sammy to try to soften this, to further explain. But, from the look on Joe’s face, no more explanation was needed.
Then Joe rushed to speak, once again breaking back into the thick dialect that he and Sammy seemed to be natural at. Finally, when Joe fell silent, Sammy turned to Eton. “They offered a large amount of money. Enough to cover the surgery and all the equipment needed for his grandson.”
She gave Eton a gentle smile. “Like I said, there is no love like love for family.”
“Even though Joe was willing to kill somebody in the process? What makes him any different from any other criminal on the street?” he asked, showing absolutely no sign of breaking, talking to her as if Joe wasn’t in the room.
“I know,” she said. “I get that. And I get that, for you, this is a big deal.”
“Yeah, it is a big deal,” he said. “Just think if it was you or your father Joe was willing to kill.”
She winced at that. “Right,” she said. “It’s easy to do something like this if it’s not personal.”
“Absolutely, but it is personal in this case,” Eton said. “Very personal. This is my life we’re talking about and the lives of my friends. We’ve all been to hell and back. So I want answers, and I want them now. Either you get answers for me or you step out of this room, and I’ll get the answers my way.”
She stood up tall and walked to Eton and damned if she stood toe-to-toe with him, glaring all the while. “This old man is hurt and not in very good shape emotionally, so you are not to threaten him.”
He glared down at her, and she shook her head. “No, Eton,” she said. “He’s just an old man, trying to save his family.”
“I know,” he bit off. “But—” Then his voice trailed away, as he stared at her.
She shook her head. “No buts,” she said gently. “This is what we have to deal with.”
“If he doesn’t talk, what do you suggest I do?”
Just then Joe started to talk.
She spun around, looked at Joe, and answered him in the same dialect. Finally, she turned to Eton and said, “He wants to talk. He is afraid that you’re right and that they might come after him now.”
“There’s no might about it,” Eton said. “He’s a loose thread. Joe gave up his life the minute he got involved in this.”
She looked at Eton and winced. “Do we have to say it quite so harshly?”
“The truth is the truth,” he said.
She rejoined Joe at his bedside, sat down, and asked, “Who hired you to do this?”
“Karl,” he said, “Karl Babinshe.”
She frowned and said, “I know that name, but I don’t know why.”
“He’s one of the old owners of a company here,” Joe said. “He invested in that townhome property development the first time but not the second time.”
“Why did he hire you, and what did he want you to do?” Eton asked him.
“He said that we were to deliver you there and to leave. All he wanted was for us to take you there.”
“And when did you know about this?”
“They contacted me after I saw you at the café,” he said.
At that, Eton raised his gaze. “I knew I was being followed, but I didn’t realize it was to that extent.”
Joe nodded. “They follow you all the time,” he said. He looked at Sammy and said, “You are in danger too.”
“That’s one of the reasons I’m here now,” she said, “because I am in danger. Everybody is in danger. They’ve already killed your son, and you are next, and they tried to kill Eton.”
“You should go away,” Joe said abruptly to Sammy.
“What do you know about them?” Eton asked.
“I don’t know anything,” he said. “Karl asked me to do it as a favor. I told him that I didn’t want to do anything illegal, and he said that it wasn’t. That I would just take you up there. Then, when I got there, and I went inside the building to tell him that you were on the way, nobody was there. Instead, I was attacked from behind.” He reached up to his head. “I’m too old for this shit,” he muttered.
“Then you shouldn’t have gotten into the game in the first place,” Eton said. “How do I find this Karl guy?”
“He has a big home up around the next town,” he said. “He spends a lot of time walking in the hills.”
“Did he give you a reason why he wanted to see me?”
“He said that somebody else needed something from you, and he’d been asked to get it.”
“That’s very nebulous,” Eton said.
Joe nodded. “I know. I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to do it. I knew I s
houldn’t have. I shouldn’t have gotten involved at all,” he said. “It’s not who I want to be.”
“Or who your wife would like you to be,” Sammy reminded him. At that, Joe looked out the window. “I almost wish I were dead now,” he said, “and that I could be with her.”
“Not yet,” Eton said, “but, if you keep it up, it will be that way. Then you’ve left your grandson with nobody to help him.”
“A lot of money was involved,” Joe said. “More money than I could ever make.”
“That’s how they do it,” Eton said. “They find your weakness, and they exploit it.” That was something that Eton himself could really understand. He didn’t like it, but he understood it. He looked down at Sammy, saw the soft look on her face, and sighed. He turned to Joe. “What else can you tell me?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know.”
“Do you have his contact information?”
“He phoned me,” he said.
“And how is he to pay you?”
“The money arrived in my bank today,” he said.
“I want the account number,” Eton said. “So we can track it back.”
“You don’t think it came from him?”
“Oh, it probably did,” he said, “but I need to figure out who gave it to him. I need the account that it came from.”
“Oh,” he said. He hesitated. “Will you take away the money?”
At that, Sammy leaned forward, patted his hand, and said, “Eton won’t. But I don’t know about the police.”
At that, his face crestfallen, Joe nodded and said, “Right. I guess the police have to be called, don’t they?”
“Well, you did accept money to help get me killed,” Eton said, with a cool tone. He was prepared to give Joe somewhat of a pass, but Eton didn’t want to let him off the hook completely.
At that, Joe just nodded and stared down at the bedsheet.
“What about your son Harry? What was he involved in?”
“He was hired by Karl to make a bunch of phone calls that they needed done.”
“Up at the building complex?”
“Yeah, he’d come up when I was there,” he said, “and use the phones up there. Where nobody knew what he was doing or where he was.”
“So, tell me everything you can about the work you did for Karl,” he ordered, “and everything you saw.” By the time Joe was done talking, Eton understood that his son Harry was probably as much of a dupe as Joe was. “Has your son ever held down a regular job?”
“Yes, but not for long,” Joe admitted. “He’s always had big plans that never materialized. He’s the baby who came into our lives later. We took him in as a baby, never could legally adopt him, so kept his name as is and treated him as our own,” he said. “We spoiled him. I know we shouldn’t have, but we did. Now he’s gone.”
Just then a knock came at the door, and a nurse stepped in. She quickly ushered them out. The last thing Eton said to Joe was, “I’ll see what security we can set up for you. Besides that we’ll see you tomorrow.”
Joe nodded, and then the door closed.
As they walked out of the hospital, Sammy asked, “Now what?”
“Now I go visit this Karl guy,” he said. “And now that I have Joe’s bank account number, I backtrack that payment.” He’d already texted the number to Garret, who passed it on to other members of the team. “We should have answers soon.” He led the way to the vehicle, and, as they got to the parking lot, the Spidey sense on the back of his neck started to tingle.
“Stay close,” he said, his hand reaching to his back, where he kept his lower back holster. He turned and looked around again.
She snuggled up close and asked, “What is it?”
“We’re being watched for one thing,” he said, “but it might be worse than that.”
He walked to the car, which was Joe’s car, then walked around it ever-so-slowly.
“What’s the matter?”
He gave her a sideways look. “Well, just a few hours ago, when I got into a vehicle, it blew up.”
She winced and said, “Maybe we should go back inside and wait for alternative transportation.”
“Not a bad idea,” he said, and he quickly led her inside. He already had his phone out, arranging for a ride. When Garret called him back ten minutes later, he said, “Give it about two minutes, then walk out to the front, and I should be there.”
He looked at her and said, “We’re about to get our ride home.”
“Good,” she said nervously. “But how do we know if it’s safe?”
“Because it’s Garret,” he said.
“How did he get here so fast?”
“He was already coming in behind us,” he said. “We needed to make sure we had more backup than last time.”
He didn’t add that Garret had come without Eton’s knowledge, but it made perfect sense that he would. Just as Eton was ready to step out, a large truck with leather and chrome drove up to the front of the hospital. “This is him,” Eton said, and he rushed her out the door and into the front of the big truck, giving her a hand up. He jumped in right behind her, the whole thing happening in a matter of seconds. As soon as they were in, Garret hit the gas and pulled away.
“Will we just leave Joe’s car?” Sammy asked.
“Yes, but we’ll have Ice send a team to check it out and to make sure it’s safe.”
Chapter 11
When Sammy got back to her place, she didn’t want to end up alone in the house. She hated to say goodbye. Looking at the two men, still seated in the truck, she asked, “Do you want to come in?”
They hesitated, and Garret said, “We can come in for a few minutes.”
Eton looked at him and said, “Maybe you should head back.”
“No way, we are staying together,” he said.
“Any reason?” she asked lightly, as she hopped from the vehicle, but they rushed her inside right away. She looked up at Eton, as the door closed behind them. “Were we followed?”
“No, not that we saw,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean we didn’t miss somebody.”
“Right, in other words, I’m in danger.”
“Anybody involved in this deal is in danger,” he said. He looked around at the house and smiled. “An architect’s dream.”
“It was my parents’ dream home,” she said, with a faint smile. She headed to the stairs, as she realized just how late it was. “My father should be asleep,” she said.
“Do me a favor,” he said, walking around. “Go upstairs, and just check to make sure that he’s there.”
She shot him a startled look and raced to her father’s bedroom. Thankfully she saw his head poking out from under the covers. As she came downstairs, she sank into an armchair. “Don’t scare me like that,” she said in a harsh whisper.
“It’s a different story when it’s personal, isn’t it?” he said, with a sideways glance.
She nodded. “I know,” she said. “I was trying to be easy on Joe because you weren’t.”
“There’s a time and a place,” he said, “but we needed answers.”
She nodded. “Is my father in danger?”
“I can’t say for sure because I don’t know how deep or how long this thing goes.” He looked at Garret, as he sat down, even now already on his laptop. “Any updates?” Eton asked Garret.
“Some. We have a history on this Karl guy. We have his bank account, and now we’ve seen where the transfer to Joe came from. It was his account, but there is money in and out of that account on a steady basis that we are tracking down even now,” he said.
Eton looked at her and asked, “Any chance of coffee?”
“Certainly,” she said and hopped up. As she went into the kitchen, Eton sat down beside Garret. “What aren’t you telling me?”
She could still hear them from the kitchen and deliberately listened in.
“One, the door was tampered with when we got here.”
Eton nodded
. “I saw that.”
“So you can’t leave her alone,” Garret said.
“I wasn’t planning on it. Next?”
“Ice says that Karl has connections to a big security company in Africa.”
He looked at him in shock. “What connections?”
“He has funded some small jobs around the world, and he fancies himself a bit of an arms dealer.”
“Well, that’s not good news. What company in Africa?”
“Apparently our main competitor,” he said.
Eton sat here and stared at him. “Are you talking about Kingdom Securities?”
“Yep,” Garret said. “We’ve never had any problems with them before though.”
“I don’t believe it,” Eton said. “We’ve even done jobs with them.”
“I know. Obviously this Karl guy has also funded a few jobs through them.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Eton murmured.
“So far, none of it does, but we are finding more and more players every day, so potentially this may be the origin of the whole thing. Do you think it’s the boss, or do you think somebody else in that company—like Krager—may want to stage a takeover or create a splinter group or what?”
“In this case it could be somebody in the company,” Eton surmised.
“We’ve known that Krager sometimes has a hard time keeping control of his hires.”
“That’s what I was wondering,” Eton said, “and I suppose it’s possible that, by trying to take out our team, Krager would increase business for himself.”
“Only if he was planning to take over Kingdom,” Garret said. “And, if that’s the case, there’s no ceiling to the trouble they could create.” Garret stared at Eton for a moment. “Are you willing to go back to the chalet, or should we both stay with her here?” Garret asked, shrugging.
“It’s probably not fair to her father to have both of us moving in here,” he said, with half a smile.
“No, probably not, but then maybe we should take her and move her up with us.”
“And that won’t happen either,” Eton said, shaking his head.
“No, she won’t leave her father. Particularly after you asked her to check on him,” Garret said.
