Liberation Day - A Thorn Byrd Novel

by Dustin Stevens

Abby was asleep in the exact same spot she’d been in four hours earlier when Thorn returned. Her oversized eyes split open and her backside nudged itself to and fro in greeting at the sight of him, but no part of her fleshy body raised itself from the couch.

  Cracking a smile, Thorn shrugged off the blazer he was wearing and dropped it over the back of a dining room chair. “Give me ten minutes, girl,” he called out, unbuttoning the cuffs of his sleeves and rolling them to the elbow.

  Opening up the laptop residing on the island in the middle of his kitchen, he pulled the video conference system to life and dialed.

  The line rang three times before being picked up, Ingram on the other side, a trace of irritation in his voice. “Talk to me.”

  Thorn leaned in and rested his palms on the counter, glancing at the glowing digital clock on the stove reading it was nudging eleven.

  “Sorry for the late call. Just got in.”

  “So you had dinner at Cardoza’s?” Ingram asked, ignoring the apology.

  For a moment, Thorn thought of pointing out that every other time they’d spoken recently was early in the morning, before he’d been to bed at all, but opted not to comment. The odds were nothing good could come from it.

  “I did. Cardoza said he wanted to meet and thank me for what happened the other night.”

  “Tallo there?”

  “He was,” Thorn said, still leaning forward over the edge of the counter, giving an oversized nod. “He was pretty quiet, seemed like he was invited more to keep up appearances than anything.”

  The same tinge of irritation was still obvious as Ingram nodded. “Interesting. Anything useful?”

  A feeling mixed of amusement and chagrin arose within Thorn, but again he kept it tamped down, forcing an impending smile away from his face. The hour was nowhere near late enough to earn any enmity, meaning his call must have interrupted some sort of late night endeavors.

  Again he had to fight to keep down a smile.

  “Oh, yeah,” Thorn said. “After the cars didn’t attract attention, I was wondering what to try next. Cardoza answered that for us.”

  The tiny bit of annoyance fled from Ingram’s features, replaced by realization. He nodded slowly, his jaw working up and down as he processed. “There’s another container coming in.”

  “Tomorrow night,” Thorn confirmed.

  Any remaining bits of animosity were completely gone from Ingram as he stared back at Thorn. ”Are we ready?”

  “We will be,” Thorn replied. “Can you get me a few things before then?”

  Reaching out in front of him, Ingram pulled a pad and pen onto his lap. “What do you need?”

  “What do we have in the way of tracking devices?”

  Ingram’s eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch, his gaze rising to stare into the camera. “Tracking devices? What do you have in mind?”

  “Small, but strong enough to cover a fairly large radius.”

  “How small? And how large a radius?”

  The left side of Thorn’s face scrunched as he wagged his head in a non-committal gesture. ”Small enough I can plant it on them without it being noticed. A large enough area to monitor wherever they go afterwards.”

  Setting aside his pad, Ingram went to work on the keyboard in front of him. “You want something you can press on their person?”

  “No,” Thorn replied. “That can be removed. I was thinking more of tagging them.”

  Ingram’s hands stopped mid-air, floating above the keyboard. “Tagging...as in, internally?”

  “As in internally.”

  A trace of surprise crossed Ingram’s face, his head rocking back an inch. “You’ve done this before haven’t you?”

  Thorn met his gaze a moment before glancing away, Abby’s moist eyes shining in the darkened living room. “More than once.”

  He remained focused toward the opposite room, hoping his boss got the message. What he had done before, what he intended to do in the near future, weren’t things he was terribly proud of. That didn’t change the fact that they had to be done, just that they didn’t need to be rehashed at length.

  “I shipped the image you sent me to our tech guys to see what they could do with it,” Ingram said, picking up the insinuation, drawing Thorn’s gaze back to the screen. “I’m emailing it over to you now.”

  Using a wireless mouse, Thorn dropped Ingram’s face away from the screen and pulled up the incoming file. It was based on the image he had pulled from the surveillance camera, a digital rendition filling in all the missing portions.

  Even with that, and the resolution enhanced, it still made for a rather generic composite.

  “Our database returned nothing, which isn’t that surprising,” Ingram said. “Off the books henchman, could be anyone.”

  Thorn shook his head, staring at the image. He had yet to see the man in person, but was fast becoming familiar with his handiwork. “I don’t think this guy is a run-of-the-mill henchman. More like a soldier of fortune.”

  His face still minimized from the screen, Ingram said, “As you can see, he’s clearly of Asian ancestry, most likely Chinese. I’ve already started inroads into our contacts there, but so far nothing.”

  Thorn remained silent, trying to think back a few nights before, to jar something loose, some sighting of the man that he hadn’t realized before.

  As best he could tell, there was nothing there.

  “You recognize the guy at all?” Ingram asked, as if seeing the internal monologue playing across Thorn’s face.

  Shaking his head, Thorn minimized the picture, Ingram’s face replacing it on screen. “No. Not to sound like a racial bigot, but he looks like most every other Chinese man I’ve ever seen.”

  Ingram snorted back a laugh. “I said the exact same thing.”

  Silence fell between them a moment before Thorn pushed himself to full height, clapping his hands together in front of him. “With that, I think I might actually get some sleep tonight.”

  “Have fun with that,” Ingram said. “I’ll have those devices to you early tomorrow.”

  “Sounds good. And be on standby tomorrow night if you can. If I’m able to get them planted, I’ll need you to be my eyes on them.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  “Thanks, Coach,” Thorn said, the right half of his mouth twitching upward. “And sorry about interrupting whatever I interrupted tonight.”

  A rye look passed over Ingram’s face and for a moment Thorn thought for sure he was going to be on the receiving end of a middle finger. Just as fast it passed, Ingram signing off with a simple wave of the hand.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Thorn said, the smile growing full across his face.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine