by David Archer
“No, don’t do that. I just hope you manage to make it in tonight. I really can’t wait to see you, baby.”
The reference to a chess game was a code that Noah and Neil had worked out before Noah left. It meant that there was a development in the mole situation, so Noah was confident that Neil would relay that information back to Allison. Once they arrived, Noah could fill him in on the details about the meeting, and Neil would be able to transmit that information to one of the gamers back at Neverland.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
It was almost three in the afternoon before Forney called. “I got you some guys,” he said. “Where would you like to meet up?”
“Take them out to my place,” Noah said. “We’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”
He and Ralph were in the car at the time, so Noah made a couple of turns to get back onto the highway and headed for his new house. Ralph looked over at him, and there was a nervous glint in his eye.
“You really bought the haunted place, right?”
“That’s the rumor,” Noah said. “I haven’t seen any sign of ghosts, though. To be honest, I think the whole story is bogus. Apparently the old guy had something wrong with his lungs and coughed up a crap ton of blood all over his kitchen. The story about him killing himself there came from the people who went to clean it up, but I checked and double-checked. He died in the hospital of complications from emphysema. Don’t think there’s any haunting going on out at my place.”
The kid smiled, but the nervousness didn’t quite fade away.
When they got to the house, Forney and the others had not arrived yet. Noah parked in the driveway and led Ralph inside, leaving Shawn and Jake out in the yard. The boy was looking all around as they entered, and made a point of poking his head into every doorway for at least a few seconds.
“I think you’re right,” he said, visibly relaxing. “I think I’d feel it if this place was really haunted.”
Noah shrugged. “I don’t feel anything. I’ve got root beer and cola. You want something?”
“Got any beer? The real stuff, I mean?”
Noah grinned. “Sure,” he said. He went into the kitchen and came back a moment later with two bottles of Bud Light and passed one to the boy. They sat down, Ralph on the couch and Noah in a recliner, to wait for Forney and the others.
They didn’t wait long. They arrived a few minutes later, and Noah invited them all inside.
Forney made the introductions all around, and Noah spoke with each of the new candidates for a few seconds. As far as he could tell, all of them were serious about their willingness to take the job, so he agreed to taking them on. Two of them, men named Chuck and Riley, he immediately assigned to the afternoon shift with David, whom Forney had also brought along. David took his new subordinates outside to talk, and it appeared they were going to get along well.
Noah delegated the responsibility for scheduling to Forney and then told him to take over running the day crew. Noah would also be present, he said, at least most of the time, but with his wife coming in late that night he would probably be late in the morning. Having Forney in charge, however, would make it possible for Noah to move himself around, get a little rest when he needed so that he could pop in on the other shifts and see how they were doing. Forney shook his hand and left, taking all of the other men with him.
At four, Noah told Shawn and Jake they could go off duty, then offered each of them a beer. They hung around for an hour or so, then headed for their homes. Each of them seemed surprisingly proud of his new job, and Noah suspected they had wives or girlfriends they wanted to brag to for the evening.
David and his men took over then, and Ralph left with them. Noah was finally alone and allowed himself to relax for a bit. He picked up the satellite TV controller and turned on the television, then kicked off his shoes and put his feet up. A moment later he sat up again, took the pistol off his belt, and laid it on an end table beside his chair, then leaned back once more.
He caught the local news programs and paid particular attention to a couple of stories about murder in the area. It seemed the local sheriff’s office was having a hard time finding clues in the recent murder of a local thug named Benny Smoot, but they were confident they would make an arrest sometime in the next few days. The other murder had happened a few months earlier, when a homeless man had apparently been robbed and then beaten and set on fire. He had not died at the time but had suffered burns over most of his body and passed away almost a week later in the hospital.
In this case, there was genuine outrage in the sheriff’s voice when he appeared on camera. Apparently the old fellow had been a veteran, a local fixture around town for several years. He had never been known to cause any problems or hurt anyone, and the sheriff was determined to find his killer. A reward of almost $10,000 was being offered by local businessmen.
The weather followed the news, and Noah noted emotionlessly that it was supposed to rain the following day. Weather was something he rarely thought about, unless it was going to interfere with his mission. In this case, rain simply meant that he would want to put on a light, waterproof jacket. This mission was not going to be over soon, and he didn’t want to start planning for its conclusion just yet. It was now that he was beginning to meet a number of the people he would have to take out.
Ronnie Sneed, for example, was the type of person Noah would expect to find on his target list. The man could laugh about people who died from overdose, and didn’t seem to care at all about the families who were hurt when drug abuse struck them. While Noah could not feel compassion for these people, his own personal moral code required him to consciously abhor their deaths and suffering. He would never, even if he had a conscience, lose any sleep over killing a man like Sneed. It would fall under the heading of community service, as far as he was concerned.
He had met others, as well. There were at least a dozen lieutenants under Morgan, each of them responsible for overseeing one of the many divisions of his criminal empire. Noah filed each name and face away in his memory and reminded himself constantly to be alert for any further information he might pick up on them. The Morgan Mafia was a hydra, with many, many heads. When he struck, it was his intent to eliminate all of them so thoroughly that none of them could grow back.
This led into thinking about Ralph. Other than being the son of a criminal boss, he seemed to be a fairly typical teenager. Unfortunately, he had been groomed all his life for the day when he would take over the illegal enterprises his father had founded. His elevation to running the drug operations was a step in that direction, and Noah had no qualms about him being on the target list.
The trick, he knew, was going to be figuring out how to take them all out at around the same time. If any of them survived for any length of time—more than an hour or so—it would give them the opportunity to regroup and possibly even resurrect the organization. This was something Noah did not intend to allow.
He cleared his mind and turned his attention back to the television, flipping channels until he found a movie he wanted to watch. Strangely enough, he felt very comfortable in the house, and it wasn’t long before he dozed off in the recliner.
The sound of tires crunching on gravel woke him, and Noah was up out of his chair instantly, the pistol snatched off the table and out of its holster without him even thinking about it. A quick look out the window, however, showed him that it was very dark out and the vehicle coming up the driveway was towing a trailer. He put the gun back in its holster and onto the table, then shoved his feet back into shoes and stepped out the front door.
Sarah had made good time. It was actually just a little after two in the morning, even though she had lost an hour on the way due to the time zone change. Noah stepped off the front porch and walked quickly out to where she parked, right beside the Charger.
She jumped out of the SUV quickly and ran to him, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him passionately. Noah returned the embrace, surprising even him
self with the relief he felt at having her back in his arms.
When they finally broke for air, Neil was standing close by, a silly grin on his face. “I thought she was going to smother you to death for a moment there,” he said. “Good to see you again, Rex.”
“You too, punk,” Noah said. “Come on in, we can unload that tomorrow.”
“Sounds good to me,” Neil said. “Just let me grab my computer. That’s all I need for tonight.”
He reached back into the SUV and grabbed the case that contained his laptop, one he had been given by Allison when he had first been recruited and which had been upgraded several times since then. It was capable of reaching the internet through cell towers or by direct satellite uplink, all with the built-in, internal antenna system it contained. It also held more computing power than all of the computers NASA used during the Apollo and space shuttle programs. He carried it up onto the front porch, then stopped and giggled when Noah swept Sarah up into his arms and carried her across the threshold.
“You already did this once,” she whispered into his ear.
“But this is the first house I ever bought for you,” he replied. “We can’t let an opportunity go to waste, now, can we?”
She burst out laughing and threw her arms around his neck. She smothered his cheek with kisses until he dropped her suddenly onto the couch, then sat down beside her.
Noah looked up at Neil as he set his computer case down beside the recliner. “Why don’t you check the place out? Never know what you might find that I missed,” he said.
Neil grinned and opened the case. Besides holding the computer, there were several other items of electronic equipment inside. He picked up one of them, a small silvery box with a digital meter, and turned it on. It was marked as a signal strength meter, but it had another purpose.
It took him about five minutes to walk all the way through the house, watching the readout the entire time. When he was satisfied, he returned to the living room and put the box back inside the case.
“All clear,” he said. “No microphones, no cameras, no bugs of any kind.”
“Good,” Noah replied. He was leaning back on the couch, with Sarah’s legs thrown over his lap. “That last call from our mysterious friend was the one we’ve been waiting for, I think. He’s coming to this area tomorrow—later today, I mean—and is willing to meet with me. He’s trying to talk me into leaving E & E and going to work for him directly, baiting it with the idea that I’d be able to have a normal life.”
Sarah’s eyebrows went up. “A normal life? You’re not actually considering this, are you?”
“No. I’m just pretending to be interested in order to secure this meeting. He made quite a point about the fact that he won’t be alone, however. It may be impossible for me to take any action against him this time, so I may have to keep up the act a while longer.”
“And of course,” Neil said, “he’s not going to give you any advance notice on where to meet. That’d make it too easy to set up a hit, or try to take him into custody.”
“Right. I’m planning to go to this one unarmed, just try to establish an atmosphere of trust. My idea is to try to convince him that I’m the jealous type, that if he wants me, then he’s got to make sure I’m number one. I won’t answer to anybody but him, and I’ve got to have enough access to make it certain that I could burn him if he betrays me.”
“Honor among thieves,” Sarah said. “My dad used to deal with the people he sold cars to the same way. Make sure you got enough on them to hang their butts out to dry if they ever turn on you.”
Noah nodded. “Exactly. It’s the only kind of trust model that could work in a situation like this. He has to be just as concerned about what I’ll do as I would be about what he might do.”
“I like this place,” Sarah said suddenly. “But I have been driving all day and I’m tired. Can we discuss these things tomorrow?”
Without a word, Noah pushed her legs gently off and stood up, taking her by the hand and leading her toward the master bedroom. “I’ll let you sleep in,” he said as they walked down the hall. “I have to be on the job at seven in the morning.”
“Sleeping in is good,” Sarah replied. “And is it only me, or is this all antique furniture?”
* * * * *
Noah rose at six, quietly made his way into the bathroom and took a shower, then slipped into his coat and shoes. Sarah was sprawled across the bed when he came out, and he leaned down to kiss her cheek before slipping out into the hallway.
Neil was up sitting at the kitchen table. “I made coffee,” he said. “Couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d try to play the game a bit. I relayed the situation back home, and you’re supposed to proceed.”
“I was planning to,” Noah said. He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down across from Neil. “So how does the game work?”
“It’s an espionage game, one of those where players have to follow clues and track down a target, then eliminate the target. I’m a game master, which means I’m sort of like God in the virtual world of the server. Molly is one of the players on my server, and she runs a team that’s made up of people from Neverland. She and I worked out a code so that we can send just about any kind of information back and forth, simply by embedding it into screenshots I attach. It’s pretty sophisticated; NSA might crack the code if they knew about it, but it would take them a couple of months.”
“Sounds excellent. And you actually get to interact with real players?”
Neil snorted. “So far, I haven’t found half a dozen that could be called real players. There are a few thousand in my group that are rank amateurs in this game, even though they may have been pretty good at some of the others out there. Almost everything else is simply a battle game, where you build your army up until he can kick the ass of somebody else’s army. This is entirely different because they have to understand the politics of this virtual world in order to accomplish the missions assigned to them.” He grinned and winked at Noah. “I’ve already based for the missions on some of the real ones we’ve already pulled off.”
Noah raised one eyebrow. “You might want to be careful about that,” he said. “If the mole is aware of how this mission runs, he may be watching what you do in the game. If he figures out that some of the missions in the bio he’s got on me are not real, it could blow the whole operation.”
“Relax, Noah,” Neil said. “Like I said, I only based the missions on some of our real exploits. There aren’t enough similarities for anyone to put them together, I promise you. Different names, different locales, different reasons for the mission, everything.” He waggled his eyebrows at Noah. “I’m not stupid, remember?”
Noah simply stared at him for a moment. “A high IQ doesn’t necessarily mean a lack of stupidity. Some of the most intelligent people in the world have made stupid mistakes.”
Neil stuck his tongue out at him.
Noah finished his coffee and walked out the door. A moment later, Neil heard the Charger start and then the crunch of gravel as he drove out of the driveway.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
One of Brendan’s crew was standing in front of the Morgan house when Noah pulled up, and he stood facing the Charger until he saw who was driving. As soon as Noah stepped out of the car, the man almost came to attention.
“Relax,” Noah said. “I’m just checking in on the kid. Everything go okay last night?”
“No problems since I’ve been here,” the guy said. “Nice and quiet all night.”
“Good. I don’t really expect anything to happen around the house, but you just never know. You’re Al, right?”
“Yes, sir, Al Spencer. We met briefly yesterday.”
Noah nodded. “I remember. The day crew ought to be here in a few minutes—just let them know I’m inside.” He walked up the front steps and knocked on the door.
Marlene opened it a few moments later and smiled when she saw him. “Come on in,” she said. “We’re having eggs and bacon, woul
d you like some?”
Noah put his big smile on his face. “If it won’t cause any problems, I couldn’t turn it down,” he said. “For some reason I can’t figure out, there’s not a restaurant in this town that serves a decent American breakfast.”
Marlene laughed and patted him on the shoulder. “Come on into the kitchen,” she said. “There’s plenty.”
Noah followed her and found Ralph, Brendan, and Jimmy Morgan sitting at a big table inside the kitchen itself. The Morgans were eating breakfast, and Brendan was drinking coffee. Jimmy looked up and smiled, then waved him over.
“Sit your ass down,” he said. “We’re having breakfast, and there’s plenty.”
“I already told him,” Marlene yelled. Noah slid into a chair, and she set a plateful of scrambled eggs and bacon in front of him. “Dig into that. You want some coffee?”
“I’d love a cup,” Noah said. She was back a moment later with a mug and then pushed the sugar bowl toward him. “You need cream?”
“Nope, I’m fine.” He added a couple of spoons of sugar and stirred, then picked it up and took a big drink. “Okay, now that is some very good coffee. Can I ask what brand?”
“I don’t know what it’s called,” Jimmy said, “but it’s imported. I tried some once when I was on a trip and liked it, so I have a standing order in all the time. Comes in these big three-pound bags. I’ll give you one.”
“See?” Ralph said. “This job comes with perks, man.”
Noah had just shoved a forkful of eggs into his mouth, so he chewed quickly before answering. “I’ll say,” he said. “If you guys eat like this every day, I’ll show up for breakfast all the time.”
“Marlene wouldn’t mind,” Jimmy said. “She seems to think she needs to cook for a small army every day, anyway. I hate to think about how much food gets thrown out this house every week.”
