“I’ve seen these ice balls in the past but never used one.”
“You like it?”
“We’ll see won’t we.”
We sat for what seemed like an eternity, each caught up in our own thoughts.
“Hey, are we cool?” I asked.
“Absolutely. We just need to coach you along.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“One more thing though.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll never embarrass you in public,” she said pulling the dress over her head.
“Thanks for that.”
I was red all over again.
Thursday
I got to the office around eight fifteen to see Hartley and Jones making coffee.
“Earl. Rob. How are things?”
“Things are good. We’ve got some intel for you,” Rob said.
“That was quick.”
“Seems like these guys are pretty open about what they’re doing.”
“How so?”
“This Amir character is the most active out of all the folks we’ve seen coming and going.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. There’s maybe ten total guys we’ve seen come and go from this place,” Earl said.
“We were led to believe it was a little larger group.”
“Not that we’ve seen,” Rob said.
“You’ve only been at the surveillance for a day right?” I asked.
“That’s right,” Earl said.
“Ok. Let’s pull a couple more days to see what the patterns are.”
“There’s something else,” Earl blurted out.
“Say it.”
“They’ve been moving a lot of boxes into the site.”
“Looks like they may be ramping up for something,” Rob said.
“Interesting, lets get some more time in down there. We may have to put more people on surveillance to cover the nights.”
“We’ve been there straight since you assigned us,” Earl said.
“No sleep?”
“Yeah we take turns, just like the good old days. You know how you do,” Rob said.
“Yeah I do. Let me talk this over with Don and we’ll call you back later in the day.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Earl said.
“You guys go back down for now though,” I said.
“On it Boss.”
I left the kitchen without my own cup of coffee. I’d go back.
+++
“Hey. You got a minute?“ I said standing in the door to Don’s office.
“Gimme five.”
“Stop in my office when you have the chance.”
“Alright.”
I went to my office to set up for the day and which included getting another cup of coffee. I grabbed the cup and made my way to the kitchen. Hartley and Jones had left, and Laura was at her desk.
“Morning,” I said walking back to my office.
“Morning.”
“How’s the day look?”
“Fairly light.”
“That’s good. We’ll talk later.”
As I walked into the hallway Don was walking out of his office.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Just had a short meeting with Hartley and Jones.”
“Yeah I talked with them a few minutes before you got here.”
“What’re your thought’s?”
“The boxes movin’ in bothers me.”
“Me too,” I said.
“We don’t have enough information to be able to predict anythin’ yet.”
“That’s the other part that bothers me.”
“What do you wanna do?”
“Maybe some additional surveillance. I don’t know.”
“Couldn’t hurt,” he said.
“We could put Smiley on it since he’s available.”
“Do you want to pay his fee for surveillance?”
“He is expensive, no question.”
“You have anybody else in mind?”
“Not off the top of my head.”
“Lemme do some review and I’ll get back to ya.”
“Ok.”
“Can I go to the bathroom now?”
“Sure. We need to talk about the meeting with the attorney tomorrow,” I said as he walked away.
“Yup. In a minute.”
I went back to my office to review email for the morning. It had been a light afternoon and evening Wednesday and there hadn’t been much to review.
Dallas had a light morning and had decided to sleep in and I thought I’d give her a call while I was waiting on Don.
“Hello,” she said.
“Morning. When’d you get up?”
“Must have been ten minutes ago. How are you?”
“I’m well. Getting things kicked off here at the office. What’s your day look like?”
“Not a lot. Still have a couple reviews to finish, but that’ll only take half the day.”
“Hey,” Don said from the door.
“Dallas I need to run. Don just walked in.”
“Ok sweetie. We’ll talk later,” she said ending the call.
“You ready to talk about Laura?”
“What about me?” she said as she walked up.
“We’re setting up the partnership meeting with the attorney tomorrow,” I said.
“What are your expectations of being a partner?” Don asked.
“I’ve actually given it some thought,” she said. “I’m not sure what you guys were thinking, but I’d like to start at five percent.”
“No way Laura,” I said.
“I knew I was being greedy.”
“Laura. You can’t be serious,” Don said.
“I’ve upset you all.”
“Not at all,” I said.
“We’ll make sure you’ll like the deal we offer you when the attorney gets here tomorrow,” Don said.
“Ok,” she said as she left the office.
“Wow,” I said.
“I know. What were you thinking?”
“I don’t know maybe fifteen percent.”
“I was thinking about the same. Why don’t we drop it to ten percent and give her a lump sum upfront to set herself up in a house.”
“I’m ok with that,” I said.
“Cool. How much you wanna give her?”
“Maybe three hundred.”
“Let’s go a half,” he said.
“I’m going to have to take a look at these magical books you’ve told me about.”
“You should. You’ll be surprised.”
“I love a good surprise.”
“Well, it’s going to be a great surprise.”
“Nice. I’ll try to look at them before weeks end.”
“You do that. I’ll call the accountant and have it taken from the operations account with applicable taxes applied to net the half.”
“Yeah, she doesn’t need to become a partner and start having tax issues day one.”
“We’ll talk later,” he said and left the office.
+++
I sat at my desk and thought of how I wanted the new partnership to be structured. It occurred to me, with three partners we needed to be cutting the operations budget a little closer and splitting the remaining profits among the three of us.
“Hugh Ranier,” I said answering my cell phone.
“Hugh, Al. You have a minute?”
“Sure Al, what’s up?”
“Listen, I’ve got something on Stephanie Brothers phone calls.”
“So quick?”
“It wasn’t hard.”
“Tell me the story.”
“Using Stephanie’s call log as a starting point, my contact went back through the logs and found out the GPS coordinates for all the calls.”
“We figured that’s how it was going to go” I said.
“Right. There are sixteen calls made from the same GPS coordinate.”
“Sixteen? In what timeframe?
“Thats like a call every other day,” I said.
“Exactly, which is more than we were told.”
“I wonder if she’s hiding something?”
“We also found there were an additional five calls made from a contact in her phone for the same location.”
“That’s interesting. Who was it?”
“Walt Whatman.”
“Did you do any research on mister Whatman?”
“Not yet. That’ll cost extra.”
“Still time and material though right? No more added fees for friends?” I asked.
“No more added fees.”
“Have you talked with Laura yet?”
“Not yet,” he said. “She’s next on my call list.”
“Let’s see what she has to say.”
“I’ll call her.”
“Good. I’ll hear from her what her plan is after you talk to her.”
“Alright.”
“We’ll talk later,” I said ending the call.
+++
Maybe twenty minutes passed and Laura stuck her head in my office.
“Hey. You got a minute?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Worm gave me a call.”
“Yeah.”
“Told me what they’d found. I relayed it to Stephanie.”
“Tell me what he said.”
“He said they found a group of calls which came from the same GPS coordinate.”
“Ok.”
“And, the calls were broken into two groups. Random numbers and contacts.”
“Contacts?”
“Yeah, numbers she already had in her phone.”
“Those came from the same GPS location?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Did he identify the contact?” I asked.
“He did. One Walt Whatman.”
“Ok. So now what do we do?”
“I called Stephanie with the info, and her take is to let it go. She’ll call Walt and get the calls to stop.”
“So, she knows this guy well?”
“Not sure.”
“Should be a cut and dry invoice then,” I said.
“Only two lines. One for Worms hours, and the other for the tech fee.”
“Looks like it me.”
“Do we mark up the tech fee?”
“No. Pass it straight through.”
“I’m on it,” she said and left the office.
+++
“Hugh.” Laura said from the door. “Scott Timmons is here to see you.”
“Great. Send him in.”
I stood from the desk.
“Scott, great to see you.”
“You too Hugh.”
“Lets take a walk.”
“Sure.”
I led him to the warehouse space at the end of the hallway.
“Couple of things,” I said.
“Shoot.”
“I want to have an office built out. Same size as Dons and mine.”
“Gonna have to put a hallway in to gain access to the warehouse.”
“That’s fine.”
“Ok, what else do you want done.”
“We’re going to be getting a sketch of a building interior. I’d like to have it replicated here as close as possible.”
“Fake walls and fully destructible?”
“Thats the idea yeah.”
“When are you going to have the sketch?” he asked.
“Should have it close of business tomorrow.”
“I can have a crew of rough in guys over here Wednesday next week.”
“Any chance you could start Monday?”
“Can’t promise anything, but I’ll do my best.”
“All I can ask for.”
“When do you want the office finished?”
“That can wait a couple weeks,” I said.
“That fit’s in pretty well. I can have the rough framing done but having the sheet rock and finishin’ will have to wait a bit. My trim crew is runnin’ about three weeks out.”
“No problem.”
“I’ll have you the cost for an office buildout in the next couple days. The other will have to wait until I see the sketch.”
“Understood.”
“Alright Hugh, anything else?”
“That covers it Scott. Appreciate you coming out.”
“No problem. We’ll talk soon.”
I walked him back to the front door.
“Thanks again Scott.”
“Sure,” he said as he walked out the door.
I heard the phone ring from Laura’s desk.
“Acme Planning and Delivery, this is Laura, how may I help you?”
I walked over to her desk and waited.
“Oh, hi Bill, yeah he’s right here,” she said handing me the phone.
“Bill, what’s up?” I asked.
“Yeah, Hugh the first project is complete.”
“Good to hear. Thanks for the call,” I said handing the phone back to Laura.
“That was quick,” she said.
“Yeah just a quick update is all.”
“I don’t remember Bill being on anything active.”
“He’s not. It was a quick call letting me know his interest in the Amir case.”
I was thinking quick and loose. I’d not cleared the Steve Johnson action with anyone. I couldn’t afford for Laura or Don to find out. Not so soon anyway, and not until I wanted them to. I didn’t need to know the detail of what action was taken, all I needed to know was that Elaine Johnson would be able to quit looking over her shoulder. She’d be free.
“Oh ok,” she said.
Personal disaster narrowly avoided I headed back to my office only to be stopped by Don.
“Hey. I got the sketch from Amir. It’s a simplistic setup. Not sure if we’re gonna need a build out after all.”
“That’s great, I haven’t committed to anything yet but, Scott is on standby if we need him.”
“Cool. Come take a look at this sketch,” he said.
I followed him into his office. He spun the monitor around to display not a sketch but the actual blueprint of the office. It was similar to the setup we had in so much as there was a small reception area upfront with a hallway on the left side and a couple offices to the right. Further down the hall was an open room with a small room in the back which must have been the bathroom.
“Do we need anymore than us to take care of this?” I asked.
“I was thinking the same. Its pretty small and from what we know there are only going to be fifteen.”
“Maybe have Jones and Hartley pull security for us, bring in Bill as another shooter. Have Laura do the driving, and we’re set.”
“You want to bring Laura in on this?” he asked.
“She wouldn’t be in harms way.”
“Lets ask her before we make any plans.”
“Ok.”
“So what do you think? Is that an approach we want to pursue?”
“I think it’s worth a shot. We’ll just have to judge her interest,” I said.
”So tell me how you’d want to do this? I wanna see if you’ve still got what it takes.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“True statement. Now, lay it out.”
“First I’d take out the four-eighty electrical feed to the building with a little plastic. At time of explosion I’d rush the front door. Bill first, me, then you. Jones on the rear of the building, and Hartley to clear the offices. We should be in and out in under three minutes.”
“What other logistics are there?”
“Vehicle camouflage. I’d take the work van out and have it plasti-dipped the brightest neon orange I could find. Stolen plates. Park it outside the building in plain site. Get out of the immediate area and strip the plasti-dip off it, change the plates and casually drive to a bar and have a beer.”
“That’s bold, but I like it.”
&n
bsp; “So do I pass your little test there El CapEeTan?” I asked.
“It’s a good plan Hugh, no doubt.”
“What’s missing?”
“Weapons selection.”
“Me and you with H&K MP-5’s, Bill with a fully automatic shotgun. Hartley and Jones each with MP-5’s. Should pretty much cover us.”
“Not much into overkill are you?” he asked.
“I don’t want to be on the failing end of a sub-standard weapon.”
“I’m with ya. Are three active shooters gonna be enough?”
“We’ll have to float that past Amir. See how many targets there are going to be.”
“The question is do we want to go into the fray?”
“We did just have a conversation about us not being involved because of our reaction time,” I said.
“I know and I was thinking about it while you were describing the event.”
“What’d you think?”
“To put a real fine point on it, we’re not fast enough for most missions.”
“Yeah, I agree.”
“This one though, as you’ve described it should be ok. Bill’s gonna go in first with the shotgun and we’ll be behind him to clean-up what is left moving.”
“So you think we’re ok on this?” I asked.
“Yeah I do.”
“Ok,” I said standing from the chair. “Let’s talk this over with Laura.”
I left the office and walked across the hall to mine. I was all cranked up from the thrill of planning on the fly and I needed something to calm me down.
I called Dallas.
“Hey,” she said answering the phone.
“Hey. How are things going out there?”
“Going well, I’ve only got one more review to do and I’m done for the day.”
“Nice.”
“What’s going on with you?” she asked.
“Just doing a little planning for an event we have coming up.”
“Yeah, is it going well?”
“I’d say so. Don and I are going to be more active in this one than we normally are.”
“Are you going to be ok?”
“Oh yeah. Nothing to worry about there.”
It was a lie because I had no idea whether we’d be fine or not. We’d be covered in Kevlar, outfitted with the best automatic weapons we could find, and we had an ace up our sleeve; the automatic shotgun.
“Did you get the reservations made at the resort?”
“Shit. No, I didn’t,” I said.
“That’s ok. We’ll figure something out.”
“I’m sorry Dallas.”
“Don’t worry about it Hugh. It’s no big deal.”
“I told you we’d get you pampered a little this weekend and, I’ve let you down.”
Hostage!: A Hugh Ranier Novella (Hugh Ranier Short Series Book 2) Page 9
