“Clean up on aisle seven.”
“What the hell did you do now?”
“Morris went rogue on you, Frank.”
“Did you have to kill him?”
“That was rhetorical, right?”
“You’ll have to find a way to speed up the flash drive retrieval, Nick. I’m going to have some trouble fixing this without them.”
“I talk to the Marshalls tonight. I’ll try and get them on board with a family trip within the week.”
“The best I can do is two hours for clean up.”
“Call me before they get here. Morris is next to the front door. It’s strange, Frank. If Morris wanted me dead, why didn’t he send a long range postcard? He knew we had a deal; but he tried to get leverage against me like he wanted to barter. You wouldn’t know what he would’ve been bartering for, would you, Frank?”
“You could have asked him.” Frank’s nonchalant tone was not fooling Nick at all.
“He was bleeding all over my hardwood floor. It would’ve been a noisy question and answer session. As you know, I have company.”
“I’ll ask around.” Frank disconnected.
Sure, you’ll ask around. Nick put the phone and weapon up on the hutch inside his dining room. He walked upstairs and knocked on Rachel’s door.
“Come in.”
“We have a problem,” Nick stated, seeing Rachel, Jean, and Deke huddled up on the bed together. There’s an understatement. “I don’t think my insurance is enough. I may have overestimated my value. The man downstairs was trying to get you and Jean. If not for Deke, he would have. I played dumb with my boss, but we need a new plan.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Road trip.”
“All of us in your Chevy? How soon?”
“We have an hour. Any longer and we’ll be cutting it close. I have something a bit more comfortable for us to travel in. Sorry we didn’t get much time to rest up. We’ll call Grace and Tim after we’re on our way. I’ll tell them we had to leave because we spotted trouble. I think we may have to use your nest egg to deal with them, Rachel.”
“You’re screwed, aren’t you?” Rachel wrapped her arms around Jean.
Nick shrugged. “Hey, new choices mean new gambles.” You sell this, you should get into the movies next, killer. “Grace and Tim will not be happy with this decision, especially since they’ll have to stay in the dark until we finish our scavenger hunt.”
“Are…are you going to stay with us, Nick?” Jean asked.
“I’m stuck, Jean. Deke saved my bacon. A life for a life, little one. If your Mom and me manage to find the right owner for your nest egg we might even make it back here soon.” Right after I kill a few people. “Get packing if you want aboard Nick’s Adventure Express. Otherwise, we call Grace and I deliver you three to them right now.”
“I want to stay with Nick.”
“This won’t go away,” Rachel said. “They have the Marshalls under surveillance. They know where we are and apparently the identities of the ones hunting us down may be on those flash drives. Did I miss anything?”
Yeah, how the hell I managed to get myself into this.
“You forgot about my boss getting in the game and deciding a high value asset with very high blackmail potential takes second place to what’s on the flash drives. This goes beyond the network you compromised. Someone has managed to get into a position of power who knows what’s on the drives. Some players in this want you dead before anything surfaces, and others want the drives as leverage. My cavalier remarks about making people-adjustments according to what I found on the drives triggered somebody’s survival instinct – either my boss, or someone in on briefings he gives.”
“Gee, you have it all figured out.” Rachel grinned up at Nick to take the edge off her sarcastic tone.
“Not everything.” Nick smiled back, admiring the way she took the news. “I’d still like to know what made my boss think the guy downstairs could pull this off by himself.”
“You said except for Deke he would have got you,” Jean put in, reminding Nick they were debating this in front of a seven year old.
“Very true, smarty, but my boss assumed without divine intervention in the form of Deke the dog, I would have been handled. I surmise from that fact either I’ve dropped a few notches in the eyes of my superiors or they have less assets to send after us. I’m hoping for less assets, because two of them have already been retired.”
“Couldn’t they recruit others?”
“From where, ‘Psychos Are Us’? There are very few ‘no questions asked’ people working at my level. This conference is over, my dears. If you want aboard the Express, get packing.”
Nick left the room. He used the remaining time to gather weapons and gear he did not already have stashed in his hidden away Cadillac Escalade. After forty-five minutes Nick stored his own Heckler & Koch USP-Tactical with extra clips in the recessed compartment he’d built under the driver’s seat of his Malibu. He next set up his satellite phone and went in to help Rachel and Jean. Nick retrieved Morris’s Glock automatic with silencer from the top of his hutch. He took off his shirt and put on a black pullover sleeveless shirt with a sewn in weapon pocket. The Glock fit into the pocket. Nick put on a windbreaker jacket over it, then threw a blanket over Morris’s body.
“The Express leaves in five minutes,” Nick called out, jogging up the stairs.
Nick went into Rachel’s bedroom, where Rachel was hurriedly zipping up the two bags on her bed. Nick picked them up the moment she finished and headed to the car.
“Bring Jean and Deke. We have to go.”
Minutes later, Nick started the Chevy and drove around the block. He parked it.
“What’s going on?” Rachel asked with a bewildered look.
“I have to meet my guests, who will be arriving unannounced very quickly,” Nick told her, leaving the spare Chevy key in the ignition. “I’ll call your cell-phone when I want you to drive the Chevy around to the house again. From there, you’ll follow me in a vehicle yet to be determined.”
“What’s this about, Nick? Why don’t we just leave?”
“Mainly, this is about asset reduction. It’s also because I don’t want to be set up by having the other unmoving asset discovered inside my house. Plus…I don’t like being played.”
“You…you mean…the guys being sent over -”
“Yeah, sucks to be them.” Nick shut the driver’s side door with satellite phone in hand.
Nick jogged to his house, went inside and dragged Morris’s body into the entryway closet. He quickly retrieved his duct tape and another black plastic garbage bag. With a box cutter from his kitchen, Nick made a slit on each side of the bag, and put the bag over his head, carefully cutting two slits for his eyes. Nick put the bag and duct tape aside and then made sure Morris’s silenced weapon was operational with a full clip.
Nick’s satellite phone vibrated. “Find out anything useful?”
“No. Cleanup arrives in ten minutes. They don’t want any trouble, Nick, so wait upstairs. If they see anything move, they’ll spray everything in sight.”
“I’ll be upstairs in the back bedroom with the woman and her daughter. All they have to do is remove Morris’s body, wrapped in a black plastic bag, leaning against the wall to the right of the front door. They won’t even have to step inside the house.”
“Good, I’ll tell them. We’ll talk after they remove the body.”
“Fine.”
Nick pulled the bag over his head, aligning the eyeholes with his arms through the slits. He wrapped the duct tape around the bag at his waist, and positioned himself sitting next to the doorway, with his right arm free behind him. His left side leaned against the entryway door frame with legs splayed out sideways. After making last minute adjustments to his eyeholes, Nick waited, his right hand holding Morris’s weapon slightly under his right leg.