Thirty-Seven
Kaiden
Borrowing one of the LCN’s nondescript stakeout vehicles with fake plates, I make a pass of the address Tina provided while it’s still light enough for me to see.
It’s your regular, middle-class suburban street. Quiet, decent, and family-oriented. Nothing out of the ordinary, and nothing to scream torture pad in the leafy avenue with its neat gardens and kids playing happily in the small park at the end of the road.
Nothing about the location makes sense… Or I guess maybe it does if you’re aiming for the least likely place for the type of crime that took place there.
I swing down the adjacent street so I can check out the back of the property. Here it’s a little more private. There’s a heavily treelined footpath running behind the gardens, and the house in question is on the end, so you don’t need to pass any other properties to access the rear doors.
Parking where I have a decent view of both the front and back, I settle in to watch for a couple of hours; checking out the families, the comings and goings, and assessing whether anything or anyone seems out of place.
It’s all eerily mundane. Suspiciously so.
Making a plan of action, I leave the area and go back to the compound so I can hack into the county clerk’s office.
Checking there’s no one around, I take the stairs to the upper level, then jump the gap between the upper floor balustrade and the crenelated recess, which hides the eaves from the downstairs view, just like I used to when I was an eavesdropping kid.
Now I’m an eavesdropping adult, but my set-up is a whole lot more elaborate and technical than it used to be.
Nobody knows it, not even the people who own and run this building, but I’ve set up my own high-tech system of computers, jammers, CCTV, and recording devices in this unknown position, which is inaccessible by any normal means.
Even the feds could raid this place and never find my little hidey-hole, and that suits me just fine. It brings a whole new meaning to operating under the radar.
I know everyone and everything that comes in and out of this place, but that’s only the half of it. Since my windfall, I’ve also set up a state-of-the-art computer system.
I’ve had one since I was old enough to teach myself how to hack, but it was made up of whatever items I could blag or ‘reroute’ without causing any suspicion.
Luckily for me, nobody expected a thirteen-year-old boy to be the one who occasionally diverted the kind of high-tech hardware most adults didn’t understand.
And I was fortunate that computer tech was another of those things that came easy to me, so I was able to take what most people considered broken or outdated and revamp it.
But while there were limits to my old system, pretty much nothing can stop me now.
I do a deep search of the address, but I’m only frustrated more by the fact that nothing stands out.
The property is owned by a couple. A run on them shows they’re a former music teacher and nurse, both now retired.
Nothing to show any allegiance to one of the syndicates, or even another country, since they’re both sixth-generation American citizens who have been here since the late 1700’s, their far ancestors - people they probably aren’t even aware of - immigrating to the US during the industrial revolution from Europe, just like a vast percentage of the population.
Not what I was hoping to find.
No suspicious heritage. No questionable associations. No red flags. Nothing to suggest either of these people constituted a sleeper cell.
Digging deeper, I manage to hack into their bank records. That’s when I hit paydirt. According to their transaction history, the couple booked a month-long trip of a lifetime twelve months ago. And bingo! They are away on week two of that trip right now.
Not only that, but the evidence is everywhere for anyone looking and doesn’t even require the level of digging I’ve done.
They’re booked with a gardening service, a cleaning service, entered into a neighborhood watch program, and even left an announcement with their church about non-attendance.
All easily accessible places for someone to gather information.
They basically left flashing neon arrows pointing to an empty home.
Closing down the system, I check the time and fetch the keys for another appropriately nondescript vehicle from the LCN compound.
Then, after muting my phone to anything but emergency messages, I opt for a power nap in my old room, planning to rise at 3 am to go check the address a little more closely.
My internal body clock wakes me moments before the old analogue alarm clock Rosa gave me all those years ago rings, and I switch off the chimes. In my pockets, I stash a handheld scanner set to the local police frequency, a jammer, and an old-fashioned lockpick set.
I send off a single text to Dominic before I leave. Standard protocol. Always tell someone where you’re going.
That’s when I see the messages and a couple of missed calls from Aspen.
I can feel her worry through the preview window for the texts. Damn it all. I should have taken the time earlier to reassure her. Give her a timeline so she’d know when I’d be back. But now it’s 3 am; she’ll be sleeping, and I don’t want to wake her. Worry her.
Tomorrow I’ll explain in person… as much as I’m able.
Right now, I need to be focused on my next move, and I can’t afford the distraction. The last thing I want to do is get injured and prove to her that I’m the bad bet she’s been so conflicted about.