Chapter 10 #2
Leaving Amarylis was one of the hardest things Tristan had ever done. As far as timing went, it was shitty, except he didn’t just want some quick roll in the hay. He was all about taking time to enjoy the moments that they had, not just get in and out, pardon the pun.
He smiled at his own joke, knowing that it wasn’t very funny, considering the stage of life they were both at. He wanted to take her away and spend a week together, just the two of them, getting to know each other apart from all the stress and panic they were both dealing with. That way they could find out who they both were on the inside and how compatible they would be.
He had a pretty good idea, but it wasn’t the same thing as walking on the beach and holding hands, talking until the midnight sun disappeared, or smiling when you wake up beside her because she’s still there, still part of your heart.
He wanted to show her so many things and take her around the world to see more. He didn’t have a clue if she liked traveling, and that could be an issue because it was important to him. He liked getting out and acknowledging how much of the rest of the world was available, just waiting to be explored. This was something that he loved to do and so hoped they would have a chance to explore together.
He headed back to the office, exhausted, knowing he would have to take a break somewhere along the line. As he popped in, the place was empty. Frowning, he looked around, then headed for the couch in his office. He would give himself just a few minutes until the others showed up; sleep had been in short supply lately, and he was starting to run on empty.
He closed his eyes, and, before long, something jarred him out of sleep. He quietly remained on the couch, wondering what woke him. Then he heard voices, thought to sit up, but something prodded him to stay silent in the darkness.
“It’s got to be in here, Lem,” somebody growled. “Somewhere.”
“I don’t know whether it’s in here or not,” Lem snapped. “All we know is that it’s no longer at the scene.”
“We also know that it was picked up and bagged with evidence, that it disappeared from the lockup at the lab, and that somebody wants it forever.”
“Of course they do,” Lem snarled. “So we have to be in and out of here fast. We can’t get caught inside, Stu.”
“Fast or not,” Stu snapped, “we aren’t leaving until we have it.”
Shifting to the floor, Tristan rolled over until he was tucked up against the desk, knowing that eventually they would come into this room.
“We’ve got a damn-short window to find that thing, and then we have to get out of here.”
“How long do you think we have?”
“He told me not more than twenty minutes.”
“Shit, that won’t be long enough. This building is huge.”
“It has to be.”
Shaking his head at that, Tristan texted Jasper and then Masters. He didn’t know where the hell everybody was or if something had gone wrong and had nixed their meeting. He expected some of his team would be here already, but they weren’t and right now he could use some backup.
He heard the two voices, Lem and Stu , and, if only two were here, Tristan could get out of this just fine, even without backup. However, he didn’t want these assholes to leave. He knew the desired USB key wasn’t here, but would these two listen to him telling them that fact, if they found him? Probably not, not any more than the others had so far.
With his own weapon out and beside him, he waited to see if they entered his room. He heard chaos in the room outside, as they searched through as many desk drawers as they could. Yet, if they didn’t even know what the USB key looked like, it would be almost impossible for them to find anyway.
Maybe that was intentional. Maybe somebody had deliberately not told them what to look for or had not shared how unique this particular USB was.
Then one of the men muttered in frustration, “What does it even look like, for Christ’s sake?”
“I already told you. He mentioned it was unique, shaped like some car.”
“A car?” he repeated, with a sneer. “Are you sure he’s not just losing it?”
“Doesn’t matter if he is or not. He’s paying us. Remember that.”
They quickly raced from one room to another, one desk to another, and when they finally stepped into the room Tristan was hiding in, he hunkered deeper inside the well under the desk, where the chair went. When the chair was abruptly pulled out, a man sat down and started opening drawers. Tristan just waited with his eyebrows raised, but they didn’t even once look underneath. Of course the room was still in darkness, as they used flashlights to search through things.
“I don’t see anything, Lem,” the man in front of Tristan growled. He pushed the last desk drawer closed and stood up, kicking the chair farther back.
“Hey, nobody is supposed to know we were in here,” his partner Lem added. “Remember that.”
“Too damn late for that,” Stu grumbled. “I’ve left a trail everywhere.” After a moment of silence, he muttered, “Jeez. We will have to get the hell out of here soon anyway.”
“We didn’t find it though.”
“Yeah, and that makes me even more antsy to get out of here. What if it’s a trap?” Stu asked.
Tristan waited until they stepped out of his room, before he slowly stood, walked over to the doorway—where he could stare into the other room—then watched. As the two men headed to the private offices in the back, Tristan silently stepped up behind the one in the rear and held his gun to this intruder’s head. “I wouldn’t take that next step if I were you,” Tristan whispered.
As the man raised his hands slowly, Tristan hit him hard enough on the back of the head to drop him, catching him to muffle the noise, then quickly moving his limp body out of the way. He stepped forward, prepared to face the other man, who still hadn’t realized that not finding the USB wasn’t his only problem.
“Where the hell can it be?” the man roared.
Tristan smiled and cocked his gun.
Recognizing the sound, the man froze and slowly turned to him. “Shit, where the hell did you come from?”
“Doesn’t matter, but where did you come from, and who’s paying you to come in here and toss this place, looking for a stupid key?”
The guy’s eyes widened, as he realized that Tristan must have heard something. “Where is my fucking partner?”
“Your partner is out cold,” Tristan replied, “and I suggest he stay that way for a little bit longer.”
“No way, man. If you hurt him,” he snapped, “I will have something to say.”
“Yeah, you might, especially when—What is he, family or something? Someone you dragged into some trouble?”
The guy paled. “He’s my brother-in-law. My sister will kill me.”
“Yeah, she sure will. Especially when she finds out you took her husband on a midnight jaunt to make some money, when there isn’t any.”
“There’s money,” he declared, his eyes wide. “What are you talking about? There’s always money.”
“Everybody involved in this case so far has taken a bullet between the eyes instead of getting paid. Is that what you want?”
Nothing but silence came for a long moment. “I want to get out of this alive.”
“You should have thought of that before you came in here then,” Jasper interjected, as he came through the rear door at the intruder’s back. “So are you Lem or Stu?”
“Lem.” He turned to face Jasper. “Now that you’re here, don’t mind us if we just mosey on out.”
Jasper looked over at Tristan. Tristan smiled and shared, “They’ve got this idea that they can come and go as they want, with no penalty for breaking and entering into a military facility.”
“Not like this is any a special place,” Lem replied.
“Oh, but it is,” Jasper remarked, with a smile, “which begs the question as to how you got onto the compound.”
“Oh, Stu and me got a ticket for that,” Lem explained. “We do service work on base all the time.”
“ Great , and does your boss know about your B&E sideline?”
“N-n-no,” Lem stuttered, “he doesn’t know, and I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell him.”
Tristan snorted at that. “No way you’re just walking out of here, so you might as well accept the consequences.”
“What do you mean?” Lem glared at him. “It’s not as if you guys will stop us.”
Tristan looked over at Stu, who was trying to sit up now. “Seriously?” Tristan asked, pointing at his incapacitated friend.
Lem shook his head. “It would be nice if you didn’t.”
“It would have been nice if you and Stu hadn’t come in here and tossed the place either,” Jasper stated, then turned and motioned to the MPs behind him. “Lock up these two,” he ordered.
Immediately Lem bolted for the door, but two more MPs were stationed there, who quickly snagged him. “We didn’t do anything,” he roared.
“You and Stu both entered restricted base offices,” Tristan explained. “You already admitted that you work for a company and used their privileges and credentials to come in here and do this, looking for a data key you couldn’t find, so theft was your intent.”
“Then on top of all that,” Jasper added, “you told two navy investigators that we can’t do anything about it.”
“And you’re wrong about that, Lem,” Tristan confirmed. “You may want to call your families right now before you leave here, so they’ll know what happened to you.”
Lem frowned at him. “Surely it can’t be that bad. They just wanted a USB key, for Christ’s sake.” He stared at his partner in crime. “You’re such a dumb fuck.”
Stu glared at his buddy. “If I’m in trouble, it’s your fault. You’re the one who got me into this,” he snarled. “So, when your sister gets on her high horse and bitches me out, I’ll just tell her to come talk to you.”
“Yeah, you do that,” Lem grumbled. “It’s not as if she’ll talk to you in jail as it is.”
“I won’t do no jail, so ain’t nobody starting that shit with me,” Stu muttered. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Yet you did,” Tristan corrected, staring at him. “The military authorities might go a little bit easier on you if you talk.”
Immediately silence filled the room, and Lem and Stu eyed each other for a moment, then looked back at him.
“How about you let us go free and clear, and then we’ll talk?” Lem suggested.
“No way because, once you step out of this building, you will take a bullet between the eyes, courtesy of the people who hired you,” Tristan pointed out cheerfully, “and we won’t get any answers that way.”
“You said that before,” Lem pointed out in a testy voice, “and I’m telling you that they’re not like that.”
Jasper shook his head. “Everybody else is in the morgue.”
Tristan cut in and confirmed, “I’ve already told them that, and they don’t believe it, though the one might have been sleeping when I had that discussion with his partner-in-crime. Anyway they don’t want to believe it. They think they’re friends with these guys and know them well. They don’t understand how the boss man will kill them because they failed to find the USB, just like the others were killed for failing to do their jobs.”
Smiling, Jasper added, “That’s not Lem’s and Stu’s problem, is it? As far as they’re concerned, they probably think that whoever is in the morgue did something to deserve being killed. Yet they didn’t deserve death,” Jasper shared. “Just like you two, those other people didn’t realize that failing to do their jobs—or failing to get the infamous key—will have boss man issuing a kill order on you.”
“So, just let us have the key,” Lem alternatively suggested, “and nobody gets hurt.”
“Not happening,” Tristan replied, with a smile. “Nice try though.”
Stu, the smaller of the two men, got desperate and said, “Look, if we say anything,… we’re dead.”
“Exactly,” Tristan agreed. “Yet, if you don’t say anything, you’re also dead.”
Lem laughed. “Look. I’ve been dealing with these guys for months. No way they’re like that. This was just a simple job. The one even told me that, if we couldn’t get the key,… no big deal.”
“Oh, did they now?” Jasper snorted. “That’s an interesting thing for them to mention. Did they say what they wanted the USB for?”
Lem replied, “Just that they didn’t want something of a personal nature released.… Man, I get that too. Shit, I’ve done some stupid things in my time, and I wished I could have gone back and gotten rid of all the video feeds.”
“I bet,” Tristan agreed, with a snarky voice. “So, that’s what he told you this was, huh ?”
“Yeah,” said Lem. “Some pictures caught him in a bad light, just when he’s about to marry somebody. So he didn’t want that to screw things up—you know, some big hoity-toity family and all that.” He laughed. “She’s a looker too. Damn, she’s a looker.”
“You’ve met this fiancée?” Tristan asked him.
“ Nah , but you know,… big high-society wedding coming up, not too many of those in the news right now.” Lem fell silent, and Stu just stared at him in horror.
Tristan smiled and asked Stu, “Do you want to confirm that?”
He shook his head. “Man, I don’t want anything to do with that conversation. This isn’t good.”
“Why is that?”
“It’s bad,” Stu stated. “You shouldn’t know anything.”
“Maybe we don’t know anything truthful and honest. Maybe your partner Lem here is just full of shit.”
“I am not,” Lem declared. “I might not be the smartest cup in the cupboard, but that guy did something pretty stupid, and he doesn’t want to lose his wife-to-be over it. Yet we couldn’t find the key.” Lem sighed.
Tristan nodded. “You failed to find the key, so what will you do about it now?”
“Keep looking for it wherever he tells us to,” Lem muttered. “It’s different, looks like a bloody car.”
“That’s interesting. How would he know what the key even looks like?” Tristan asked.
“Something about… he saw it.”
“Maybe he’s the one doing the blackmailing?” Tristan asked.
“No,” Lem said. “He’s the one being blackmailed, and he just didn’t dare let it get any further because of the wedding. His father-in-law isn’t the kind to stand around and to let that shit happen to the family name.”
“Yeah, and what about Trinity? How did she feel?” Tristan took a stab in the dark at the name, as he remembered a big society wedding coming up and a lot of buzz about it, with a military husband-to-be.
“I don’t think she thinks very much of it. So, you know her name?” Lem asked.
“Yeah, glad you caught on to that.”
“I don’t think she knows her fiancé is catting around, and she probably won’t bother Daddy about it at all, just as long as she gets her spending money.”
“ Right .” Tristan nodded. “I’ve met a few of those in my time.”
“ Right. ” Stu rolled his eyes, adding his two cents. “I would like to bang a chick like that, but I sure as hell wouldn’t want to try and keep one happy paycheck-wise,… if you know what I mean.”
“Man, you can’t even keep my own sister happy,” Lem complained, staring at his brother-in-law in disgust, “and you might have just got yourself killed.”
“Yeah, not likely,” Stu countered in a harsh tone.
Stu said, “This is not my fight, not my problem. You’re the one who got me into this shit.” He snarled and huffed at this partner. “If anybody pays, it’ll be you, Lem.” Stu just shook his head.
Stu turned to Tristan. “So, now what?” he asked in disgust.
“You tell me. You’re the one who’s not talking.”
Lem chuckled at that. “Yeah, I talked, so I walk out of here free and clear,” Lem declared, with a big grin. “Wait until my sister hears that I made a deal and that you’re the one stuck holding the bag.”
Stu just glared at him, then turned to Tristan and stated, “You know that this is bad news for us, right?”
“I’m telling you how it’s bad news no matter which way you look at it,” Tristan repeated, “but you knew that going in. You knew exactly that you were up to no good and what the penalty would be. I suspect you were hoping that Lem would get blamed and that you would get out free and clear.”
A smile played at Stu’s lips. “Not a bad plan.”
“Except Lem’s the one already talking.”
“He always talks. That’s the thing,” Stu complained. “However, you can’t trust anything that comes out of his mouth. He’s loose that way.”
“I am not.” Lem glared at Stu. “You’re the one always talking,”
Tristan asked Stu, “The question right now is, do you confirm what Lem just told us?”
Stu shrugged. “I guess. It’s not as if I can deny it now.”
“See?” Lem, the big guy, pointed at Stu. “You always talk.”
“Yeah, but what you just did was put us in deep trouble.” Stu snarled. “If the boss finds out you talked, we’re shit out of luck.”
Jasper shook his head. “You still don’t want to believe it, but you’re both pretty much doomed either way.”
“And if we are”—Stu turned to face Tristan—“then you guys have to look after us.”
“Why is that?” Tristan asked, eyeing him with a bored expression. “You’re the ones who broke in here. Nobody gives a shit about a couple of two-bit hoods.”
“That’s not true,” Lem spoke up, rejoining the conversation. “We have information.”
“What information? You already gave it to us.”
Lem opened his mouth and then slammed it shut, knowing that to be true.
Stu turned to his brother in-law and muttered, “You dumb fuck.”
“What?” Lem asked. “I didn’t tell him about Tony or about the bar where he spends his time or nothing like that,” he argued. “We should still bargain with that.”
Stu just groaned and looked over at Tristan, who had a big grin on his face.
“Interesting people you hang out with, Stu,” Tristan noted, with a bright smile.
“Hey,” Lem cried out. “I told my sister not to marry him, but she didn’t listen, and now look at the shit I’ve got to deal with.”
“So, what else do you have to bargain with, Stu?” Tristan asked.
Stu went silent, but Lem spoke up. Again. “Hey, I’ve got something. It should be worth something,” the big man began, looking at Tristan. “Where Tony stays, all kinds of things about him.”
“Yeah, so do you know why he wants the key?”
“I told you that already,” Lem replied in confusion.
“Have you ever heard the name Mason?” Tristan asked.
“Yeah, that’s some guy Tony hates.”
Jasper turned to face Lem, staring intently. That caught his interest and Tristan’s too. “Any idea why?” Jasper asked.
Lem shook his head. “No, I don’t know why, but whatever is between them is bad, as in ugly bad.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t tell me anything about what or why.”
“I can’t tell you that because I don’t know,” Lem admitted. “I really don’t.… All I know is, Tony clams up and gets an ugly look on his face when somebody mentions Mason’s name. Just don’t know what it’s all about though.” Lem shrugged. “And, if you’re smart, you would stay away from that topic too.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice? But it’s not an option in our case.”
“It sucks to be you then,” Lem replied. “I just know that Tony has some serious hate for Mason.”
“Enough to hire a sniper to take him out?”
Lem considered it. “Maybe, but I don’t know anything about that.” He shook his head and went on. “If that’s what you’re after, we don’t have any information on that. We just know about the key.”
“And you’re pretty sure it was Tony’s stuff on the key that he wanted to protect?”
Lem shrugged. “I didn’t question it, just assumed what he told me was the truth, but who the hell knows with people these days.”
“What do you mean?” Tristan asked.
“Everybody lies.”
“They sure do,” Tristan confirmed, with a wry look at Lem, “including you.”
“Hey, I’m just saving my ass to get cleared here,” he declared. “We aren’t armed or anything. So we didn’t come here looking for any trouble.”
“No, but you sure found it, didn’t you?”