by David Archer
“No problem,” Kate said. She grabbed some napkins from the counter and put them on the table, then sat down and ripped open the bag. “Forgive me, but I’m starving. I’m a creature of habit, and it’s my habit to eat my dinner at six o’clock. That habit is probably why I have this waistline, but oh, well. There are some curses in life we just have to learn to live with.”
Noah raised one eyebrow at her as he sat down and unwrapped his own sandwich. “I know the plan calls for you and my wife to become friends, but I think she’s honestly going to like you. You talk a lot like she does.”
“What can we say? Great minds think alike, right? Don’t worry, she and I will get along just fine.”
They finished eating and Noah went to gather his things out of the bedroom he had been using. He hadn’t completely unpacked, so it only took him a few minutes to shove everything back into his bag. The only thing that didn’t make it was the dirty clothes he hadn’t had a chance to wash, yet. Kate stepped in and handed him a plastic trash bag for those, then reminded him that they had bought laundry soap. “You do know how to use a washer and dryer, right?”
“I do,” Noah replied, “and I even know how to fold my clothes when they’re done.” He shoved the last of his dirty clothes into the bag and then turned and smiled at Kate. “Listen, thanks for everything,” he said. “We’ve got to keep up this act for a while, so we’ll be seeing a lot of each other. I just want you know I really appreciate what you’ve done, both for the mission and for me personally.”
Kate started to speak but looked flustered for a moment. She closed her mouth and then opened it to start again. “You really are a lot like my brother,” she said. “This is probably as close as I could ever get to having him back, even for little while. I should probably be the one thanking you.”
Noah carried the bags out to the car and found several teenage boys standing around it, staring. Their tongues weren’t exactly hanging out of their mouths, but the overall visual effect was about the same.
“That’s your car, man?” asked one of the boys.
“It is,” Noah said.
“Is that a General Lee car?” another asked.
“Yeah, it is. It’s a 1969 Dodge Charger, but the General Lee wouldn’t have been able to keep up with this one.” He slid in behind the wheel and watched the boys as he started the big engine. Their eyes, already wide, got even bigger when the 540-cubic-inch hemi engine roared to life. The whining of the blower drive system could just be heard over the rumble from the exhaust system, and when Noah revved the engine once, the boys looked like they were about to jump out of their skin.
He tapped the horn once and put the car in gear, backing out onto the road and then starting the twenty-minute drive to his new and temporary home. He got there without incident, used the remote on his sun visor to open the garage door farthest from the house, and tucked the car inside. He closed the garage door, grabbed his bags, and carried them in. The door from the garage entered through the utility room, so he dropped his dirty clothes bag onto the washer as he walked on toward the master bedroom.
He tossed his bag onto the bed and then opened it to put his things away. There was a beautiful old dresser, which he planned to leave for Sarah, so he took the four-drawer chest that stood on the other side of the room for himself. He didn’t have that many clothes with him, so it only took a few minutes to put everything away. His bath and shaving kit went into the master bathroom, and he was suddenly glad Kate had thought to buy towels. He took a long shower and then wrapped a towel around himself and sat down on the bed.
He took out his phone and dialed Sarah, and she answered quickly.
“Hey, babe,” she said. “We still haven’t gotten on the road. All the stuff we have to bring with us won’t fit into my car, so we have to get a trailer. Your buddy Wally is putting a hitch on my car for me tonight, but I won’t be able to get a trailer until tomorrow morning, about eight o’clock.”
“That’s okay, honey,” Noah said. “It’s actually only about a nine-hour drive. If you leave there by noon, you’ll be here by ten o’clock, local time. I’ll text you the address so you can come straight to the house. My sister, Kate, helped me get some dishes and stuff, but if you don’t like what she picked out we can always go get more.”
“Oh, come on, Rex, you know I’m not that picky. I’m sure it’ll be fine. I’m just excited that we’re finally going to have a home together.”
“Me, too, babe. Is Neil giving you any trouble?”
“Not really,” Sarah said. “He’s just got so much computer junk that he has to bring along. If it wasn’t for that, we’d already be on the way.”
They talked for several minutes and then said good night. It was only a little after eight, but Noah planned on being up bright and early. His new job would actually begin in the morning, when Ralph Morgan was released from the hospital, and he planned to be there long before that happened.
* * * * *
“How is he doing?” Neil asked. “Everything going okay over there?”
“Seems to be,” Sarah said. “That sister of his is being awfully helpful. Apparently she helped him pick out dishes and such for the house today. She and I might have to have a little talk when I get there.”
Neil just looked at her for a moment. “Please correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, “but isn’t that something a sister would do?”
“Yeah, but… Okay, fine, you’re right. I’m just a little jealous, okay? Now that he’s mine, dammit, I have a right to be jealous.”
Neil, his eyes wide, held up both hands and surrendered. “Did I say you didn’t? I’m quite sure I never said you didn’t have a right to be jealous. You can be as jealous as you want to, I don’t mind a bit.”
Sarah burst out laughing and threw a couch pillow at him. “Knock it off,” she said. “Don’t ruin my mad when I’m just getting it going. Besides, when I finally get to meet this ‘sister,’ I’m probably going to like her. From everything I’ve read about her, she seems like a pretty good person.”
“She’s a fed,” Neil said. “There’s no such thing as a good fed.”
“You butthead,” Sarah said. “Remember something—we’re feds, too.”
“Yeah? And your point is? But at least we’re better than FBI agents. All we do is kill people; those bastards ruin their lives and then make them keep living.”
Sarah stared at him for a moment. “Neil, what on earth soured you on the FBI so badly?”
Neil grimaced. “Who do you think came after me when I hacked the bank back in high school? I’ll never forget how they marched right into school and took me out of my twelfth grade English class. I was handcuffed and dragged out like I’d murdered someone, right in front of everybody I knew. I was railroaded through court, tried as an adult, and sentenced to ten years for something they called ‘digital bank robbery.’ I hadn’t actually stolen anything.”
“But you did hack the bank, right? I mean, if you committed a crime, why were you so surprised when you got arrested?”
“Because I thought I was too good to get arrested, okay? I thought I had outsmarted everybody, but my whole life went down the tubes when they arrested me. The only good thing was when one of the agents on my case, a woman, said she didn’t believe I was a danger to anybody, so they sent me to a federal prison camp, instead of putting me into one of the actual prisons. At a camp, you have to go out and get a job, and as long as you’re back on the premises of the camp when you’re supposed to be, you don’t get hassled. I got hired on at Geek Squad, and that’s where I met Rafael.”
“Rafael? I don’t think you ever mentioned him before. Who was Rafael?”
Neil grinned. “Rafael was the guy who showed me the mistakes I was making as a hacker. He taught me some tricks I’d never even dreamed of, but once he opened my eyes to what was possible, I suddenly started seeing new ways to use computers against themselves. Since I wasn’t allowed to drive, most days it was just me and Rafael in the office, helping people wi
th their computer problems over the phone or dispatching the house call crews. When things were dead, he would show me all sorts of things I’d never heard about before, but by the time I’d been there a year, I was teaching him things. The trouble was that he couldn’t quite understand a lot of what I was saying.”
“You’re saying, he was smart, but you were smarter?” Sarah asked.
Neil shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. He told me he wasn’t surprised, that he had figured out right from the get-go that I’d pass him up in no time.” Neil looked thoughtful for a long moment, then turned back to Sarah. “You know, it turned out Rafael was the one who put Allison on to me. She actually went after him first, but he told her that I was better, and that I deserved the second chance more than he did.”
Sarah cocked her head at him. “Why? What was he in for?”
Neil looked down at his lap for a moment, then turned his face up to look into her eyes. “He had hacked into the traffic control system in San Francisco about eight years ago, and accidentally—which the court believed, by the way—set every traffic light to green. Over three hundred accidents happened over the span of twenty minutes, and a hundred and fifteen people died. He was still trying to fix the problem when the cops tracked him down and arrested him.”
Sarah looked at Neil’s face for a moment, then picked up the remote for the TV. “Let’s find a movie,” she said. “Real life is too depressing.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Noah was awake at six and was shaved, dressed, and out the door by six thirty. Morgan had told him the day before that Ralph’s doctor was supposed to see him around eight thirty or nine, but Noah wanted to be there early and talk to the men who were already watching over the boy. There were two sheriff’s deputies at the hospital when he arrived, but one of them was Collins. Noah walked up to him boldly, and the deputy cut off his conversation with his colleague.
“Deputy Collins,” Noah said, “I’ve been hired…”
“Yes, sir, I already know,” Collins said. “The sheriff briefed us this morning, and we’re supposed to assist you in any way you need us to.”
Noah had expected it, but a part of him was almost surprised. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going up to talk to the people on duty now, but I may be letting some of them go. Scott Forney should be here about any minute with a few potential new people. Would you send him on up when he gets here?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Madison,” Collins said. The other deputy nodded to Noah with a smile, and he turned and walked into the hospital.
Morgan had told him that Ralphie’s room was on the fourth floor, and it took Noah only a couple of minutes to find it. A large man with missing front teeth tried to stop him from going into the room, but Noah simply stared at him. “Do you have any idea who I am?” Noah asked, and the big man shook his head. “My name is Rex Madison,” he said. “Jimmy Morgan hired me to take over as chief of security for Ralph. Now stand aside so I can go in and make sure my charge is okay.”
Missing Teeth stepped aside, and so did three other men with him. Noah entered the room to find Ralphie sitting up in the bed, his tray table pulled up close and holding the remains of his breakfast.
“So you’re Rex Madison, are you? Pa told me you’d be taking over today. I guess I owe you a big thank-you; Pa says if it wasn’t for you, that dweeb Benny might’ve actually managed to kill me.”
Noah shrugged. “I can’t say for sure. All I know is that I saw a gun come out and get pointed your way, so I tried to stop anything bad from happening. Couple of deputies told me that the security tape looked like he had a good bead drawn on you, and that when I grabbed him and threw off his aim.”
Ralph grinned at him. “Well, thanks, whatever you did. All I remember is seeing that gun barrel appear in front of me and realizing that I was looking straight down it. I’m smart enough to know that means it was aimed right at one of my eyes. I’d much rather have this concussion than be blind or dead, right?”
“I’d have to agree with you on that,” Noah said. He turned and looked at the men who were standing around the room, staying out of his way. “These were your bodyguards?”
“Yeah,” Ralph said. “That’s Ronnie and Billy Jim and…”
“I don’t care who they are,” Noah said. “Not one of you had seen a picture of me, had you?”
All of the men in the room, including Ralph, shook their heads. “No,” said one of them. “Why? Was we supposed to see one?”
“Not necessarily,” Noah said, “but you should never have taken my word for the fact that I was supposed to be taking over today. All four of you stepped out of my way on my say-so and let me walk right up to Ralph, who’s laying in his hospital bed and completely vulnerable. If I were somebody other than who I am, then maybe whoever hired Benny to try to kill Ralph could have gotten to me, too. If that were the case, Ralph would be dead already, and I probably could have killed all four of you before you could react. You’re all fired. Get out of here now, before I really get pissed off.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” said one of the men. “Who do you think you are? You can’t…” The man fell suddenly silent as he dropped his eyes downward. Noah had drawn his pistol and pointed it directly at the big fellow’s groin.
“Care to bet?” Noah asked. “If I had been a killer, I could have shot Ralph as soon as I walked in and then taken the four of you down with a single shot each. Firing five shots and having to spin around once would take me about 1.3 seconds. It would take any one of you more than two seconds just to draw your weapon, and another 1.5 seconds or more to aim it at me. I’d even have time for a second shot if I missed a couple of you with the first. And even if one or two of you survived, would you really want to? Ralph would be dead; would you really want to face Jimmy?”
All four of the men were staring at Noah, and all four of them swallowed hard as they considered his last question. One by one, without another word, they walked down the hall toward the elevator and left the hospital.
“Wow,” Ralph said. “You were a little rough on them, don’t you think?”
“Not nearly rough enough,” Noah replied. “They let a perfect stranger walk into your hospital room without even checking to see if I was armed. What I said to them was true. If I were hired to finish what Benny Smoot failed to accomplish, you would already be dead. Your father has hired me to make sure you stay safe. I’m not going to have idiots like that working your security detail. As far as I’m concerned, kid, you’re more important than the president of the United States. That means I want a security detail on you that’s every bit as good as the one on him.”
Ralph let out a sigh. “Okay, look, Rex, let’s talk. See, Pa thinks I can’t take care of myself, but there’s a lot of things that I like to do where I don’t want a bunch of freaking babysitters around, know what I mean? That’s why I kinda like the guys I had, because they knew how to get lost when I wanted them to. Now, if you’re taking over, you and me got to work this out.”
Noah looked at the boy for a long moment, then shook his head. “What part of ‘I’m going to keep you alive’ do you not understand? I’m going to put together a security detail that is going to shadow you twenty-four hours a day. There will be men standing outside your bedroom door and under your bedroom window all night long, and when you get up in the morning, at least two of them will be at your side from the moment you roll out of bed until you turn out the lights again. I don’t care if you and your girlfriend are doing the horizontal hula—there will be at least two armed men within three feet of you at all times, do you understand me?”
Ralph’s face fell. “Aw, c’mon, man,” he said. “I gotta have a little bit of privacy, know what I mean? Me and my girl, we like to—you know? I can’t have a couple of goons standing around when I’m trying to get her in the mood, now, can I?”
“Sorry, Ralph,” Noah said. “But this is how it’s going to be.”
“How what’s going to be?” Jimmy Morgan asked as he entered the room,
Scott Forney right beside him.
“Pa, you gotta talk to this guy,” Ralph said to his father. “He’s saying he’s gonna have bodyguards standing over me every minute of the day. Come on, Pa, I don’t need no babysitters. Hell, I already pack a gun of my own. I don’t need somebody like this goon standing over me all the time.”
Morgan smiled at his son, but then his hand flashed out and slapped the boy across the face. “You let me tell you something,” he said. “Somebody tried to kill you a couple nights ago. Now, maybe it was just Benny getting his tweak on, or maybe somebody paid him to try to take you out, like he said. Either way, we now have a situation where we can’t take any chances. We’ve got to make sure you’re safe, because you’re the next generation of the Morgan empire. What that means is, if this man right here says he’s going to have somebody standing next to you while you take a dump, you might as well just ask the guy to hold the toilet paper for you. Rex has already been through some pretty bad stuff, and he’s managed to survive it. That tells me he’s a man who can think on his feet, and that means he’s probably a man who can keep you from getting killed. He’s going to be in charge of your security from now on, and if I hear of even one time you try to give him or his people the slip, you’re going to answer to me. You got that, boy?”
Ralph’s eyes were wide and locked on his father. “Yes, sir,” he said shakily. “No problem, Pa.”
“There’d better not be,” Jimmy said. “After what happened the other night, I’m not taking any chances with you. You might not understand it, son, but you’re the most important thing in the world to me. All the rest of this could go to hell in a hand basket, but if anything happened to you I’d be destroyed. Now, Rex is the kind of man who can figure out pretty quickly what to do to keep you safe, so I don’t want to hear any more talk about you not doing what he says.”
“Yes, sir,” Ralph said. “There won’t be any.” He looked up at Noah. “Rex, I’m sorry about all that. We got no problem, I promise you.”