by Dave Daren
“Good,” I said. “Gabriele, do you think that you can use Arielle in our plan?”
“More hands are always better,” the hacker said as he stood to stretch and grab a sausage. “Actually, that’s not right. But, I think an extra set will be helpful in this situation. Especially one who’s already been in the building.”
“Alright,” I said. “Then it’s settled. You’ll stay here, where it’s safe, and then tonight we’ll go to Gryffon. Why don’t you get some of the breakfast, and we’ll talk.”
Arielle nodded her head, stood up, and walked over to snag some of the bacon. She chewed on it as she looked out of the window, and then her face paled as she leaned closer. She started to tap her foot nervously as her eyes narrowed on something below.
“Hunter,” she said as she glanced over her shoulder. “They followed me.”
Chapter 12
“Shit,” I said as I jumped up from the couch.
Hank was right behind me, but the bodyguard went for the balcony instead of the window. He managed to look calm as he stepped out into the cool mountain air and looked around. He yawned, ran a hand through his hair like he was still waking up, and then leaned over the railing as he looked at the street below.
I watched the grey car that Arielle pointed out from behind the curtain. I thought that I could make out the shadow of someone in the driver’s seat, but that was it. I looked down the street to see if there was anyone loitering, but the sidewalks were filled with tourists and people on their way to work so it was hard to be sure.
“We need to get out of here,” my bodyguard said as he came back inside.
He drew the curtains all the way closed on the balcony and then motioned for me to do the same with the window. He still had a calm air about him, but there was purpose in the set of his jaw as he looked around the room.
“Now?” Gabriele asked.
The young hacker looked down at the floor where the blueprints and photos were scattered. He took a swig of his energy drink, put his hands on his narrow hips, and then nodded like he was making a decision. The purple-haired man bent down to start picking everything up while he mumbled to himself about losing his place.
“Yes, now,” Hank said. “We can regroup later, but we can’t stay here with an unknown enemy outside.”
“Did you see them?” I asked as I finished with the blinds.
I was sure that there were at least two men in the car, but the light that reflected off of the windshield made it hard for me to tell. I ran my hands through my hair as I took in a deep breath to calm my nerves.
“They were still in the car,” the beefy man said.
He stalked into the other room to start gathering his things. His shoulders were tense, and he moved fast as he threw everything back into his bag. He was a man on a mission, and I didn’t want to make him wait.
I followed his example and went to pack. I hadn’t had enough time to spread out too much, so my bag was filled in no time, and I was back in the sitting room with the others. I couldn’t tell if I was excited or scared, or some combination of both, but I did feel like I was in a James Bond movie.
Arielle peeked out of the blinds as she tapped her foot like a bunny rabbit. She glanced over at me when I came back into the room with my suitcase, but then looked right back outside. She reached up to pull the loose strands of her hair around her shoulder to braid it while she continued to watch the car.
“Do we have everything?” I asked.
“I have the blueprints, photos, and my gear,” Gabriele said as he hefted his black canvas bag onto his shoulders.
“I have what I need,” Hank said.
He looked toward the table scattered with our breakfast plates and containers.
“We can leave those,” I said. “It’s not like they don’t already know who we are. And we’re not going to eat at that place again.”
“You’re right,” the bodyguard said. “Is everyone packed?”
“Ready to go,” I replied. “But where are we going to go?”
I tugged my phone out of my pocket as I realized I needed to find us a place to stay for the night and to regroup.
“For now, we’ll just drive,” Hank said.
“They’re not in the car anymore,” Arielle said as she turned away from the window. “They looked like they were coming inside.”
I hurried over to the balcony door, pulled back the curtain, and checked the gray sedan. I cursed under my breath when I confirmed that it was empty. I did a quick calculation and guessed that we had less than five minutes before they were at our door, even less if they already knew which room we were in.
“Let’s go,” my bodyguard said.
The large man hefted his bag onto his shoulder, pulled his newly acquired pistol out of its holster, and walked across the room to crack the door open. He looked left and right before he glanced over his shoulder to motion us forward.
I reached over and took Arielle’s cold hand in mine, squeezed it reassuringly, and then followed after Gabriele. I mentally counted down the seconds as we snuck out of the room. I gripped the handle of my bag in my free hand so that I could run at any moment, and threw a smile over my shoulder at the nervous government attorney.
“We should take the service stairs,” I said. “The car is parked by the side door, anyway. And they’re probably going to take the elevator.”
“I’ll go in front of you,” Hank said. “Hunter, you take my spare and watch our backs.”
I grabbed the pea shooter that he pulled out from his ankle holster, checked to make sure that it was loaded, and then started toward the door to the service stairs with Arielle right behind me. I almost jumped out of my skin when the elevator door rang and two men in suits stepped out.
“Hey!” the younger of the two shouted.
“Run!” Hank called as he waved us past him.
I didn’t need any further instructions as I pulled Arielle into the stairwell behind me. I followed after Gabriele, who’d already bolted into the service exit. The young hacker was faster than I expected given how much junk he put into his body and the heavy bag he had on his shoulder, and I had to admire his moves as he navigated the narrow steps.
There was a scuffle behind me, and I paused on a landing to see that my bodyguard had managed to break the handle to the door. I could hear the men on the other side shouting as they tried to get through, but the wooden slab wasn’t moving.
“Are you okay?” I asked as the beefy man ran down the stairs toward me.
“Yeah,” he grunted. “But that door won’t hold them for long. We need to get out of here.”
The door to the bottom floor swung open below us as Gabriele ran out into the early morning light. The purple-haired man had the car unlocked and the engine started by the time the rest of us came out of the building. He was focused on the display panel on the dashboard with his eyebrows furrowed, and his lips pursed together as he messed with the GPS.
“There,” the hacker said as he sat back in the passenger seat with a satisfied smile. “They won’t be able to track us this way, at least.”
“Good,” Hank said while he took the driver’s seat.
I slid into the back seat next to a shaking Arielle, and I squeezed her hand reassuringly as she twisted in the back seat to look at the service door. I’d been in worse situations, but by the look of terror in her pale-blue eyes, I was sure that the beautiful lawyer hadn’t been chased by men with guns before.
“Arielle,” I said. “Where should we go?”
“Go?” she asked.
She tore her gaze from the door just as the two men in suits burst out of the stairwell. She blinked a few times as her mind caught up, and then she nodded her head like she’d just come up with a solution.
“There’s a park outside of the city,” she said. “It’s outside of any mob territory, so we should be safe.”
“Perfect,” I said. “Gabriele, can we still use the GPS?”
Hank didn’t wait for i
nstructions. The well-trained bodyguard had already peeled out of the parking spot and onto the main road while our pursuers were still running back to their grey sedan. He made a few quick turns, and I wondered how much he’d studied the streets just in case it came to this.
The young hacker in the passenger seat turned to stare at me with a look of disdain in his hazel eyes.
“Of course, the car’s GPS is disabled,” he said. “But I can use my phone. What’s the name of the place?”
The beautiful lawyer shook her head.
“It doesn’t have a name,” she said. “Not one that you can put into the GPS. It’s mostly used by kids who are out to party.”
“I’m guessing you spent some time there as a kid,” I said with a smirk as I tried to calm her nerves.
A pretty pink blush colored her cheeks as she met my eyes. She gave me a noncommittal shrug before she turned back to the road ahead of us. The brilliant woman began to give instructions to Hank, and after the third turn her shoulders had begun to relax.
I sat back in my seat and watched the city pass by, But I kept an eye on the rear-view mirror and the side mirrors on the off-chance that the goons chasing us would catch up. But Hank sped through traffic like he’d lived there his entire life, and soon the last of the city was behind us.
“I don’t think they followed us,” I said.
“No,” my bodyguard responded.
“They may have had some engine trouble,” Gabriele said with a smirk.
The hacker had kept his laptop balanced on his legs since we’d fled the hotel, and his fingers had flown across the keyboard as he typed. He’d barely seemed to register each tight corner, and he hadn’t stopped typing even when we were sliding back and forth in the seats as Hank maneuvered the car through traffic.
I caught occasional glimpses of the screen, but there was nothing there that I could understand. I gave up trying to translate the symbols that appeared on the screen as Gabriele smirked at me and shook my head.
“You hacked into their car?” I asked.
It was an impressive feat, especially since we hadn’t been there for long, and the young man hadn’t had any direct contact with their car.
“Just a little,” the purple-haired man said with a shrug. “I didn’t have enough time to do much, and I got lucky that the dumbasses had their bluetooth on.”
“Still,” I said. “That’s pretty amazing.”
“What did you do?” Arielle asked as she leaned between the two front seats.
“I only had time to turn off the start button,” Gabriele said. “It just means that they’ll have to use the actual key to start the engine.”
I nodded my head as I thought about it. I had to admit that I rarely ever had my key on hand. I usually had it in my briefcase, and it would take a few seconds for me to retrieve it if I had to. I would put money on one of the men having the key to their car in their pockets, add that to the time that it took for them to figure out what was wrong, and Gabriele had bought us at least a five-minute head-start.
“There it is,” the beautiful lawyer said. “You can pull off right there.”
She pointed to a little dirt path that was barely wide enough to fit the car. It turned out that the so-called park that she’d taken us to was little more than old wooden picnic tables and a fire pit that looked like it might’ve been used the night before. There were tree stumps scattered around the fire pit, and empty bottles of beer littered the area.
“This is a park?” I asked.
“It used to be nicer,” Arielle said. “But the city stopped paying attention to it, and the teens who party here rarely pick up after themselves.”
“It’s a good place to regroup,” Hank said. “I doubt the Gryffon men will think to search for us at a drinking spot.”
“True,” I said with a smile to the brunette next to me. “You did a great job.”
“Thanks,” she said with another pretty blush.
The four of us climbed out of the car and headed toward the nearest picnic table. Gabriele laid out the blueprints that he’d covered in his chicken scratch handwriting, the photos, and then pinned it down on the four corners with stones.
“Let’s go over the plan,” the purple-haired man said as we sat down. “We need to do this tonight, especially since they’ve already had us followed. If we wait any longer, then they’ll have enough time to move everything around, and who knows what other hole-in-the-wall country they’ll hide it in. No offense.”
“None taken,” Arielle said with a shrug. “Andorra is not on many people’s radars. I like it that way.”
“What are you thinking?” I asked Gabriele as I tried to read his handwriting.
“I can easily bypass their security measures,” the young hacker said while he pointed to the cameras. “I won’t be able to do a loop in their feed, but if I can sneak in, then it’ll only take a few seconds to get through the card readers.”
“The servers should be on the basement floor,” I said. “There won’t be any windows, but they may have guards down there.”
“That’s where I’ll come in,” Hank said. “I can watch Gabriele’s six while he breaks through their firewalls.”
“How long do you think it’ll take for you to get what you need?” I asked.
The young man looked up from the blueprints with a thoughtful expression. He tapped his fingers on the wooden table like he was running the numbers, and he chewed on his lip ring.
“Twenty minutes,” he answered. “Maybe longer. Their system didn’t seem too complex when I poked through it last night, but they may add some extra security since they know that we’re here now.”
“Maybe,” I said as an idea came to me. “But they don’t know who you are. They might know who Hank is since he’s with me all the time, and they definitely know who Arielle and I are.”
“What are you thinking, Hunter?” Hank asked.
The bodyguard had been around me long enough that he could recognize when I had a plan.
“I’m going to be your distraction,” I said.
Gabriele nodded his head and then stood up to start pacing behind the table. He paused, rifled through his black canvas bag, and produced a fresh bag of red Twizzlers that he immediately began to munch on.
“That could work,” the purple-haired man said after a few minutes.
“How are you going to distract them?” Arielle asked. “You saw the men at the hotel. They had guns, Hunter.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But I doubt that they’ll open fire right in the middle of their lobby. The cops would have a harder time covering that up. And I have a subpoena that I fully intend to serve.”
“They don’t have to honor that, though,” the brunette said with a frown. “And I don’t have the authority to enforce it without the magistrate’s permission. He’s not going to give either of us that. I think he’s been… What did you call it? On the take… for several years.”
The beautiful lawyer’s pale-blue eyes flashed with rage, and I would put money on the fact that the magistrate had blocked most of her attempts to investigate the corrupt company.
“They don’t have to,” I said. “In fact, the more they resist, the better.”
“Because then they’ll have to argue with you to get you out of the building,” the government lawyer said with a bright smile as she caught onto my plan.
“I can be very dramatic,” I said with a wink.
“And he’s very good at arguing,” Hank added. “I think this could work.”
“If you can get all of the information from their servers,” Arielle said as she began to bounce her foot. “Then I can bring it to the right people. I know a few people that are still on my side. And if I have proof of Gryffon’s illegal activities, then they won’t be able to ignore it.”
“Perfect,” I said. “You can take care of it on this side of the ocean, and we’ll bring down their operations in the US.”
Hank nodded his head as he processed the new pla
n. He frowned as he studied the beautiful lawyer sitting next to me, and I realized what he was thinking before he even said it.
“You’ll need protection once we leave,” the bodyguard said. “The Serbian mob won’t take this lying down.”
I looked over at the beautiful brunette as the truth of Hank’s statement sank in. I’d be out on the first flight in the morning, if not tonight, and then she would be on her own. I knew that she was smart, but she didn’t have enough experience fighting off the mob to be left without some form of protection.
“Do you think we could have a few guys watch over her?” I asked the beefy man across the table from me.
“I know some people in Spain,” Hank said as he stood and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Let me make some calls. If they’re still there, then they should be here before we have to leave.”
I nodded to the large man and then grinned at Arielle. I could see the excitement in her eyes as she looked at me. I’d only started to battle against the Serbians in the last year, but the beautiful woman next to me had been at war for longer than that.
“What makes you hate Gryffon so much?” I asked when I realized that I still had no idea what had set her on her path.
The brunette pulled her hand out of mine as she began to study the blueprints. She had a frown on her face, and I could see her weighing the pros and cons of answering my question. Finally, she sighed and turned back to me with a determined set of her shoulders.
“They killed my fiancé,” she said. “He was trying to expose them, and they found out. So they made him disappear. I searched for so long, but they never even discovered his body.”
She swiped at a tear that spilled down her cheek before she took a deep breath.
“I promised that I’d bring them down if it was the last thing I do,” she said.
“I’m so sorry,” I said as I took her hands in mine.
“Thank you,” she said. “I know that he’ll be able to rest once they can’t hurt anyone anymore.”