The Arena: The Awakening (1)

by James Robert Scott

  “Wow,” thought Laura, “This guy is really good!”

  “I also got you one of these this morning.” Taylor handed Laura a smart-phone.

  As she looked at it, he explained, “It’s totally encrypted and untraceable. You can use it anywhere in the world and it cannot be hacked, listened into, or tracked.”

  “How do you know it’s that secure?” enquired Laura.

  “It’s my program that runs it, so I guarantee it” he replied.

  He was almost bragging in his statement but Laura had sussed by now that he was no threat to her and only wanted to help. He was obviously loving what he was doing as he was getting to show off.

  Thinking ahead, Laura said to him “With your computer bits and pieces, how good do you really think you are?”

  He paused for a brief second before replying with “There’s nothing I can’t do with a computer. There’s nothing I can’t get you either, if it’s needed. Why?”

  “Does this new cell phone send emails?” she enquired.

  “Yep, still all encrypted” he replied.

  “I can’t tell you what date, or what time you’ll get it, but you’ll get a message asking for you to arrange a couple of things for me. It’ll be fast-time and I will need you to come through with it.”

  “Sounds like a challenge” replied Taylor rubbing his hands together.

  He was like a child in some ways but full of self-confidence. Laura felt confident he could do what she asked so thanked him again for what he had done and left. It was time to get back to dealing with Scott.

  Chapter 24

  Answers

  The traffic away from the city at that time of the day was horrendous. By the time Laura had something to eat, got changed into some dark clothing and reached the Mountain Lakes area, it was dark. She stopped again at the rest area overlooking the lake and took a brief look at the house. Through her binoculars, she could see that the house was in darkness so it was possible he hadn’t made it home yet. She drove past the premises and was frustrated that, as she did, she noticed that there was a light shining through a very small window of the basement of the house.

  “Damn it!” she thought.

  It was decision time. Did she carry on or put if off for another day? She drove on and back around to the rest area where she took a seat and thought about what to do next. She ran through various scenarios in her mind and calculated what could go wrong. She hadn’t seen him arrive home so there was a small chance he wasn’t alone. She needed to be sure otherwise she would need to put it off until another time.

  As she looked around where she was sitting, there was a newspaper in the trashcan next to the picnic table. It was a local paper which gave Laura an idea. She quickly looked at the classifieds and adverts and found a local pizza delivery company. After a few minutes on the phone, there was a large pepperoni pizza on its way to Scott’s house. If she could get herself into position before it arrived, she could see if Scott answered the door. If he did have someone else with him, someone acting as security, they would answer the door at this time of night rather than him.

  The delivery company said forty five minutes so Laura drove to the other end of the estate and parked her car before heading to Scott’s house. When she arrived, it was still in darkness so she slipped into the front garden and picked a suitably large piece of shrubbery to hide in. She sat there watching for what seemed like an age. It was starting to get cold. There was no movement at all from the house. For such big premises, you would have expected more. Laura’s thoughts were short lived as a beat-up old station wagon pulled into the driveway, with music blaring from it. Once the ignition was turned off, she could see that it was the delivery boy. He raced up the steps to the front door, pizza in hand and rang the doorbell. It took him a second ring to get any signs of life in the house. The hallway light came on and the door was opened. It was Scott!

  There was a very brief discussion between the delivery boy and Scott as Scott obviously hadn’t ordered anything. She could hear the delivery boy saying to Scott that it had already been paid for but he didn’t want to hear any of it. The delivery boy, in frustration, put the pizza on the floor and walked off towards his car. Before long, he was reversing out of the drive-way with his music blaring. He didn’t care if the pizza wasn’t wanted, it was paid for so he got his money either way and off he went to his next delivery.

  Scott stood on the doorstep briefly and looked around outside his house. He slowly scanned the front garden looking for any signs that there was someone around. He totally missed Laura hiding in the bushes. She was too good at making herself invisible for him to see her. Before long, he picked the pizza up and went back inside the house. There were still no lights on in the house and he disappeared out of sight. Laura had already picked her entry point to the house, which was a side door she had seen as she set herself up in the garden. It had a wooden frame with a glass panel on top and a wooden panel on the bottom and a single door lock that would be easy for her to pick without making a noise.

  Laura gave it a few minutes before making her move. The door lock was opened in a few seconds and she was inside. She drew the pistol she had tucked in her side pocket and cleared each room as she went. She went upstairs just to make sure that the house was clear apart from the basement. It was cold upstairs. It looked like it wasn’t really used. Once she was happy with it, she made her move back downstairs and headed into the basement. Laura made no noise as she calmly walked down the stairs. It was light down there but fairly dim. The bulbs could have done with an upgrade. There was a television on in one corner of the room showing the daily news. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she could see that the pizza box was there opened and on the table. As it turned out, the basement was a bit of a man cave and had all amenities you could possibly need including cooking facilities, a fridge, sofa and a bed in the corner. As she scanned the room, she could see that Scott was actually eating a slice of the pizza with his back turned to her. He still had no idea she was there.

  While pointing it at the back of his head, Laura slowly cocked the hammer on the pistol. She could see him visibly freeze at the sound. So not to give him a chance to do anything, she said “Turn around slowly Scott!”

  He did as he was told and turned around, still with a piece of pizza in his mouth. The look on his face when he did so was one of those moments of realisation that he had a very serious problem to deal with. Using her pistol, Laura indicated for him to step to the side and sit on the chair nearest to him. As he sat down, he finished chewing the mouthful of pizza he was struggling to keep in his mouth.

  “I’m going to ask you a series of questions Scott and this is one of those times in your life where you need to be quite accurate in your answers. If I think for a moment that you’re lying to me, well, just use your imagination.”

  Laura was calm and collected and spoke in a soft tone.

  “Is that what you said to Cooper, Mia” replied Scott.

  “It was something along those lines Scott. Oh, and if you call me Mia again, I’ll shoot you just for the hell of it! My name is LAURA!”

  Laura had raised her voice to make sure her point was made and that there was no mistake on who was in charge of this situation. Scott stared at her realising that he didn’t really have any option but to do as he was told. What he didn’t know was how much information she already had, so he resigned himself to the fact that he would need to answer as truthfully as possible otherwise he was going to be shot. Laura started the ball rolling.

  “Why?”

  This was the most open thing she could ask which, if he was telling the truth, he wouldn’t be able to tell her anything she didn’t already know.

  “Why?” he replied. “Why not? Don’t get me wrong Laura, I had nothing to do with actually selecting you for the project. I don’t think any of us did. We bought into the project for the chance to have a silent, untraceable, asset at our disposal. That asset alone would be indispensable in the current
climate. Both foreign and domestic threats are getting more and more real these days and we need to protect not only ourselves, but the public that we work each day to protect as well. The project that created you was the way forward.”

  Laura paused for a moment and thought about what he said. She was aware that they didn’t have anything to do with her being selected but the way he said it was 'the way forward' caused her to think.

  “You said it was the way forward? Are there any more like me?”

  “No!” he replied. “I don’t believe there are. The project hasn’t been going long enough for them to have developed any others.”

  Laura was reading his face as he spoke. His eyes looked directly at her and his facial expression didn’t change. From what she could see, he wasn’t lying to her.

  Laura took a deep breath and said “Tell me about Hank’s involvement in all of this.”

  “As I said Laura, we didn’t know who was going to be the asset that they developed. There’s no way I could have known that you were his wife until he told me so last week. I got approached by the Arena to test their plan by getting someone to investigate your earlier missions. I asked Hank, as he was my senior agent in the office. No other reason. I couldn’t have predicted that he would find you, or that you would turn out to be who you are, as I didn’t know you both beforehand.”

  From what he was saying, Laura was happy that he was telling the truth and that Hank didn’t have a hand in what was going on. She felt better about that but still needed to decide what to do with Scott.

  “Do you have a safe here?” she asked.

  “Yes, but it’s only small. There’s nothing in it about the project. We weren’t given hard copies of anything we were told. We were basically the finance behind it as you cost a lot of money to develop.”

  “Open it,” she replied and with that, Scott got up and walked over to the far end of the room.

  Laura watched his every move and, once he had dialled in the code, she said “Open it and step back.”

  He did as he was told and moved out of the way. All Laura could see in there was a very neat stack of money and a pistol. Laura told him to stand at the other end of the room. Once he had moved, she put it all into a canvas bag that she picked up from next to the safe.

  “Are you going to kill me Laura?” Scott blurted out.

  She looked at him and could see what looked like genuine fear in his facial expression.

  “You contributed to an organisation that took the life of someone that they could have saved and turned them into their own dirty little secret. Someone to do your wet work. You took away my life! And the happy life that Hank was living with me! What do you think I should do Scott, because I want it all back?”

  Scott didn’t want to answer. The look on his face started to change from fear, to acceptance. He knew that whatever he said, it wasn’t going to make any difference to what Laura was thinking.

  Laura took a moment and without giving him a chance to answer said “Can you bring yourself to promise me that this conversation will never be discussed with anyone?”

  Scott nodded.

  “Can you also promise that no harm whatsoever will come to Hank?”

  “Yes,” he blurted out with a gasp of almost relief.

  “Then fine,” she said. “For now, you stay alive but if I suspect that anything is going to come of this conversation, or that anything happens, or is going to happen to him, you’ll be gone! I’ve got quite a few spare rounds for my rifle and, believe you me, I’ll use every one of them if necessary to put you down.”

  She meant what she said and could see in his face that the warning had hit home.

  Before he could say anything else, Laura was heading up the stairs and out of the house. She felt that she didn’t need to say any more to him. Within a few seconds, she was out the door and heading back to her car. Even though her warning was firm, she didn’t trust Scott to stick to his word. She knew she had set herself up for more work but, if it kept both her and Hank safe, it was a task she would happily undertake. Deep down she wished that Scott would keep to his word but, given what he had been a part of, she knew he didn’t really have any morals. Not ones that Laura recognised, anyway.

  The more she thought about it, the more upset and frustrated she was getting. “Why did I let this one live? Why should he live?” These were the questions going round in her head that she couldn’t construct a suitable, acceptable, answer to.

  Back at her hotel, she threw around what she had done in her head and before long it was all becoming too much. She knew she was tired, so it was off to sleep with tomorrow being a new day, when she would look at it with fresh eyes and then make her decision.

  Chapter 25

  Decision time

  It wasn’t a good night’s sleep. For all the time that she lay there, she probably only got about an hour’s shut-eye. The only good thing was, she had now constructed her plan in fine detail. In the middle of the night, she had sent a text to Taylor telling him to hack Scott’s phone lines and to report anything of interest back to her. Especially if it involved Hank. She had no reply from him yet so she got herself up and into the shower for a long soak. It was only 7am so she made use of the endless hot water in the hotel. By the time she came out, she had a returned message from Taylor on her phone. It was short and sweet.

  It just said “I’m on it”.

  With that, she got herself ready and headed out for some breakfast. A few days before she noted that, not far from the hotel, there was an old-style diner in a run-down shopping complex that looked quite friendly, so she headed over there to start her day off.

  It wasn’t long before she was sitting in a bright pink booth by herself contemplating what to eat. If you didn’t know her, you would have thought that she was just a normal person going about their daily business. It was nice for her to relax and watch the world go by, just as anyone else would. As she placed her order, the waitress poured a large coffee into a cup at the booth. It smelt so good. The aroma was rich and strong. It was quite an efficient place as it didn’t take long before sitting on the table in front of her was a double eggs benedict with a side of bacon and some rye toast. As she took the first bite, she savoured the multiple flavours. It only lasted for a second, as her cell phone started to vibrate. She swallowed quickly and answered it.

  “How’s the food?” came the voice at the other end.

  It was Taylor.

  “How…?” Laura didn’t get the chance to finish. “I can see from your phone's GPS you’re in a diner. How is it?”

  “It started nice but I’ve not really had the chance to enjoy it. You got something for me?”

  “Yep, and it’s not good news I’m afraid. You remember I told you I designed that encrypted cell phone you’ve got now? Well, it’s a good job I did, as the minute you left last night, Scott called another one, so being the designer came in quite handy this morning.”

  “What did he say?” she asked while trying to sip some of her coffee.

  “He called Anita Hudson, told her that you had visited and he told her all about the conversation you had.”

  She knew it. She knew he couldn’t be trusted.

  Taylor continued “She asked him if there was anything they needed to do about Hank. He told her he was fine where he was, as he didn’t know enough to cause any problems.”

  That would usually be a good thing to hear but due to him breaking their agreement, something inside her told Laura that it wouldn’t stay like that.

  Before he could carry on telling her what was said in detail, Laura interrupted Taylor.

  “Taylor, I’m going to send you that message in the next few days that’ll have detailed instructions for you to follow fast-time. Are you still up for the challenge?”

  “Always” he replied excitedly.

  “You’ll need to use the bank account you set up for me. There’s plenty in there so use what you need to get it arranged.”

  “No pro
blem. You know I can do anything,” he replied.

  “Can you leave me alone now to finish breakfast?”

  “Yep.......”

  Click, the phone went dead. Taylor had hung up on her.

  As she went back to eating her food, she couldn’t help but raise a little smile. She enjoyed the back and forth between her and Taylor as, although he was a little weird with all his technical stuff, he was actually a good guy.

  Breakfast done, Laura looked out the window of the diner while sipping what was left of her coffee. The decision she had made was actually easier than she thought. Scott couldn’t be trusted and he needed to be dealt with sooner rather than later. Because of what she had started to plan in her head, a serious level of forward planning was necessary, so she got her cell phone out and started writing her message to Taylor. As she typed away, the waitress returned and topped her coffee up with a fresh brew.

  It didn’t take too long to type it up. There weren’t any pleasantries in the message, she was quite specific in what she needed. She didn’t send it straight away, but saved it in her account for later. Finishing off her fresh coffee, she settled the check at the cash desk and headed out the door.

  Laura’s first task was to head back to her hotel and clean out the room she had been living in for the past few days. As she packed up her things, she actually felt a bit sad about leaving. She worried that she may have committed herself to a life of moving from place to place, but that thought passed quite quickly, as she remembered the mission at hand. Once everyone was gone, she would be free to live wherever she wanted, for as long as she wanted. As she closed the door behind her, she was smiling as knew she was getting closer to her goal. She settled the bill and loaded her cases into the car. As she sat there in the driver’s seat, she realised that she would need to freshen up the limited wardrobe she’d been carrying around for the last few weeks. There were plenty of malls in the area according to her GPS system in the car so she headed for the biggest, which was ten miles outside Denville.