Hard Wired

by C. Ryan Bymaster

  Books by C. Ryan Bymaster

  The eMOTION Series:

  Featuring Fifth and Dent

  eMOTION: Forced Pair

  eMOTION: Hard Wired

  eMOTION: False Positive

  – Forthcoming 2015 –

  Surge Protector

  Forsaken: Ev and Ell

  eMOTION:

  Hard Wired

  A Fifth and Dent Novel

  By

  C. Ryan Bymaster

  Text copyright: C. Ryan Bymaster, 2014.

  All related characters and elements are copyrighted by the author.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the author.

  PROLOGUE

  The three left the house, taking with them all signs of life. The front door they had left wide open to the unseasonably dry afternoon heat, and when they made the end of the walkway and hit the sidewalk, only one of the trio looked back. There was a slight tremble below her lower lip which matched the almost imperceptible tic in her right eye.

  Cherry loved what she did, loved spreading the warmth she had found with others of like mind. But sometimes there was a crack in the façade, a fissure in her foundation. She didn’t know what it was, but it came over her in waves. It wasn’t depression, that much she knew, but it was more of a lack of … something. Something stronger, something warm, something that made waking up every morning worthwhile.

  Something real?

  Her steps faltered — maybe she’d hit a raised crack in the concrete of the sidewalk — and she ran her eyes over the empty house they were leaving behind. Green, verdant lawn on the verge of going brown and dormant, gently swaying porch swing painted the same faded beige as the rest of the single-storied house, rose bushes along the front bay windows gone to a wild mass of thorns above a bed of wilted petals. And inside ….

  She shivered.

  The two others she was with stopped and turned back.

  Looking carefully at the house with the front door slightly ajar, the clean-cut man asked gently, “Everything okay, Cherry?”

  She tore her gaze away from the empty house, the same house that had not been empty when they’d been invited in, and let her eyes take in her companions. Connor, the younger of the two, was sixteen by just a few weeks, and still carried more of a childish aura about his chubby frame and in his wide and round dark eyes. His skin was the color of a latte with heavy cream and his mop-top of unruly brown hair bespoke of his mixed parentage. His gaze was on the ground, aptly watching a pincher bug traverse the sidewalk.

  Jeffery, the African-American who’d inquired about her well-being, was in his late twenties, had close-cut hair, and the build of someone who respected his body as a temple. His light brown eyes opened up just a touch as he regarded her, and she could do nothing but smile up into those warm and caring windows. And when he put a tender hand upon the boy’s shoulder, she felt that warmth seep into her very being.

  Her lips parted and her eyes crinkled as a smile attempted to split her face. She let the memory of the house they had just left behind be just that — a memory. She tucked an errant lock of her shoulder-length blonde hair behind her ear and assured Jeffery that she was fine.

  “Good, good,” he beamed.

  He pulled out his EB, scrolled through a few apps and pages, and pulled up the map of the neighborhood. As his fingers searched and his eyes scanned the screen, he spoke to Cherry and Connor.

  “Okay. Looks like the next candidate is down two streets and over one.” He looked up, pocketed his EB, and ushered his two companions along.

  “Do you think the next one will be open to our message?” she asked.

  “I do hope so,” Jeffery answered over his shoulder. “Some people just don’t realize that they need help, and those people, like the poor soul back there, just don’t know how to handle such welcoming bliss.”

  It was sad, Cherry thought, that people reacted in such drastic ways when they met the three of them. Sometimes they couldn’t handle the bliss, and they did things that were so … She shook her herself, knocking that thought from her mind.

  Her smile bloomed once again as they crossed the street. She liked that the three of them looked like a family. Black man, white woman, mixed child. Though maybe not related by blood, the three held a bond stronger than that.

  They reached the other side of the street and she winced as she stepped in gum, the heat making it much gooier as it clung to her sole. She paused to scrape the bottom of her shoe against the lip of the sidewalk, removing the gum ….

  And most of the blood that still stuck to the rubber treads of her shoes. She looked back and grimaced. Her bloody shoeprints led all the way back across the street, along the sidewalk, and up the walkway to the house with the open front door.

  The house that had not been empty when they had knocked.

  After a final sigh, she turned and skipped ahead to catch up to Jeffery and Connor.

  Yes, it was sad that some people reacted so passionately to the message they were spreading, but that wouldn’t stop her from trying.

  I

  Kasumi Takeda’s phone vibrated in her pocket, but she was too invested in the game she was playing to do anything about it. She had her feet spread apart as she leaned in toward the machine, tap-tap-tapping away at the “fire” button. This was the farthest she’d gotten in the game so far and she wasn’t going to let something like Dent trying to get a hold of her break her concentration.

  She narrowly missed being shot down by an enemy missile and she threw her whole body to the right as if it would help her dodge the digital attack. She returned fire and almost shouted in anger when a missile from the other side of the screen hit her, taking her last life. She cursed out loud in her native Japanese and then ducked her head sheepishly, looking around the empty stop-n-go mini-mart.

  Luckily, no one was around to witness her behavior. Well, no one but the old man behind the counter at the other side of the store, that was. He may have been hard of hearing and missed her vocal outburst, but his head shot up from his search-a-word puzzle book and he suddenly looked as if he wanted to throw his pencil across the room.

  Need to keep myself in check, she thought.

  She mentally kicked herself in the butt. It wasn’t her language she cared about — though for some odd reason Dent had been telling her a child of her age shouldn’t be using such foul language. It was her emotions that she needed to control. She took a deep, calming breath, relaxing herself and pulling her emotions back in, just like she had been practicing over the past four months.

  As she calmed her emotions, she looked at the old man behind the counter. He, too, visibly relaxed, putting the pencil in his mouth to chew on as he bent back down to finish his puzzle.

  Her phone buzzed again and she fished in her pocket to pull it out, expecting to see Dent’s name on the caller ID. But, it wasn’t him. It was some unknown, blocked number.

  Ignore. Sorry, don’t know you, don’t want to talk to you.

  She gave the arcade game one last look, debated on giving it one more go, then decided against it. She grabbed her plastic bag of goodies and necessities and left the mini-mart, chiming her way through the sliding glass doors. Outside, she hugged herself tightly, warding off the chill bite in the afternoon air. Her wool-lined jacket may not have been designer or chic, but it did the job. Dent had insisted on buying this one over the lavender one she had had her eye on. That pretty lavender jacket hadn’t been as thick as the one Dent had bought her, but it sure had more fashion and style than the blah-brown one she was stuck with wearing.
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  She headed out of the parking lot and made a right after the gas pumps. She kicked a few pine cones that were stupid enough to have fallen near the sidewalk or in the thick grass lawns of the houses to her right and watched them bounce and cavort and wobble their way into the two-lane street. She was four pine cones in when her phone buzzed again.

  Unknown caller. Again.

  Now she was getting concerned. As far as she knew, only Dent had her new number. But with things the way they were with technology, she knew it wouldn’t be too hard for anybody else to get her number. That’s why Everything Buts were such a necessity these days. EBs allowed people to access the internet with total privacy, keeping their location and user information completely protected from hackers and prying digital eyes.

  And, like her thoughts had somehow magically dipped into that digital ether, her EB chimed with a notification. She put her phone back in her pocket and pulled out her EB. There were no little icons on top to signify what the chime was for. No new emails, no new media postings, no alarms, no important calendar dates, no nothing.

  Something was definitely up. She put her EB away.

  She needed to get home, get back to Dent and let him know what was going on. He’d know what to do, and he wouldn’t freak out like she was starting to. The thought of Dent freaking out calmed her, and actually made her chuckle. The thought of Dent doing anything remotely emotional was hilarious. Her spirits buoyed from her mental pep talk, she trudged on, pausing only to teach a few more pine cones a lesson.

  Da-ding.

  She froze.

  Da-ding.

  Like a snake charmer sticking her hand into a burlap sack full of cobras, she slipped her hand into her pocket. She slowly pulled out her EB, looking at the trees around her, because she was afraid to look down. And then, like ripping a bandage off, she quickly looked down at the screen.

  GET HOME ASAP. TROUBLE. GET DENT.

  No freaking way! The message was written across her home screen. That in itself was impossible. In order to read a message, she had to open the appropriate app. Messages just didn’t appear on the screen like that. And then the fact that there was no sender information, no return information, made the magic mystery message all the more frightening. She and Dent had made some bad enemies earlier that year — her mother back in Japan being just one of them — and the two of them had gone to great lengths to stay under the radar ever since.

  Thoughts of Noman popped in her head.

  Dent didn’t believe her whenever she brought up Noman, but she knew Noman existed, and he was out to get her for some reason. It always seemed that whenever she felt the safest she would look around and notice the nondescript man watching her. He hadn’t done anything to her, yet, but he would. She knew he would. She hadn’t seen him in a while — the last time was in the supermarket three months ago — but she knew he was around.

  He was her personal bogeyman.

  She shoved her EB back in her pocket and walked ahead, at first briskly, and then soon enough she was practically flying over the sidewalks and streets, through bushes and trees, startling deer and birds, until she finally hit their street and huffed up their driveway — way too long for a driveway — and burst through the front door.

  The house alarm beeped, and she slapped her palm to a small plate in the wall near the doors. There was a small tingle as the reader scanned her palm and the beeping stopped.

  If the alarm was on then that meant the house was empty.

  Even so, she screamed Dent’s name.

  II

  A flash erupted from the second floor window, and a piece of bark splintered just to the right of Marion Dent’s shoulder. The next shot would be better aimed, the gunman having had adjusted the barrel accordingly, so Dent moved to his right, into the direct line of fire just behind the sap-bleeding pine. As expected, the next shot came, splintering a tree to his left. The bullet would have taken Dent in the chest had he not moved as he had.

  Most people would have chosen to move in the other direction, away from where the first bullet had ripped into rough bark, more out of fear and primal urge than out of a logical assessment. But Dent wasn’t like other people, wasn’t burdened with such trivial things as fear and urges. Because of that, he was able to assess each situation without a mind clouded by emotional second-guesses. His lack of emotions had saved his life countless times before. It had likely saved his life just moments ago. And there was a very high probability it would continue to keep him alive in the future.

  He paused behind the tree and made a quick mental tally. So far he’d been shot at by three separate people. One at the front door, which hung askew on its hinges, one from the shattered window to the right of the front door, and now the person upstairs. He knew the layout of the house, as well as knew from his employer that there would be six people inside at this time of early evening. Two would be down in the basement with the chemicals and machinery. That left four armed men free to keep Dent from penetrating their fortress, their place of business.

  The nearest house was two miles down a tree-lined one-way street, so the prospect of being interrupted before he fulfilled his contract would be slim. And the sounds of gunfire were not an uncommon sound out here in the mountains and hills. Hunters, kids showing off, parents showing children how to properly discharge a firearm, all were commonplace up here.

  There was little chance that Dent would be interrupted.

  And the sooner he went in, the sooner he’d fulfill the contract and get paid. He pulled out his side-holstered Glocks, heard the biometric palm ID scanners disengage the safeties, and spun from behind the protection of the tree. His plan on infiltration was basic, simple. Normal people shied away from high-speed projectiles — one of those base emotions he wasn’t constrained by — and Dent used that to his advantage.

  First shot he sent into the front door, resulting in a shower of splinters. That would cower the two gunmen there for a few seconds. The second shot he sent directly into the upstairs window. If he was lucky he would hit the overconfident gunman up there. If not, at least he’d earn a few seconds of safety. And then he’d deal with that gunman accordingly once he breached the front door.

  For that was now where he was headed at top speed. Both barrels, held before him, left a trail of wispy smoke that was dispersed by his wide shoulders. His left and right index fingers squeezed almost simultaneously. The two shots resulted in another explosion of splintered wood and shattered glass. One of the men at the front returned fire, but it was a blind shot, and it went wide, searing the air to Dent’s right.

  Two strides from the entry now, Dent tucked his guns in, lowered his shoulder, and plowed through the bullet-ridden hanging door. He felt a solid crunch as the door swung in and took the man behind and to left of it. He sent a bullet into the forehead of the man to the right. With a back sweep of his foot, Dent caught the edge of the door and pulled it back just enough to get a shot at the man crouched behind. The man was too busy holding his ruined nose to offer any resistance and he fell back as Dent’s next bullet ruined his forehead.

  Sweeping the house with guns and eyes, right to left, Dent took note of only what pertained to completing the terms of his contract. The house opened ahead to his right, an empty table with a few trademark paraphernalia of the drug industry. To the left, was a small hallway leading to the kitchen and dining room area, and in between was the stairway leading up. He knew that just behind the column of stairs would be the single entrance to the basement.

  Dent froze, keeping his ears and eyes open, his muscles loose and ready. There were two more gunmen somewhere inside. The only sounds he heard were the echoing scrapes and muted thuds coming from the basement. That would be the two chemists trying to grab what they could. The effort was futile on their part as the only means of escape would be through Dent. They, being nonlethal threats, he would leave for last.

  He crept up the stairs, every other step creaking and announcing his ascent to the men above. At t
his point, it didn’t matter. They already knew he was coming.

  He turned the corner of the small landing and continued up the second half of the stairs, wondering where the other two were, running through scenarios of how this would play out, forming plan upon contingency plan. He felt he had a few sound tactics when his head crested the second floor and the wooden balustrade to his right exploded.

  So much for planning.

  Splinters dug into his face and his eyes and he brought both guns up and over, squeezing each index finger twice in the direction of the gunshot. Before his eyes had stopped watering he heard a heavy thud and knew he had dropped the gunman. He wiped his eyes with the back of his jacket, noticed the blood that smeared the fabric, and sidestepped up the final steps. A quick sweep of the four upstairs rooms revealed no more gunmen.

  At least, no more breathing gunmen.

  In the room overlooking the front yard lay a man in a thick pool of blood that originated from his neck. Dent’s shot from outside had, beyond expectation, clipped the gunman as he hid in the gloom just inside the window. Satisfied, Dent turned and hustled back down to the basement door and the frantic noises behind it.

  Kicking it open revealed a steep set of stairs that spilled out into a concrete-lined room that ran the entire foundation of the house up above. Halfway down the small, narrow steps, Dent saw movement. Two heads poked around the wall to the right at the base of the stairs. Dent was still unpracticed at correctly surmising the emotions people flashed across their faces, but if he had to guess, these two men went from wide-eyed hope to even wider-eyed despair as they recognized Dent as not being one of their own men.

  He noticed that they both held duffel bags clutched tightly to their chests, and before he could react, they ducked back out of sight, forcing Dent to descend fully into the basement. Coming down the final steps, he now had a clear view of them. They were unarmed, the bags still clutched to their chests. If Dent were the type to laugh, this would have been an appropriate time. How these men thought the bags would protect them from bullets was incomprehensible.