Company Ink

by J. A. Cipriano

  “Hot damn, he shot me,” Marty called, “and the bullet just bounced right off. Man, I love these suits!”

  “I know, right?” I sent a blast wave at a group of three soldiers who were running at us from my left. They scattered like bowling pins. By now, shouts and gunfire were erupting all over the compound, but Marty and I were able to take them down a bunch at a time. “Head for the truck yard,” I said as we kept running. “We’ll cut through and circle the warehouse. Skye said that Presley’s in the back building.”

  “Got it,” Marty said as he unleashed a concussive blast at a pair of guards coming out of one of the front buildings. “You know, I kind of feel like switching to lasers and destroying some of this shit. This is some kind of huge, nasty drug operation, right?”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” I said as I took down another four guards. “Go for it. Maybe target the trucks?”

  “Definitely,” Marty said as he held a hand out. “Lasers!”

  A minute later, we were moving through the crowded truck yard with Marty blasting the rigs and shredding trailers full of packages that definitely looked like drugs, while I smashed soldiers to the ground. Between taking down bad guys, I switched my weapon systems to the pulse laser and blasted the hell out of the warehouse, melting holes and huge tears in the aluminum siding and exploding whatever was inside. The place was full of sparks and smoking wreckage by the time we reached the back and spotted the small building where Presley was hiding.

  “You’ve still got eyes on the target, right?” I said into my headset as we closed the distance to the building entrance.

  “Yeah, he’s in there,” Skye’s voice announced. “But I’m not seeing Ronnie or Lisa anywhere, and I’ve checked every camera and angle in the system. He must be keeping them somewhere without surveillance.”

  “Guess so,” I said as the uneasy feeling I had when I realized Ronnie wasn’t at the base returned. It didn’t make sense for Presley to have hostages and not keep a constant eye on them. But I couldn’t think about what that might mean right now. First, I had to get to the kidnapping son of a bitch.

  “Okay, we’re at the entrance, and there’s an electronic keypad lock,” I said to Skye. “Can you crack it or should I try blowing it?”

  “Um… if you blow it, who knows what will happen to the structural integrity of the building,” she said, clearly thinking, and I wondered if she had the blueprints for the place pulled up on her screen. “Give me a second, I think I can override it and open it for you, and hey, if that doesn’t work, then try blasting it.”

  “Okay. Try to hurry, though,” I said as a fresh wave of soldiers rounded the warehouse from the opposite side of the truck yard. I started blasting them, and Marty joined me. “Skye can’t find Ronnie and Lisa on the security cameras,” I told him as we took down the black-clad, gun-toting men. “Listen, don’t kill Presley until we actually have the girls. We might need him to tell us where they are.”

  “Yeah, all right,” Marty said, not sounding at all happy about that.

  A few minutes later, Skye made a frustrated sound over the headset. “I can’t get through that door,” she said angrily. “He’s got some really heavy encryption on the systems for this building. It’d take me hours to crack it.”

  “That’s okay. I’ve got this one,” I said as I turned toward the door, and as I readied my suit to blow the door inward, I realized I didn’t have to do that. Sure, Presley could erase my pen commands now, but I still had the few seconds of delay when I wrote something down instead of speaking it. I could get the door open before he could reverse the command. “Cover me for a minute, Marty.”

  “I’m on it,” he said as he whirled to blast another small group coming through the ruined truck yard.

  I produced my pen and decided what the hell, I’d just write directly on the damned door. I grabbed the door handle in preparation and wrote This door is unlocked. The second I heard something beep, I yanked on it, and it opened right up.

  Maybe I was crazy, but it seemed like Presley hadn’t even tried to stop me from using the pen.

  “Come on, we’re in,” I said, reaching back to tug Marty’s arm. I couldn’t worry about why Presley didn’t seem to catch what I’d written when we were so close to him now.

  Inside the building, there was a long hallway leading left and right.

  “Hey, Skye,” I said into the earpiece. “Can you walk me through the building to wherever Presley is?”

  “You got it. Take a right at the entrance,” she said.

  I headed down the right corridor with Marty beside me, both of us looking everywhere for more soldiers. So far, it was quiet in here. We reached the end, and the only way to go was left. “I turned left at the end,” I told Skye. “There’s a bunch of doors down here. Where to now?”

  “All the way back,” she said. “When the hallway ends, you’ll have to turn again, and he’s in the first room on the left.”

  “Got it,” I said as we kept going.

  The building remained silent except for our footsteps as we walked down the hall, turned and stopped in front of the first door on the left. At least this one didn’t have a keypad.

  “Skye says he’s in there,” I said and activated the suit’s gun.

  Marty did the same. “It’s probably locked,” he said.

  “Let’s find out,” I said as I reached for the handle, surprised as hell when it turned easily in my hand. I pulled the door open and swung into the entrance gun first.

  The room was an office with a desk and a bunch of monitors on the left-hand wall. Henry Aaron, also known as Presley, sat behind the desk with his hands folded on the surface. And he was grinning.

  “Hello, Roger,” he said as I strode in. “And … Roger’s friend. I’d call you by name, but I forgot who you are because I don’t care. I only want the pen holder.”

  I raised the gun at him. “Where are they, Henry?”

  “Not here, obviously,” he said, spreading his empty hands and flashing a terrible smile. “I told you, if you want them back, you’ll have to go to Club Ace tomorrow morning.”

  “We’re not waiting until tomorrow, you sick asshole!” Marty shouted. Before I could stop him, he ran past me and grabbed Henry by the shirt, dragging him across the surface of the desk with one hand. Henry gasped as Marty let his feet hit the floor, and then slammed him hard on the desk to drive the gun into his throat. “Where the hell is my girlfriend?”

  Henry let out a wheezing chuckle. “You’re not getting a damned thing out of me,” he said. “Kill me if you want to, but then you’ll never find them in time. And you’ll never find Presley, either.”

  The words hit me like a punch to the gut. “What are you talking about?” I rasped. “You’re Presley, you asshole.”

  “I’m not, actually,” Henry coughed out with Marty’s gun still pressed to his throat. “I’m not the pen holder, jackass.”

  “Marty. Ease up for a minute,” I said as my head started pounding. Much as I didn’t want to believe this, it actually made a lot of sense. If Henry wasn’t the pen holder, it would explain why Agent Smith knew so little about him and was never able to track him down. “We still need him to talk.”

  With a frustrated snarl, Marty pulled his gun back and slammed Henry against the desk again. “You’d better start making sense, real fast,” he spat.

  “I’m not Presley. We’re partners, you see,” Henry said with another chilling smile. “How do you think we’ve stayed in business for so long, with the goddamned FBI breathing down our necks?”

  “Goddamn it! Well, where the fuck is Presley?” Marty shouted.

  “He’s not going to tell us. Not here, at least.” I shook my head. “I keep trying to stop acting like a Bond villain, but assholes like you don’t give me much choice,” I said to Henry. “Looks like you’re coming back to the base with us. Marty, why don’t you make sure he’s comfortable for the trip?”

  “With pleasure,” Marty said, and drew back a fist to
knock him unconscious with one blow.

  36

  “They look hungry, don’t they?” I said to the chained figure dangling over the crocodile pool. “Especially that one. Her name’s Mandy, and she’d like to have you for dinner. Literally. So, how about you tell us something, unless you want to spend the rest of your very short life as an oversized chew toy?”

  Henry cackled in his increasingly hoarse voice and bucked against the chains that bound him. “How about you let me teach those whores of yours a few manners? They could stand to learn a little respect, obviously.”

  Felicia, Gail, and Skye all bristled at the comment. “Give him back to me, Roger,” Felicia said. “He’s not broken enough yet.”

  I sighed and pushed the control button to swing the rig away from the crocodile pool and start lowering Henry to ground level. “Just take him back to the interrogation room and lock him up, for now,” I said. “Maybe if we let him cool off for a while, he’ll have a change of heart.”

  “You’re right. I did have a change of heart,” Henry croaked, narrowing his eyes as Felicia and Gail approached him. “I’ve decided to kill all of you, not just Roger.”

  “You really don’t know when to talk and when to shut up, do you?” Felicia said as she and Gail lowered Henry’s bound form from the hook that had been hoisting the chains and started dragging him away. “Somebody definitely needs to learn some manners, but it’s not us.”

  “Hey, Skye. Hold up a minute,” I said as she moved to follow them out of the room.

  She stopped and turned toward me with a quizzical expression. “What’s up?”

  “I’ve been thinking about something,” I said. Actually, I’d been thinking about a lot of things, none of them pleasant and most of them centered around my frustration at still not having Presley. “If Henry is the pen holder’s partner, then the pen holder must be someone close to him. And it probably wouldn’t be a friend. Anyone who’d be friends with this guy would’ve turned on his sorry ass by now,” I said. “So, I’m thinking it must be family.”

  “The sister,” Skye said, catching on right away. “You know, that’s worth a shot. I’ll go see if I can dig up anything on Gladys Aaron.”

  I nodded and smiled at her. “I know you’ll find something. Did you age-advance her when you worked on the photo before?”

  “No. The software only works on one face at a time, and I wasn’t thinking about the sister when I did it. I’ll get that going while I look for intel on her,” she said, then frowned slightly and rested a hand on my arm. “Do you think they’re okay? Lisa and Ronnie, I mean.”

  “They’d better be,” I said, unable to keep the anger from my voice. “Can you get started on that? I have to make a phone call.”

  “Right away,” Skye said, leaning in to kiss my cheek before she headed out of the room.

  I wandered toward the exit as I got my phone out. Even if Skye was able to find anything on Gladys Aaron, we still couldn’t be a hundred percent sure she was Presley and there wasn’t much chance of gathering enough info to find her before tomorrow morning. I’d have to go to Club Ace after all. But I wasn’t leaving that bar until I had Ronnie and Lisa safely with me, and Presley out of commission.

  I’d need a little help, and I knew just who to get it from.

  I dialed Agent Smith as I closed the door to the tank room behind me and headed toward the main rooms. She answered on the second ring, sounding a little irritated. “Roger, someone busted through a huge drug manufacturing operation north of Vegas a few hours ago. I’m just finding out about it now. That was you, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it was. I have Henry Aaron with me,” I said, folding an arm across my waist as I stopped to lean against the wall. “But there’s a problem. He’s not Presley.”

  “What?” the agent gasped. “Who is, then? And why does his name keep coming up whenever Presley does?”

  “Because they’re partners. Or were, anyway, until I shut Henry down,” I told her. “I’m not totally sure who Presley is, but I can make an educated guess. I think it’s Gladys Aaron. Henry’s sister.”

  Agent Smith let out a sharp breath. “Okay, so you have Henry. I’ll take him into custody, and then we can work on finding the sister to question her.”

  “We don’t have time for that,” I said. “Believe me, I’ve been trying to get information from Henry for hours, and he’s not going to crack. But I’m going to be meeting with Presley tomorrow morning.”

  “How the hell did you manage that?” Agent Smith said.

  I closed my eyes. “It’s supposed to be a hostage exchange. Me for two of my team members. Presley captured them earlier today,” I said. “But I have no intention of being a hostage, so I’m going to need your help. How fast can you get here? To my base, I mean.”

  “I know where you are, Roger,” she said, and I could hear both the smile and the sympathy in her voice. “Give me five minutes, and I’ll be there.”

  “Great. Just don’t do that time-stopping thing, okay? It’s weird and it freaks me out a little,” I said.

  “All right, I won’t. See you soon,” she said, and hung up.

  I pocketed my phone and walked the rest of the way to the main entertainment room, where Skye was hacking away on her laptop and Marty was pacing holes in the floor.

  “Skye said he still hasn’t told us anything,” Marty said when I entered the room. “What are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to get Lisa and Ronnie back,” I said. “Don’t worry, I have a plan.”

  Just then, a shimmer of light appeared in the center of the room. Skye let out a little gasp and Marty stared with his mouth hanging open as Agent Smith stepped through the light.

  “Hello, Roger,” she said, giving me a smoldering look that made my insides shiver. “And friends,” she added, looking at the other two. “You must be Marty, and you are Skye?”

  Marty blinked twice. “And who the hell are you?”

  “Guys, this is Agent Smith with the FBI,” I said as I approached her and stopped short before she could touch me like she did the last time. Now wasn’t the time for unfulfilled sexual cravings. “Hey there. Thanks for coming.”

  She nodded and glanced at the clipboard she held, where her pen was chained to the top. “You said you have Henry Aaron here, correct?”

  “Yeah, we do, and you can have the piece of shit,” I told her. “But first I want to talk. I’m going to need your help tomorrow.”

  She flashed another shivery smile. “So, you do want to work together after all?”

  “Not exactly. I mean, I don’t want to sign on to the FBI, if that’s what you mean,” I said.

  “That’s a pity. I think you’d make a fantastic agent,” Smith said with a faint frown. “All right, what do you need? I’ll try to accommodate you.”

  Before I could explain, Skye’s laptop let out a long beep. She jumped a little, looked at the screen, and then motioned me over. “I’m still searching for anything on Gladys Aaron, but the age-advanced photo is done,” she said. “It was faster this time because I’ve got the hang of the software.”

  I walked toward her, and Agent Smith trailed behind me. “At least I’ll know what she looks like, in case she shows up at the bar herself,” I said. But as I looked at the screen, instant recognition slammed into me like a ton of bricks.

  The age advancing program hadn’t changed the blonde hair of her childhood, but it was easy for me to picture her with darker hair and wearing a siren-red cocktail dress.

  “Goddamn it, that’s Ann,” I said, feeling like someone had reached down my throat and squeezed my guts. “The woman from the poker game. The one I thought was in trouble.” I was sick with rage at her betrayal, the way she’d flirted with me and played the damsel in distress. She must have known who I really was. After all, she’d talked to me at least twice before Monte Carlo.

  Skye drew in a surprised breath. “So, you really think she’s Presley?”

  “She has to be. I mean, whil
e I was there …” I trailed off and remembered her talking to the blowhard drunk who’d been harassing her. Something about arranging a delivery. “She was selling Henry’s drugs. That was the ‘business’ she had to take care of. It’s definitely her.”

  Agent Smith leaned closer and looked at the image on the screen. “Amazing,” she said. “We’ve been after Presley for years, and you find him … I mean, her, in less than a week. You’re saying she’s the one who’s holding your team members hostage?”

  “Yeah, she is,” I said through clenched teeth. “And we’re going to bring her down, tomorrow morning. Walk with me,” I said to the agent as I started for the interrogation room. “You can take her stupid trash brother with you, and I’ll fill you in on the plan for tomorrow.”

  We headed out, and I made myself calm down so I could think clearly. Part of me refused to believe that it had all been an act. Ann had seemed genuinely distressed at the poker game, and there was nothing hateful in that kiss. At all. But I couldn’t let my guard down by thinking she might be innocent. Not when she had Ronnie and Lisa.

  One way or another, I’d know everything tomorrow.

  37

  I kept the rented sedan and drove to Boulder City the next morning, arriving at Club Ace about ten minutes early. There was only one vehicle in the parking lot, a battered old Chevy Bel Air, and all the neon signs were turned off, although there was a light on inside the place.

  When I got out of the car, the first thing I did was activate my suit. I had no idea what to expect here, but if Team Aaron’s tactics so far were any indication, the bar was probably full of soldiers. I headed for the entrance, activating the blast weapon on the suit, and then I opened the door.

  That was when some kind of invisible force hit me from inside the place and knocked me back to land on the ground. As I lay there, momentarily stunned, the suit crackled and buzzed a few times before it broke apart and melted off me. It didn’t even pull into the backpack, just formed a puddle of black goo on the pavement.