The Relic Runner Origin Story Box Set

by Ernest Dempsey

  Dak offered a snorted laugh and bobbed his head.

  That much was true.

  Will wasn't good at keeping a low profile. He had too much pride for that. The man known as the quartermaster had always been happy to share tales of action and adventure with friends, even some stories that were supposed to remain classified. He omitted names and locations, of course, but the stories were there just the same. The funny thing was, Will almost never took part in any of the missions he discussed, though no listening ear could discern that. He was an armorer, a guy who could get things, but a killer? Maybe in a life Dak didn't know about, but as far as he knew, Will had never even been in a bar fight.

  "Where?" Dak asked pointedly.

  She crossed her arms. "You're welcome, by the way. I said it wasn't hard, but I'm good. For an ordinary person, maybe it would be."

  "Thank you," Dak offered. "I do appreciate it. Seriously."

  "Good. And you're welcome." She cleared her throat. "He's in a small Portuguese fishing town called Nazare. It's famous for some of the largest waves in the world. Once that word got out, surfers from around the world started coming to visit or buy condos there. Your friend Will has a place on the beach."

  "You're amazing," Dak said with a smile. "Thank you again."

  "Don't mention it. I'll leave you to your… um, drying off. You'll hear the alarm on the dryer when your clothes are ready."

  She abruptly left the bathroom and closed the door behind, leaving Dak alone to his thoughts and speculation.

  Nazare, he thought. It was just like Will to find some obscure European beach to settle down. It was also the last place anyone would look for an ironmonger like him. There wasn't a huge market for weapons on the Iberian Peninsula, not that Dak knew of, but from there Will could connect to buyers in France, England, and beyond. Then again, it wasn't really Will's style to work with those types, which meant Dak's friend may have changed his business a little. In the past, he was happy to sell certain kinds of weapons to citizens in the US, weapons that were deemed illegal.

  He still ran background checks on them, making sure he wasn't selling these guns to psychopaths. Will had strict standards for that sort of thing, considering what he was doing was illegal.

  That was another reason Dak trusted the man. Will had a code of ethics and stuck by it. Even when breaking the law.

  A thought occurred to Dak. He tried to keep it from slipping out, but he couldn't fight off his curiosity. He pushed away from the sink and stepped around the corner to find Nicole standing over a glass of red wine at the kitchen counter. He couldn't tell if she was crying, but it sure looked that way from the side.

  The pain from years before sunk into his chest like a rusty knife. He knew another apology wouldn't change anything. Maybe a little flattery could.

  "I gave you nothing but the man's first and last name. How in the world could you have possibly located him in less than ten minutes with that minimal information?"

  Nicole's lips creased, easing up her right cheek. "First of all, you were in the shower for twenty minutes. Five more and you would've run out of hot water. Second, a girl has to have her secrets, doesn't she?"

  He inclined his head, peering at her over the tops of his lower eyelids. He surrendered a nod. "I suppose so."

  "Although," she added, "since you gave up the fact he was in the military before and maybe had a few run-ins with authority in one form or another, that helped a bit. I also don't think your friend is trying very hard to keep a low profile. Not like I would if I was in his shoes. Honestly, I expected it to take hours, maybe even a day or so to find him. And I'm good."

  "He's on Instagram. Isn't he?"

  "Yep." She emphasized the word with a pop. "Didn't even bother changing his name to an alias."

  "Well, in his defense, he's not super creative with things like that. Circumventing the law? Definitely."

  Nicole sighed. She delicately picked up the stemless wine glass and tipped back the drink, taking in a huge gulp.

  "I thought you were a whiskey girl."

  She cocked her head to the side and twisted it to face him. "Yeah, I am. Sometimes you got to mix things up."

  "I never heard of a saying about whiskey before wine. Plenty about beer and liquor, though."

  A feeble laugh leaped from her lips. "Yeah, I think we all know that one." She took another sip, this time less aggressively, then set the glass down. "You can sleep on the couch tonight. Then go find your friend in the morning."

  "No," he said, shaking his head. "I can't do that."

  "Well, you're not sleeping in the bed with me."

  After he snorted, he corrected his statement. "I meant I can't stay here tonight with you. I don't want to put you in danger, any more than I may already have. I have to keep moving until I get to Will."

  "One night won’t put me in danger. I know how to take care of myself."

  She was right. Nicole could handle herself in most kinds of fights. Plus, with him there, they'd be a formidable adversary for any assassins or bounty hunters the colonel could have sent.

  "That's true," he said. "You can. But I won't be able to sleep if I stay here."

  "Where are you going to stay, Dak? Got a hotel on the outskirts of town or something?" She turned to face him, leaning on an elbow atop the counter.

  He rolled his shoulders. "I'll figure it out."

  "No. You're staying here. If this colonel sent people to find you and they knew you were here, they would have already busted down the door."

  That part wasn't entirely true. If he was one of the hunters, he'd wait until dark. Fewer eyes to witness anything suspicious. Maybe he was being overly cautious. He usually erred on the side of caution more often than not.

  Nicole's safety wasn't the only reason he didn't want to stay. He wanted to stay there with her, more than anything. He wanted to scoop her up in his arms and kiss her until the sun rose over the eastern horizon the next morning.

  That wasn't on the docket, though, and he knew it probably never would be.

  "Look," she said, pointing at the couch. It was a beige chaise with thick, soft cushions. "It's not a sleeper sofa, but it's more comfortable than any couch I've ever slept on. I pass out on in some nights while I'm up late watching television. I have sheets and a pillow you can use."

  He lowered his eyes to the floor again, humbled by her generosity, generosity he didn't deserve. Not in a million years.

  "Okay," he grunted.

  "I'm sorry, what?" she teased.

  "Thank you," he corrected as he lifted his eyes to connect with hers. "For everything."

  "Yeah, well, you're welcome." She turned and raised the glass, then dumped the remaining contents into her mouth. She swallowed hard. Nodding as she apprised the container, she looked back at him. "Yeah, you're right. Whiskey is better."

  "Mind if I have another?"

  She permitted a grin to cross her face. "May as well. Probably the only way either of us will get any sleep tonight."

  Six

  Nazare, Portugal

  Dak woke up to see Nicole's face lying on the pillow next to him. She smiled dreamily as he allowed gravity to keep him trapped in the sheets and comforter.

  "It's time to wake up, Dak," she said, her voice carried by an unusually heavy reverb. It sounded blurry in his ears.

  "I don't want to wake up," he slurred. "I'm tired. And I'm comfortable."

  The same grin he'd fallen for over and over again creased her lips and she shook her head at him. "No, sleepy boy. You have work to do. And I can't stay."

  "Just five more minutes," he growled. He reached his arm out to wrap it around her waist, but it passed through her covered figure and the apparition vanished.

  "Nicky?" he said, suddenly overcome with panic. "Nicky?"

  His head snapped up from the pillow, and he looked around the room. Dark blue curtains at the far window blocked the rising sun's rays. One of the windows, cracked the night before, allowed the sound of w
aves crashing against the shore to dance through the room. The ambient sound helped him to sleep and had done wonders for his poor nocturnal habits.

  He swallowed and looked down at the bed sheets covering his legs. He planted his hands firmly on the mattress to keep him upright while his brain caught up with reality.

  The same blasted dream, he thought.

  It was at least the tenth time he'd experienced it. He wished he could make it go away, but Dak knew that particular nightmare would likely haunt him the rest of his days.

  With a sigh, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stuck his feet on the bamboo floor. Another breath and he stood, albeit with a slight wobble, and meandered over to the window ten feet away.

  The room wasn't large, but the primo location more than made up for the lack of space. Being alone, he didn't need much, anyway.

  He pulled open the curtains and tugged the string to raise the Japanese blinds. Dak ran fingers through his hair and gazed down the hillside toward the sandy beach. Enormous waves crashed onto the shore, bringing with them a cool breeze from the ocean. The salty air mixed with the faint scent of seafood wafting up from a grill down the street. Several surfers were already on the beach, wading into the frothy churn while fishing boats bobbed in the gentler swells farther off the coast.

  Dak had lived here for six months. And for six months, he had no complaints, except one; he couldn't locate the other five members of his former team.

  After leaving Nicole's place in Istanbul, he took a series of trains to Portugal and eventually landed at Will's doorstep.

  It felt like yesterday.

  Will had opened his door and stared at Dak as if he was the ghost of someone he’d wronged long ago. Will was almost the same height and build as Dak. The two friends had joked in the past that they could have been brothers if their ancestries weren't so opposite. Will's history traced back to Cameroon and Ivory Coast, while Dak's was all over the place, mostly in Europe.

  "Look what the cat dragged in," Will had said upon Dak's arrival.

  "Bad clichés?" Dak asked.

  Will snorted at the snarky remark and then gave his old friend a welcoming hug. After being invited in, the two went through the usual catch up kind of conversation for half an hour before Dak dragged Will into more recent events.

  To his credit, Will never flinched, never balked at any of it. He knew only too well what it was like to be wrongfully accused, though he didn't complain about it.

  Dak explained what he wanted—needed — to do, how he planned to track down the men who'd taken everything from him. Will was happy to help with that. Maybe a little too happy. The fuel of vengeance seemed to course through him, as if he was getting a little vicarious payback for his own misfortunes.

  More than just offering to help, Will set Dak up in a cozy apartment next door to his own, complete with a coastal view. Dak wondered how many of these apartments Will owned, but didn’t ask.

  Will also hooked Dak up with new ID and paperwork too, including a brand new passport that would have slipped through any customs agent's inspection.

  His new name was Dan Bronson, which Dak was fine with. He was still Dak. The name was only for getting through security checkpoints, wherever they might be. His driver's license was a work of art too; it even included the holograms for the state ID of Tennessee that few people could replicate.

  Now, six months later, little had changed.

  Dak wasn't one to mooch, though, and refused a job with Will to make his own way. That resulted in a low paying gig at a local restaurant as a dishwasher. He didn't mind the work. It was honest, and it took care of his basic needs. His life was on hold until he tracked down the five men who betrayed him. Luxuries or comforts could wait.

  However, this life certainly had its perks—the view of the beach being one of them.

  He turned around and walked softly across the floor, mindful of the neighbors below. He felt certain that they never heard him moving about, but he tried to be a good tenant and not disturb the others.

  Dak stopped at his black IKEA dresser and pulled out the top drawer. He'd found many Europeans preferred the inexpensive yet efficient Swedish furniture, especially in smaller flats like this one.

  He took out a Led Zeppelin T-shirt and pulled it down over his torso, then slipped into a pair of khaki cargo shorts and flip-flops. After a yawn and a long stretch nearly to the ceiling, he walked out into the hall toward the kitchen and living room.

  The apartment’s 500 square feet didn’t offer much in the way of room, but it was more than adequate. He'd set up a desk in the corner near the balcony overlooking the coast and the village to the left so he could enjoy the views with his coffee, and while he checked the computer for any information about the five men he hunted.

  Each day the routine was the same. If it changed, the difference was miniscule. He'd learned to surf to kill time between shifts since there was only so much he could do in his online search.

  He knew that Will was doing his best, too, and had recently made a few less-than-ethical updates to his software that allowed him access to cameras in some of the larger cities around the world. The number of feeds he could access were finite, and he'd been clear just how tiny a needle they were trying to locate in a planet-sized haystack.

  Dak compared it to fishing. Not the kind done in the sea off the coast of Nazare, but the way he used to fish back in the States on the lakes and rivers of the southeast.

  He flipped open the laptop, a hand-me-down from Will—one of the few gifts Dak accepted from his friend—and entered his password.

  His right index finger ran along the track pad to move the arrow on the screen and then clicked the email icon at the bottom. It was the same morning routine he'd grown accustomed to over the months of waiting, hoping. Every time doubt crept into his mind, telling him he'd never find the other five, he beat those thoughts away with a steel hammer and forced himself to hold out faith he would find the men who did this and bring them to justice, his own brand of justice.

  They were probably living on sandy beaches, sipping fancy drinks, going to nightclubs, living in small mansions. Maybe they weren't that stupid. Dak knew Bo would have given them instructions on how to spend their ill-gotten fortunes, if they'd even been able to find a buyer for the horde.

  This entire time he'd operated on the assumption that the five Judases had made a ton of money from their heist. That assertion was proven likely when none of them turned up in their former homes, or anywhere.

  They'd made their money and gone dark. That much was clear.

  The only lead Dak had in his back pocket was a conversation he once had with Carson about the city of Miami.

  Carson had a thing for it, the Art déco buildings, the Cuban food and cigars, the nightlife, and most of all, the beaches. He talked about it like it was the greatest city in the world. After that conversation, he never brought it up again. When Will asked which cities, he should target for traffic feeds first, Dak told him Miami.

  That lure had produced nothing for six months, but neither had any of the others.

  Dak entered the password for his email account and it bloomed onto the screen. He scanned through some of the usual stuff, mostly promotional mail from various retailers he ordered everyday goods from.

  Halfway down the page, he stopped. His eyes opened like a time-lapse of a flower opening its petals.

  Possible match.

  He read the words again. And again. Then he clicked the email and opened it.

  Will's software had automatically generated the email upon facial recognition of one of the targets. Will warned that there could be dozens, maybe hundreds of false positives throughout the search, but so far the software hadn't sent them any bad leads, or any good ones for that matter.

  Dak felt his heat pulsing as he clicked the black and white video clip from a street camera near South Beach.

  The video began with nothing unusual, just tourists and beachgoers enjoying a stroll i
n the hot sun. Then a face appeared in the middle of the screen and a shiver ran through Dak's body. His skin pebbled at the visual.

  It was Carson Williams. There was no question in his mind. He'd recognize the man anywhere.

  He was wearing a white Polo and gray cargo shorts with a phone held to his ear. The image resolution even allowed Dak to identify the model and version of the smart phone his ex-teammate used.

  Dak nearly shot out of his seat when his phone vibrated in his pocket. He took it out and looked down at the caller ID, though only one person in the world had this particular phone number.

  He pressed the answer button and raised it to his ear.

  “Did you see?” Will asked.

  “I did,” Dak said. “You know, your apartment is next door. You could just come over.”

  “Good point.” Will ended the call, and three knocks came from the front door.

  Dak rolled his eyes with a laugh and walked over to the entrance. Out of habit, he peeked through the eyehole and saw his friend’s head drooped over his shoulder as if the act of waiting for ten seconds was the most inconvenient thing he’d ever experienced.

  Dak unlocked the deadbolt and pulled the door open. “I didn’t ask for turn down service.”

  “Yet,” Will quipped.

  Dak stuck out his hand sideways and Will clapped it hard, shaking it for a second.

  He let go and stepped inside as Dak shifted out of the way.

  “So, looks like your boy is in Miami, huh?”

  “Looks that way.” Dak closed the door and locked it behind him.

  “What’s your plan?” Will asked, spinning around slowly and crossing his arms. “Going to head back to the states and hunt him down?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I thought you’d say that.” Will gave a nod and wandered over to the door that led out onto the balcony. “It’s been nice having you around. Offer still stands if you ever want to come back and do some work with me. You can make some good money in this gig.”