7- Bad Guys

7

Bad Guys

It just didn’t add up to Eliza.  Josephine’s questions just kept repeating in her head.  They were questions that made sense.  People who did this kind of stuff did not hall off and kill their sellers.  If they did, no one would sell to them.

“Hello!  Earth to Liz.”  She was reminded where she was as Barkley jibed her from the driver’s seat of their standard issue four door sedan.  “What size do you want?”

They were getting lunch at McDonald’s and taking a break from the infinite room search.  She hated this place.  It was too fattening and the mere taste of it sometimes caused her to gag.  Barkley loved it, however, and he was the supervising agent so it was his choice.

When I’m done with probation, I am never eating this shit again.  She thought to herself.  “Small.”

Barkley turned back to the drive thru speaker and finished telling the minimum wage employee on the other end the rest of their order.  They pulled up, paid and got their food before pulling into a parking spot and sorting out whose was whose.

This process also annoyed Liz.  After all, if they were going to eat it at the restaurant why not just go in, instead of sitting in the parking lot like rejects.  Barkley said it was because he liked to pick the music he listened to while he ate, but Liz still thought it was stupid.

“It doesn’t add up.”  She said, finally.  She could almost hear Barkley’s eyes roll.

“Seriously, you are letting that vacationer get in your head.”  Barkley said as he munched on greasy fries.

“Look, just because she is a tourist in the wrong place at the wrong time doesn’t mean she’s wrong.”  Liz persisted.  “What reason would the shooter have to kill the man?  Even if he refused to give it to them, they would want him alive so they could get it out of him later.”

Barkley frowned.  “I don’t know, I’m not a crazy spy.  Look, there could be any number of reasons that guy shot first and asked questions later.”

Liz was silent because she couldn’t think of one that made any sense whatsoever.  The whole thing was starting to bother her, especially the gigantic Russian computer programmers on the top floor.  Barkley was treating it like everything was done except the finding of the drive, but Liz felt there was more to this.

She unwrapped the cheeseburger, if you could call it that, and the imitation meat, cheese, and bread stared at her menacingly.  She frowned back and rewrapped it, instead taking a drink of the watered down Coke.

“Where did you get the intel about the list?”  She asked him finally after swallowing.

This question seemed to get Barkley’s attention.  “A reliable source.  Why do you ask?”

Something about his reaction seemed defensive to Liz.  She just shrugged back at him.  “I’m just wondering if it’s credible, is all.”

Barkley stopped eating and frowned.  “It was a credible lead.  Bill Lentz was a traitor and that got him killed.  Look, I was the one who brought this to the department.  It is good.  Got It?”

Liz raised her hand in surrender.  “Okay, alright.  I got it.”

Liz did not get it, though.  Something was not right.  She planned to find out what that something was.

****

The bag was yanked off of Leonard’s head and he blinked while his eyes adjusted.  He was in the back of a van sitting on a bench against the right side wall.  From the slight jostling, he could tell the van was moving.

Across from him sat a large angular faced man with a Mac-10 Oozie pointed at his face.  “Don’t move.”

The words were in broken English with a heavy Russian accent but Leo had no problem understanding. “Got it.”

“Do not move.”  Another Russian to his left standing hunched over in the van between the back and the cab was also holding a Mac-10 Oozie at his face.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”  Leo reaffirmed staring at the barrel of the gun.

“Ask him about the drive!”  Another man from the cab, probably the driver.

“The drive?” Leonard feigned ignorance.

“Pavel.” The one seated in front of Leonard spoke this one word.

Leonard was then struck hard with a closed fist from the man standing to his left, the force sent him to the bench howling in pain.  Slowly he shook off the punch and sat back up.  His captors were polite and waited for him to recover.

Leo turned toward the man who had struck him.  “You must be Pavel then?”

This time he was looking at him and still never saw the punch.  It hit him just under the jaw and rattled his teeth.  He actually fell off the bench to the van’s metal floor.

The sitting man turned toward Pavel angrily and barked something in Russian.  Pavel shrugged back and the interrogator bent over to help Leonard up to the bench.  “My apologies.  Pavel does not speak English so he thought you had insulted him.”

Leo shook his head and he pulled himself back to the bench.  “Now why would anyone in my position do that?!”

The interrogator shrugged.  “This happens more often than you would think in our line of work, but you seem to be very polite and I thank you for that.  As does Pavel.”

The interrogator looked to Pavel and said a couple of things in Russian and Pavel nodded.  Leonard had the strange feeling that he had somehow fallen into the twilight zone.  “Thanks.  Glad I could be of help.”

“Now, if you don’t mind, where is the flash drive?” The interrogator asked.

Leo frowned.  “I really don’t know what you are talking about.”

The interrogator looked at Pavel and nodded once.  Leo again saw stars, this blow connecting just over this left eye and again he crumpled to the floor.  “Oh my, you would think you would have been prepared that time.”

Leo spit blood on the steel of the van from a freshly cut lip.  “Why would I be prepared?  You just thanked me for being polite!”

Again the interrogator helped him back to a sitting position on the bench.  “My friend, you misunderstand.  That punch was not for lack of politeness, it was for lying to us.  You do understand what is happening here, correct?”

Leonard stared for a second then looked up at Pavel then back to his interrogator and spoke questioningly as if searching for the right answer.  “You are torturing me to find out where the flash drive is?”

The interrogator’s face brightened and he nodded.  “Yes.  Yes, you have it.”

The nod was completely misunderstood however and Pavel cracked Leonard again in the face.  “What the fuck?!”

The interrogator shook his head and again barked at Pavel in Russian.

Again Pavel shrugged despondently.

“Again, I am sorry.  This is less confusing in one language.”  The interrogator said as he pulled out a cell phone.  “I will expedite this process.”

He hit a button and waited while the phone on the other end rang.  Someone picked up and after a few words in Russian, the interrogator handed Leo the phone.

 Leo took it as if it was a bomb.  A feeling in his gut made him sure that this was going to be bad.  “Hello?”

“Leo don’t tell them-“ Josephine on the other end spoke desperately and then was cut off by the phone being hung up.

Leonard’s face dropped and the smiling almost chipper interrogator politely took the phone back.  “You see the stakes, yes?”

Leonard stared back.  It was over.  As if the world was punishing them for their good fortune, the Devereuxs where about to be killed by Russian terrorists after winning $50,000,000.

Karma was real, and it sucked.

“Da.” Leonard said, it was the only Russian word he knew and it meant yes.

“Ah, you are such a wonderful captive.”  The interrogator responded happily.  “Even meeting us half way on the language iss-“

It was at this point karma again decided to shift.

Pavel turned to tell the driver that Leo had given in and the driver turned.  In that moment he failed to avoid the large pothole in the road ahead.  He hit it going 40 MPH.  Any normal driver would have experienced an uncomfortable bump, maybe the tire would blow, but that would be the end of it.

This, of course, excludes people standing in the back of vans with hair trigger Oozies.  The bump toppled Pavel backwards, the surprise caught him off guard and he jerked as he fell, accidently depressing the trigger, spraying Leo’s interrogator with bullets into his chest and abdomen.

The interrogator slumped backward, his hand with his Oozie falling to the bench next to him, the impact depressing his finger on his Oozie’s trigger sending a three round burst of automatic weapon fire through the back of the driver’s seat and through the back of the driver.

They driver made a gurgling noise then slumped forward on the wheel.  The van took a hard right, too hard.  It tipped and rolled sending Pavel bouncing around the back of the van and snapping his neck on the final impact.

The van had stopped moving and was completely silent.  It laid in the street rocking back and forth after its long and deadly roll.  Inside, Leo had a small crisis of self.

He decided no one could have survived the roll.  This conclusion was supported by a lot of evidence. Three bodies of evidence.  Two of them were sprawled on top of him limply.  He was also covered in their blood, from the random gun misfires.  Added to this was the fact no one had been wearing any kind of safety harness or restraint and Leonard Devereux was dead by any mathematicians calculations.

He took a deep breath and realized that he was not dead.  Somehow during the crash all the bullets had missed him while he simultaneously crashed only into the bodies of his captors, cushioning the impact damage he would have taken slamming against the interior of the van.

It appeared he had come to the wrong conclusion about Karma after all.

He remembered Josephine, tied up in their hotel room.  The other Russians had her.  He grabbed one of the Oozies and kicked open the back doors.  “I’m coming Joe.  Just hold on!”

****

The air in the car had gotten stale in the wake of the agents argument.  The only sounds were that of them chewing their subpar meat products when Liz’s phone buzzed.  Thankful for the ice breaker, she answered.  “Agent Eliza Adams.”

Barkley watched as she listened to the voice on the other end then she hung up.  “What was that about?”

“That was police dispatch.”  She answered.  “They have just gotten unconfirmed reports of a man fleeing the scene of an accident covered in blood and holding an Oozie.  The reports are saying he was wearing a goofy tee shirt.”

Barkley sighed.  “Going to be a long day.”

TO BE CONTINUED.

6-Stuff Happens

6

Stuff Happens

They rode the elevator up together and Josephine could tell that her husband was not happy.  He was scatter brained to the point of absent mindedness, but he was not stupid.  He knew the flash drive she had found in her purse was the flash drive.  Being the righteous hero he was, he had wanted to immediately take it to the D.H.S agents.

Joe had other ideas.

Curiosity had gotten the better of her and she had to know what was on it.  Too much crazy had happened around them to not at least take a peek.  “Come on, don’t be poopy.”

Leonard frowned at her.  “I’m not being ‘poopy’.  That thing is dangerous.”

“It can’t hurt just to look at it.” She countered, not seeing the harm.

“You sure about that?  As is, we are going to have a hard time explaining to the agents why we didn’t give it to them when they asked us about it.  Not to mention two people are dead because of that thing.”  Leonard ranted back towards her and Joe considered it.

He was right.  Two people were dead, and this thing had gotten them killed.  Now, she held it in her hand and wanted to look at the secrets that it held.  Not to mention, government agents rarely accepted the ‘accidental stupidity’ defense, so they might be in some trouble after all.

“Okay,” She gave in.  “You’re right.”

Leo was taken aback by her surrender.  “Yeah… yes I am.”

“It’s dangerous.  Looking at its contents could get us in trouble.”

Leo nodded.  “Right, it’s safer just to hand it in.”

“Right.”  Joe said.

“Right.”  Leo replied.

The elevator dinged to let them know they had arrived on their floor.  After a moment of silence and as the doors slid open, Leo couldn’t resist.  “Maybe just a peek.”

Joe couldn’t help but grin.  “A peek won’t hurt.”

With that, they hurried down the hall towards their room, energized by the decision not only to break the rules, but to unravel another layer of the mystery that had been following them around for the last two days.

Leo caught Joe’s arm as she came to the hotel room door.  The card lock had been drilled out and the door was open, propped on the internal hitch lock.  Joe froze as she noticed it too.  Leo stepped in front and moved, slowly, toward the door.

It was Joe’s turn to grab his arm.  She whispered.  “What are you doing?  Go get security.”

Leo freed his arm from her grip and pressed forward, pushing the door open.  Joe’s stomach clenched as horrifying images of Leo being brutally murdered in front of her played in her mind.  The thought was so horrid, it almost caused her to scream.

She didn’t scream and Leo was not brutally murdered.  Instead, the door just creaked open to reveal their empty suite.

They walked in and realized instantly that someone had been there and tossed the place, looking for something.  Neither of the Deveruaxs had to guess what they had been looking for.

“You think the agents did this?”  Josephine asked in the initial confusion.

Leo shook his head.  “No, I don’t think so.  I think there is someone else after that stupid drive.”

Joe agreed with the theory.  She had suspected as much after she really thought about the events of the day before.

“I’m going to go find those agents.  We need to tell them about this.”  Leo said as he headed for the door.

Joe knew the fun was over.  This had just gotten real.  There were people out there still looking for this thing, willing to kill for it.  The Deveruaxs were not spies.  It was time to turn in the drive and do the right thing.

“Be careful.”  She said as he left.

“Stay in the room and lock the internal lock.  Don’t open the door for anyone but me.” Leonard said as she left, letting the door swing closed behind him.  She went to the lock and flipped it into place.  She then took a deep breath and turned back to the ruined room.

She began to look through the suite, trying to figure out if anything had been taken during the tossing.  It was at that point that she saw the laptop they brought, lying out on the bed.

Like a siren’s call, it beckoned and suddenly she was very aware of the flash drive in her pocket.  A peek couldn’t hurt, right?

She pulled open the laptop and waited for it to boot up before plugging in the drive and waiting for the auto load prompt.  When it popped up, she quickly selected the ‘open folder to view files’ option and a window opened on the screen.  It read;

This drive is password protected.

Then, predictably, it asked for a password.

“Shit.”  She said, cursing her own stupidity.  It was a highly important piece of government hardware, why wouldn’t it have a password?

She shrugged and decided to put in something just on the one and a million chance that it worked.

She hit the buttons, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 and grinned to herself at the joke while pressing ‘Enter’.

The window vanished and the folder promptly opened.  “You have to be kidding me!”

Inside was a series of files, all marked with a date and time and the file abbreviation ‘.dce’.

She had never seen that kind of file.  That’s all that was in the folder.  There was close to 200 of them, all dated for two years prior.  She double clicked on one just to see what would happen and she got a message informing her that the computer did not have the software required.

She frowned.  The clearing epiphany she had been hoping for did not come.  The flash drive had no information for her and she felt stupid for even trying to find something.  She should have left it to the professionals; left well enough alone.

She then remembered her husband’s knowledge of all things obscure.  She grabbed her cell phone and texted him;

“What is a .dce file?”

A second later, she got the response;

“It’s a video file.  It can only be played through a Drivecam event player.  Why?”

It took maybe half a second and then it hit her like a ton of bricks.  The flash drive was not an agent list.  It was a-

The crash came a second later, echoing through the room.  It was the sound of a door being kicked in.

Joe’s mind worked fast.  She knew there was no other way out of the room other than a five story drop off the balcony to the pavement.  She also knew that whoever was kicking her door in would be after the drive.  If they were brazen enough to kick the door down in the middle of the day, once they had the drive they would kill her.

She pulled the flash drive and opened the nightstand drawer putting her hand in and dropping the drive behind the drawer before sliding it almost all the way shut.

Just as she finished, she saw the dark eyed man who had stalked her in the hallway appear in the doorway.  This time, he had a mean looking gun strapped over his shoulder and hanging at his side.  She didn’t know what it was called, she was not a gun person, but she knew it shot a lot of bullets when the trigger was pressed.

His eyes were hungry in the wrong way.  He looked at her like a piece of meat and spoke.  “No take back.”

Joe tried to think of the right way to play the situation.

While she was trying to think of the right way, her panic stricken body ran forward and grabbed the laptop, hurling it at the Russian killer in her bedroom doorway and screaming at the top of her lungs.

The laptop struck the man in the head and he stumbled backward into the living room, falling over a recliner.  He yelled something in Russian, which Joe figured was some kind of curse, as he toppled awkwardly to the floor.

Joe sprinted through the doorway and turned the corner to head for the door and bumped directly into another man’s chest.

It was the giant from before, the one who had leashed the hungry man before he could let his dark ambitions loose on Josephine.  His massive hand clamped over her mouth as his giant arm wrapped her waist.  She struggled as hard as she could, but it only seemed to cause him to strengthen his grip.

“Calm yourself.”  He said with a heavy accent.  “I promise, this will be painless.”

****

Leonard frowned at the phone screen as the elevator took him to the ground floor.  She had not texted him back right away and he was struck with the sense that she had decided to look at the flash drive after all.

“Why did you need to know?”

He sent another text into the ether and got no response.

He began to worry and as he reached the bottom floor and the elevators opened, he switched to his contact list and found Joe.  He then moved to the small vending machine area next to the back door of the ground floor.  Not wanting to bother others with a call, he pressed her name and put the phone to his ear.

He heard it ring once before the bag was slipped over his head.

“What the-“ was all the chloroform would allow him to say before the blackness of the bag became the blackness of reality.

TO BE CONTINUED…

 

5- Eureka!

5

Eureka!

The knock on the door came and a lesser man would have panicked with the Department of Homeland Security knocking at their door, but not Yuri Chenkoff.  Yuri was a professional, he knew well enough that his alias and the aliases of his crew would hold up to the scrutiny of the D.H.S, but that it wouldn’t really matter.  They weren’t looking for them, they were looking for the flash drive.

That was most certainly not in the room.

Yuri eyed his men, Vadim, Boris, Oleg and Pavel were in the room.  Nestor, his last man was out following the couple down the hall.  Yuri was positive they were the ones with the flash drive.  Yuri noticed Vadim’s eye twitched and he gave him a hard look.

“Remember,” Yuri whispered in English so as not to be heard through the door.  “We are Russian business men here to pitch a computer program to interested buyers.  Keep it together and everything will be fine.”

The knock sounded at the door again, this time louder and accompanied by an American man’s voice.  “Department of Homeland Security, open up please.”

Yuri steeled himself then opened the door.  In front of him stood a stout blond haired American man in a suit.  Next to him was a woman who would be attractive if she stopped trying so hard to look like a man. They were accompanied by three Traverse City police officers.

“Can I help you?” Yuri said with a heavy accent.

The blond man eyed him for a second.  Yuri knew this was the effect his massive size had on normal people.  He eventually found his nerve.  “I’m agent Barkley and this is Agent Adams.  We are with the-”

Yuri cut him off.  “The Department of Homeland Security, yes I heard when you yelled it earlier.  I will ask again, can I help you?”

The woman stepped up, undeterred by Yuri’s size.  “There was a shooting downstairs.  We are investigating the incident and would like permission to search your room.”

Yuri’s eyes shifted to Adams’ and he attempted to feign fear on his face, not an easy task since Yuri Chenkoff feared nothing.  “My God, how terrible.  Of Course, but I can assure you we had nothing to do with this horrible thing.”

With that, he stepped aside and let the police and the agents pass.  They moved in and Barkley began to coordinate the search.  Adams, however, stared at Yuri’s men who all stared back with hard faces.  “What are you gentlemen in town for?”

Yuri shrugged.  “We are here to pitch our new computer software to a perspective buyer.”

The woman’s eyebrow rose as she turned to Yuri skeptically.  “You are a little big to be a computer programmer aren’t you?”[Z&M1] 

Yuri’s smile widened.  “Everything is bigger in Russia.”

Yuri bent down a little when he said it in order to intimidate the agent.  To his surprise, it had no effect.

“Can anyone corroborate your story?” She asked and Yuri’s eyes went to his men.

They all tensed slightly at the question as if waiting for Yuri’s sign, when given, would mean kill everyone in the room.

Yuri shook his head.  “I’m sorry.  Our buyers must remain anonymous.  The computer business can be one of treachery.  You understand, yes?”

Adams seemed to watch him for a second then decided to let it go.  Barkley had returned.  “Let’s get out of here Adams, there’s nothing.”

Adams nodded and the two of them left with the police officers.  “Good luck agents.  I hope you find what you are looking for.”

Yuri shut the door behind them and took a deep breath.  With that out of the way, he called Nestor. Nestor had been following the couple all day and, with any luck, would have gleaned a clue to where the flash drive is.

Nestor answered. “Yes?”

“Nestor, it is Yuri, what have you found?” He asked, his voice was all business.

“Nothing,” Nestor replied.

Yuri became agitated.  “What do you mean nothing?  You have been following them for six hours.  They have given you no clues?”

“Honestly sir, I don’t think they are what you think they are,” Nestor replied.  “I think they are just two stupid Americans on holiday”

Yuri’s fist clenched and he forced himself not to hurl the phone in rage.  “They must have it.  The way he ran to them, they must be his contact!”

“I am sorry, sir.”  Nestor said into the phone.  “In the last six hours they have gone out to breakfast, went for a swim at the beach, eaten ice cream, argued about renting Jet Ski’s, he won I think he is afraid of them, then they got ice cream again before returning to swim.”

Yuri took a few deep breaths.  “Have you learned nothing?”

“The man has very funny shirts.”  Nestor replied.

Yuri was shocked.  “What?”

“The man’s shirts, they are very funny,” Nestor said, almost jovially.  “He has a shirt on now that says ‘I’m with stupid,’ but instead of pointing to the person next to him it points to his penis.”

Nestor found this hilarious and began to laugh.  Yuri hung up before he got any angrier.  “Oleg, go to their room, break in and search it.”

Oleg’s grin widened.  He had a dark side to him that always bothered Yuri.  He had been the one who cornered the woman in the hall and almost blew everything.  Nonetheless, he was ruthlessly efficient as long as he could keep his deviant urges to himself.

 As he passed Yuri, Yuri grabbed his upper arm to stop him.  “Oleg, do not get caught.”

Oleg nodded and Yuri released him to get to his job.  They were running out of time.

****

“I am so full.”  Leo said as he held his stomach on the way back to the hotel.

Josephine knew what he was going through.  The Deveruax’s had a bad habit of over eating whenever they were on vacations.  This day had been no different.  “Tell me about it.  Why did we do that?”

“I don’t know,” Leonard said before letting an earth shattering belch go.

“Oh my God!” Josephine said as the stench wafted through the small car.

“I can’t help it!” Leo tried to defend himself and failed.

Joe used her console to roll Leo’s window down, in order to get some fresh air in the car.  She pressed the “lock” button so he could not roll the window up.  It had just started raining outside and Leo whined.  “Hey, come on!”

She couldn’t help but laugh as he and his ridiculous shirt got pelted with rain drops.  “That’s what you get!”

His eyes narrowed and he reached over towards her armpit, her most ticklish spot and she tensed, “Alright, truce!”

She unlocked his window and he rolled it up.  “Thank you.”

There was a silence as they both calmed down and her mind, as devious as it is, again brought her back to the mysterious shooting the day before.  “I just don’t get it.”

Leonard eyed her and she knew exactly what he was thinking.  He knew where she was going before she went there.  He knew she had always had a hard time letting things like this go.  She craved information, always had.  Leo had never quite let her live down the fact that she had Googled him after he had asked her out.  She couldn’t help it, she wanted to know what she was getting herself into.

“We are on vacation,” Leonard said.  “We are also not law enforcement agents.”

Josephine shrugged.  “I know, I know, but doesn’t it seem a little weird to you?  Why would the buyer shoot the seller before he had the item he was trying to buy?”

Leo considered this.  “Drug deals go bad all the time and people get shot.  I mean, it comes with the territory of being a criminal.”

Joe frowned.  “This is not a Van Damme movie, Leonard. This is real life.”

Leonard nodded.  “Got that right, there would be way more high kicks if this was a Van Damme movie.”

Joe ignored that.  “All I’m saying is that these guys are stealing national secrets, they’re not normal criminals.  I would think they would be more, I don’t know, organized.”

Leonard considered this.  “Okay, so what if the shooter isn’t the buyer?  Maybe he’s just ambushing the seller in the bathroom and maybe there is a different buyer?”

Josephine nodded.  That theory sounded better to her.  The shooter was a third party who took out the seller for what he was selling, meaning whoever the buyer was, he was still out there.

“Let’s let it go for tonight, huh?  We’ll just go upstairs and relax, no more talk of dead people?”  Leonard pleaded and Josephine had no choice but to surrender as they pulled into the hotel and parked.

As they began to get out, Josephine noticed the flash drive plugged into her radio, the one they loaded music on to listen to on the trip.  “Don’t forget the flash drive.”

Leonard shook his head.  “Nah, I just leave it in the car, it’s not like we are going to use it upstairs.”

Leonard opened his door but before he could get out, Joe grabbed his arm stopping him and forcing him to look back.  “Hold on, did you leave the flash in the car yesterday, after we had arrived?”

Leonard was confused as to why this mattered so much.  “Sure I did, why?  I don’t think anyone’s going to break into the car for a lousy flash drive.”

A cloud lifted in Joe’s head, she realized what had happened and grabbed her purse and began to dig into it.

Leonard still didn’t understand.  “What’s going on, babe?”

She ignored him and kept digging until she found it.  As she pulled it out of her purse, Leonard stopped talking and stared, realizing now what Joe and come to understand a minute ago.

She was holding a flash drive in her hand.

The flash drive.

TO BE CONTINUED….

4- Rich people stuff

4

Rich People Stuff

The penthouse room at the top of the beach side hotel was beautiful.  Upon entering there was a large kitchen, bigger than the one they had at home. They could follow the hall back to the huge living area that opened to the double sized patio overlooking the water from the fifth floor. To one side was the large Bedroom and to the other a dining room area with its own set of patio doors to overlook the water. Everything was clean and high end with an over powering feeling of luxury.

Just like that, the stress of the day had melted away and the couple was ready to begin the first vacation of the rest of their lives.  Joe went to the patio doors and slid one open.  The lake air rushed in to meet her and she took a deep breath.  The enhanced calm was ruined by the noise of the T.V. behind her.

“They have a flat screen in every room!” Leo said with excitement that quickly drained away when he saw the scowl on Joe’s face.

“Seriously?” Joe said with exasperation.

Leonard put his hands up.  “You’re right, we aren’t here for that.”  He said as he walked over to her.  “We are here for this.”

He took her in his arms and kissed her deeply.

They released and Josephine smiled.  “I’m going to go get some ice.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”  Leo teased and they broke their embrace.

It took Joe a couple of minutes to find the ice bucket.  While she looked, Leo called from the bedroom, “I’m going to take a quick shower, the drive made me stinky… They have a Jacuzzi!”

She smiled and shook her head.  He was like a kid in a candy store.  She found the bucket and headed out into the hall.  She let the door close beside her, then began to walk in the direction of what she thought would be the ice when she caught the eye of a strange fellow leaning on the wall.

He was at least six feet tall with broad shoulders and tussled black hair.  He was wearing a shiny blue business shirt and Dockers with a sport coat.  The man had been leaning against the door across the hall until he noticed Josephine when he seemed to perk up.

For an awkward moment that felt like an hour, the two just watched each other.  Finally, Joe decided to make the first move in the random, seemingly needless, chess match.

She smiled at him and raised the bucket.  “You wouldn’t by chance know where they keep the ice on this floor, would you?”

The man stared back as if he was taking time to process the information and decide what to respond.  “No ice on this floor.”

He was not American, she could immediately glean that from his hard time with English and his heavy eastern European accent.  “Excuse me?”

He gestured with his hands now.  “There is no ice on this floor, no need.”

She still wasn’t quite catching what he was getting at and decided to inspect for herself, walking down the small hall to the crossway in the middle.  He plodded along behind her and she started to get nervous.

At first glance she had thought he was a D.H.S agent put there to watch her and her husband giving their involvement in the shooting incident in the main lobby that morning.  Now she thought something completely different.

The shooter in the hobby had been Russian.  She had gotten that much from Eliza in her interview, and what were the odds of a man in that kind of business working alone.  She calculated that they would be pretty low.  Leo liked his movies and books about lone heroes like James Bond and John McClain, but in real life, spies travelled with backup.

She stopped halfway down the hallway completely.  He seemed to understand why then said.  “Ice not on this floor.  Ice in the room.”

She figured it out.  She had never stayed in such a high end room before but it didn’t make her feel any less stupid.  They had full freezer/refrigerator in the penthouses.  There was no need for an ice machine room.

She turned back to her shadow.  “Ah, I see.  No ice on this floor.”

He nodded.  “It in room.”

She eyed him for a moment.  “Are you following me?”

That sentence he understood, and Josephine did not like the reaction she got.  His expression became dark, his eyes lost the soul that most humans carried there.  Instead the dark pupils dilated and he suddenly reminded her of a predatory cat she had seen on the nature channel.

One that was stalking its prey.

His features hardened as his body tensed and Joe took a step back out of sheer instinct.  “Never mind. Stupid question, I was mistaken.  Let me take that one back.”

“No take back.” His sloppy English was no longer funny, it was foreboding.

A door slammed shut behind them and broke the mood.  They both turned and Joe saw the biggest man she had ever seen in person in her life.  Leonard had forced her to watch the Rocky movies early into their relationship and she had actually kind of liked them.  The man standing in the hall reminded her of the giant Russian in Rocky 4.  He had deep piercing blue eyes and short crew cut blond hair.

His eyes fixed on her would be attacker and he seemed to shrink in the man’s presence.  “Vy neakkuratno , vernut'sya vnutr'’

The Russian rolled off the goliath’s tongue and the dark haired man slowly and sullenly walked back into the room from which they had both come.  The blond monster’s eyes of disapproval never left his subordinate’s.  Once the door shut behind him, the man turned toward Josephine with a smile.  “I am sorry.  Boris can be over bearing.  I hope he did not offend?”

Joe seemed to recover her wits.  “No, I’m good.”

“We are here for a business meeting and we have a tendency to misread the American customs.  It’s what you call culture shock, I believe.”  The Russian continued to explain, his accent was heavy but his English was good.

Joe was determined not to make the same mistake twice.  She nodded.  “No it’s really okay, not a big deal.  If you’ll excuse me.”

“You know there’s no ice on this floor.” The Russian said as she passed, seeing her bucket.

She stopped.  “Yes, your friend explained that to me.”

He smiled.  “I’m glad he could at least be of some assistance.”

With that, the Russian turned and re-entered his room.  Finally alone, she took a couple of deep breaths to calm her nerves.  “Nothing happened, just a weird guy in the hall.”

She tried to reassure herself but couldn’t. There was something about those two, and the whole situation that sent up red flags.

She tried to shake it off and headed back to her room.  She opened the door and heard Leo call out to her from the living room.  “Did you get the ice?”

“No,” She answered back setting the bucket on the counter.  “The ice is in our room.  We have a freezer.”

She heard some strange grunting noises and then he called back.  “Nice, I didn’t even think about that. Getting used to rich people stuff is hard.”

She shook her head opening the stocked fridge and grabbed a water.  “Is that right? Did you take a shower already?”

More grunting.  “No I got caught up with something, so what took you so long?”

“Some weird guy, I’ll explain-” She heard the grunting again and had to say something.  “What the hell are you doing in there?”

As she asked the question, she walked into the room and saw something that made her feel like she had taken a blow to the head.  “What the hell are you doing?”

Leo was in his underwear, his legs locked.  His rather large ass was covered only by the sweat drenched boxer briefs and pointed strait up in the air.  While his torso was stretched diagonally down towards the floor his hands were narrowly holding his balance as his stomach hung below him and jiggled with exertion.

“Downward facing dog.”  He said through grunts of effort.

Joe now realized the T.V. was on and showed a beautiful, young, slender, fully clothed woman doing the same thing.  She made it look easy.  Leo made it look like a sloppy mess.

“Yoga?” She said confused.  “Why are you doing Yoga?”

“We are rich now.”  He answered as he brought his body down to the ground and straddled the floor in a series of clunky obtuse movements.

“I’m failing to connect a dot somewhere.”  She answered as her look of horror deepened.

“Rich people do Yoga.” He answered matter-of-factly, as if that was all the explanation he needed to give.

“Rich people do a lot of things, doesn’t mean we have to” Josephine answered her face now contorting with laughter.

He scowled at her.  “Laugh if you must but I am bettering myself.”

“Okay, Okay…” she tried to calm her giggles. “But why did you take your clothes off?”

“It just kinda happened.”  He grinned.  “I decided not to fight it.”

She shook her head in laughter again.  “I’m taking a shower.”

She headed for the bathroom and knew Leo wouldn’t be far behind.  The strange event in the hallway slipped from her mind as she once again got her vacation on track with some Jacuzzi fun with her soul mate.

She hoped it would stay that way.

It didn’t.

TO BE CONTINUED…

 

 

 

3-What Just Happened?

3

What Just happened?

Yuri Chenkoff clicked the off button on his cell phone, hanging up on Petroff.  He moved to the dining room where Vadim, his computer man, watched the hotel’s security cameras through a hacked feed.

“He is moving in on the target.”  Yuri spoke with a heavy Russian.  “Watch the bathroom door.”

Vadim’s fingers ran across the keypad and the feed on the laptop switched to show the bathroom door, and Petroff.  They both watched as Petroff entered the room and shut the door behind him.  If everything went according to plan, one man would exit the bathroom in a couple of seconds and it would be Petroff with the flash drive.  The American would be disposed of.

Yuri was a monster of a man, standing six-six and weighing over 300 lbs.  He was one hundred percent muscle, spending long hours lifting weights and perfecting himself into the killing machine he was today. Having grown up on a back woods farm in northern Russian where the conditions were terrible, he had dreamed of a better life.

He had found his better life with the Russian government.  Having taken the first chance he got to get out of his rural purgatory, he had joined the Red Army and after a couple of, what they called ‘psych evaluations’, he was moved to Spetsnaz and into wet work.

It took Yuri very little time to realize that Freelance was where all the money was.  He made the move to private work and had been independent for the last ten years.  He was, however, getting old for a killer. Nearing forty, it had become harder and harder to keep his body in the perfect condition he needed it to be in.  Although he never could see his life without killing, he knew it was coming time to retire from the business, at least for the most part.

With that said, he had felt like a real winner when he received the tip about this list.

He had already lined up a list of buyers that were offering billions of dollars for the material.  He had put a team together and the rest was history.  Nothing would keep him from completing this mission.

It was because of all of the work he had put into this mission which caused his heart to sink as, to his surprise, he watched as the target came out of the bathroom first, blood oozing from his shoulder, and took off running.

“Shit!” Vadim said in Russian.

“Give me the full lobby now!”  Yuri bellowed and Vadim sped through the key strokes.  The lobby came up just in time to see Petroff raise the gun and fire two shots before the D.H.S Agents put him down in a hail of gun fire.

He looked away at the floor trying to gather his resolve.  Vadim shook his head.  “Not good.  That’s an abort.”

“No.” Yuri said quickly.  “Not yet.”

Vadim turned and stared.  “It is blown Yuri.  Petroff is dead and The D.H.S will have the drive for sure!”

“No!  We abort when I give the order!” Yuri’s voice seemed to shake the room and Vadim could only nod.

“Run the lobby feed back.  Show it to me again.”  Yuri said, calming himself.

Vadim did as he was told and Yuri watched the whole thing unfold again.  The target’s mad dash across the lobby.  Petroff’s emergence from the bathroom.  The storm of gunfire.  The target crashing into the silly looking fat American tourists.

Yuri smiled.  Maybe there was hope after all.  Maybe the target had made a last minute decision to stash the list.

Yuri pointed at the screen.  “I want to know everything about the Americans.  As soon as possible.”

****

Anyone who ever said they had no interest in love or marriage was lying.

Humanity as a whole was romantic and there was no real way around that.  Even the most cynical and logical still wished, somewhere deep down within themselves, that there was someone out there so perfect they would break down the walls and prove them wrong.  Josephine, though of the more cynical and logical variety, had never been one of those people.  She had always known that one day her prince charming would walk into her life and she would have the two kids a dog and a white house with a picket fence that came standard in the American love story.

Love was nothing, if not unexpected.

She had fallen for Leonard only a couple of weeks into the courtship, a surprising fact given that he was silly, sometimes childish, and almost always impractical.  Although she had never pictured herself with a guy like him, he brought a liveliness and a humor to her world that was sorely needed.  Everything seemed grey before Leo.  Now it was in color.

Even with this fact, it was still easy to sometimes wonder how she could have fallen for him.  As she sat next to him waiting to be interviewed by the Department of Homeland Security staring at the writing on one of her most hated of his shirts, she was again visited by this sense of wonder.

It was a blue T-Shirt with yellow writing on the front that read ‘Nice guys always finish… Exactly when they are supposed to.’ Followed by a big yellow smiley face winking at anyone who gazed upon the shirt and could not infer the message from the writing alone.

“I hate that shirt.”  She said as they sat at a small table in the Northwoods first floor bar area.  Everyone in the lobby at the time of the shooting had been sequestered here while the Two D.H.S agents and the local police made their rounds gathering statements.

Leo’s face went wide as he looked at her with overblown melodrama.  “I just had a guy die on me for the first time ever and you are commenting on my shirt?”

Joe felt a ping of regret.  Sometimes she had a hard time comforting others.  “I’m sorry.  Are you okay?”

Leo quickly turned his frown into a smile.  “Yeah, I’ll be fine.  I didn’t know him.”

Leo had a way of correcting himself whenever he thought Joe had been hurt, but Joe had learned better. She could tell from the extra tremor in his had he was more bothered then he had let on.

“Mr. and Mrs. Dev-e-rocks?”  The well-built D.H.S agent had made his way to them and had butchered Leonard’s family name.

“Devereux.”  Leonard corrected politely but the agent seemed miffed for a second before his partner, the well-dressed younger woman, stepped in.

“Devereux, sorry about that.  My name Eliza Adams, Department of Homeland security.  This is my partner, Barkley Samuels.  Would you mind if we asked you a few questions?” Adams was more polite, more placating.  She was using honey.

“Of course, anything we can do to help,” Leo spoke out and extended his hand.  He was always over eager with government officials, not to say that he wasn’t over eager to volunteer more information than he should to just about anyone who would listen.

Eliza sat down across from them while Barkley stood behind her and watched them.  Joe had to wonder if this was an act.  She had watched so many crime shows with Leonard that this reminded her of the good cop, bad cop routine.  She found herself wondering if people really did that in real life.  If that’s what this was, it seemed silly to her.

Eliza went through a battery of questions.  The standard stuff, who are you what are you doing here, etcetera.  When they told her they were on vacation, Leo let it slip they were officially millionaires and Joe had glared at him not wanting that to be public knowledge.  Eliza had congratulated them and even Barkley’s face lightened.  Winning the lottery was apparently a little like being a celebrity and it garnered some special respect even though all they had really done was get lucky.

 “Did he hand you anything?” The question was strange and perked Joe’s attention.

“What would he have handed us in the time it took him to knock us over and die?”  She asked, sounding a little more cold and sarcastic then she wanted to.

“It would be something small, like a computer drive?” Eliza reworded the question and Joe watched as Barkley seemed to shift uncomfortably.

Joe could tell that even that was more information than they had wanted to give.  “So, this this flash drive is what they killed him to get?”

Eliza nodded and began to answer when Barkley’s hand snapped to her shoulder and she realized she had become too chatty.  “Just be on the lookout.”

“So does that mean we are free to continue our vacation?” Leo asked, ready to be done.

“Almost,” Eliza said.  “Mr. Devereux, will you step to the bar with Agent Barkley and empty your pockets?  Mrs. Devereux, if you could empty you purse with me.”

Leo stood and walked with Barkley to the bar.  Joe picked up her purse and began to empty the contents onto the table.  Without tall, dark and mean behind her, Joe decided Eliza might be more loquacious.  “So, what’s the deal with this drive?  Was he here to sell it?”

Eliza couldn’t resist the opening.  “We believe so.  We also believe the shooter was the buyer.”

“Who was the buyer, the shooter I mean?”  Joe tried to press her luck but watched Eliza’s face close up. She realized she had said too much and walled herself off.

“I can’t say ma’am.”  She said, then something caught her eye, a small flash drive.  “What is that?”

Joe shook her head.  “Not what you are thinking.  Leo programs music onto it and we play it through the car stereo for long trips.”

Eliza was crestfallen.  “Oh, I see.”

Leo and Barkley returned from the bar ending the conversation.     

“Alright, Mr. and Mrs. Devereux.  You can go, but if you think of anything else, please give me a call.”  Eliza said before handing them both her card and moving on to the next group.

****

“I’m sorry, I got carried away.”  Eliza said when they had reached a safe distance from the Devereuxs

“Damn right, you did,” Barkley snapped back.  “These are civilians not our task force.  Do you understand that?”

Eliza could do nothing but nod sullenly.  She was slightly relieved to see the anger leave Barkley’s expression as quickly as it had come.  “Don’t worry about it.  What did you read off those two?”

Eliza shrugged.  “Well, they don’t seem involved.  The wife is quick, she picked up on the info but a lot of people are smart, and did you see that husband?  That shirt was ridiculous.”

Barkley nodded and watched them leave the lobby and head to the elevators.  “Yeah, I think you’re right… but something in my gut tells me we are going to be seeing more of the Dev-e-Rocks before this thing is over.”

TO BE CONTINUED…