23. March 7th

MARCH 7TH

Waters

CanI give Kai more than these next few weeks?

That was the million-dollar question, wasn't it? And it was distracting him from his job right now. Giving himself a shake, he tried to convince himself he'd have plenty of time to mull it over later.

Later. There's a whole other level of distraction.

His meeting with TB and Nemo took care of two things: updates and saving him from a trip into the town. He wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. However, it was difficult not to think about later, not to plot and plan their time alone when he knew there wasn't anything to inhibit him now. And he wasn't sure which was more dangerous: thinking about what would happen behind closed doors or thinking about what was going to happen at the end of the filming.

All of a sudden, his watch began beeping softly and rapidly. Frowning, he glanced down to see a red light flashing in time to the beeping. A couple of clicks silenced the beeping and flashed a code on the screen: C1.

Kubrick's room!

Kubrick was squatting down at the edge of the pier talking to Vixen and Enigma, checking in on her injured actress and discussing with them if they thought working an injured Vixen into the script as a moment might have value. He didn't want to leave her alone, but someone or something had tripped Cyclopes back at the house.

"Kubrick, I'm going to go check on the others. You good here?"

"Sure thing. Everything okay?"

"Just stay here with Enigma and Vixen, okay?"

Kubrick frowned but gave a single nod.

It took everything he had in him not to take off at a run for the house, but he didn't want Kubrick to panic. Plus, he knew that TB, Nemo, and Demon would all be getting the same alarm. One of them would be close by to keep an eye on Kubrick, and the others would be moving toward the house. Once he had turned the corner on the path between the lake and the house, he tapped into his watch's comm system.

"Sitrep," he barked.

An Irish brogue came over the speaker. "C1, C2, and C4 perimeters breached. On my way there now."

"No one was watching the house?"

"Nemo was."

A feeling of unease rippled through Waters. "Has he checked in?"

"Negative."

"TB?" he called out.

"Got my eyes on Kubrick. Go."

"How close are you, Demon?"

"Southern corner now."

"Wait for me. Be there in sixty."

Waters took off at a jog, swinging around to come in from the eastern side so he could coordinate with Demon. "Here."

"No sign of Nemo, but no sign of disruption, either."

"Slow and easy. I'll go in the front with a detour past her window to see if there's anything there. You take the back. Swing out to the tree line and take a quick look for Nemo."

"Already done. He's not there."

"Okay. I'll check in before we enter."

"Copy."

Walking as nonchalantly as he could, looking for all of the world like he was simply returning to the house for something, Waters continued toward the house at an angle that would allow him to scout out Kubrick's room to see if anyone was inside. The alarm on his watch was still flashing, but then again, it wouldn't stop until he reset it on-site.

As he passed the window, he used his peripheral vision to see if he could spot anything. The shutters were open, but nothing looked off from the outside, and he didn't want to get closer and tip off anyone who could still be inside. Whoever had tripped the alarm had accessed the room through the kitchen and then the War Room entrance.

As Waters arrived at the front door, he removed his gun from its place at the small of his back and moved into position on the porch. He tapped a quick text to Demon to breach on three.

Tapping the countdown on his audio, when he hit three, Waters swung through the door and quickly cleared the hallway. He listened carefully. There was no sound of Demon entering the house, but then again, there wouldn't be. Unfortunately, there was also no sound to indicate anyone was within the walls at all. Waters trained his weapon on the War Room doors, which were cracked open. Backing up to the door of his room, he quickly tested the doorknob, and it was still locked. With both hands to his weapon, he noticed a text from Demon.

"Nemo out cold, but okay. Coming out."

Waters breathed a small sigh of relief that Nemo was still breathing, but the intruder could still be in the house. Did Nemo spot him and get caught following, or did the intruder sneak in behind him? Nemo wouldn't have had any reason to enter the house unless he was following someone. But what if there were two of them? Nemo could have followed one and then been snuck up on by a second. It would have been odd for him to miss a tail, but not impossible.

Demon came from the kitchen, giving the "all-clear" sign.

Waters motioned to the War Room doors, pointing Demon to go high. Counting down from three on his fingers, the two men burst through the door.

It was trashed. Papers were everywhere surrounding the desk. The worktable with all of the storyboards was overturned. Desk drawers were pulled out and dumped on the desk. Both his tablet and Kubrick's laptop were missing.

The doors to Kubrick's room were also cracked.

After clearing the room, Waters again motioned for Demon to go high, and he used his fingers to count down, breaching the door. If the War Room was a mess, then her room was a disaster. Everything was ripped apart. Literally. Pillows had been cut, and the filling dumped. The mattress was tipped, slashed, and clearly searched. Her backpack was dumped, and the contents were strewn across the floor. What little clothing she had brought with her was also littering the space.

When they had entered, after the cursory sweep showing clearly that no one was still in the bedroom, Demon had continued on to clear the bathroom. He now surveyed the windows, running his fingers along the frames, looking for evidence that they'd been recently opened.

"Clear," Demon informed him.

The two men proceeded to clear the rest of the house and found themselves alone, save for Nemo sprawled on the kitchen floor. Once they confirmed no intruders remained behind, they went to collect and revive their teammate. Demon did a quick pat down to check for injuries and found nothing more than a significant bump on the back of his head. While Waters made an ice pack, Demon broke an ammonia stick beneath Nemo's nose. It didn't take more than a second or two for him to wake and issue a complaint of, "I'd have rather gotten bitten by the snake again." Together, Waters and Demon hauled him up from the floor and put him in a chair.

While Demon proceeded to take vitals for Nemo, Waters used his watch to call TB. He picked up immediately. "All clear here."

Waters appreciated that TB knew exactly what his first concern would be. "Good. Here, not so much."

He looked over to where Demon was working on their teammate. "Nemo took a whack to the back of the head. No details yet, but can't rule out the possibility of two Charlies, so keep frosty."

"Roger that." TB clicked off.

Waters made a second call. Midas answered almost as swiftly as TB had. "What the holy hell is going on down there? Nemo's life alert went off, Cyclopes is going apeshit on C1, 2, and 4, and there are two men in black systematically destroying the contents of C1 and C2."

"I'll have Demon reset the alarms momentarily. Someone broke into the house. Do you have any pictures for me?"

"Umm, yeah. I don't know who these guys are, but they're fast and efficient." Keys were clacking in the background. "From what I can tell, there's only two of them. Facial recognition will be no good as they're covered head-to-toe. I might be able to get some rough estimates on height and weight, but that's not super helpful. Right now, I don't see any distinguishing marks like tattoos or birthmarks, but I'll go through it frame by frame when we're done and double-check. One thing I can tell you, they're both male."

"Could they be Egyptian?" Waters asked.

"Possibly. No way to tell that, though."

Demon stood up from rechecking the knot on Nemo's head and left the room, presumably to reset the alarms. Within moments, the red lights on their watches went dark. He re-entered the room and leaned in the doorjamb.

"Midas," Waters began, "I need you to put the video up on the TV in the War Room. Both my tablet and Kubrick's laptop are MIA."

"They'll be there before you are."

"Nemo, you good?"

"Five by five, Boss." He got up from the chair with a wince, but he didn't complain or groan as they moved through the house. When they arrived, the television screen already had the video surveillance paused on the screen. Midas' face was in a small box in the upper left corner where the damaged pixels normally appeared. The timestamp in the bottom right corner showed they entered the house, searched, and were out in less than five minutes.

On screen, the entry, search, and exit were fast and smooth. Intruder One entered through the kitchen door. Nemo quickly followed, and Intruder Two took Nemo down with a tap to the head using what appeared to be a baton.

The man winced at watching himself go down. "Sorry, Boss."

With each action committed by the two men on the screen, Waters got angrier and angrier, especially when they began pawing through Kubrick's personal items.

"Fecking arseholes," Demon muttered. He looked at his team leader. "What's the play?"

"If I had Steel here, I'd track them, but that's obviously not happening. And knowing that there are two of them, there's no way I'm sending anyone out alone after them. We need to get the actors back here and under wraps, at least temporarily."

"How's she going to take it?" Nemo asked.

"Typical, Kubrick, I'm guessing. She'll be pissed but collected. Might call them a few more creative names."

"Got my list here to take inventory," Midas quipped as he gestured to the whiteboard behind him. The list was growing as every day she seemed to have a new Kubrick-ism for him to add to it. There were checkmarks next to them as a show of how often she repeated them. "Assclown" was by far the favorite.

Waters allowed a small uptick of one corner of his mouth. He was angry, but he could see how his woman's filthy mouth would be high entertainment to his teammates. He might help add some names to Midas' list as well.

"You want us visible?" Demon asked.

"Negative. I'm okay with her knowing I have some security measures in place. She already knows the bare bones about Ka-Bar and what's going on. But I refuse to cause panic amongst the actors. Let's get the War Room at least appearing normal-ish to the naked eye. We don't need to worry about disturbing evidence. Both had gloves on from moment one."

"What about the electronics?" Nemo asked.

Midas answered. "Waters and Kubrick's were both tagged. If they turn his on without the proper fingerprint on the lock being used, the drive automatically wipes itself in five seconds. They won't even get to a start-up screen."

"None of the other alarms were tripped, so they knew right where they needed to go. Or thought they did. It was a streamlined ingress and egress, but they were clearly on a timeline of some kind." Midas looked to his left and squinted. "Your tag and Kubrick's are live, but the signal is screwy. They might have them inside something that's messing with the signal. Like an iron box. Once they try to open yours, the signal will terminate, too, so then we'll only have Kubrick's to work from. I'll keep an eye on it and see if we can catch a break."

Demon looked to Waters. "How will she handle the loss of the computer?"

Waters shrugged. "As far as I can tell, she hates the fucking thing. Most of the work she did was on all of these sheets of paper. She's a bit old school that way." He shook his head. "The disaster of things being out of her organized chaos will probably be the tipping point."

He scrubbed his face, dragging his hands down his cheeks. Hands on hips, he stared at the screen. "Something's weird about this break-in. Damned if I can see what." The two men knew the look and let him process. They began picking up the room, making piles of papers on the desk, dumping supplies into random desk drawers, righting furniture, and generally making it look good to where the actors wouldn't recognize anything being off.

Waters had watched the video footage three additional times before he spoke out loud. "Midas, she's going to have to report this to Big Bird since her computer is gone. We need to track his every move. I don't want her surprised when he shows up."

"You think he'll come all this way?" Nemo asked.

"I know he will," Waters replied. "He won't be able to resist the opportunity to come down here and read her the riot act, even though it's not something she provoked. Well, not wittingly."

He sucked in a full lung of air and let it out. "One more thing."

"What's up?"

"Her brother asked her to pick up a package in Cairo. That's why she went there in December. When she got there, no one knew anything about a package. She has no clue what it was, but maybe someone thinks she has said package, and that's what they're looking for. Because of this added link to Egypt, I want boots on site."

"Got it. I'll get Steel on a plane and out playing Hansel to Ka-Bar's Gretel, plus start tracing back all the mail going out of the embassy from that day forward. If I strike out, I'll search all packages going through the public services from the embassy outward."

"And Midas?"

"Needed yesterday. Got it?" Midas' face winked out from the screen, and there was quiet.

"She gonna be okay, Boss?" That came from Demon.

Waters nodded. "Yeah. I'll be stuck to her side whether Big Bird comes down or not, but I'm pretty sure he'll book himself on the first flight after her call. He'll take over my space, and I'll bunk with Kubrick."

"He'll love that," Nemo quipped. "He already loves you so much."

"Don't care. She's my primary concern, not dickwad." He shook his head in frustration. A selfish part of him couldn't help thinking this might derail his plans for tonight. While it gave him the perfect excuse not to hide his relationship with her in front of the others, in truth, he wasn't exactly sure how she'd take the thought that they'd been invaded. His entire being was screaming at him to lock her down, to hell with her movie, but he knew that was never going to happen. As long as they were all vigilant, it was clear that the intruders hadn't found whatever they were looking for, and they could manage to keep her secure.

If they never got together as planned, he'd still be close to her. That was all that mattered in the long run. And frightening as that was, he couldn't find it within him to care.