Chapter 4

Four

“You’re bored,” I told Remy as I pulled up his current location. Thanks to Google maps, I had access to street level as well as three-dimensional maps. It wasn’t like I could just repurpose a satellite to scan his location.

If push came to shove I could, I supposed, but that would bring heat in the form of hellfire down on us. Not a benefit really.

“I am bored,” he admitted. “But, I do need details on those guys. Soft background, habits, regular destinations—the usual.”

“We looking for a good spot to ambush them or a reason to?”

Remington didn’t say anything immediately. His quiet could be because he was actually considering his answer. Or it could be he was in danger of being overheard. It was far more likely the former than the latter. He could and had, found perches and nests where he’d spent days waiting out a target.

I would prefer we didn’t discuss how he handled his bodily functions, particularly after he told me the longest he’d ever made it in a nest was 89 hours. My imagination provided enough detail. I was sufficiently grossed out enough to not ask more questions.

“Maybe a little of column A and a little of column B,” he answered finally. “You ever wonder if there was something else you could be doing right now?”

“Well, I was binging the 90 Day Fiancé when you called.”

He snorted. “Luv, I meant a different line of work.”

I shrugged, despite the fact he couldn’t see me. “I know, I think my answer still stands.” It took me a minute to figure out where the best location for his sniper’s nest would be. Then I studied the local traffic cams.

He was invisible on all of them.

Remy was good.

“Uh huh, okay, so if you weren’t on the phone with me, you’d be binging Netflix.”

“More or less,” I answered, flipping screens to the research. The names were just that. Names. They might be targets. They might be associates.

They could be his partners in a bowling league.

“What if you had a different job entirely?” He seemed fixed on this particular topic. “Like how do you even go to school for tech goddess of the universe?”

I snorted. “Who said I went to school?”

“Me,” he retaliated. “You’re too damn intelligent to not have like fourteen different degrees. I bet you’ve even got a PhD floating around. I’d play doctor with you anytime.”

My face heated at the less than subtle innuendo, but I kept my laughter light. “You’d lose that bet, I’m afraid. I never even finished my Master’s.”

“Damn. MIT, though right? You seem like you’d be running MIT.”

“Remy…”

“Yes, Patch my dear?”

“Focus.”

“I am focused,” he said. “We have time. You’re doing research, and I’m curious.”

“I don’t have to stay on the line while I do the research. I can always just finish up the files and drop them in your box for you so you can review them when you’re done.”

It was how we normally did this.

“Ouch,” he said with a huff of faint laughter. “C’mon, Patch. Indulge me. It’s been forty-eight hours since one of these pricks stuck their head out to check the weather. I could be here for days and die of dehydration or boredom. Maybe both.”

“And questioning me about my life is something to do?”

“Well, you practically know everything about me. Where I grew up…”

“Idaho?” I mused aloud.

“Stoke-on-Trent.” The snap in his voice had me biting back a smile. “You’ve got jokes now.”

“I’ve always had jokes,” I told him. “You just have to pay attention.” I was putting together a profile on the first name. They were—very clean. Almost too clean. Work history. School history.

Even their credit history.

All very normal. Middle of the road. No huge investments. No huge losses. One bad item of bad credit that rolled off after seven years. Small, insignificant loans. Car loan.

House refinance.

House sale.

House sale? I pulled up the papers on the property and the tax records for the property. Though it showed payments for ten years, and in his name before—no wait there it was. He assumed the mortgage.

Yeah, it was a really good job of an identity build but this was a cover ID. I flagged the file with a warning for Remy. If he’d been given someone in WitSec as a target, he needed to think about that hard.

So did I.

Sure there were some shitty ass people in WitSec, but not all of them. There were also marshals just doing their jobs.

“Play with me, Patch,” Remy cajoled. “Twenty questions, truth or dare—just—tell me something about you that I don’t know.”

“I hate cell phones,” I told him after I zipped up the file on the first name and sent it off. I started building one for the second. After how much had been done to cover the first, I wanted to make sure I didn’t set off any alarms by digging too deep.

“Why?” He sounded legitimately surprised.

“You know anything about horses, Remy?”

“Some,” he said. “Probably enough to be dangerous. Like I know how to ride, for fun. Why?”

“Well, you know how they tell you that when you control the head on a horse, you control where it goes. But to do that, you need a halter and a lead rope.”

“Yes,” he said slowly.

“The thing is, sure, you have a grip on a thousand pound animal, but they have one on you.”

“Cell phone offers convenience, but it’s also a leash.”

“Exactly,” I said. “I don’t like that part of them. I think about when I was a kid and I didn”t have a phone—and how badly I wanted one. My dad told me I was too young, etc etc.” I shook my head. “I had no idea how good I had it and once you get one—it’s like you’re now permanently leashed.”

All someone had to do was reach out and pull on that electronic lead to yank you back in. I’d worked hard to cut those cords. It was why I had three different phones now. One for each aspect of life. Not counting the burners in my go bag.

If I ever had to abandon this life, it would suck, but I had everything in place to do it.

“Were you a girly girl or a tomboy?” Remy asked. “When you were a kid.”

“Oh, I thought you were asking about now.” I deadpanned the delivery as I stared at the facts populating about the second name. Just as clean as the first, but also a co-worker.

That could be a problem. They wouldn’t usually put two witnesses in close proximity. Possibly just a friend developed in the new life? Or family member?

They might bring a family member?—

Oh, I backtracked the name then looked at the locations and the history. It was different. Almost too different from the primary.

“If you want to tell me about now, I won’t object,” Remy said. “But I’m trying to picture blonde, blue-eyed you with pigtails…”

“Who said I had blonde hair and blue eyes?” Amusement curved my lips. As skimming attempts went, it wasn’t a bad one at all.

“Damn, you’re a hard nut to crack.” The protest on Remy’s part carried a lot of humor.

“I thought it was a game, not an interrogation,” I reminded him.

“Who says it can’t be both?”

I zipped up the second file and sent it off. “Me.”

There was a beat of silence, then he blew out a long breath. “Understood, luv. Understood. Backing off.”

“Thank you,” I told him. “I have one more name here to finish building a profile for. Did you really need these or was it an excuse to talk to me?”

“Both,” he admitted. “You ever feel like something is too good to be true?”

“Every day.” The fact I’d survived this long? Definitely too good to be true. “What’s your gut telling you?”

“Walk away,” he said and the issue he was struggling with crystallized. Remy took a lot of black bag jobs, wetwork, and assassinations. I didn’t ask too much detail about his targets and he didn’t defend them.

It was all a job. A transaction. Once he accepted a contract, he fulfilled it. He just didn’t accept all contracts. If he was on this…

“You’re scouting a potential contract,” I said abruptly and then winced at my big mouth.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “Got this offer before, turned it down. They came back with almost double the fee. So I wanted a good look at the target. Want to know why they want them scratched off.”

“You don’t know why.” It wasn’t a question. I was tempted to dig deeper into the location. Strip mine the area for data and see who he was tracking.

“No,” he said. “That part bugs me. Bugs me that they are offering twice as much for something that seems a pretty straightforward job.”

“Then why not go to someone else? Someone with less discerning taste?” Because as much as I admired Remy and enjoyed his acerbic wit. He’d been my client the longest of all my regulars. Also, my first in this new life and job.

We went back…

Something tickled in the back of my mind. McQuade had a similar issue. My clients didn’t generally cross paths. Though McQuade and Remy had been in the same place during the same conflict once. Thankfully, their different jobs never brought them to blows.

“You never ask me about my targets,” he murmured and I kind of wish I could find him on one of the street cams. As it was, I had a good idea of where he was.

“You tell me what I need to know. You ask me the questions you need answered.”

“That’s it? No looking deeper?”

“Do you want me to look deeper?”

“Do you know that answering a question with a question is annoying?”

I smiled at the drop of humor in his voice. “Is it?”

He chuckled. “Never change, Patch. Never change.”

“I don’t intend to. This works because you tell me what you need and I find it.” I zipped up the last file and sent it off. “The reason that job bugs you is they want you to do it. They aren’t being dissuaded by your no. The fact they are offering you more money is bait.”

“If I turn it down, what do you think they do next?”

“Depends on how badly they want you to do the job.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

“Do you want me to look into this target?”

He went quiet. The silence elongated, until I wondered if we’d been cut off. “Not yet,” he said, finally. “If this is a trap for me, I don’t want you triggering it.”

So he did see it, and that let me breathe a little deeper.

“I’m here,” I reminded him.

“That’s what I adore about you,” he said. “Tell you what, next time we talk—tell me what your favorite kind of music is and if you know how to dance.”

“Next time?” I verified.

“Yep. Next time. Go watch your crazy show. What season are you on?”

“Why?”

“Cause I plan to watch it. The fact you like it means it might be important and I always do my research.”

A little shiver went through me. “Am I the target, Remy?”

“Never,” he whispered. “Always.”

“Thanks for clearing that up.”

His soft chuckle echoed in my ears as he ended the call and I leaned back in the chair. He didn’t want me to dig into the target, but he didn’t say anything about the people offering him the job.

Remy only got jobs through two sources.

Me and the Post Office.

Time to dig into the back and see what was happening there.