Chapter 1, page 9

As if on cue Matt broke in, satisfaction ringing in his voice, “Can I assume that you have a high quality, off the rack, silk suit to pair with that fancy new car.”

Laughing, I placed Robin’s card on top of my wallet, which I had placed on the nightstand right next to the video camera. “You can assume that.”

“You have a few nice, handmade silk suits here you could have worn you know.” He said with a scoff.

“But that wouldn’t have been a challenge.”

“You and your challenges.” Matt said before blowing air threw his lips. I didn’t think he was taunting me, but I also knew that I was getting awfully close to the end of his patience.

“Yes me and my challenges. You know how alive I feel when I have to stretch myself both mentally and physically.”

“We’ve beaten this to death, Marcus. You just need to accept that I’ll never agree with you. It’s all about the path of least resistance.”

“I know.” I responded warmly. I knew I would never be able to convince him that challenges were not a waste of time and effort, despite the fact that “me and my challenges” have always netted us the greatest reward. But he also knew that I felt bored if I didn’t have something to entertain me, so he mostly went along with those types of jobs, provided that I didn’t expect him to strive to overcome the challenge.

“Well since I won’t be able to talk you out of this nonsense,” Matt began, all joviality draining from his voice. “Tell me that your reconnaissance has been going well.”

I mentally began reviewing what I had managed to see ever since I set up my single surveillance camera. Unfortunately, the effort had only produced a steaming pile of nothing. The motion that I thought I saw earlier was the first sign of life, let alone activity, that I had seen from my sole vantage point. Not for the first time I began wishing I had been able to get more eyes on the warehouse. But there had been people, probably Dempsey’s men, guarding the building. And they did an excellent job making sure that everyone steered clear of the area while not making it look like that was what they were doing. Not even the homeless were safe from their interference, and that was just mean. I had spent the whole trip down here creating my homelessness persona only to have my efforts wasted.

Normally the homeless are left alone, so I had figured I would be able to plant a few of my surveillance cameras. All I had to do was get close enough to touch the building and presto, my system would be in place. I would have been able to plant a good sampling of cameras pointing into the building. But the one time I tried to get close enough to place my cameras, a guard materialized out of thin air. Well he didn’t actually “materialize,” that would have been quite the trick, but it certainly felt like he had. If he hadn’t been carrying that rather large gun, I might have made another effort somewhere else along the wall. Instead, I contented myself with a simple perimeter search. This turned up only a single entrance, a door to the building adjacent to the loading dock. Disheartened, I decided to place a camera pointing at the entrance before I gradually made my withdrawal.

Since I had already taken enough grief from Matt, I decided not to mention just how little information I was able to scrape together about the location. “Well I think I just saw something a moment ago.”

“What do you mean, you think?”

“Considering that I was dealing with an irate and rather shrill voice at the time…” I definitely couldn’t resist the poke. “Yeah, I only Think I saw something enter the warehouse.” I had to learn how to bite my tongue. A comment like that was just going to add fire to all Matt’s objections.

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