Caleb 66 - Revenge

I looked at Dana and then turned to look at Gracie.

"When?" I asked Gracie, breaking the ice. I knew full well what they wanted to say, but despite knowing I knew, they were still finding it difficult.

"We put the deposit down on one of the apartments we saw yesterday," said Gracie. "They are doing their due diligence, but all things being equal, we should be able to move in this weekend.

I smiled at her. "Congratulations." I turned to Dana smiling at her too. "It will be good for you guys to have your own space. It's been really great having you stay with us, but I'm happy for you."

"You're sure?" asked Dana looking a little uncertain. "After all you guys have done for us, we kind of feel bad."

"Don't" I said. "Like I said. It's been really great having you stay with us, but we're all growing up. We can't live in a frat house for the rest of our lives. Honestly, I'm really pleased that you found somewhere. I guess in some ways the fire moved things along, giving you the impetus you needed?"

"Kind of," said Gracie. "What's more interesting is that, although it was a watershed for me, it was even more so for Dana. All of her 'boy' stuff was burned up in the fire. All her clothes, and everything she had here from her old life, is gone. Even the computer with that stupid ID on it is gone."

"You never uploaded that to the cloud?" I asked. Dana shook her head.

"It's a fresh start for us both," continued Gracie, "and so it just made sense that we should take the step and get our own place."

"You're going to come over for dinner sometimes?" asked Ness looking at the pair. There were tears in her eyes. Gracie had lived with us for as long as Ness had, and she'd come to love her almost as much as she had the other girls. Dana too.

"Does this mean," asked Jules, "We're having a 'going away party?'"

"I think we should," said Amanda, "how about Friday Night?"

Arrangements were made for us all to go out on Friday night, and I caught an undercurrent of plotting between Gracie and Amanda. I didn't peek but I figured I knew what that was all about.

"Did you find out anything more about Knight," asked Jules after Gracie and Dana had left.

"I found out where he lives," I said. "And I'm going to take a run past his place in the morning."

I went on to describe what I'd learned from Purcell about the others in the gang, and what I'd done to him in the coffee line. Strangely, none of them laughed. I expected them to find it funny but nobody did. If anything, there was a feeling that he'd deserved far worse and a feeling of disappointment that I hadn't done more.

"Don't worry," I said to them all. "I'm not finished with him yet. Once I've got the information I need from Knight, we'll make a plan. None of them are going to mess with us ever again."

Four thirty the next morning found me outside of Knight's house. Knight lived in a gated community, with a high surrounding wall and a manned security booth at the entrance. I'd run along the side of the wall and then, with a little TK push, had hopped over it. I was currently kneeling in shrubbery at the side of his house, invisible in the darkness.

I'd originally intended to get closer but could see security cameras mounted all throughout the community. I contented myself in my current position almost against the outside wall. I could still scan inside of Knight's house and find the minds within.

There were five people in the house.

Knight slept alone. His wife slept in an adjoining room. They had two young children in a shared bedroom and a live in Au-pair who slept in a room next to the children's bedroom. I found out that the Au-pair was sleeping with both Knight and his wife, but separately. Both knew that the other was sleeping with the girl but they ignored it. So far they hadn't all slept together.

Knight was as dirty as they came. I'd been told that he represented some powerful people and he did. Some of those people were not people that I'd want to mess with. We'd need to be very circumspect in how we went about taking Knight down. There was plenty to use. He wasn't just screwing his Au-pair; financially he'd been screwing his clients, his partner, and just about everyone else he came into contact with. Even Walter Greenwood, whom he'd represented for a number of years, had suffered losses to him.

He was very careful though, never taking too much, never dipping his beak too deeply into any one pot, but the cumulative effect was that he'd amassed quite a considerable amount of money. He lived very high off the hog, but he'd also been salting away funds, moving money from clients and his practice, to an offshore account which even his wife knew nothing about.

He had long term plans and those didn't include his current family. His caution and patience had served him well though. Nobody even suspected that he'd been stealing from just about everyone he'd dealt with, from his clients to his business partner. His last check of his Caymen Island account showed a balance of over fifty million amassed over the last ten years. He'd planned to double it in the next five to seven years and then move on. He'd be in his mid forties and he had plans to travel and enjoy the rest of his life.

"We definitely need to take that from him," said Ness at the 'war council' we had after school that day.

I'd laid out all the information I had on all of the people involved in burning our house down.

I was happy to note that Levi Green had not been at all involved, nor had he contacted Knight to let him know that I'd been to his office. In fact, Knight was a little put out with Green. He'd tried to call Green a couple of times already and each time his secretary had told him that Green wasn't available. It appeared that Green was distancing himself.

There were the five men who'd been each paid a thousand dollars to do the deed, in addition to Purcell. Purcell had pocketed five thousand for the job, claiming to his 'friends' that he was splitting the fee for the job equally between them.

There was Purcell himself to be dealt with. It was Ness that came up with the beginnings of an idea of how to punish them. We spent some time discussing it until we'd hashed out the details.

Then there was Knight. We'd have to be more careful with him. We could let people know what he'd been up to, in one way or another, but given his clientele, that could very likely get him killed. The kind of people he represented weren't the kind of people to complain to the State Bar if they found out their lawyer had been ripping them off.

Obviously, we were going to take his money, although I wasn't sure what we were going to do with it once we had.

Finally, Trevor's dad was also someone we would have to be careful with. Again, since he had clients referred to him by Knight, for a fee, he also had been stealing from the same people. If they found out, Greenwood was as likely to turn up dead as go to prison.

"I think our original plan for Greenwood," said Mary, "could be equally effective on Knight."

"IRS," I said nodding. "That would work. We could provide the IRS with enough information and proof to take them both down without any of their clients being involved. It was a given that people would try and get away with paying as little tax as possible, so it would be almost expected that they would be doing it too. If the IRS just happened to get an anonymous tip, and investigated..."

"I have enough knowledge from the pair," I said, "to give the IRS enough to put them both away for a very long time and seize just about everything they own. Since nobody knows about Knight's nest egg, they won't be looking for that. Greenwood has a little money salted away, but nothing like the amount that Knight does."

"Sounds like a plan," Mary said. "So how do we 'tip' the IRS?"

Jules grinned evilly and outlined the idea that had just occurred to her.

++++++

That night, Ray Purcell walked out of the bar he'd called into on his way home from work. It was late and he'd been the last to leave. That wasn't unusual. The bar wasn't exactly on his way home but he liked it. It had become his 'local' and he often went in for an after work drink.

He walked down the alley at the side to access the parking lot. The alley wasn't well lit, but it was clean and dry. It was short and as he emerged from it, into the parking lot, he noticed someone standing by his car.

That was when he realized that the side window of his car was smashed. The guy standing by it appeared to be urinating, through the smashed window, into his vehicle. He shouted.

"Hey,"

I turned to look at him, and grinned, finishing off and tucking myself away before turning to face him.

"You!" he said. "You little fucker. I'm going to make you lick all of that up, glass and all."

He ran at me fists flailing.

I sidestepped, exactly as I had with Greenwood, leaving a trailing foot and tripping him. He stumbled and fell across the hood of his car.

Stepping away a little, I waited for him to gather himself and turn to face me.

"You're going to regret messing with me," he said. "I'm going to break you into pieces."

I sighed, already bored with the monolog.

Purcell squared up, assuming what he seemed to think was a fighting stance. He bounced in place, his fists up like a boxer. Then he snapped a kick at me.

I didn't even need to move. He was so far away that there was no way that that was going to land. He smiled grimly.

"That's right," he said. "I'm MMA, and I'm going to make you suffer."

He moved forward, setting his feet ready for a move, but in that moment I moved. I snapped out a fist catching him squarely on the nose, breaking it. He staggered back, his hands going to his face and coming away covered in blood.

To his credit he didn't scream out as I thought he would. He just growled and flung himself at me.

A huge roundhouse came in, which I ducked under, and I planted a fist into his liver once, then again. He grunted in pain and swung again, this time with the other hand. I swayed back allowing his fist to pass my face and then pushed his arm across, using his own momentum to turn him so his back was almost to me. I then planted my foot against his ass and pushed him away. He staggered but didn't go down.

Purcell was panting now, unable to breathe through his broken nose and holding his side where I'd hit him. He spat a gob of blood onto the floor, glaring at me all the while. For myself I just stood, watching him, waiting for him to make his next move. I wasn't in any hurry.

It took him a couple of minutes to gather himself, but he eventually straightened assuming his stance again. This time though, it was more of a martial arts stance rather than boxing. His feet were planted firmly, nor was he bouncing.

He moved toward me and I took up my own stance. He tried a jab, but I blocked it easily. He tried again, with the same result. For now, I was content to let him come to me. I simply stood there letting him make his moves and either blocked or dodged his attacks. Another jab blocked, followed by a front kick which I sidestepped. He lunged at me, hoping to grapple, but I chose not to engage. I simply stepped aside once again and used his own momentum to trip him to the floor.

He scrambled to his feet immediately and flew at me, all pretence of a fighting style gone, hoping to overwhelm me with his bulk and fury. I blocked four punches in quick succession and then struck, my fist catching him perfectly in the solar plexus, winding him. He staggered back and I followed up punching him once again in his liver. Purcell collapsed to his knees, wheezing and croaking.

I stepped up on him and he threw his arm up to protect his head.

I wasn't going to hit him in the head. That was a sure way to break my hand. Instead, I grabbed his arm extending the elbow, and then brought my own elbow down on the back of it. The crack of the bone snapping was drowned out by his scream of pain.

He fell to the floor sobbing in pain and cradling his injured arm.

This was not the first time I'd deliberately broken someone's arm to prove a point. Idly I thought back to Jasper and the time I'd broken his arm. And that was for threatening just one of my girls. This guy had attacked all of them.

"You set fire to my house," I told him. "Any one of the women I love could have been inside there. You never even bothered to check. You could have killed them."

With that, I stomped down hard on his leg, shattering his kneecap. He screamed again.

"Either of my sisters could have been in the house," I went on, working myself up further. "Sarah is only eighteen. What did she do to deserve that? You could have killed her."

I stomped again, his other kneecap shattering beneath my foot. He didn't have the breath to scream, collapsing to his back, retching up a mix of alcohol, bile, and blood as he lay sobbing pitifully on the ground.

"Melanie," I continued almost shouting, "has been abused all her life. I promised to take care of her and you almost took her away from me."

I grabbed his other arm, dragging it away from his broken one and twisting it, and snapped his wrist.

Purcell was now crying and blubbering on the floor, his face a mess of blood, and his eyes almost closed by the swelling.

I crouched down where he lay, broken and bleeding, on the alley floor. Despite his screams nobody had come to see what the noise was about. This wasn't the best area of the city and there was often a lot of stuff going on that normal, decent folk didn't want to involve themselves in. It wasn't that unusual to hear gunshots. People rarely reported them anymore, not in this neighborhood.

"You could have killed my friends," I told him, my rage abating a little, "or even me."

I reached behind me and pulled out my CQB, pulled the slide back, and chambered a round.

"I had thought," I said, "that I'd be satisfied with giving you a beating. But now I'm not sure. You see, you're the kind of stupid that will make excuses. You'll tell yourself that I caught you by surprise, that I sucker punched you, and that if I'd only fought you fair, you'd have kicked my ass.

"That means that you'll crawl away into your hole, until you heal, and then you'll come at me again. I can't be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life, waiting for shit like you to take a cheap shot at me or mine. You won't even have the balls to come at me. You'll come at one of my girls, or a friend of mine.

"So I think it's best all round if I just end it now. I've sated my rage. Now I need to make sure you're not going to take a shot at my family."

I brought the CQB up until it was pointing directly at his face and pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot echoed around the alley.

+++++++++++++++

Purcell woke from his nightmare, his bed soaked where he'd peed in his terror, sweat pouring off him. Quickly, he checked himself, feeling his arms and legs, pressing his hands to his face. Everything was okay and, other than lying in a puddle, he was perfectly fine.

He thought back to his dream, the picture of me, causing such a fear reaction he actually peed again.

I put my truck into gear and drove off. It was about a mile to the next guy's house and it was after midnight. The illusion dream had only taken about ten minutes to play out so I had plenty of time, but I wanted to get the others done. I still had to go and deal with Knight and Greenwood before my night would be over.

By the time I reached Greenwood's house, there were six, terrified, enuretic men too scared to even climb out of bed to clean themselves up. None of them would be able to even think about me or my family without quaking with fear.

By the time I'd left Greenwood's neighborhood, he was sitting in his home office, typing furiously.

I'd thought to have him write a confession, detailing all of his misdeeds to the IRS, providing proof so that they would know exactly what he'd been up to. Jules, however, had been slightly more Machiavellian. Instead of turning himself in, Greenwood was tipping the IRS off about Knight. Given the knowledge I'd taken from Knight, I was able to give him access to all the evidence he needed to present to them. While he was in there, I also had him transfer all of Knight's money from his Cayman Islands account. Several local and national charities benefitted from hefty donations. His final email was to Knight's partner, informing him of how Knight was stealing from him.

Once he was done, I sent him back to bed with absolutely no memory of what he'd just done. While the emails were anonymous, he'd made no attempt to hide his trail, not even using a VPN. It would be child's play for anyone who was interested to track it back to him.

I then moved on to Knight, who reciprocated Greenwood's actions and gave all kinds of information to the IRS about Greenwood, his client. He then, for thoroughness, reported himself to the state bar for breach of attorney client privilege. He too went back to bed, completely forgetting his nocturnal activities.

It was just after two when I arrived back at the hotel. For once all my girls were still up, waiting to hear the results of my nights activities.

"All done," I said. "I'll be amazed if any of them even thinks about us ever again."

"How did the illusions go?" asked Amanda.

"As expected," I said, "every single one of them peed themselves. One didn't just pee."

"Eww," said Sarah wrinkling her nose.

"Is that it then?" asked Melanie. "Is it done?"

"I think so," I said. "I'll keep my ear to the ground to check on results, but I think those who wronged us have been punished."

I looked from girl to girl. They were all satisfied. At first there had been some discussion as to whether what we were planning was proportionate to what they'd done to us, but that was quickly discarded.

They'd burned our house down, without a thought as to the potential people that could have been inside. They had no way of knowing that none of us, nor Gracie and Dana, nor Josh or Louise were in the house. It was pure good fortune that the house had been completely empty.

Not only that, either of our neighbors could have been burned out, or someone could have attempted a rescue and got injured or killed. Their complete lack of regard for any of the lives that could have been lost in the fire meant that they deserved everything that they got.

What's more, none of it could be traced back to us.

Yes, I'd done things I shouldn't, but I'd met Maggie's criteria. I'd not been caught.

The next morning, I rewarded myself with a lie-in. It had been nearly three by the time I had gotten to bed and so when I woke at four, I didn't even get up to pee. I simply closed my eyes and went straight back to sleep.

I was woken up just after seven by my phone ringing.

I pulled it to me from the charging dock and looked at the screen. E.

"Morning," I said a little sleepily as I answered. "Is everything alright?"

"Did I wake you?" he asked. "Sorry, you said that you were up at four every morning. I thought..."

"It's fine," I said. "I had a late night, but I was due to get up in a few minutes anyway. What's up?"

"I just heard about the fire," he said. "James told me that you were all okay, but I wanted to check in."

"We're all good," I said. "The house is completely gone though."

"Why would anyone want to do that?" he asked. "Do you know who it was?"

"I'll tell you all about it when we meet up," I told him.

"So where are you going to live?" he asked. "Are you going to rebuild?"

"We're looking for a place," I said. "And yes. Once all the insurance is sorted out we're going to rebuild."

"Well," he said. "I don't know what Connie or I could do, but I wanted you to know that if there's anything you guys needed, then you just need to call."