Unhappily Ever After Bk. 01 Ch. 04

"Morning, Red," I answered. "Yeah. I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd come down and get some work done. It's a bit hard to keep my finger on the pulse with everything that's going on. Are you blokes okay for supplies? Is there anything I can bring you back from town tonight?"

"No, we're good," Red answered. "Did you catch the local news last night?"

"I'm afraid not. Did I miss something?

"It appears that a couple of fishermen drowned downstream from here," Red said. "Apparently, their boat hit a log or a rock or something and capsized. It appears they weren't wearing lifejackets, and they got tangled up in all the gear they had in the boat with them.

"From what I heard, not much of the stuff they had in the boat related to fishing. It was more the sort of stuff you'd find if someone was setting up a surveillance operation."

"Maybe they were bird-watchers," I responded. "I don't suppose any of their gear drifted ashore? As it turns out, I could use about three cameras and a small server."

"Would game-trail cameras do the trick?" Red asked, "We found six of them along the riverbank.

"We did salvage some other stuff but sent it on to Prancer to see if it could be resurrected. We thought we might set the game cameras up around the place to help us keep an eye on things here.

"Okay, load three of them in a hold-all and drop it by the driver's side door of my truck. I should only need them for twenty-four hours - two of them, anyway. The other one I may need to leave in place for a bit longer. I should have them back by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.

"Did the news elaborate on the two men who were drowned? Their nationality? Time of death? That sort of thing?"

"I think they said they were of Eastern Mediterranean ethnicity and that all indications were that they died sometime yesterday morning. Why do you ask?"

"Nothing, really," I responded. "Just curious. Anything else?"

"Oh, we kept the explosives."

"What fucking explosives?" I asked, my heart rate kicking up a notch or two.

"Not much," he answered with a chuckle. "just a couple of kilos of C4 with dets, timers and a couple of burner phones all set up as triggers."

"Thanks for finally telling me about them," I said. "It looks like the bastards might be getting serious.

"I'm pleased you hung onto them. The way things are going, they might come in handy.

"Thanks, mate," I said.

"No problems," Red said. "I'll catch up with you later."

"Later," I answered.

I thought I'd run my plan to set up surveillance on my office, the meeting room and Todd Manyweather's office past Tommy Jones. I didn't want him to think I was going over his head.

His text came back all in capitals. "DO NOT PLANT CAMERAS. HE HAS THE WHOLE PLACE WIRED. WE HAVE BREACHED HIS NETWORK. HAVE ACCESS TO EVERYTHING HE SEES. ACKNOWLEDGE".

I sent back a brief text, also in caps, which simply said, "MESSAGE UNDERSTOOD. ROGER".

The next message from him was brief and to the point. "My place, 1000. Come alone", it said.

---oooBJSooo---

...Continues, Part Four.