Geek Mafia: Mile Zero by Rick Dakan (reading tree txt) 📖

CHLOE’S morning had been beyond frustrating. It had been downright

depressing. After Bee’s news about their compromised camera network, she’d spent a couple hours helping her engineer friend reconfigure the software on some of the cameras and install new security so that Winston couldn’t tap into their feeds (or so they hoped). She’d then taken the new cameras out into the field to set them up around the bight marina, but when she got there, she discovered that Winston’s boat was gone, presumably with the killer on board. They could be well on their way to Miami by now. Or Cuba. “Fuck” she said under her breath.

She’d set up the cameras anyway, just in case they came back, and then went home to help Bee go through the video records and see if they could find any sign of where Winston or the killer or really anyone else had gone. Like Raff. Where the fuck had he gone? There’d been no sign of him since he’d left his house in search of Sandee. The RFID tag hadn’t popped up on any of the readers, and they couldn’t find him on any of the cameras.

And then the cameras had started dying. One by one, across the city, they’d started winking out. They were being blinded.

“What the…?” Bee said when the first one went out. “I just lost the Petronia 4 Camera.”

“That’s not good,” Chloe replied. “Let’s roll back the video on that camera and see if there’s anything weird going on there.”

They watched the video, but there wasn’t anything unusual in the half hour leading up to the camera going dead. No sign of Winston or Lily or anyone they recognized and no sign of anyone even noticing the camera.

“Crap!” Bee shouted, “Look at that.”

The big screen showing the map of the city was now displaying a constellation of blinking red dots with camera names next to them, all around the west end of Duval Street. “Someone took down a wireless router there,” Bee said.

“Any chance it’s just a coincidence?” Chloe asked.

“Of course,” said Bee. “They go down all the time. But I don’t think so…” She typed and clicked on one of her computers. “As far as I can tell it just shut down. Probably someone pulled the power. I’ll have to go out there to see what’s wrong.”

“And while you’re doing that, more of them will go down,” Chloe said.

“I don’t see what else we can do,” said Bee. “Whoever’s doing this is blinding us all over the city.”

As they watched, three more cameras went down within a couple minutes of each other. “How’re they doing that so fast?” asked Bee. “It’s not a software thing. They’re just out there yanking the plugs or something.”

“Winston must have his whole Crew on it. Probably took a pic of the whole camera map while he was here and then sent it out to his gang.”

“Doesn’t he know that we’ll be suspicious?” asked Bee. “I mean, who else could be doing it?”

“Well, Isaiah or Eddie or Raff cold be doing it. All of them probably would do it if they knew about the cameras. And that’s probably going to be what Win tells me when we talk - that Eddie or Isaiah is after us and that the only way we can survive the night is to do exactly what he says. He’s trying to panic us.”

“He’s doing a good job,” said Bee.

“Yeah, he really is,” agreed Chloe. The two of them stared at the board, helpless as more cameras went dark. She couldn’t stop him, so she had to change the nature of the game. The cameras didn’t matter anymore. Time to forget them and move on. “I’m going to call Paul and we’re going to go see Winston.”

“You are?” asked Bee. “What’re you going to say?”

“I’m not sure yet. But I can’t let this go unanswered. I need to do something to throw him off his game.”

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure,” said Chloe. “That’s why I’m going to get Paul. I can always count on him to think of something crazy.”

CHLOE and Paul met at Anna’s, a small sandwich place on Simonton that wasn’t quite in the middle of tourist central but still had big enough crowds that they could sit in the corner and go unnoticed. Paul had his usual roast beef and she decided to switch things up and had a BLT instead of the tuna.

“I swear he was trying to bait Eddie,” Paul said to her in hushed tones. “He was provoking those guys, just begging them to do something stupid.”

“And Eddie’s probably the kind of guy that would do something stupid if he got angry enough,” Chloe said.

“I don’t doubt it. Marco as much as told me so. We need to see Winston and try somehow to get him to ratchet down the aggro.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“I mean, he’s gotten what he wants already. Unless we rat him out, I don’t think Isaiah and Eddie are ever going to be able to be certain about who exactly it is that’s behind Raquel’s murder. And until they’re both satisfied, this whole shadow corporation deal is dead in the water.”

“And you’re ok with that?” asked Chloe.

“If it ends this whole rain of bullshit we’ve been subjected to, then yeah, I’m ok with that.”

“I’m not sure I am,” she said. Part of her agreed with Paul - anything that ended the current clusterfuck was good, but she didn’t want to lose the opportunity that Isaiah was presenting them.

“You’re not?” Paul asked, a confused look on his face.

“If they all leave, what happens then do you think? Isaiah’s not the kind of guy to give up. He’ll go forward with his plan in some form, right?”

“I’d assume so, yeah. He doesn’t seem like the kinda guy who’d give up on his dream.”

“Neither am I. Neither are you,” said Chloe. “But when he goes to version 2.0, do you think he’s going to ask us to join again?”

“Maybe?” said Paul. “I don’t know…”

“It’s pretty unlikely. I mean, the only reason we got invited in at all is because Winston vouched for us. But there’s no way that’s going to count for much with Isaiah after he leaves Key West. He’s going to go back to New York, and he’s gonna think things over, and maybe he’s going to figure out that Winston’s just as good a suspect as Eddie. Or that maybe we are. Either way, there’s no way he’s trusting either of us again.”

“No, you’re right. He’ll cut us out,” agreed Paul. “But then again, four days ago we didn’t even know there was something to be cut into.”

“But now we do know. And knowing it’s out there, I want it. I really want it.” Chloe hadn’t even fully realized this was true until she spoke the words out loud. “It’s a path out of this dead end we’ve driven ourselves into. It’s a way to expand our Crew and our influence and get off of this damn island.”

“And that’s worth risking everything for?” Paul asked. “It’s worth it to you to stir things up and bring on some confrontation with your old friend - your mentor really - who is obviously willing to kill to sink this deal? You want to go up against Winston and blow this whole thing open?”

Chloe thought about that. She was mad at Winston. Really super fucking pissed off. Hell, maybe the only reason she wanted to hook up with Isaiah’s plan was because Winston didn’t want her too. Wouldn’t be the first time she’d done something just to piss off a father figure. “Yeah,” she said. “I really do. He’s fucked with us, Paul. And part of me still loves the old bastard and if he has the world’s best excuse I might even forgive him. But yeah, I’m willing to go against him if he’s standing between us and what we need to do.”

“What we need to do,” Paul said, mulling the words over. He was silent for a long moment, staring off into space.

“Yeah, it’s what we need to do,” she repeated. And it was true. Although she didn’t want to face the reality of it, she knew deep down in her heart that unless something changed in their Crew’s life, then her relationship with Paul was doomed as well. But she couldn’t come out and say it couldn’t find the words that would express her certainty without sounding like an ultimatum to Paul. And they’d been together long enough for her to know that he didn’t take ultimatums well at all - no better than she did.

Paul nodded to her and smiled. It was a wan, tired smile. A smile of recognition, and maybe resignation. “It’s what we need to do,” he said. A statement, not a question. She breathed a silent sigh of relief. He did get her message.

“The question is,” said Chloe. “How do we do it?”

“We talk with Winston,” said Paul. “He’s expecting us to come to him. Now that he’s knocking down our camera network, he’s got to think we’re in a total state of fear. So we have to do what he expects if we’re going to catch him off guard.”

“I agree,” said Chloe. “I figure we go, meet with him, and try and feel him out. See what he wants. Then we’ll know how to react.”

“I think that’s backwards,” said Paul. “He’s too good at this shit. He won’t give away anything he doesn’t want to. We can’t worry about what he wants, we’ve got to make him want what we want him to want. Does that make sense?”

“It does,” said Chloe, seeing a path forward now. “He is better at this than we are, and he knows it. We should play into that. Make him think he’s getting the better of us.”

Paul nodded and got that look he got when the ideas were flowing through his brain faster than he could talk. He kept nodding and said, “Ok, ok. I’ve got an idea. But we need to go home. We also need a blond wig, two old phones and an extra car.”

“We do?” asked Chloe. “Ok, that’s all doable. What’s the play?”

Paul stood up, leaving his sandwich half eaten. “I’ll tell you on the way home. This is going to take a bit of setup, so we need to get on it.”

She smiled and stood up with him. This is when she loved him the most. Not lost in some online world in front of his computer or drunk off his ass at the party. Now, when he was alive and excited by some new idea, some new plan