Chapter 21

That evening while Brannon was stopped at a light at 1st and Battery a street person came over to clean his windshield. When he tried to brush her off she gave him one of the portacoms instead.

"Have a nice night Mr. Brannon," she said as she faded into the surroundings.

She had no more than left than the portacom began to buzz. "Mr. Brannon, instead of going north, head for the Renton Mall. We'll talk to you later."

It took him about a half an hour to get to the mall. We had been watching him from one of the Hunter drones. The other one was about two kilometers behind making sure the first one wasn't being tailed. When he got there he was instructed to enter the parking garage and go down to the third level, south-west corner. There Dane met him. She was wearing a bodysuit so skin tight that a pimple would show much less a weapon. Blake wanted him to know that she was unarmed even if she was enhanced. She had him get out of the car and follow her. He was shown into a room off of the elevators and told to empty his pockets onto a table. The contents were then scanned and pushed to one side. He then had to undress and after a scanner had been run over him was given a set of coveralls to wear. The contents of his pockets were placed in a bag and placed on his clothes and he was then told to follow her to another car. He was again given the original portacom and informed as to his route from there. As he was a cop and would feel undressed otherwise there was also a weapon, an Ares Predator with an extra mag in the seat.

An hour later he went through something similar at the Aurora Mall where he was again scanned, dressed and placed into a third vehicle. He went through another hour of misdirection before we had him stop at the New Century Square Hotel about a block and a half from where he started. He was met in the lobby and escorted to the elevators and up to the room we had taken.

"Sorry for the runaround but it was necessary to protect ourselves. We're..." started Blake.

"Yes, I know who you are. You are Stefon Putnam aka Blake, you are Brian Whitefeather aka 'Coon, you're Jean Misty Dawn aka Dane and you're Colin Running Deer aka Cain. Did I get it all right?"

We all nodded. I hadn't known the real names of the others until that moment. I guess they all looked as shocked as I did.

"We've done a little checking on our own. Shall we get down to business?"

We sat down at the conference table we had requested for the room and as we did I slid him two chip cases.

"The first case holds the chips that started all this mess and the second case holds everything that we have been able to come up with since this all started," said Blake quietly. "There is a copy of questioning of one of the people who was high up in this theft along with how it was done and the names of those involved. We were originally hired to watch-dog a meeting and nothing else. We had nothing to do with the theft, transportation and getting rid of the chips. What we are giving you will prove that. Also if you want him we can give you the person that provided a lot of the answers."

"We want one thing and that's out of this mess." Blake stated emphatically.

"We know that you came into the picture much later. What we weren't sure of was whether you had the chips or not. Mr. Put... Blake, we're not quite as bad as a lot of people give us credit for being."

"Well maybe, but another problem we had was trust. Who could we trust. There's a lot of big money in this operation and with that you can buy a lot of people, even people who work for the UCAS FBI!"

"Again I can see your point and I can't blame you for your suspicions. I don't think that any of our people have been bought but then it surprised me about Captain Johnson being dirty."

"What I'm going to ask you can refuse and I'll understand but I want you to keep going like you have been," Brannon said. "Keep stirring things up, keep looking for links and connections like you've been doing. The longer they think you still have the chips the less they'll be looking for us coming after them. There might be a reward in it for you but that's might. All I can say for sure is you'll have the grateful thanks of a friendly government."

"Like we've been doing is setting ourselves up as targets. We've already been involved in two shootouts and nearly three more. If we hadn't run when we did we could have been taken out and you never would have gotten the chips. And your grateful government crap don't cut it either, I'm a Cascade Crow not a UCAS," I exclaimed.

"Look, I know it's asking a lot but I'm asking. We have a few contacts that can help you but not many. I can't even offer you protection as that would give us away and take away the value that you would be."

"You know how to reach me. Think about it and call me tomorrow sometime. Now I think we better end this and you get out of here. How long do you want me to wait before I leave?"

"Yeah, we'll call you tomorrow. And you can leave in twenty minutes or so," said Blake.

"Before we go I got to ask something, was de Chateau one of yours? There's things about him that just don't add up. We couldn't find anything out about him being a Decker yet he had a hot Deck and some very hot programs. They were supposedly sent to check the transport route but that doesn't fly with me. He had a lot of contacts and names that just doesn't seem likely and there were some other things that kind of pointed towards him being deep cover," I said.

"No, he wasn't one of mine. And by mine I mean the FBI. He might belong to someone else but not to us."

We left and returned to our hideout. There wasn't much conversation during the return trip, I guess we were all thinking about the proposition that Brannon had put to us. In a way what we were doing next would be going along with his request, even if he didn't know what it was. I for one was hoping that this would be the end of the run and we could start to get our lives back to normal. I had some classes and people I wanted to get back to and I'm sure that the others had things in their lives that they wanted to continue with.

Upon our return Thunder reported that Brannon had waited the full twenty minutes before he had left the room. He had returned to the Federal Building not far away and as of yet had not come out. It was now a little before midnight and in only five hours we had the next meeting planned. It was time for a short nap before we headed out.