Chapter 64

I left Mosby's apartment at 3AM. I felt about her not like a lover, but as just a sex partner. I found it impossible to love a ringer. Actually I was surrounded by people on someone else's payroll. I had no real control over them except in outwitting them. Knowing Mosby for what she was, without her knowing that I did, was some kind of victory for the good guys.

Playing the Pros from Dover would be a bit more complicated, but I was still in the information gathering stage. I already knew that if I wanted to get some time out of the camera's eye, I needed to have Gwen behind the lens. I could maneuver her a little better than Mike. Mike however was better, if I wanted to document an event. Also Mike had proved himself to be dependable in a dangerous situation. If I was going to bring in a runner, I wanted Mike behind us not Gwen. I did not want to worry about her safety. I know I wasn't supposed to think about the pros in my decision making, but a beat down of Gwen would do none of us any good.

It was all a lot more complicated than any of us anticipated going in. With Jen and Marty, the plan was to keep it as complicated and convoluted as possible. The more turmoil the better the TV show, was their thinking, no doubt. I could have been wrong about them, but I didn't think so.

All of that ran through my mind as I drove home at 3AM. That night I did the same thing I had trained myself to do every time I entered the compound, I flipped on the monitor. The house and grounds appeared to be empty and the gate seemed to be just as I left it. The problems began when the gate opener did not work. I could think of no reason for it not to work. Since I knew better than to get out of the car to check it, I backed the cruiser out of the drive entrance. It was too late to go to a motel and I really did not want to go back to Mosby's place. Even Gwen was home in bed, since she would have called it a night after the noise from my mic changed from moans to snores.

Since it was the only warm place I could easily get into at that time of night, I drove the cruiser back to the office. I was about to leave the car, when it dawned on me. If I was being set up, the office would be the fall back ambush site. First the gate, then the office, it made sense. Well at least it will be the second string, I thought.

I used the forty dollar cop spotlight type flashlight to scan the office and parking lot. Since I saw nothing, if there was any danger, it would have to be a sniper. A sniper wouldn't have bothered to rig the gate. He would just shoot me through the window of the cruiser. Everything considered an assessment of a low threat level was in order. After all that I simply opened the door and stepped out of the cruiser.

I made it into the office, with the 'emergency kit' from the cruiser in hand. On the way into the office I decided that most likely something was simply wrong with the remote opener. Once inside the office I opened the back pack purchased from Goodwill. Inside a sealed plastic bag I had a towel and a sheet to be used for staunching the flow of blood in case of an accident. Also in the back pack was an old coarse wool blanket from the Red Cross of days long gone. It was certainly not a synthetic blanket of the new Red Cross. I had rejected several of those because I considered them inferior.

So there I lay on the floor, wrapped in the blanket, using the back pack with the first aid supplies stuffed inside as a pillow. I had, for sure, slept in worse places, I thought of course that didn't make it any more comfortable.

I guessed that the paranoia was because Jerry had mentioned the Russian mob. I never did get a satisfactory resolution to that incident. In any event the die was cast, and I was on the hard floor of the office. I planned to stay there until my own personal geek could go out to check the gate. When he went, I would be with him riding shotgun. I meant to do that literally, using one of the riot guns loaded with buck shot, not bean bags.

Lucas arrived first, however before we could get out of the office the Pros from Dover arrived weighted down with camera bags. Lucas became a traitor to both me and his girlfriend, even before he realized what he had done.

"You guy's missed it. If you had gotten here earlier, you could have caught the boss asleep on the floor."

"Oh really?" Mike asked. "What happened."

"Just a glitch with the entrance gate to my place. I didn't want to try to work on it in the middle of the night, so I crashed on the floor here."

"Why here?" Mike asked.

"It would have been a waste of money to go to a motel for three hours. It was after four when I left the broken gate. I knew there was heat here, so it seemed logical."

"Everything you do is logical," Ed said shaking his head as he walked by me.

Mike turned his attention to Gwen, "Don't you think that little episode would have had entertainment value?" he asked.

"Mike, I used my best judgment," Gwen said angrily.

"Next time at least check the house monitor before you go to bed," he said. He was obviously peeved, but not nasty about it.

"Sorry you two can't tag along to watch Lucas fix the gate. At least I hope he can fix it." I said smiling.

While I tried to pour water on the fire, Lucas checked the battery in the gate's remote. The kid was developing quite a tool collection. His were mostly electronics tools, while mine were purely mechanical tools. Between the two of us we could handle most small repairs.

"Well your battery is fine," he reported. "I can't measure the signal strength but it looks okay on the surface of it. Let's ride out and take a look at the gate."