Chapter 66: Revenge

I lay in bed staring at the ceiling. I’d gone into the other suite, leaving the girls, since I routinely went to bed before they did. I didn’t want to force my bedtime on them and they, in turn, didn’t want to keep me awake doing what they were doing.

We called down to reception and had all the trash removed from unpacking all of the various purchases that had been made that day. The maids had also been in and made up the beds and cleaned the rooms while we’d been out.

That thought reminded me that we’d have to buy new towels. I didn’t think Amanda and the girls would have thought about that when they’d been out on their buying spree. That could wait until we found a house. I was chafing that the realtor hadn’t gotten back to me. I’d though that their office was open on a Saturday. Sundays, I’d noted from the website, was for viewings only.

The other thing, well actually the primary thing, that was keeping me awake was the fact that I’d recognized one of the arsonists that had attacked our house. It was obvious to me who had given the order, although I still did need to exclude one possibility. I would do that in the morning. It wouldn’t take more than an hour. I could finish up some other business while I was there too. It was a niggle but I wanted to put it to bed.

I centred myself, using a meditation technique to clear my mind, and allowed myself to slide off into sleep.

When four o’clock came around, I found I was once more surrounded by girls. The bed was a king, but there was hardly a spare inch of space. Sarah once again had joined us, but was snuggled up between the twins, behind me, while Ness was sandwiched between Jules and Melanie, who I was spooning.

I slid out of bed, Melanie being the only one who woke. She still had the habit of the street and woke up at the slightest movement.

“Go back to sleep,” I told her.

“I should train,” she said without enthusiasm.

“Take a break,” I said. “There’s plenty of time.”

She didn’t take much convincing and settled down again putting her arm around Ness who, in her sleep, snuggled back into the older girl’s embrace.

I rode the elevator down to the first floor and exited the hotel. The valet jumped up, surprised to see anyone out at this time. It took less than ten minutes for him to bring my truck out to me.

Walter Greenwood’s house was about fifty minutes drive away and, given it was early Sunday morning, the roads were clear. I didn’t see a single car for the first thirty minutes.

I arrived in the Greenwood’s neighbourhood just after five. I’d have less time than I thought although, it being Sunday, I doubted that many people would be up and about this early. The kind of workers that got up at that time didn’t live in this kind of neighborhood.

I parked my truck a few blocks away and jogged down the sidewalk towards their house, noting that all the properties around were in darkness. A quick scan of the surrounding area showed that there were a couple of dogs, but they were also asleep inside. It seemed everyone was slumbering.

Stopping as if to tie my shoelace, I scanned Walter Greenwoods home. There were three minds in there. Two together in a bed, I figured were Walter and his wife, and the other would have been Trevor.

I found which of the two in the double was Walter and slid into his sleeping mind.

It was definitely him that had set us up for the baseball bat attack. At the time he’d tried to attack me, and I’d tripped him into his car, he’d called his lawyer, Knight. Knight had told him to call the police and report the assault. He told him to ask for a particular captain in the department and he’d make sure the right officers were sent out to deal with it.

After that hadn’t worked, Greenwood had spoken to Knight once more, and they had decided I needed to be put in my place. Of course, actions like that didn’t come cheap and Greenwood had paid Knight twenty thousand to arrange the beating.

After yet another failure, Greenwood told Knight that he wasn’t going to spend any more money and that the responsibility for dealing with me was Knight’s. He didn’t order the torching of our house, but there was certainly the implication that something more was going to happen. He’d left it in Knight’s hands as to what.

I searched Greenwood’s mind for something that I could use to get my revenge. When I was done, I had found more than enough but wasn’t sure exactly how to utilize the information. I decided to hold off for now and discuss it with the girls. They had been equally affected and should have a say in the retribution.

It was just after six by the time I’d returned to the Nines. I handed my keys to the valet and he took my truck away. I decided to go for a run.

The girls had ordered breakfast by the time I got back to the room about ninety minutes later. Mary looked at me as I entered, indicating a covered plate which they had saved for me.

“I thought you’d be back sooner,” she said. “It’s probably cold.”

I grinned at her. “I decided to go snooping,” I said. “I’ll tell you about it in a minute.”

After a quick shower I returned to the room and, with the bacon from the breakfast and a couple of slices of bread, made myself a sandwich. I sat down to eat as the girls watched me expectantly.

“Well?” asked Ness impatiently. “Where exactly did you go snooping?”

“I went and had a look at Walter Greenwood,” I said.

“Did he burn our house down?” asked Sarah.

“Not directly,” I said, “nor did he order it burned down. He did order the thugs with baseball bats. When that didn’t work, he just told Knight to ‘do something’ but he didn’t specify what.”

“Then what are we going to do about him?” asked Ness. “We can’t go to the police, we have no evidence.”

“I was thinking of something a little more circumspect.” I said with a predatory grin. I went on to explain what I had found when I’d plundered Greenwood’s mind. He had a lot of secrets, many of which, if they came to light, could see him ruined, and probably imprisoned for a long time.

“First,” I said, “that tax loophole that Trevor mentioned. Aside from that, there is a lot that the IRS would be very interested to find out about. If they were to get their claws into him, I have no doubt that life would become very uncomfortable.

“Then there are the clients he’s been ripping off. I’m sure that the SEC would be interested to hear about that. Not to mention the clients themselves. He’s skimmed literally millions from his clients over the last ten years. I’ve no doubt that they will each want their pound of flesh.”

“We need to be a little careful about that,” said Mary. “We don’t want an irate client taking matters into his own hands. While I’m more than happy to see him go down, I don’t want us to be responsible for his death.”

I thought about that for a few minutes. Mary was right. Dianna had told me that Knight represented some people I didn’t want to tangle with. If Greenwood and Knight worked together, how many clients did they share? Had Greenwood been stupid and greedy enough to skim from people who would be likely to take more direct action when showing their displeasure?

“Stick to the IRS,” said Jules. “They will cause him more than enough problems. He’ll lose a lot of money, and probably spend some time in jail. He may even lose his trading license as well.”

“Makes sense,” said Amanda. “If any of his more dubious clients find out what he’s been up to, it won’t be because of us. But I still don’t see how we are going to do this. No matter what we know, we still don’t have any proof.”

“He does,” said Sarah. “Perhaps he could get an attack of ‘conscience’ and decide to turn himself in?”

All eyes turned to Sarah, and she looked around self-consciously. “What?” she asked.

In the end we decided that would be our course of action, but not yet. We needed to find out more about Knight, and decide what to do about him, before we did anything about Greenwood.

Since it was Sunday, there was little that could be done about Knight. Greenwood didn’t know where he lived and, therefore, neither did I.

We spent the rest of the day doing what we would normally do on a Sunday; catching up with schoolwork and just spending time together. For dinner, we decided to go out to a local Italian restaurant. That brought back memories of my first ‘date’ with Ness, although there hadn’t been quite so many people there that time. Josh and Louise had come with us, but Gracie and Dana hadn’t come back from viewing the apartments they’d gone to see. I presumed they were getting some dinner while they were out.

I lay in bed that night, reflecting on what I wanted to do the next day. I needed to take the gun safes to a locksmith and see if they could be opened. I wanted to see if anything inside had survived. I’d been told by the fire officer that he didn’t think that they would, given the heat of the fire, but I’d also been told by others that they should have.

I also wanted to swing by Knight’s office again. This time, however, I wasn’t going in. I needed more information before we could decide exactly what to do about him.

The next morning, I saw the girls off to their respective days and then started my errands for the day. Neither Josh and Louise, nor Gracie and Dana, had come up to our room. Although I didn’t see any particular reason for them to do so, I still felt a little sad that we seemed, even in such short amount of time, to be drifting apart. I figured that would resolve with Josh and Louise when we moved into our new house, wherever that would be, but Gracie and Dana? Were they going to drift out of our lives now? I hoped not.

I started at the locksmith, feeling incredibly foolish, when he opened both safes in a matter of seconds.

“Just because the biometric or digital locks are damaged,” he said, “doesn’t mean the safe is trash. These have a key override, which I was able to use to open them.”

He opened my safe first and, despite the appearance of the outside of the safe, the inside looked exactly as it had when I’d last opened it to put my Glock in. Everything looked perfect. I lifted both of the weapons out and examined them. They looked fine. I’d strip them and give them a good cleaning later to be certain. I grinned at the locksmith, happy that Dean’s present hadn’t been ruined.

Gracie’s weapon was equally undamaged and, after leaving the locksmiths shop, having purchased two new safes from the same manufacturer, went to the FBI office to return it to her.

“I got you a new safe as well,” I said, “since I was there. It’s in my truck.”

“I’ll grab it later,” she said. “Can we talk tonight?”

“I have my flying lesson,” I said. “I’ll be going out probably before you get back to the hotel. I won’t be back until ten-ish.”

“Is that too late?” she asked.

“Not for me,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “We’ll come up about ten.”

I smiled at her. I figured I knew what it was about, but chose neither to peek nor to press. I’d let her, or them, tell us in their own time.

A half hour later I was sitting in my truck in a public parking lot a block from the offices of Knight and Temple. I was trying to decide what the best way forward was.

I needed more information but was uncertain of the best way to go about it. I’d been rash to have gone into their offices and announce myself. I’d thought myself so clever, letting Knight know that I knew, although, even so, I thought the reaction disproportionate. Yes, I’d caused him to tail end a patrol car but there was no way he could have known that I’d caused that. Even if he’d seen me in his rearview, he couldn’t have recognized me or known about the power I used to crash his Porsche.

I thought back to the memory I’d taken from Tom Pritchard. I recalled the face of the man who’d taken off his ski mask as he’d driven away, not knowing he’d been observed. It was the face I was currently looking at as he stood in line at the coffee cart on the street a half block away.

Ray Purcell was a security guard at Knight’s office. He’d worked there for five years and really enjoyed it. The work was easy with each day spent strolling around the office complex, flirting with the very pretty interns, and watching the monitors in the security control room. The extra ‘little jobs’ he did for Knight made him good money and also gave him some status in the small pond in which he swam.

Purcell was also a gym rat and spent a good portion of his life in his local gym. He fancied himself as a MMA fighter, although he’d never really made the grade. His only serious fight had seen him laid out cold in under three minutes. He was a bully that never missed an opportunity to use his size to intimidate.

The coffee cart was busy and the line was quite long. Purcell was in no hurry as he seemed to be making progress with the young woman, next to him in line, who he was currently working his ‘charm’ on.

I examined his memories.

I saw him getting the call from Knight telling him to escort me out of the building. I heard Knight say that he wouldn’t be unhappy if I were to ‘trip’ on the way out. I was a snot nosed kid who didn’t know who I was playing with. I saw his frustration when he’d tried to grab me to escort me out and I’d sidestepped him.

I also saw him take another call later the same day. Knight had gone out for a lunch appointment and come back in a foul mood. He’d somehow managed to crash his Porsche and, although he’d been able to smooth things over with the police via his contacts, the repairs to his car were going to cost him a packet. Knight had seen me in the car behind him and, although there was no damage to the rear of his car, he was convinced that I’d pushed him into the police car. He’d said as much to the officers but, since there wasn’t a mark on the back of his vehicle, they hadn’t believed him.

He told Purcell that I needed to be taught a lesson, and Purcell was very happy to be able to oblige.

Purcell hadn’t been given specific instructions as to what to do, so he’d organized his ‘team’ to go and torch the house.

When he arrived, the house was in darkness. He assumed nobody was home, although he didn’t bother to check, and simply went ahead with the plan setting fire to the house and then speeding away free and clear.

Knight had been very pleased with the result and had paid Purcell a bonus. Since I was in Purcell’s mind, I also got Knight’s address along with the details of all the others who’d been involved in torching our house.

The woman who Purcell had been chatting to had been responding positively to his charm, and was in the process of taking out her phone to take his number.

It was childish, I know, but I couldn’t resist. Harking back to the day I’d first spoken to Mary, I remembered what I’d done to Todd and pushed the compulsion on Purcell.

I heard the noise, even from my distance, as Purcell let loose with the wettest noisiest and most obnoxious bout of mixed flatulence and diarrhoea I’d heard for some time. All the people in the line at the coffee cart, and even the employee behind the cart, scattered as the foul miasma produced enveloped them. A stain could be seen spreading down the legs of Purcell’s light grey uniform pants.

I grinned to myself as I started my truck and pulled out of the parking lot, heading back to the hotel.

When I arrived for my flying lesson later that afternoon Arnie wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Danny was waiting by the plane as I walked out to the tarmac. I looked around.

“No Arnie?” I asked.

“He’s away,” he said. “He’s finishing up his instructor certifications. All being well he should be clear to instruct by the end of next week.”

I nodded and we started running through the external checks on the plane.

“I heard about what happened,” he said as we worked through the list. “I’m sorry about the house.”

I shrugged. “Nobody was hurt,” I said. “It’s just a lot of inconvenience now.”

“Do you know who did it?” he asked.

“Not really,” I lied. “We had a run in with Sarah’s ex, but it seems a little extreme for him. We have an FBI agent living with us, and I also do some work for them, so it could be anyone really. The FBI has been looking into it, but they don’t have any idea either.”

We climbed into the cockpit and started the preflight.

Once we were airborne, Danny looked at me.

“Is Sarah’s ex trouble?” he asked.

“Not really,” I said. “He’s a spoiled child who didn’t like Sarah dumping him. He’ll get bored and move onto something else, I’m sure.”

He nodded to himself. “Arnie and Sarah seemed to get on well at his party,”

I laughed.

“Is that what you call it?” I asked. “She’s talked about nothing else since. She even asked if she could come along when Arnie is instructing me.”

“What did you say?” he asked.

“I said I didn’t know if it would be allowed,” I responded.

“We normally don’t mind,” he said. “It’s sometimes good to have passengers so you can get the feel of how the aircraft handles with more weight on board. I’m not so sure it would be a good idea in this case though and, were it anyone else, I would probably say no. You don’t want your instructor distracted. Since we’re just going through the motions with you, though, I don’t see any harm in it.”

“I’ve only got three more instructor lessons in any case,” I said. “After that its my cross country and solo work.”

He nodded. “Which reminds me, I have a line on an aircraft that you could use for your additional certifications. Its twin engine, complex, and high powered so it would take you through a lot of the extras you need. It’s an old buddy of mine who has a flight school in Nevada. He’s grounded just now following surgery and won’t be able to fly for at least the rest of the year. The rental is good, but the plane’s in Nevada.

“What I was thinking is that you and Arnie could fly down there, giving you some more stick time, and Arnie some more instruction time. Then he could bring the other plane back, and you could use the journey back as some of your solo cross country flight hours. That journey will give you the time you need. What do you think?”

“How much will the rental on the plane be?” I asked.

“I have other work lined up for it,” he said. “Once Arnie is up and running, we’re going to be able to take more students. It will increase the cost of your lessons, but not as much as you think.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said grinning at him. “When?”

“Saturday after next?” he suggested, “That will get most of your instructor time out of the way. You can finish up on the trip down there, and run your solo flight on the way back. And since you’re effectively doing me a favour, by helping bring back the other aircraft, I wont charge you for the return trip. If you didn’t do it, then we’d have to fly down and get it ourselves. Obviously, it depends on conditions on the day, and you’ll need to plan your flight beforehand.”

I nodded. “Sounds good,” I said, happy to be getting these milestones out of the way. That flight would mark pretty much halfway to getting my PPL. I still had a lot to do, but I was making progress. As usual, the lesson itself was completely uneventful. By the time we landed, I was ready to get back to our temporary home.

Gracie and Dana were waiting in our suite when I arrived back after my lesson. I’d stopped and grabbed a burger on the way. I had told the girls earlier in the evening that they shouldn’t wait for me to eat.

It was just after ten that I arrived back at the hotel.

Dana stood and came to give me a hug as I entered the suite, kissing me on the cheek.

“Hey Caleb,” she said as she guided me over to the sofa, where Gracie was already seated. I took a seat between them. All the other girls were either on the chairs, lounging on the bed or on the floor.

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.”