Chapter 16

I had Ring design a disguise for me so that I could join in on the practice sessions with the guns. Of course, I had to apply for a permit, but I did it in disguise and used a false name. Once I learned how to handle the pistol, I did not need the permit, so there was no problem there. With my other abilities, no cop could arrest me for illegally carrying a gun.

I told Mom and my concubines to keep the gun with them at all times when they were out of the house, and they should have the gun where it could be easily reached when they were at home. There was some grumbling over that, but all of the women agreed to cooperate with my request. Dad wore his gun in a shoulder holster at all times when he was not in bed, and then he kept the gun on the bedside table. The women carried the gun in their purse or pocket while they were outside, and beside their beds at night.

When I was working, I carried my gun in a holster I wore at my side. The holster completely enclosed the gun in frozen-air. That way, I could get to it easily, but no one could take it from me. I never expected to get into a quick-draw situation, so this looked like an adequate solution to my problem. In fact, I expected never to use the gun, but I kept it with me to keep Dad happy.

My investigation of Conner & Conner Consultants was paused while we went through the gun training. It took three weeks for the permits to show up for the concubines, so I spent that time in shooting practice and in working on things that my TK could do to improve the safety and effectiveness of my helpers.

All four of the younger concubines wanted to go with me when I went back to Montgomery to follow up on Conner & Conner Consultants, but that was impractical. Instead, I agreed to take them one at a time with me to Montgomery; I even promised to include Mary in the mix.

I constructed a smaller version of the torpedo-like transport container large enough for one person, and that was how I took my assistant with me each day. Most of the time in Montgomery was depressingly boring for the woman, because I spent a lot of time mind reading the personnel within Conner & Conner Consultants. I was looking for a person who made the contacts with their employers so that I could follow up on the chain of guilty parties.

It took a while, but I finally found her. I took so long because I was embroiled in the chauvinistic attitude that a man had to be the brains behind Conner & Conner Consultants. This person turned out to be Susan McHenry, and she was a first class bitch if there ever was one!

I was flabbergasted when I found out that she kept a naked man as a sex toy chained by the neck under her desk so that he was available for cunnilingus at any time, even during meetings. She had a private bedroom off her office where she could engage in coitus with the sex toy whenever the mood struck her. The sex toy was kept locked in the bedroom whenever Susan was out of the office. I did find out that he'd had a forced vasectomy, so a condom was never needed.

Anyway, back to the important stuff. McHenry rarely talked to a client except in her office. The reason was that she wanted a full file on the client: photos, voice print, fingerprints, and anything else anyone could think of. Her reasoning was that she wanted to be able to identify the client if there ever was a case of failure to pay the bill or of blackmail. Her intent was to protect Conner & Conner Consultants from any possibility of repercussions following the successful completion of a contract. There was no question that I could put Conner & Conner Consultants out of business at least temporarily by eliminating Susan McHenry, but that would have cut off my chain of investigation.

All of this special information was held in a separate file. A PC was used to store the data, and it was kept secure by never connecting it to any other computer. In fact, the computer was not even connected to the LAN (Local Area Network) used within Conner & Conner Consultants. Any time there was a need to transfer information, it was done personally by Susan McHenry using a thumb drive. She would have killed on the spot anyone else caught using the special computer.

Susan McHenry didn't know it, but her sex toy used his spare time to break into this computer and make DVDs of the information stored there. He didn't know what he would do with the information, but he hated Susan so much that he was willing to risk his life to copy the files. He hoped one day to even the score with her by giving the information to someone who could bring her and Conner & Conner Consultants down.

This was always in the forefront of his mind, and I picked it up the moment I first read his mind. I figured that, if I could work it right, I could get the information he had copied from the sex toy and have Dad analyze the data for me. I hoped that he could put the data into a form that would let me use it to chase down a lot of very evil people.

What I needed to do was to mentally contact the sex toy and set up some way for him to pass the DVDs along to me. There should be plenty of time for that once Susan left her office for the day. She had a separate apartment and relaxed there with various gigolos that she hired on a random basis. The woman was sexually insatiable and seemed to need a fuck every 12 hours or so. Her operations at Conner & Conner Consultants were what paid for this life style.

I mentally contacted Mary and told her that Hazel and I would be late for supper and to please save something for us when we finally got home. Hazel and I marked time on the roof until Susan left the office at around 6:00 PM. She had locked the sex slave in the bedroom, but he had long since learned to pick the lock so that he could get to the computer. He was sitting at the computer when I mentally contacted him.

There was some delay, but the man found a suitable vent in a place where he could reach it. He stared at the grill as I had asked, and I had all of that information that I needed. I bid him goodnight, and Hazel and I hurried home.

Hazel and I ate supper while I talked to Dad about my plan for retrieving the data on Conner & Conner Consultants. I asked him to hack into the Fire Department files in Montgomery and retrieve the drawings for the air conditioning system duct layout used in the Conner & Conner Consultants building. Meanwhile, I would use another computer to sketch out the grill so that one of the women could visit a hardware store tomorrow and buy a suitable screwdriver.

I had the sketch we needed made up in about 30 minutes: I am no computer whiz. Dad took only a little longer than that to get me a copy of the drawings I wanted. The next morning, Sally and Ann went shopping for me to buy the screwdriver. While they were about it, I had them pick up one of those gadgets that was a "universal" tool with a multitude of screwdriver blades, wrenches, and who knew what else all in one tool, but small enough for me to carry. I could use TK to remove a screw if I had to, but a screwdriver was a Hell of a lot more convenient.

I memorized the path of the duct that I was interested in, and I discovered that it was large enough for me to travel down it all the way to Susan McHenry's office. To do that, I had to open an access panel on the building's roof. That was no problem at all, and I was ready by the time my friend was ready to pass me the DVDs that I wanted.

He was startled when he found me waiting behind the grill to pass him the screwdriver. It took only a couple of minutes for him to remove the grill and to hand me the dozens of DVDs that he had. My God! Conner & Conner Consultants must have been in business a long time to have served this many clients. I took the DVDs from him and waited for him to reattach the grill. He asked to keep the screwdriver. I let him because he said that he had a secure hiding place for it. He planned to keep the screwdriver with the DVDs he was collecting for me.

I thanked him and used my TK to float back to the roof. I replaced the access panel and left for home. This had been a solo operation, so I had no concubine to worry about. Had I known that the job was going to be this easy, I would have allowed one to come with me, but I only had hindsight to work with in this case.

Supper had been held for me, and I regaled everybody with the story of my adventure. Actually, there was not much to tell, but I made it as interesting as I could. I gave Dad the DVDs that I had, and he rushed off to start work on them. It turned out that somebody had done a good job of correlating the data in the files, so he did not have much to do to get a workable report from the discs.

He got so interested that he stayed up all night working on the files, and he had a preliminary report for me by the next morning. We had hoped to find something to tell us who had wanted me dead and who had wanted the hacking software. Neither one was on this stack of DVDs, but we hoped to get that information soon.

I was still learning about the operations of Conner & Conner Consultants, so I went back early that day to try to get a better feel for how they operated. I hoped to stay over late enough to find out what my sex toy friend had copied from the computer. This day was an interesting one because Susan had a VIP (Very Important Person) visitor. He turned out to be the client who had wanted the death of Dr. Hilton. He was there to complain that Dr. Hilton was still walking around, and he was unhappy that he had nothing to show for his $500K fee for eliminating Hilton.

I read his mind while he was in Susan's office, and I found out what was going on. Dr. Hilton was working on a new antitank weapon. Specifically, he had directed the development of the fuel for the weapon, and the client was trying to stop the development of the rocket. If he couldn't stop it, at least he wanted to delay it. I could not be sure, but I got the impression that the client was representing Iranian interests. The problem was that the client thought in a language that I did not know, and I had to wait for him to translate his thoughts into English before I could follow them.