Chapter 9

I figured the message meant I wasn't coming back anytime soon. Since the temperature often reached 10F or colder, I drained all the water. Carlos's brother had added an in ground valve for me to use to drain the system. I even drained the giant coffee maker looking thing which sat on the wood stove and made hot water for my shower.

Unlike the wood stove at Church Camp my new wood burning stove was a wonder. I didn't build a fire near as big as I could have in the stove. With it I heated only the office, bathroom, and sleeping loft. I had moved to the loft to sleep, since I had some heat in it.

Carlos had built an unpainted handrail and stairs for the loft. Then one of the emigrant ladies made me a curtain as big as a stage curtain. It was made from two matching bedspreads and it fit the opening perfectly. I promised she could make curtains when I had windows installed.

I left a key with Carlos since there was nothing to find or steal in the Country store. I explained that I had very little money, but I would pay him a few dollars since I was going off to work, if he wanted to come in and finish some of the raw wood. I also told him not to let it go over $500 as I wouldn't be able to pay it. I added that he could come and go as he wished. But suggested he refrained from having a party in the country store.

"Carlos if you decide to get a little on the side, have her wash the sheets," I demanded with a smile.

"I'm going to wait for you to come home, so we can do a threesome," he said equally amused.

With the house in pretty good shape, all things considered, I drove the truck into Roaring Gap. I parked in the parking lot of the Central Park Coffee Shop, then went inside to order a cup of coffee. It wasn't nearly as good as Cell Block Six even though it was three times the price.

I was about halfway through the cup, when a woman much younger than Mission walked into the restaurant. She walked right up to me then she sat down without an invitation.

"I'll have a double cappuccino," she said to the waitress without being asked. "So Rose how is the house coming?"

"I'm not ready for home and garden's yet, but I'm getting there. So who the hell are you?" I asked.

"I'm your new best friend," then she gave me the ever changing password.

She then handed me a cheap paperback copy of the book 'East of Eden'. The password was supposed to be the 16th word on the 3rd page. I looked and it was there. "So what's up," I asked.

"This one is new. You will be working with another under cover asset. You haven't done that before, so I caution you to play nice," she said. "He is pretty much doing the same deal you are."

"I always play nice," I said.

Liam who had been gone during the renovation was suddenly standing behind her. "Rose, watch this one. Her name is Morris and she is a first class bitch. Also she likes to use people to climb the success ladder. So far we at the Camp have had no interaction with her. I think when the boss finds out she is here, she will be gone."

I had learned how to handle Liam. I nodded so slightly that Morris wouldn't notice but Liam got it.

"So what is the deal?" I asked.

"Your identity papers are in this envelope. Destroy the information inside when you have it memorized. Leave your cell phone and laptop here. We will get them back to your new place, but with new memories.

You leave from here and drive down to the coast. You won't need to rent a place, just contact our agent there. He is expecting you, and he has a place for you to stay. And Rose, I hope you don't get sea sick." Morris smiled, then stood to leave. "Now give me your car keys, your new ride is in the parking lot. It is small and red. Have a nice trip. Wait ten more minutes then start your drive."

"Not a sports car I bet," I whispered under my breath.

"Back stabbing bitch," Liam said as she walked away.

"I don't know about that, but I didn't like her," I whispered. "No idea why, I just don't trust her."

"You have good instincts. We all know that," he said.

In the parking lot ten minutes later I found my large backpack leaning against an eight or nine year old Hyundai. The state obviously had gone all out again, I thought sarcastically. I opened the trunk and swung my bag inside. Inside the trunk was a spare tire, and a plastic box. Along with jumper cables, some other car type stuff. Also there was a cell phone and laptop. I removed the cell phone. It was a disposable, of course. There was also a little box with two new model Porter daggers.

I opened the bag containing the laptop. Needless to say I was familiar with that type tiny laptop. It was a cheap Chinese knockoff of an HP laptop. The built in screen was no more than seven by nine inches. It had been modified to be one of those hacker proof models.

They weren't at all hacker proof, if the owner was careless. However it had no hard drive. Instead it had several USB ports and flash drives. The operating system was on one flash drive and the memory was another. Even the ram ran from a third flash drive. It was a hacker's nightmare. That is if the owner could just remember to remove the operating system at night. Without that in place, the hacker could not access the computer. Well he could if he physically got his hands on the thumb drives, but if you knew enough to buy one of those you should know enough not to let that happen.

I left the laptop when I closed the trunk. Once I was behind the wheel I pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the coast. As I checked the gauges I noted that the car was full of gas. That was good of the law dogs, I thought. It meant I should have to stop only once to fill the ten gallon tank. Well that was if the car did as well on gas as advertised. If it got less than twenty five miles per gallon I might have to stop twice.

That fucking Hyundai barely made it to the coast. It spewed clouds of smoke from the rear even though it ran well enough. The gasoline mileage was also abysmal. It barely got twenty miles to the gallon. When I stopped outside Capitol City for gas, I also checked the oil. It was down only half a quart. There was a lot of smoke for half a quart of oil, I thought.

I stopped again about a hundred miles from Port Charles for a refrigerated sandwich, a tank of gas, and a quart of oil. Port Charles, I found from Google and my laptop connected to the trucker's WIFI at the Mega Truck Stop, was almost a coastal town. It was a port city but not located on the coast. About a mile inland from the ocean, Port Charles sat on the bank of one of the State's largest rivers. It was a popular place to park sport fishing boats, since it was usually secure from tidal surges, even during the many summer storms. Since the seasick crack from Morris, I had to assume the charter boat business was what I would be looking into. Though I had no idea why the State cared about charter boats. I also had no idea why they had a boat.

Port Charles had a population of just under 20,000 full time residents. The summer residents might swell that number but just a little. There were plenty of motel owners and charter boats crews who came just for the summer, I supposed. I dialed the cell phone number from memory.

"Jack Slade, I'm Natalie Ripkin," I said to the man who answered. "I think you are expecting me."

"Yeah, where are you?" he asked in a gruff voice.

"On the outskirts of town," I said. "So where are you?"

"Come to the city's marina. The Ruby Anne is in slip number eight," he informed me.

"Right," I said. "Am I going to be sleeping on board?"

"You can, if you trust me," he said.

"I don't know you, but I know and trust me," I said. "I'll be there in ten minutes."

Finding the marina was easy. Finding the Ruby Anne wasn't. The marina was typical of anything run by a government bureaucracy, it was a nightmare of poor planning. The marina had been added to many time over it's hundred plus years of existence. No grand plan existed, so it was a rambling monster. Worse of all the slip numbering made no sense at all. The small slips were number 1-100 starting at the office and going west. There were more slips for larger boats starting with -1 and going to 50. Those went east from the office. Small boat slip eight was on the dock just outside the rear door of the office. Large boat slip eight was two floating docks south from the office. It was still within walking distance so I did.

The Ruby Anne looked like a tugboat. It was kind of short and most of the topside was an enclosed wheelhouse. It seemed to be well maintained. Judging from my Country Store, the damn thing had been restored after it had been mothballed a while.

"Ahoy on the Ruby Anne," I shouted from the dock. "Permission to come aboard.

"Come on up damn it you don't need permission, you are crew for god's sake," the older man's voice replied.

The old man was at least sixty. His hair was longish, not fashionably long, just unkempt. He had a beard of course, which seemed to have been self groomed with garden sheers. He was also built like two fifty gallon drums one atop the other. The man had no shape at all.

"Aye Aye skipper." That's when I realized he looked like the Captain from the Television show 'Gilligan's Island'. I am afraid I laughed at my own silent joke.

"What so fuckin' funny," he asked with his face turning red.

"Nothing at all skipper. I sure hope I have better luck than your last first mate," I said.

"What the fuck you talkin' about?" he asked.

"Didn't anyone tell you that you looked like the Skipper on Gilligan's Island?" I asked.

"No, cause I don't look like that fat bozo," he said.

"Well if I were you I would have a picture made with me and you in costume and post it on your website," I said with giggle. "If we do it I want to be Ginger."