Chapter 9

It’s funny how little you understand that what you are waiting for, without knowing it, is the one thing that can give you peace and a direction. Knowing that it was possible to avenge Benjamin was almost cathartic for me. My mind drew up dozens of scenarios, all of which ended with my enemies dead and their companies compromised to the point of bankruptcy, or out of business.

To achieve any of those things, I had to think like Malcomb, who took care of these types of things for Andrea. Mal would know how to make those low-life bastards dead, and gone, and do it barely breaking a sweat.

For two days I dug out every piece of information that the women had to share. Instead of more hotel rooms, I took them to the mountain and treated them like royalty, but every waking moment was spent debriefing them, until I believed that I had discovered everything they had to tell me. Helen had the most to tell. After all it was her husband who started the ball rolling that I prayed would end with those responsible filling graves wherever I found them.

It took a few days of intense research to piece together the network of companies that those rat bastards used to shroud their crimes, but information is a weapon, and everything a company does is trapped somewhere on the web. For forty-thousand dollars, I hired a team of forensic auditors to dig to the very end of their network of lies and find me the real truth. They performed beautifully, and once they found the faintest trail, they followed it into the bowels of the enemy, uncovering things that I bet those low-life’s didn’t even know about their operations.

In the end it was obvious.

The trail led right to the heart of their syndicate, and once I took them apart from the center out, they would be weakened to the point of collapse. My auditors found their enemies, as well as their allies, and I began to assemble a plan to turn them all against each other, and then kill whoever survived, so that - in the end – they would all feel the pain of my rage.

Andrea was about to lose her worst enemy. The ones that dogged their operations would soon feed maggots, instead. She would never know – she could never find out – what really happened. One day soon, Andrea would wake up to be told that the crime syndicate that spent decades coming after her holdings simply ceased to exist.

‘You are welcome... ‘ I breathed into the night, as I contemplated her good fortune.

Helen, June, and Alice chose to stay on the mountain, rather than move somewhere more pleasant. I’d suggested Aruba, Atlantis, or Curacao, but Helen firmly rejected being anywhere but safe on my mountain, where she, her daughter, and her mother could pass through a carefully concealed door, and flee into the cave, where they would be safe until help arrived.

There was no time for a relationship. Helen and I quickly came to an understanding. I would gladly give them a safe haven, but that was all they would be getting from me. My mind was focused twenty-four seven, on bringing down our common foes. Sex or love didn’t enter into the bargain, and I steadfastly refused to allow myself to be distracted from my task.

On the day I left the mountain to be closer to my enemies, Helen walked me to the pick-up. “Whatever you’re planning will be dangerous. Those people will kill you like they’d swat a mosquito. Are you prepared for that,” she asked? She didn’t see, and would never know about the things I set in motion or the plans I made, so fear about the outcome would be natural.

“If you don’t hear from me, remember that everything here is safe. The taxes, and utilities are paid automatically, and there is a pad with phone numbers in case you need anything. My attorneys have been instructed to care for you if I can’t come back, so just hang out, enjoy the mountain air, and know that I’m taking care of business.” That’s all I said before I drove away, anxious to get started.

Roger Boatwright was one of the principles that sent the shooters after me in my last life. He lived in an enormous, ostentatious, ugly, old, mansion near Dallas. He spent millions trying to pretend to be one of the oil billionaires and spent more covering his back trail. If not for his obsession with covering himself, the auditors would have never found him.

Roger was a bad man.

Roger had bad enemies, and one of them had a son that was just as bad, and just as gay as Roger. They knew each other, but not by their real names, thus the two had no idea that they were mortal enemies.