Page 73 of Good Enough

“Could they be Egyptian?” Waters asked.

“Possibly. No way to tell that, though.”

Demon stood up from rechecking the knot on Nemo’s head and left the room, presumably to reset the alarms. Within moments, the red lights on their watches went dark. He re-entered the room and leaned in the doorjamb.

“Midas,” Waters began, “I need you to put the video up on the TV in the War Room. Both my tablet and Kubrick’s laptop are MIA.”

“They’ll be there before you are.”

“Nemo, you good?”

“Five by five, Boss.” He got up from the chair with a wince, but he didn’t complain or groan as they moved through the house. When they arrived, the television screen already had the video surveillance paused on the screen. Midas’ face was in a small box in the upper left corner where the damaged pixels normally appeared. The timestamp in the bottom right corner showed they entered the house, searched, and were out in less than five minutes.

On screen, the entry, search, and exit were fast and smooth. Intruder One entered through the kitchen door. Nemo quickly followed, and Intruder Two took Nemo down with a tap to the head using what appeared to be a baton.

The man winced at watching himself go down. “Sorry, Boss.”

With each action committed by the two men on the screen, Waters got angrier and angrier, especially when they began pawing through Kubrick’s personal items.

“Fecking arseholes,” Demon muttered. He looked at his team leader. “What’s the play?”

“If I had Steel here, I’d track them, but that’s obviously not happening. And knowing that there are two of them, there’s no way I’m sending anyone out alone after them. We need to get the actors back here and under wraps, at least temporarily.”

“How’s she going to take it?” Nemo asked.

“Typical, Kubrick, I’m guessing. She’ll be pissed but collected. Might call them a few more creative names.”

“Got my list here to take inventory,” Midas quipped as he gestured to the whiteboard behind him. The list was growing as every day she seemed to have a new Kubrick-ism for him to add to it. There were checkmarks next to them as a show of how often she repeated them. “Assclown” was by far the favorite.

Waters allowed a small uptick of one corner of his mouth. He was angry, but he could see how his woman’s filthy mouth would be high entertainment to his teammates. He might help add some names to Midas’ list as well.

“You want us visible?” Demon asked.

“Negative. I’m okay with her knowing I have some security measures in place. She already knows the bare bones about Ka-Bar and what’s going on. But I refuse to cause panic amongst the actors. Let’s get the War Room at least appearing normal-ish to the naked eye. We don’t need to worry about disturbing evidence. Both had gloves on from moment one.”

“What about the electronics?” Nemo asked.

Midas answered. “Waters and Kubrick’s were both tagged. If they turn his on without the proper fingerprint on the lock being used, the drive automatically wipes itself in five seconds. They won’t even get to a start-up screen.”

“None of the other alarms were tripped, so they knew right where they needed to go. Or thought they did. It was a streamlined ingress and egress, but they were clearly on a timeline of some kind.” Midas looked to his left and squinted. “Your tag and Kubrick’s are live, but the signal is screwy. They might have them inside something that’s messing with the signal. Like an iron box. Once they try to open yours, the signal will terminate, too, so then we’ll only have Kubrick’s to work from. I’ll keep an eye on it and see if we can catch a break.”

Demon looked to Waters. “How will she handle the loss of the computer?”

Waters shrugged. “As far as I can tell, she hates the fucking thing. Most of the work she did was on all of these sheets of paper. She’s a bit old school that way.” He shook his head. “The disaster of things being out of her organized chaos will probably be the tipping point.”

He scrubbed his face, dragging his hands down his cheeks. Hands on hips, he stared at the screen. “Something’s weird about this break-in. Damned if I can see what.” The two men knew the look and let him process. They began picking up the room, making piles of papers on the desk, dumping supplies into random desk drawers, righting furniture, and generally making it look good to where the actors wouldn’t recognize anything being off.

Waters had watched the video footage three additional times before he spoke out loud. “Midas, she’s going to have to report this to Big Bird since her computer is gone. We need to track his every move. I don’t want her surprised when he shows up.”

“You think he’ll come all this way?” Nemo asked.

“I know he will,” Waters replied. “He won’t be able to resist the opportunity to come down here and read her the riot act, even though it’s not something she provoked. Well, not wittingly.”

He sucked in a full lung of air and let it out. “One more thing.”

“What’s up?”

“Her brother asked her to pick up a package in Cairo. That’s why she went there in December. When she got there, no one knew anything about a package. She has no clue what it was, but maybe someone thinks she has said package, and that’s what they’re looking for. Because of this added link to Egypt, I want boots on site.”

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