Page 29 of Hemmed

“That’s what we all said, honey. We’re just friends.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Did you find it?” asked Ace, walking into the comms room. “Did you find Krauss’s island mansion?”

“Hello to you, too, Dad,” smirked AJ.

“AJ, I’m serious about this one, son. Did you find it?”

“We did, or I should say, Hayes did. We’re gonna miss that kid when he leaves. Krauss, as we already knew, has multiple properties around the world. He has a yacht big enough to be called a mansion. It sits at the marina in Miami. He has a home in Quebec, near Quebec City, one in Seattle, one in Baja, and, of course, his mega-mansion in Bangkok.

“We know there are others. We just haven’t been able to locate them. The house you want is on Hibiscus Island. Twenty-seven thousand square feet of living space, hidden doors and hallways, lookout towers with guards. It’s a nightmare to get into. Right now, we can see almost forty men guarding the property. We’ve passed over it a few times with the drones and can detect at least another twenty inside the property.”

“Damn,” muttered Ace. “How do we get those men out of there?”

“That’s a problem. He calls his men Spartans. They die before they leave him, and many have.”

“So, we have to take on sixty or so men in order to get to him?” asked Nine.

“Maybe. Maybe not,” said Ace. “We could create a large distraction that brings them out and pushes you in.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but,’” smirked Ghost.

“But I think we’d be better off getting him to Quebec City. He only goes there when he has to. He’s less comfortable in that mansion because it’s not his usual place to stay. It’s smaller, doesn’t have the space for as many of his Spartans as he’d like, and he doesn’t speak French,” smirked AJ.

“How can we get him there?” asked Gaspar.

“Easy,” smirked AJ. “We photoshop pictures of Craig and Thurston on his property. Let him know that someone can get to him but emphasize that they decided to take a Canadian vacation. He’ll be pissed, and that will force him to make mistakes. We already know that Thurston’s death and Craig’s arrest haven’t been made fully public.”

“What about the guards? I’m sure there are some there, and he’ll bring more,” said Nine.

“He does have five that are there permanently. He can’t bring all of his Spartans with him because most have been denied access to Canada. It’s another reason he doesn’t like going up there. There was an incident in 1998 where his guards killed four women, pedestrians who were out for a walk and lost their way. They ended up on the back side of his property, and they whipped them to death and threw their bodies on the side of the road. Near the mansion.”

“And he wasn’t found guilty?” asked Ghost.

“No. He denied any knowledge of the incident and fired the guards, of course, but he settled with the families out of court and was allowed to return. His bodyguards, for the most part, were not.”

“So that’s the reason you want us to go there?” smirked Ian. “Good job, kid.” AJ stared at them all with a strange look on his face.

“Ace, tell your son to tell us everything, or I’m going to beat the shit out of him,” said Ghost.

“Not if I do it first. AJ, what the hell, son?”

“Okay. This was difficult because I couldn’t use the baby geniuses. I could only use the teen geniuses.”

“Is that how we’re referring to them now? Baby geniuses and teen geniuses?” asked Nine.

“It helps us to figure out who is who,” said AJ. “Anyway, I could really only use Victoria and Hayes, and even then, I made sure that Hoot was with Hayes the entire time, and Mo sat with Victoria. I have to say, those damn kids handled that shit better than most adults.

“We knew that it wasn’t just Krauss involved in this. It couldn’t be. He’s got tech-savvy people working for him, but no one who could have created this program at the level it is. He has help, but I needed proof on what help he was getting. So, Hayes and Victoria didn’t just create a program to search for certain words or phrases. They didn’t make this something that we could have done ourselves. What they searched for was what we call micro-aggressions in their financial picture.”

“Micro-aggressions?” frowned Gaspar.

“Yeah, it’s a term used sometimes around behavior. Like saying to someone, ‘you have lovely hair for a black woman.’ That’s a micro-aggression or back-handed compliment. In finance, we use that term when we see strange purchases or deposits that seem out of character for the user.”

“I’m waiting, AJ. I’m trying to be patient, son, really I am,” said Nine. AJ laughed, shaking his head, and turned to Victoria and Hayes.

“I’ll explain, sir. Is that okay?” she smiled.

---