Page 78 of Double Shot

And like that, the call was over. Sadie was oddly furious, she thought the call was a show of weakness, and now that the beast was wounded, we should move in for the kill. She didn’t recognize that he could have put bullets and boots through our doors and windows, if he knew where we were, and when we did things.

Lach went through the house, looking for spy equipment.

To our collective surprise, he found several items. But given their relative age, placement, and non-internet connectivity, it was unlikely they were from Cartel sources. The batteries were dead, but it was simple enough to power them back up and access their memory devices. It was pedestrian fair, bed-and-breakfast snooping. A spy eye in the shower, another in the master bedroom, and a security camera outside the house peaking over the fence toward the backyard of a neighbor.

Most of the footage was mundane, maid service cleaning the shower stall, the last guest taking a shower, the lens steaming from poor placement. The bedroom feed was the same, housekeeping, a person sleeping. It was one of the more dismal attempts I had seen at attempted voyeurism.

He went over the house several more times, looking in increasingly deceptive places. Eventually Sadie and I confronted him, after he had taken the microwave apart, looking for a microphone. Replacing the microwave was a small price for a slice of peace.

There was also the matter that I think we were all a little disappointed with the voyeur gear we found having nothing of interest. With all the cameras the Bootlegger house had, there were a number of encounters that had been caught through the electric eye. Thethrillof making home movies was easily dampened by modesty on Sadie’s part, and my complete non-interest in being some sort of mock porn actor. The current news loop of some singing actress tart with her own line of shoes, cosmetics, and peripheral electronics throwing lawsuits and social media tantrums after her nude selfies and thirty second sex tape were leaked was just the icing on the cake.

* * *

“So, it just over now?”Sadie asked. “That’s too easy, I don’t believe it.”

“We’ll play it by ear, love,” I said.

“But we’re totally canceling that Texas plan.” Lach nodded.

“Yes, yes we are, we have other things to do now,” I agreed.

“Like what?” Sadie asked.

“First order of business is to decide if we want to remain here, or find a new location,” I said, and managed to get a proper fold on the omelet.

“Here as in just this house,” Lach said. “Not here as in changing cities.”

“We’ll stay in this area, most of our real estate investments are here,” I agreed. “But if Escadrille knows about this house, it’s as good as burnt.”

“Not actually burned,” Lach said, looking over at Sadie. “Burned as in everyone knows where it is, so it’s not safe anymore.”

I was trying to not look too hard at her for the moment. Sitting at the little breakfast nook table, she looked more delicious than anything I was making. I felt like the luckiest man in the world, and even the events in Mont Saint Chauvignon were becoming little more than distant memories, being neatly wrapped in a pearl of forgetfulness.

“I know what he meant.” I could hear her eyes roll at Lach.

“So, we have to go house hunting again?” Lach groaned. “Can’t we just get an agent to find a new place?”

“Well, that was the plan, either that or built from the ground up, but that will take time,” I said.

“This place doesn’t have a big enough garage,” he added.

“You don’t have any cars to put in the garage we havenow,” I countered.

“I know, and when are we going to address that?” he asked. “I’m tired of renting if I want to go for a Sunday drive.”

“I’m sure that getting new cars is not a priority right now, but I really agree with Kyle on this, I need some fast cars to go with all this, now.” Sadie grinned. High-speed driving was on her training list, and she seemed keen to get to that.

“We should celebrate somehow,” Lach agreed.

“After breakfast,” I countered.

“Well obviously,” Sadie quipped back at me.

* * *

The DC showroomfor AutoModellista was breathtaking, even to my jaded senses. The floor was white marble, veined lightly with gray and almost a hint of pink. All the fixtures were polished chrome, everything else was almost antiseptic white. It wasn’t a car dealership, I felt like I had walked into Heaven, everything was aesthetic. The cars sitting on display were the sort that even felt beyond our not-insignificant resources.

The obvious centerpiece was the black-on-black Bugatti Chiron, looking like Satan’s coupe, double parked at the pearly gates. The Pagani sitting to its right was some mental one-off that was all carbon fiber and Italian flag colors. To its right was a Koenigsegg Regera, as stark and opulent white as the showroom itself.

---