Page 57 of In The Trenches (Owens Protective Services)

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I walkedthrough the doors of the office, eager to get to the sat phone to call Rae. Suddenly, the lights flickered on and the air kicked in. I stopped and looked around, wondering if power was fully restored, but noticed we still weren’t running at full strength yet.

Mark walked out of the conference room with a grin on his face. “The mayor agreed that as the central location of operation, your office needed to get fuel right away so we could actually use some equipment to help us get the city online.”

“Does this mean we get coffee?” Dash asked.

“After the disaster with Scottie, I really hope so. I don’t think any of us can handle another open flame in the building. Mark, I’ll join you in a little bit. I have a few things to catch up on.”

“No problem.”

After he walked away, I turned back to Dash. “Let’s get the computers up and running right away. I want to see what’s on this footage.”

“Right away, boss.”

He headed to the IT room as I went to my office for the sat phone to call Rae.

“Miss me already, boss?”

“Please tell me you’re by a computer.”

“I happen to have one right in front of me. Why?”

“We’ve got power restored, and I think I’ve found something. I need you to look into a research facility for me. I’ll send you the address.”

“What am I looking for?”

“I don’t know, but they’ve got tight security. The man I spoke with said they have electronic locks and a lot of research that they can’t allow to slip out.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“I could be wrong about this, but there were five buildings on that block that lost backup power.”

“You think that was on purpose?”

“Almost positive. Dash and I checked it out. All the other businesses seemed perfectly normal, but this one…the man was panicked.”

“Do you have a name?”

“No, but I’m sure you’ll be able to figure it out.”

“I’ll let you know when I have something.”

“Thanks, Rae.”

I hung up and headed to the IT room. Dash already had one computer up and running, and was booting up the rest of the systems.

“I’m just pulling up the feed. What exactly are we looking for?”

“Anything that tells us why five backup generators went out.”

He started scrolling through the feed from earlier in the day. We watched as hours of the day passed without anything suspicious occurring.

“I’m not sure if we’re going to find anything,” Dash sighed. “All someone would have to do is shut the valve for the fuel on the backup.”

“There’s got to be something,” I muttered.

“Yeah, but we’re looking at one camera angle. We can’t even see all the buildings on the block.”

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