Page 54 of In The Trenches (Owens Protective Services)

With my hand gliding along the wall, I slowly made my way downstairs, watching for the man who chased me. But he wasn’t there, or anywhere on the street that I could see. Yet, I still felt eyes on me the entire way home. The question was, who was following me? Was it the man from work, or was it someone from my past?

21

CASH

“How are we looking?”I asked Mark as he showed me the grid where they’d been able to reverse engineer the power. “We’re looking good. We’ve already started in some of the grids, but this particular grid is a problem.”

I looked closer at it. “What’s going on?”

“These five buildings, all of them have generators, but none of them kicked in when the power failed.”

“Just on this grid?”

“Exactly. It doesn’t make any sense. When the power went out, the generator would automatically kick in and take over, but that’s not what happened here.” He stared at the grid curiously, but I could tell there was something else on his mind.

“Whatever it is, just say it.”

He finally turned to me, his face serious. “Look, in order for the backup generators not to kick in they would have to be out of fuel. But what’s the likelihood that happened to five buildings on the same block?”

I knew exactly how that might happen. “It could if the backup power was cut.”

“Who would do that?” he said in a low voice. “It’s gotta be a coincidence.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences.” I grabbed the sheet with the grid information on it. “Keep working on this. I’m going to run down a few things.”

Stalking out of the office, I headed to find Rae, only remembering when I entered the IT room that she had already left with New Guy. “Shit,” I muttered.

“Need something, boss?” Dash asked as he walked into the room.

He was another IT guy, but also worked in the training center with Fox. Rae was my mastermind, but Dash grew up a computer nerd, so he switched on and off when needed. Fortunately, he could hold his own in the ring with everyone else, including Rae. “I need to find some footage.”

He snorted. “There was a blackout. What kind of footage are you hoping to find?”

“I think we might have a lead on why the blackout happened, but it’s a long shot.”

“I love a good long shot,” he grinned. “Where are we going?”

He grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair and pulled it on before I even answered. I waited to answer until we were completely alone. I didn’t want too many conspiracy theories floating around until I had more evidence.

We got in my truck, and only then did I reveal what I thought might have happened. “You know we’ve been working on reverse engineering the power back to the city from larger generators around the city.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, one block is completely black. Five buildings, all with generators, failed to kick in during the power outage.”

“That sounds like more than a coincidence.”

“That’s what I thought. So, we have a massive power outage with no explanation.”

“You mean, other than the fact that they’ve fucked the entire west coat. Boss, it’s a domestic terrorist attack.”

“Yes, but there’s always a purpose behind it. What would that be? To teach us a lesson?”

He frowned, glancing away from me. “To cause disruption to the system.”

“No, I don’t buy it. And if it had been one failed generator, I would have believed it was just that, but five is excessive, and all on one block? Somebody purposely killed the backup power to those buildings.”

“To hide the true target,” he added.

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