Page 55 of In The Trenches (Owens Protective Services)

“Exactly. Maybe they were hoping in the chaos nobody would notice, or maybe they just wanted to buy some time.”

“But like you said, if they only cut the backup power to one building, nobody would think anything of it. Why take out the whole block?”

“I’m guessing so the target didn’t realize they were a target. If there was a failure on the entire block, somebody else might not put two and two together.”

“But you’re not just somebody, boss.”

“Aw, you flatter me.”

“Well, someone’s got to hold that gigantic head on your shoulders.”

“It’s gigantic for a reason. There are brains behind all these muscles.”

“Didn’t realize your muscles were in your head,” he retorted.

“Your brain is a fucking muscle, moron.”

I knew I walked right into it, but I couldn’t help it. Sometimes, it was just too easy to bait Dash. “The brain itself is not a muscle. It contains blood vessels and nerves, including neurons and glial cells—”

I tuned him out as I parked the truck across the street from the grid where all the power went out. Dash was still rattling on about the brain as I looked at the buildings in front of us.

“You start with the far building,” I interrupted, pointing to the building on the corner. “I’ll start at the other end. As far as they’re concerned, you’re looking into how to get their backup generators working so we can use them for this grid.”

“Got it, boss.”

He shoved his door open at the same time as me and we went our separate ways. The first two buildings were a bust. The first was an office building. They didn’t seem to be affected by the outage at all. There were security guards posted in the lobby, and they didn’t report anything suspicious happening. The second building was much the same. There were no security guards, but the boss seemed wholly unconcerned about the actual outage. His only concern was how much money he was losing with his employees at home.

I walked into the third building on my list, not very hopeful that I would get anything out of them. That is, until I saw the extreme number of security guards in the lobby.

“I don’t care about your excuses!” a man yelled from across the lobby. I couldn’t tell who he was yelling at because the other figure was in the stairwell. The man turned and stomped toward me, his pace slowing when he saw me.

“Excuse me,” I said, walking up to him with my hand held out. “My name is Cash Owens. I’m working with the city.”

He eyed me speculatively. “You don’t look like you work for the city.”

I glanced down at my jeans, black jacket, and black boots, then back up to him. “It’s laundry day, and that’s not really an option right now.”

He nodded, his hands fisting at his sides. He seemed agitated as he stood in front of me. He was eager to get somewhere, but he didn’t want to appear rude. Either that, or he didn’t want me to know that he wanted to get away from me as quickly as possible.

“What can I help you with?”

“Well, we’re trying to reverse power from larger generators, such as the one you have, but it seems like this entire block lost its backup generators.”

“As you can see, we’re still in the dark,” he said, holding his hands up, motioning to the darkness of the building even in broad daylight.

“Any idea what might have caused the backup to fail?” His eyes narrowed on me. “So we can fix the issue,” I added. “We’re eager to get as much power back to the city as possible.”

“Since it’s my generator, I think the power should be fed back into my building, not the city,” he countered.

“Except, this is a coast wide issue. Millions are without power.”

“And that’s my problem, why? I’m the one that pays for this building, the generator, and the fuel that runs it.”

I smirked at him, glancing around the lobby again. “Is there some reason you need the power for this building more than others?”

“This is a research facility, Mr. Owens. We have many projects that are kept under lock and key. Electronic locks, that is. Without power, all our research is vulnerable.”

I nodded to him. “Did anything go missing?”

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