First Activation

He took my shovel and position in the developing hole and continued the work.

I looked across to Jerry who was just starting to open his mouth, “Don’t you say a fucking word, not now.”

To Lea’s credit, she didn’t complain even when we swapped again a couple of times, leaving her to dig without a break. We eventually finished, and I rolled Bernie into the grave.

I looked at Jack, he nodded, and I started to shovel the earth back in. Lea helped me and we silently filled the grave. The silence could have made Bernie’s burial quite solemn, but tension was building between the four of us and a confrontation was inevitable. I had no idea what Lea was thinking, but if her story wasn’t good enough, then she would be in for a very uncomfortable ride — perhaps in the trunk with Jerry.

“Come on, let’s get moving,” Jack said, “I don’t want to hang around here any longer.”

I could tell he was upset about Bernie, I think we all were apart from Jerry. Lea looked like she would attack him at any moment, and I was surprised she didn’t take a swing at him with the shovel.

“Right, let’s get going to Hermitage. What’s the address?” I said.

“Hogback Road, it’s not far from the highway. It’s a big place that’s set back from the road,” Jerry replied.

“You’re not leading us into a trap are you?” Jack asked.

“Do you think I am fucking telepathic?”

Jack screwed up his face, stepped towards Jerry but managed to hold himself back from whatever he was intending to do. It seemed that Jerry and Jack had quickly built up a mutual and passionate hatred of each other. It was understandable.

“He’s given us the address, we don’t need him now,” Lea said.

“We? There is no ‘we’ at the moment,” I replied. “You can sit in the front with Jack, where I can see you. I’ll take the back with Jerry.”

She rolled her eyes and slumped into the passenger seat, I got into the back with Jerry.

“There’s Sat Nav in this one,” Jack said, “Hogback Road?”

“How many times does he need to be told?” Jerry replied.

“Jerry, do you ever stop?” I said, shaking my head.

Jack fiddled with the control panel and found our destination. It registered as being just over six hours. That was definitely wishful thinking due to the state of the roads, but at least we had something to aim for. The house was near the only junction on the road, so it would be easy to find if we had to go on foot.

“Right, start talking,” I said to Lea as we pulled onto Interstate 84.

“You have to give me a chance to tell the full story before judging me, please,” she said.

“You’ve got an opportunity right now. Jerry, you can keep your mouth shut.”

“How do you know Ron?” Jack asked.

“You already know that. His niece is my partner.”

“Whatever, get to the important part.”

“That is the important part to me; I left Martina after we had an argument. I am praying that Ron has kept her alive.”

“He’s not going to kill his own niece is he?” I replied.

“I doubt it, but Ron is a bit of a funny character.”

“Come on, Lea, what do you know about all this?” Jack said.

“I met Martina two years ago. She lives with Ron because her mother died of some kind of cancer. She doesn’t know who her dad was.”

“This sounds just like a Jackie Collins novel,” Jerry spitefully chuckled.

“Jerry, this is your last chance. Any more from you and you’re spending the rest of the journey in the trunk, got it?” I said.

“Okay, I love listening to liars anyway.”

I pushed the muzzle of my rifle into Jerry’s side and he winced but remained silent.

“After we’d been together a few months, Martina scored me a job working for Genesis Alliance.”

“Doing what?” I asked.

“He needed an Administrator and Logistics Coordinator. It was easy work and paid well. Ron was a bit odd though.”

“Anyone who turns people into murdering, suicidal maniacs, is more than a bit odd,” Jack replied. “What did the job involve?”

“Ron owns a small warehouse on the edge of Monroe; he would tell me when and where the containers within it needed to be shipped. My job was to arrange a courier to ship specific units to worldwide locations, I could do it all from home.”

“So you distributed the devices around the world?” I asked.

“I didn’t know I was doing that. The description on the packing slip was always ‘Scientific Testing Equipment’, I’ve no interest in science. It was just a job. Would you question it?”

“No,” I admitted.

“There was nothing suspicious about that part. I visited the warehouse once, it had a security guard and the inside was nothing special, just lots of large boxes stacked in columns. I’m trying to think of a place where we didn’t send one of those things.”

“Fair enough, was that all you did?”

“I had to do some other general admin work. One of the tasks was looking after the company’s online banking. At first, I couldn’t believe how much money went through the account. I asked Ron about it and he told me it was normal for an import/export business to have that kind of turnover. I don’t really know much about business, so I just went with it.”

“What about Ron? What’s he like?” Jack asked.