~Chapter 11~

~June 21st, 2019- On the road somewhere between Los Angeles and Eugene
Emma had lost track of how much time had passed since they had left the Los Angeles city limits. She had fallen asleep, and then woken again to the sound of a soft country band playing from the Hummer’s car stereo system.
Sniper, eyes hidden by his black sunglasses, drove silently, tirelessly. The only times they stopped where when Emma needed to, the man was a machine.
Hesitantly, Emma decided to try and strike up a conversation.
“So… Sniper, what exactly do you do?”
“I’m a Mercenary.”
Emma nodded, “An assassin?”
Sniper shook his head, “No, a Mercenary.”
Emma was confused, “So there is like a whole structure within the Underworld?”
Sniper shrugged, “I guess.”
“Can you help me understand it better?”
Sniper thought a moment before answering.
“Mercs are basically hired guns. We do anything from security to acting as bodyguards to bounty hunting. Assassins are more covert, they sign on for only one contract at a time. Once they’ve killed their target and get paid, they disappear.”
Emma thought she understood, “Okay, What does Hollywood do?”
“Hollywood is what’s called a Forger. She specializes in fake ID’s, passports, legal papers and documents, whatever you need.”
Emma was surprised. She never thought the crime world was so organized.
“So there are Mercenaries, Assassins, and Forgers. Are there others?”
“Informers you can hire to investigate or keep tabs on a person or organization. Spies are like informers, but you normally send them for a specific piece of information. Hackers are exactly as they sound, they hack computers to get whatever you need. Or if you need a specific program designed, normally they can program it for you.”
Emma nodded slowly, “Wow, any others?”
“Well, there are also Smugglers and Thieves, but they are kinda self-explanatory.”
“So you are a Mercenary, Hollywood’s a Forger, what is Josh?”
Sniper checked his blind spot and moved his tank of a vehicle in the next lane over.
“Josh is a kind of cross between a Mercenary and Assassin. When he gets involved with Underworld business, he normally does a bit of both.”
“What about Nathan Wolv and Scarlet?”
“Nathan is a Merc, Scarlet is an Assassin. And if you ever meet with Wraith, he’s an Informer.”
Emma had never heard of Wraith before.
“Wraith?”
From behind his dark glances Sniper glanced into his rearview.
“Wraith is an ally of Josh and Wolv’s. He is a master Informer and, from what I hear about him, there isn’t anything he can’t do.”
“Will he be with Josh?”
Sniper shrugged, “I dunno. He might be, but Informers move around a lot.”
“I see.”
Emma turned to look out the window and ponder all that Sniper had told her.

~June 22nd, 2019- Josh Taske’s House in Eugene, Oregon
Ring-Ring-Ring….
“Hello?”
“Hi, Gwyn?”
Lexy stood in the kitchen, fixing breakfast with the help of Scarlet and Maria, telephone held to her ear with one shoulder while her hands were occupied with a rather large bowl of pancake batter.
Her cousin, Gwyn Nettleson, currently lived in Washington, although she had probably lived in all fifty states at one point in time. She was one of Lexy’s closest friends, as well as the relative who lived the closest to Josh’s little family.
Gwyn, of course, was happy to hear from Lexy.
“Lexy, Honey! How have you been? How are the kids? How’s that handsome husband of yours?”
Lexy laughed, “Everything’s fine, Gwyn, but I did have a favor I need to ask you.”
“Go ahead, shoot.”
“Well, me and Josh want to take a vacation with some of our friends, and we were hoping you could come and take the kids to stay with you while we are gone.”
Gwyn laughed knowingly, “Ah, a second honeymoon, eh?”
“You could say that.”
Gwyn laughed again, “I suppose I could take them. How long you planning to be gone?”
Lexy was hesitant to answer. Her cousin was a good friend, but she never fully made up her mind until the last minute.
“We don’t exactly know. But we’ll call you when we do.”
“Wow, you kids are spontaneous! Okay, I can be down there by, say, tomorrow night? Then I can stay the night and bring the kids back the next day.”
Lexy sighed in relief, “Thanks Gwyn, you’re a lifesaver!”
Gwyn was obviously proud of herself, “No problem, Hon, see you tomorrow, ‘K?”
“Bye Gwyn.”
Lexy hung up the phone and looked over at Scarlet.
Scarlet looked back over Maria’s head, her green eyes solemn.
She came around to where Lexy stood and put a hand on her shoulder.
“It’ll be alright. Don’t worry, Me, Nathan and Josh have been through things like this before, and Josh has always gotten us through in one piece.”
Lexy nodded and a tear ran down her cheek.
“I know, but what if we don’t come back? What if Josh is killed?”
Scarlet stared at the floor, “Then we do what we always do. We survive.”

Upstairs in the Den, Josh, Nathan and Wraith searched through file after file in search of everything they could find on James Hughes.
The Den was Josh’s office. Sealed shut by a powerful magnetic lock, it contained everything Josh and Wraith had ever gathered on the criminal Underworld and its associates.
Upon entering the room, the first thing you would notice was the circular table with a Shadow Tech holographic image projector built into the tabletop. Behind the table, making up the entire back wall of the room, were filing cabinets that housed the bulk of Josh and Wraith’s collection of knowledge.
To the right of the door was a state-of-the-art Telecom video and audio communications setup. To the left was a desk containing four working computers routed to two large plasma monitors. Next to these were ceiling-high shelves that stored Josh’s extensive collection of surveillance equipment. With everything from bugs to radios and miniature security cameras, Josh could keep tabs on a whole office building if he wished it.
Now, Nathan and Wraith searched through the filing cabinets along the back wall, pulling all files on James Hughes and the people working for him.
Josh sat at the desk running a similar search on all four of his computers.
Anything they found was either being piled on the table or, in Josh’s case, downloaded to the hologram projector’s memory card so it could be brought up in crystal-clear 3D imagery later on.
While they were sorting through data, Nathan threw a brief glance at Josh and cleared his throat.
“Ehem… Does Lex know about your stint in the armed forces?”
Josh nodded, “Yep.”
“Even the Delta Force part?”
Josh sat back and stared at the wall behind the computer monitors.
“No… not that part.”
Wraith glanced from Nathan to Josh, but said nothing.
Nathan put his file back in its place in the filing drawer, and took a sip from his beer that sat on the table next to him.
“Are you going to?”
“I don’t know…”
Wraith’s green eyes did not look up from the file he was scanning.
“Would it change anything?”
Josh turned to look at the informer, “What?”
Wraith looked up to lock his green eyes with Josh’s gray ones.
“Would you being in a top-secret division of the armed forces that little is known about change your relationship with you wife?”
Josh shrugged, “I don’t know, good question.”
Nathan leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.
“I’d tell her, worst it can do is maybe cause a little mistrust on her part, but not much. And at best it explains a bit about us three.”
Wraith and Josh both looked over at him.
“Explain what?”
“Why we are like we are. I mean, give us an impossible mission where we’ll get shot at and will have to kill a bunch ‘a people, and we are good to go. Ask us to go to a Christmas party at the neighbors, and we are afraid they might ask too much about what we do or have done, or we are paranoid that there is an assassin about to storm through the door with guns blazing.”
Nathan straightened up and met each of their looks.
“Come on; don’t tell me you don’t feel like that too. Why else do you still work as an informer, Wraith? Or you, Josh, why did you take that job as Matt’s Chief of Security? We are good at what we do and comfortable doing it. Combat and espionage are what we know, and little else.”
Josh nodded slowly, a thoughtful expression on his face.
“When I dropped the girls off at that birthday party a few days ago, knocking on that door scared me more than knocking down one in Cairo ever did.”
Wraith’s eyes rested on Nathan, “Yes, it is true that we are most at home on the battlefield. I do find it surprising that you are the one to make that analysis, Nathan.”
Nathan grinned sheepishly and shrugged, “Hey, I had a long flight with only a magazine on psycho-analysis or some crap like that.”
Josh laughed and turned back to his computers.
“Well, that’s enough soul-searching for now; let’s get back to data-searching.”
Nathan spun his chair around and pulled another file out from the open drawer behind him.
“Roger that, Captain.”