Simon’s warehouse
5:55 pm

Nikki wiped the corner of her mouth and set her napkin onto the table and leaned back, her hand going to her full belly. Simon, or the Rage, not sure which of the 2 is the chef but knowing it was one of them, had just cooked and served her one of the best meals of her life. And they hadn’t even gotten to desert yet she thought with a smile. Simon was straightening up the kitchen and saw her smile. Grinning back at her,

“What are you smiling about Butterfly?” Nikki’s cheeks flooded with heat as she took in Simon in all his splendor moving through the kitchen with a practiced ease,

“I just really enjoyed dinner, you are a great cook” she knew better than to encourage the Rage with her desert thoughts, she was too full to play right now. “I really appreciate you cooking for me, it was a real treat.” Simon came around the island to where she was sitting and planted a steamy kiss on Nikki that was good enough to have been considered a dessert in and of itself.

“It was my pleasure as is every minute I get to spend with you.” Ok, Nikki thought, that just isn’t playing fair. She had better get this conversation moving to a cooler climate.

“You are so sweet, thank you. I hate to ruin the moment, but we got a new case today.” Simon’s brow raised in anticipation as she continued, “There have been 2 mobile Army transports hijacked in the last week. Both were carrying a new experimental handheld missile launcher being developed for use by our land troops. It is very small and lightweight, but extremely accurate with some new guidance system. These missiles can take out an armoured vehicle or even a low flying airplane or helicopter. There were 6 missiles in each transport. They were coming from a defense contractor located in the middle of the country, location undisclosed, and were heading to 2 bases, one on each coast, for testing. We have been given the coordinates of the attack sites to start from as well as access to the vehicles for forensics.” She took a breath while studying Simon’s reaction. He was focused on her and she could see the wheels turning already. She looked into Simon’s eyes and continued,

“We ran a search on the internet and the dark web and we can’t find anyone looking to buy….or sell these weapons…” Simon’s brow raised slightly and his eyes grew a little larger,

“Someone stole these weapons to use them for something specific.” Simon said while heading to his work station.

3:25 pm

The Rage developed his own version of waterboarding. I told you he was very creative when he wants to be and Tango has him dancing…. It was just too easy. All you need is a bathtub, some weights, and a dropper. Dropper, like the thing you squeeze the bulb at the end to suck up medicine and drop it in your eye, drop by drop.

Anyway….. We placed Tango in the tub and strapped the weights to him. We then filled the tub to right under his nose. We figured it he ended up snurfing water up his nose it would burn his sinuses. Then, to “Animal I have Become” we started adding water. Drop by drop. It beats watching TV. Panic filled eyes frantically trying to stretch enough to get a breath of air, captivating stuff. I think Tango would have preferred reruns though. After we resuscitated him the 2nd time, the Rage got bored and put him back in his barb wire Snuggy. We’ll have plenty of time to play later. In the meantime, I met Uniform today.

Indecision kills, or more accurately, if you are indecisive in front of the Rage, it’s likely he will kill….you. If anyone on the face of the earth ever deserved a face punch, it is the dickhead who came up with the 4 way stop. They decided they would leave it up to the traveling public who should proceed into an intersection next…. Really? These people can’t even function in a red light, green light environment and now they are expected to actually exercise decision making skills. It boggles the mind and if I can figure out how to literally boggle Uniform’s mind, we’re gonna do it!

Just because the sign says “Fines doubled in work zone” doesn’t mean you have to go under the speed limit. Just don’t go over, I can live with that. What you can’t live with, Uniform, is when you hold us up unnecessarily at the 4 way stop and then again at the construction zone. All 7 miles of it. I came up with 193 ways to show the Rage’s displeasure during that 7 mile stretch. That may prove to be uncomfortable for Uniform. Ragesearch is ongoing, stay tuned.

FBI Headquarters
10:50 am

The task force just concluded their after action meeting on the Robbery case. The team was able to arrest the person that was buying the stolen data. He was a North Korean national with suspected ties to the Chinese government. Before closing that link, they went ahead and transmitted the plans to the other party. Not before altering the data slightly of course. Let them spend the next 10 years chasing faulty plans around.

Even though he vehemently denied it, Mitch Gifford was arrested for the theft of classified government data and is being charged with espionage. The warehouse where the laptop was found was purchased in his name and they found data on his personal computer that was part of the stolen information. They found the money trail from his fraudulent billing and his offshore accounts that were recently emptied. While they couldn’t locate the money, it didn’t matter for the trial as the transfers into the account were all documented. All in all the mission was a complete success and the task force’s stock within the Bureau rose a little more. Nikki and Rob were walking toward their offices from the conference room when Rob looked over at Nikki and said in a low voice,

“That was really nice work Nikki, everything is all nice and wrapped up.” He studied her out of the corner of his eye. “The only thing that I can’t answer is the presence of unidentified blood in the warehouse. It doesn’t match Gifford’s type.” Nikki continued walking without the slightest hitch and turned to him,

“That is weird. Maybe it was there before Gifford bought the warehouse. It was only purchased 6 months ago.” Rob continued walking and he looked over at her as he came to his office door,

“Yeah, that must be it. Although, I wonder who Simon is writing about in his blog these days…” he winked at Nikki and went into his office. Nikki turned and kept walking toward her office, hoping he didn’t see her hands shaking or notice that she didn’t take a breath during the entire conversation

2:15 pm

Every single day for the last 5 years, 3 months, 1 week and 2 days, I woke up asking that I run across the son of a bitch who killed my wife. That day came. Not only did I find her killer, I found out it was someone who I trusted from my past and that they were actually trying to kill me, not her. She just had the bad luck to be with me at the time. To say Tango will not enjoy his stay at the Chateau is the very definition of understatement. I came across him almost 2 days ago and to keep the Rage from ripping him limb from limb and beating him to death with them right there, I had to promise some Snatchchat type moments would be in his future. He relented, made a nice barbed wire Snuggy for Tango and tucked him away at the Chateau so he could plan the photo array. It’s possible there were a few rats roaming around his room. My housekeeping staff at the Chateau leaves a lot to be desired. We thought there was nothing a pig wouldn’t eat, must be related to the rat family then….

The Rage thought it would be nice to get Tango ready for his photos so he wanted to pierce his ears. I didn’t realize until it was too late that he meant piercing internally. He drove an ice pick, very slowly, through each ear drum. I am guessing from Tango’s response that it might have stung somewhat. It didn’t seem to improve when I added alcohol, but I was worried about infection. You just can’t be too careful and with all those rat bites, I am guessing he might get one anyway.

Today is day 1. This fucker owes me another 1,924 days that I have lived mourning my wife and child…

Abandoned warehouse Mclean, VA
8:35 pm

It had taken 35 minutes to get to the warehouse. They drove by and didn’t see any cars so they parked 2 blocks away and approached on foot. There were no street lights and the warehouse was dark. There wasn’t a vehicle outside, but they certainly could have left it inside. Simon stopped at the rear of the building and pointed to the wall. Nikki looked at the power meter on the building and it was spinning quickly, a lot of electricity was being used in the warehouse. They were next to the HVAC system and it wasn’t on so something inside was drawing the current. They had been at the site for several hours and no one came or went. Simon told Nikki that he was going inside and she was going to stay outside and monitor the building to make sure no one came or left.

Simon entered the warehouse through a window at the rear, he didn’t want to risk coming in through a doorway. There was an electrical contact on the window that he was able to circumvent. Inside, the warehouse was completely dark except for a dim light he saw coming out of a window on the 2nd floor, presumably an office. After clearing the 1st floor, he cautiously made his way up to the 2nd. As he peered in through the window of the office, he saw a desk in the middle of the room and there was a laptop sitting on the desk. He looked every which way he could get an angle and didn’t see anything else in the room. He slowly opened the door and began easing into the room when a gun barrel came out of the dark and pressed up against the base of his skull,

“Hands on your head” rough hands grabbed his hands and quickly slipped zip ties on them behind his back. The hands grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around so he was standing face to face with the man who had trained him so many years ago. Wide open eyes stared back at him like they had just seen a ghost,

“It…it can’t be, you’re dead. I killed you….” a couple of seconds passed before the weight of what Jack Turner, his friend, mentor, and teacher had just said slammed into Simon like a freight train. The only sound Simon could hear was the blood crashing around his eardrums like he was in a tornado.

“You son of a bitch, you killed my wife and tried to kill me???” Every cell in Simon’s body came fully awake and a vibration coursed through him as the Rage became fully alert. Turner was shaking his head from side to side, trying to figure out how Simon was standing in front of him.

“Oh well, I guess I get to finish what I started.” Turner raised the gun toward Simon.

“Do you know why you will never beat me Turner?” Humor passed through Turner’s eyes and a smirk slid across his face as he said,

“I can hardly wait, tell me?” a menacing chuckle escaping his lips.

“Because I have a butterfly” Simon said smiling back at Turner. Turner paused, a questioning look in his eye and as he began to raise the gun again, the soft snick of a gun being cocked sounded from behind him as Nikki came into the room, gun aimed directly at the back of Turner’s head. He turned slightly to see behind him and in that second, Simon turned and head butted Turner right across the bridge of his nose. Blood exploded from his nose as Turner’s gun clattered to the floor. A second later, Simon heard a switchblade knife and the zip ties fell to the floor behind him. He smiled that Nikki brought the switchblade, it was the one he used to free her from the Panty Snatcher. He gave it to her when she got out of the hospital. Fitting. He turned, kicked Turner in the face to make sure he stayed down, and then he pulled Nikki into a heated kiss.

“What took you so long Butterfly?” he said with a smile on his face as he pulled back slightly. Nikki looked into his eyes for several seconds and her gaze dropped to the man on the floor.

“I heard what you said to him, he is the one that caused the car accident isn’t he?” Looking at the pain in Simon’s eyes as he regarded Turner. Simon only nodded. He crouched down and secured zip ties to Turner’s wrists.

Simon went to the laptop and several moments and many clicks later he closed it and walked over and handed it to Nikki.

“This has everything you need, the man who is buying the stolen data is here in Virginia. Your team can take him and anyone associated with him down. As far as anyone else is concerned, Gifford is the man who was stealing the information from his own company. This warehouse is in his name, case closed. Nikki looked into Simon’s unflinching eyes for several seconds and then over to Turner on the floor,

“Case closed.” Nikki took the laptop and headed out to the car. Simon had work to do and would make his way home later.

Simon’s Warehouse
4:15 pm

An hour earlier, the 5th site was attacked. Simon has been working furiously at his computer since the alarms went off and he slapped his hand down on his desk,

“I’ve got a location. Whoever this is knows what they’re doing. I had to hack a dozen proxy servers but my program left enough of a breadcrumb trail to follow. The data went to a location in Mclean, Virginia. I brought up the satellite image and it is an old abandoned warehouse. The warehouse is owned by a dummy corporation that I found out is registered to Mitch Gifford. I know he didn’t buy the property so our head Tango likely did in Gifford’s name to keep the attention on him. I don’t have much time to get there, once he has the remaining data, who knows where he will go.” Simon said as he begin gathering his things. When Nikki stood and started gathering her own things, Simon stopped and looked at her wide eyed,

“Where are you going Butterfly?” Nikki continued gathering her things and looked him in the eyes, “Keys” she said with a smirk that told Simon parts of him might end up in a vice if he refused. When he hesitated, she held her hand out in front of him,

“Simon, I know you want to protect me, and I love you for it, but I am a trained FBI agent and I am coming with you.” Simon held her determined gaze for a few seconds and released the breath he was holding as he laid his keys in her hand. He thought the Rage was tough to deal with but he’s not even in the same class as Nikki, Simon thought while locking up and following her out to the car

3:45 pm

Britney, please forgive me, and I want to make it perfectly clear that it wasn’t the Rage, it was my fault. You know we love “Work Bitch” and have been working diligently to that saucy tune, but the Rage has been playing different tunes with his Pandora account and came across the song, “Animal I have Become” by Three Days Grace. “There’s still Rage inside”, how could I not give it some play time. We have re-joined the workforce, kind of. We have someone in our life now, I just needed a change. You will always be our favorite, please forgive.

Of course the reason I bring up the tune change is because we had a guest at Chateau De Simon. This particular ass zit is at the root of the problem we have been asked to solve. Greed reared its ugly head yet again and took a bite out of Tango #2. He was stealing from his own company and someone found out and used it against him to make him do even worse. His greed has opened this country up to a pretty significant threat. Money doesn’t do you much good when you’re dead, or in Tango 2’s case, wishing you were. I have to leave enough of him for my employers to interview, unfortunately, so we had to be more creative in gently coaxing information out of him. He isn’t the head Tango but he sure seemed willing to try to help us find who that is. I don’t know if it was because he broke a nail, or maybe that the Rage removed all of them, including his toenails, but he gave us what he could in the end. The problem is, he doesn’t know who is pulling his strings.

After we redistributed his wealth to several charities, I let the Rage use his vice to try and stop the bleeding from those fingers, they sure looked painful. Tango 2 may have a little difficulty committing anymore cyber crime now that his fingers are all flat though. What, we left them attached…..mostly…

I made the mistake of letting the Rage watch the show Forged in Fire. Now I have to build a damn forge… This weapon will kill! Doug Marcaida…

Simon’s Warehouse
11:15 am

Nikki and Simon were working through the data they had from the case so far. Simon had responded quickly enough to the 4th site that he was able to install his own tracking software onto the worm program to try and track where the data was being moved. The worm program was only active long enough to copy the data and then it would shut down. Simon had asked the head of security for the project’s field locations to remove some key data from the servers so that if they were hacked, the hackers wouldn’t get all of the data to recreate the system. Initially he had refused, but after the 4th site was hacked, he had his programmers remove some of the critical code from the 5th site and store it off site at an undisclosed location that only he knew. If that data was compromised, they knew the source of the leak. Simon was busy trying to track where the data was moving when Nikki looked over at him,

“Simon, come check this out. I found something interesting. I have been pouring over the backgrounds of all of the site personnel and didn’t come up with anything so I started running checks on everyone at Global Shield who own the project. Initially, I didn’t find anything there either so I used the program you gave me access to and I found that one of the 3 partners at Global Shield, Mitch Gifford, has an offshore account in the Cayman Islands. Gifford is the company’s CFO. I haven’t been able to access the account information yet, but the fact that he has one is suspicious.” She looked up at Simon who had come over and was standing next to her looking at the monitor. Simon leaned down to the keyboard and after several keystrokes, Gifford’s account information came up on Nikki’s monitor. She already had Global Shield’s accounting information accessed and after several minutes comparing the deposits into Gifford’s account against the company’s expenses she found invoices matching the deposits exactly. Gifford had created a dummy company that was billing Global Shield monthly for cyber security and over the last 3 years, he had billed, and deposited into his own account, 3.9 million dollars. Simon leaned down and kissed Nikki on the cheek and went back to his computer and started doing his own checking.

40 minutes later Simon looked up at Nikki and said, “I couldn’t figure out how he was able to bill for cyber security if they didn’t actually have any programs running, but it turns out that Gifford has a tech background and he actually developed cyber security systems before he formed Global Shield with the other 2 partners. The question that is nagging at me is why would he steal the technology his own company is developing?” He was pacing while he was speaking with Nikki and he came to a sudden stop right in front of her,

“Unless someone found out he was embezzling money from his own company and they are blackmailing him into helping steal the missile defense system.” He looked at Nikki as a dangerous smile appeared on the side of his mouth, “I know just the guy to help us get to the bottom of this mystery.”

6:15 pm

The Rage and I took on some part time work, we have been hired as consultants. And before you start writing asking to hire the Rage, it doesn’t work like that. We have been asked to fix a problem and since you know that’s what we do, we agreed to help. This particular problem fits with our mission goal which is to make the world a better place for you. We also get to use our own brand of persuasion in doing so and I know that’s what you want to hear about so let’s tag this particular project as Tango and roll up our sleeves. Before we get into it though, remember that the rules, as always, will still be enforced. As they say in Maryland, drive gently, but please go the damn speed limit…..

I can’t go into too much detail due to the sensitivity of the project but let’s just say that Tango is taking something that doesn’t belong to him. Want to guess why? Deadly sin #1 of course…. To take something that is not yours is bad enough. To do so while putting the people of our great country in peril, you might as well spit in the Rage’s ice cream. It’s just not going to end well for you.

This particular thief, or thieves, I am after are not your garden variety thugs. They have been highly trained by the best there is. They have been trained to be invisible, to escape any situation, to resist any form of persuasion or torture. The only problem with this high level training is that they didn’t factor in the Rage. He invented invisible, he can sneak into your dreams and leave only a smile on your face on the way out. And if you think you can resist the pain and torture that the Rage has for you, you are sadly mistaken. Just ask Tango #1, the first unfortunate asshole that thought he was untouchable. Too bad the Rage is very touchy feely…..

Tango 1 was the proverbial boots on the ground, the grunt. This is the poor unfortunate soul who was tasked with the actual breaking and entering. You know where I am going with breaking and entering don’t you???? Yep, the Rage broke every one of his bones. All 206 of them. He actually told us what we wanted after 7…. It’s really hard reaching all of the metatarsals, the little bones in the feet. I had a lapidary hammer that belonged to my dad. I’m glad I found a use for it, not much of a rock hound myself but the Rage sure liked it. As with all criminal enterprises of this magnitude, there are layers. Time to start peeling…..you know what that makes me think of…..

Simon’s Warehouse
3:35 pm

Nikki and Simon had visited the 2 remaining sites and installed Simon’s extra security and camera equipment. They had been working at their computers most of the day when Simon leaned back and was slowly shaking his head,

“It can’t be” he muttered. Nikki stopped and looked up at him as he was slowly shaking his head from side to side, brows furrowed as he looked closer at his monitor and clicked a few more times.

“What is it Simon, you look like you just saw a ghost?” Nikki asked with concern in her voice. Simon leaned back, his right arm scratching the back of his neck as a puzzled look came across his face.

“I just found some code on one of the servers at the first site that was hit. I recognize it but it can’t be. The man who came up with that code is dead.” Nikki got a puzzled look on her face,

“Are you sure he’s dead, you couldn’t be mistaken? I don’t understand, how do you know he is the only one who could have written the code?” Simon looked at her for a couple of seconds before answering,

“He’s dead.” His tone and body language left no doubt in Nikki’s mind that Simon knew what he was speaking about. “This code was written by a man in my old unit. It is a worm program that he wrote to monitor a person we believed was spying on us for China. The target was working as a professor at one of the universities that the government was working with to develop the Star Wars missile defense system several years ago. The worm program allowed us to see exactly what the professor was working on and we found out he was passing information to someone in China. Unfortunately, we also found out that the man who developed the program for us was also selling the same information to another government. I was tasked to solve the problem.” He looked at Nikki who nodded in understanding. Simon looked off into the distance as he was thinking,

“There was only one other member of my team that even knew the worm program existed but I never got a chance to find out what they did with the program or to the target in China because I left the agency shortly after shoring up our internal leak. If this program is being used now, it means that he kept the program and is now siphoning intel on the current missile defense system. This is bad Nikki. If the person responsible is who I think it is, and I have no reason not to, we won’t find him. He’s the one who taught me how to stay invisible.” Nikki had stood up and was walking over to Simon’s monitor when an alarm went off and several of the monitors on the wall came to life with live footage at one of the two remaining sites. All of the site’s external security and cameras were off, but the footage they were watching was coming from Simon’s equipment around the second perimeter.

“There” Simon pointed at something tiny in the air above the site. He quickly clicked a few keys and the tiny object became larger and Nikki saw that it was a drone with some sort of attachment on the top of it. “That’s how they are defeating the security systems, that thing on top of the drone is an EMP device that was being developed while I was still working for the government. If they have access to that weapon, we have no idea who is involved. It could be some rogue thief, or it could be someone working from within our own government. How else would they have access to this equipment?” As he was talking to Nikki, Simon was moving through his apartment gathering supplies. “There’s only one reason to steal this information and that is to sell it to someone else. Whoever is behind these thefts cannot be allowed to get this information out of the country.”

Simon finished gathering his things and Nikki reluctantly agreed to stay at Simon’s while he went out to the site. His satellite program was already sorting footage and once he finds a target, he and the Rage are going to go calling. Nikki had a secure connection to her FBI computer and Rob agreed that she should continue working the lead with Simon from here while they are following other leads. After Simon left, Nikki was sitting back at her computer wondering if she would ever get used to him leaving all the time. At that thought, she picked up where she left off checking deep background for the site’s personnel