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.