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“Oh! Heavens yes! Let me get the data cable!” dithered Henry. The Acrobats hadn’t known him long, but even they noticed what had to be a sign of him being rattled by all of this. He slipped into a kitchen, cooked a tasty meal, usually got compliments on the meal, then the consumer of said meal died days, weeks or months later. He never had to do his own logistics. That’s why the Grand Masters always had a body guard. Never allowed to do a job alone.
Henry returned with cable and phone. He cobbled it up to the laptop once Slim booted it from the DVD. A few clicks later they were staring at a series of pictures. “Just copy them all to one of your thumb drives” instructed Henry. “The dark haired fellow with hairline in full retreat is Dimitri. You probably could have guessed that since they are all shots from the bar. The sandy-blond haired chap is the watcher.”
“That tattoo, Russian special forces” said Giant. They all turned to look at him. “What! I paid attention in some of the classes. Does this guy look like one of the two you were assigned?”
“We will find out in a bit” said Slim. “Not a lot of ports on this thing. Here is your phone back Henry.”
“No rush” responded Henry. “You could have left it on to charge.”
“Since I don’t want to bother Old Timer for one of the Micro-SD card adapters, I have to use this USB port and the adapter we had in the bag, so, sorry, can’t charge your phone just yet. We can try to remember to plug it in for you when we are done.”
“No, that’s fine. I will charge it in my room. We should all be certain to fully charge our phones tonight” Henry said as he turned to walk away.
***
Morning came hard. One glass of Chardonnay certainly wasn’t enough. I snuck back down to the kitchen to refill my ice and get two more bottles while the Acrobats were pouring over what we had. In a clearer state of mind I would have done the job myself, but, they need to hone their skills. We will all either be dead or on our own soon enough.
I stumbled down to the kitchen bringing some of the tea bags I pilfered from our last hotel and set to boiling a gallon of water, then finding a pitcher which would hold all of that. Yes, I’m sure Henry had tea bags around here somewhere, but I’m crazy, not stupid. I was stupid the first time I ate the cod meal he prepared for me. I’d like to think I’ve gotten a wee bit smarter since then.
The clock said it was a quarter to ten. Plenty of time for a shave and shower while this water tried to boil. I ran into Stretch on his way down the stairs. We grumbled our mornings as we passed. They must have imbibed quite a few refreshments last night as well. Perhaps what they found finally spelled it all out for them. No way we come out of this clean. Even smaller way for us to come out of this alive. Whoever they were, they fucked us good.
Water still wasn’t boiling when I returned, dressed for my day. I set about finding hash browns, bacon and eggs for breakfast. Few things would piss off Henry more than me cooking in his kitchen so I was happily going about making a mess when he showed up.
“Step away from my stove!” bellowed Henry as he entered the kitchen. “You make your tea, I’ll cook the breakfast.”
“Think I’ll just have toast” muttered Stretch from around his coffee.
“Did you bring that coffee with you?” I asked feeling particularly evil. To the hairy evil stink eye Stretch gave me I said “You might as well eat breakfast now” and served it with my best shit eating grin.
“Even coffee!” he exclaimed.
“I have been at this game long enough to know there is nothing you can consume that Henry and his little band of brothers can’t poison. At least I operate from that perspective.”
“How come you aren’t worried about your tea then?” asked Slim as he entered the kitchen.
“I brought the bags from our last hotel” I chuckled. I know. Only a real asshole would tease a hung over man like that, but the shower really helped get rid of mine. “That reminds me” I continued without missing a beat, “where is the toaster?”
Henry pointed to a cabinet and I went to retrieve. Before I could ask my next question Henry pointed to another cabinet and said “bread is over here.” Into the air he said “Anyone care for an Omelet? I have mushrooms, onions and green peppers to put in them.”
“Hold the green peppers” answered Slim. “Hopefully there are more than enough hash browns to go around.”
“You’re actually going to eat?” Stretch kind of hissy asked.
“You saw what I did last night” replied Slim. “How Henry chooses to poison us is the least of our worries.”
“It’s not that bad” chimed in Giant as he made a bee line for the coffee. “At least we can just kill the watcher, no interrogation required.”
“How do we know this?” I asked with genuine interest.
“Henry’s picture of the watcher matched Stretch’s assignment” Giant said without missing a beat. “He be dead, he be dead, he be dead, dead, dead Jon Snow.”
“What’s with the ‘Game of Thrones’ reference and what’s with the spring in your step today?” I asked. “No! Don’t answer the last part!”
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