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With the tea bag in hand, Janelle headed to the nurses’ station. It was empty. She looked around to see if anybody was close by, but nobody was. Everybody appeared to be off dealing with patients. She sighed and then caught sight of a little kitchen area behind the nurses’ station. Janelle hesitated, wondering how much trouble she would get into if she went in there and put on the kettle. She wouldn’t want to step on any toes, but Tesla wanted a cup of tea. Surely getting a pregnant woman some hot water for tea couldn’t be that big of a problem.

So she stepped around the counter and went straight back into the kitchenette area. She filled the pot with water and put it on, then stepped back out so she wasn’t in the restricted area. She sat outside near the front desk and waited for a nurse to show up. When none did, she started to get worried, then heard conversation behind her, as several of them returned to the station.

One of the women asked, “May I help you?”

“I was hoping to get a cup of tea,” she explained. “Nobody was here, and I apologize, but I put on the teakettle, and I hope to grab some hot water.”

One of the nurses asked, “You went back there and put it on?”

Janelle hesitated, then decided that honesty was the best answer. “Yes, I thought that somebody would be there, so I called out, stepped inside, but nobody was there. So I just put on the kettle and stepped back out of the room to wait. I’ve been waiting for it to boil and for somebody to come back.”

The woman frowned at her and said, “This area is restricted.”

“I understand that. And, if somebody had been here, I would have asked them about it beforehand.”

The woman gave her an odd look, muttered something under her breath. Still, she took the tea bag and walked to the back of the kitchenette, plopped the tea bag into a cup, poured hot water on it, and brought it out to her. “That’s all I can do for you. Please do not come back here again.”

Her words were stiff and incredibly unwelcoming, and Janelle realized how badly she must have stepped on somebody’s toes. She apologized again, took the cup, and headed back to Tesla. The rude nurse had not been out of order because Janelle had clearly been in the wrong. However, how irritating it was that she could get into trouble for something like that, when it hadn’t been her intent to break any rules or to offend anyone. Obviously the rude nurse had seen it a different way. As Janelle returned, the men nodded at her, and she stepped into the room.

Tesla looked up and smiled. “You got some.”

“I didn’t get anything to go with it. I saw no milk, no sugar.”

“Milk would be nice, but even a cup of tea is great.”

As far as Janelle was concerned, a cup of tea wasn’t the same if you didn’t have milk. “I’ll just pop down to the cafeteria and get a little pint of milk, and it should last you most of the day. Surely we can get a few more cups of tea.”

“I should have just had someone get a kettle from home for my use,” Tesla added, looking around. “There are certainly enough outlets available.”

“We should have thought of that before, considering how long you’ve been here, right?”

“But you don’t want to be breaking the rules because you’re here, and you just want everything to go properly, all so they can focus on taking care of the patients.”

Feeling sad and sorry for everything she’d gone through already, Janelle stepped back outside, looked over at the men, and announced, “I need to go to the cafeteria and get some milk for her tea.”

Evan stepped up to join her. “Let’s go.”

As they walked past the nurses’ station, the one nurse glared at her.

Once they were just out of earshot, he noted, “I gather you stepped on some toes.”

“I guess.” Janelle frowned. “I didn’t consider it that big of a deal, but nobody was at the nurses’ station or inside the kitchenette behind the nurses’ station. So I put on the teakettle, and then I stepped back out and waited.”

“Ah, you went into their territory.”

She nodded. “Apparently that’s all it took.”

“Sometimes that’s the case,” he said, with a small smile in her direction. “As you well know, nobody likes to have their toes stepped on.”

“And you’re right. I just didn’t think it would offend anyone so greatly.” She gave him an eye roll. “Besides, if I can do something to make this easier on Tesla, I will do it,” she declared.

He smiled. “It’s nice that Tesla has a champion.”

“As you well know, Tesla has lots of champions,” she replied. “Quite a few of us have known and have loved her for many years,” she murmured. “We are all so busy in our lives, it’s hard to always stay in touch the way we would want to, but, when something like this happens, we all come out of the woodwork.”

He smiled. “And that’s how it should be. Friends helping friends.”

“And that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” she asked, with a sideways look at him.

“Yeah, it is. I’ve known Mason for a very long time. I’ve served with him for years, and we’ve been through some challenging times together. It breaks my heart to see him like this.”

“And yet we both know this is temporary, especially for somebody like Mason.”

He chuckled. “The only problem with that thinking is, when anyone does die, it just shocks the hell out of us.”

“And yet we all die at some point,” she muttered, a pang of fresh pain going through her.

He murmured, “I’m sorry. I forgot about your mom.”

“No, that’s what we’re supposed to do, right? We’re supposed to move on. We’re not supposed to have a heart attack, or to melt down every time somebody mentions death or dying, or what we do afterward,” she shared, giving herself a shake. “Everybody’s been very kind to me. It’s just been such a shock, what with all this extra stuff going on. So I don’t even know how to react anymore. You just see everything happening around you, and you react blindly, without thinking about what you’re saying and what you’re doing. It’s just this instinctive movement that you make.” She sighed. “So, I’m sure I could be doing lots of other things right now, but I guess I’m still feeling very much like I’m in shock.”

“So, you should be,” Evan stated. “Not only did you just lose your mother after many years of illness but you’ve just successfully survived a kidnapping that could have ended very badly. So, don’t judge yourself so harshly.”

She gave him a sideways glance, her lips twitching. “It’s almost as if you know women.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m married to a pilot,” he reminded her, with a smile. “And I understand a whole lot of things, not only about women, but about people now, too,” he shared. “She has given me incredible insight into a world that I hadn’t really recognized as being an issue. However, when you deal with people under trauma or a stress of some kind, as you have been,” he pointed out, “all kinds of shit happens, and you don’t really have a chance to react to anything. You literally just go through the motions. Your body is functioning, and your mind—although it’s numb in many ways—somehow just keeps functioning too.”

They walked into the cafeteria, and he asked, “Do you want anything?”

She looked at everything and sighed. “Maybe a cup of tea.”

He laughed. “In that case, why didn’t we just come and get Tesla’s cup of tea from here?”

“I don’t know.” Janelle groaned. “Getting it up on her floor just seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“And because you were just helping her.”

“Still, that nurse will not remember me kindly.”

“I don’t remember seeing that nurse before,” he noted, “although I haven’t been here enough to keep track of the nurses.”

“That’s the thing, right? They have so many people on staff, yet still must have shortages and must rely on traveling nurses and sharing between departments, so you never know who’s who,” she noted. “You just hope that everyone who comes through is supposed to be here.”

“Which is also why the hospital must have as many security checks as they do.”

She rolled her eyes at that. “And do you think they do?” she asked. “Or is that just another fallacy?”

“God, I hope not, because there must be some security in place here.”

“Sure, there are key cards, but what if their key cards are stolen or don’t work or something?” she asked, looking at him. “I can’t imagine they have a whole lot else in place.”

“No, those cards could be everything, couldn’t they?” Evan asked, as he calmly looked out at the world around them.

They moved to the counter in the cafeteria and quickly bought several cups of tea. He grabbed a coffee for himself, and they headed back up to Tesla again.

“You seem preoccupied,” she murmured, as they made it to the floor where Tesla was waiting.

“It’s not so much that I’m preoccupied, but we’ve come up against things like this in the past. We just never have a good idea of who’s involved in these kinds of actions,” he admitted. “So, we’re at a loss sometimes as to how to stop it, outside of posting guards.”

“Yes, but you and I both know, when personnel have to go in and out of hospital rooms to tend to the patients, if somebody’s up to no good and wants to get in, they’ll get in.”

He glared at her. “Now, why would you be putting that shit in my head?”

She smiled at him. “Oh, come on. I didn’t put that in your head. It was already there, and you know it. You were just assessing the danger of leaving Mason and Tesla alone with just three guards.”

“And yet three guards should be plenty.”

“Yes, they should be.” Then she stopped as she reached the area where the trio of guards stood, talking. “You trust these men, right?”

He nodded. “Yes, Jasper has been careful to see that they’re all men we’ve served with, and Mason has served with.”

“And none of them have a grudge against him that you know of?”

“No,” he stated, staring at her.

She shrugged. “Then, if we don’t see an inside attack like that, it must be somebody who can get close enough to Tesla. And if that’s not somebody she knows and trusts, it’s got to be somebody she doesn’t know or somebody who she doesn’t expect to see.”

He looked at the door. “Like a nurse?”

*

Guilliam threw himself into a nearby chair and glared at Jasper. “Supposition is fine and dandy, but we need proof, proof that somebody else is involved, proof of what their actions are likely to be, now that we have the grandfather and Greg in custody. Will the others just walk away, hoping to stay uninvolved, or is that need for revenge so strong that they will go after Mason anyway?”

“We can’t afford to be wrong on somebody else’s being involved.”

“No, we can’t. Plus, we’re running out of suspects.” They pondered that for a bit, before Guilliam spoke up again. “Both grandsons are accounted for, one dead and one in lockup here. There is Gabe’s mother, who’s going through cancer treatments, and we’ve got Gabe’s father, who is running the businesses. He’s been a big force in town, but he doesn’t seem to share the same attitudes as his deceased son, his nephew, or his father-in-law.”

“I’m not sure if anybody has that kind of force in the community, outside of this old coot,” Jasper noted. “When you think about it, how many assholes in the world can continue like this, without seeing the writing on the wall? It’s one thing for the old codger to behave in that way—he’s been getting by with it for at least seventy years—but with the son-in-law taking over the reins, the business changing, his living at the retirement home, no wonder the grandfather was desperate now to finish off Mason.”

“Right, and the son-in-law made several decisions that weren’t good for the business.”

“Or maybe it was good for the business, but, because of the grandfather’s methodology, everything changed, and maybe his methods were no longer working.”

“Exactly. So who does that leave?”

“Just the daughter with cancer and her husband, at least alive and out of jail.”

“Or anybody that the grandfather may have paid as a backup. Contracts don’t necessarily get shut down just because a person has died or has been picked up and thrown in jail. It would remain a contract until the deed was done.”

Jasper nodded. “That’s true, but how will we figure it out? I don’t think either of these family members are too interested in telling us.”

“Don’t you think the grandson might have something to say, now that he knows he’s not getting the big windfall he’d expected?”

“I don’t know if deep down he ever believed he would get the big money, or if he understood how much they didn’t have,” Jasper murmured. He looked back at the temporary jail area. They were waiting for an escort to take the two men to local police jail cells, so the prisoners were safely ensconced somewhere else, and the navy investigative team didn’t have to be on guard all the time.

Guilliam continued. “It’s a very strange scenario. I get the grandfather, and I get the grandson. If that’s the end of the attacks on Mason from that family, this would be lovely, but I’m sure not getting that same feeling from either of them.”

“No, I’m not sure either. Again, the old man is implying that it’s not over, but then he’s not saying anything specific either. It’s almost as if he doesn’t want us to know something. Yet he’s reassuring himself that he’s still got an ace in the hole—and one that we’ve got to watch out for.”

“Agreed, but I’m not sure how we’re supposed to track this unknown entity. Yet we better do it before it becomes something else.”

“You mean another attack?” Jasper asked.

“Exactly,” Guilliam stated. “We need to tear apart both of their lives—just in case,” he murmured. “We can’t discount the possibility of somebody else being involved, somebody the old coot has been using on the sly, like a hitman, for want of a better word. The invisible muscle. That one person he potentially kept as a hidden weapon.”

“And that’s great, but who would have seen him?”

“We should check every person who’s visited him at the retirement home. That would be a start. Can we pull his phone records for… what, the last year?”

Jasper’s eyebrows shot up as he contemplated that idea. “It would be a hell of a lot of data, but you’re right. That should be long enough for us to find out something. Let me see what I can do. You should go see Janelle.”

“I would, except they’re at the hospital. She wanted to go visit with Tesla.”

He winced at that. “Why?” he asked in alarm.

“I thought it was a reasonable idea, just from the standpoint of getting her past what she’d been through at the hospital. So she didn’t just see it as the place where she was attacked.”

“You’re right,” Jasper conceded, “but, from a mission point of view, they’re all now in one place.”

“Yeah, I did think of that, but we still have three guards on Mason, so I thought maybe they would be safe. That and the fact that there is no need for anybody to come after Janelle anymore.”

“I agree with you there, but I’m not sure we’re dealing with logic in this instance, or even sanity. We’ve got revenge that’s been sitting and festering for too long. A man has lost his own power, his own ability to do all the things that he’s been doing all these years in order to run the world as he wanted to, and he’s run amok within this community for decades. People think he has money, and he’s found ways to frighten people into doing his bidding, but we have no idea just how far he’s gone or what he’s done with it all.”

“Right. I was just wondering if we had a way to get him to talk. We can’t afford to have him give up anything in terms of punishment.”

“And yet think about it. What punishment will we dish out to him? What is he, eighty? He could spend the last years of his life behind bars, sure, but I don’t think he’s all that healthy.”

“No. From the looks of him, chances are, he won’t make it to trial. And that just makes it even more important to ensure we get all the information from him that we can. There won’t be any going back if we wait too long, and then he dies.”

“You go try talking to him again,” Jasper suggested, “and I’ll get the subpoenas going. Then we’ll talk to the manager of the retirement home. Masters is in there talking with him now. Plus, he’s got the assistant manager and a few others he’s been interrogating.”

Just then Masters joined them. “The manager is crumbling fairly quickly, though I’m not sure it’ll do him much good. He’s been facilitating the purchase of burner phones and phone cards for a couple years now. He thought the old man was just having fun playing at some spy game.”

“And how is he feeling about that now?”

“He’s terrified that he’s on the hook for some of this.”

“And he very well may be. It was against the rules of the home, so he knew it was wrong from that standpoint at least.”

“Sure, but he ran the home, so, from his perspective, I doubt that he thought anything of it. Now, the other manager, she’s terrified as well, and she’s been coughing up all kinds of information. I’m just not sure any of it’s helpful. It’s a classic case of give absolutely every little detail to appear cooperative,” he shared, with a wry look, “so she doesn’t give up anything useful.”

“Let me go talk to her,” Guilliam stated, as he stood up.

Masters nodded. “Gideon is in the process of talking to the other residents of the retirement home now. So, there’s a good chance he might pop up with something. Even just a little tidbit could help. What we’re looking for is another person, someone who may have been involved, even as a backup. We just can’t afford to miss anybody.”

“I’m right there with you,” Guilliam replied. “So far, the only people who visited Granddad were his daughter and his son-in-law. Though they visited just a couple times, it didn’t go very well, with lots of yelling and blame. Then the grandsons visited more. It was both grandsons for a while, but, with the death of Gabe, it’s down to just Greg now.”

“Interesting,” Masters murmured.

“In what way?” Guilliam asked.

“I guess, if you don’t have a whole lot of friends all your life, nobody comes see you at that age.”

“I think it’s more a case of outliving most of them,” Masters noted. “The other thing is, granddad seems to have been the kind of guy who made sure that he had no friends. Nobody could betray him then, right?”

“I guess,” Guilliam murmured. He looked down the hall where the old man was temporarily held. “So, who is he protecting?” He turned to the others. “Any bastard children?”

“Not that we found so far,” Jasper shared, “but, considering how he treated everybody in his world, including his own family members, I wouldn’t be shocked at the possibility.”

“Then is it anybody we know of, or is there literally somebody that he’s managed to keep secret all these years?”

At the end of the day, they had talked to dozens more people, written up statements, compared statements, and still they couldn’t come up with any other person of interest. The grandson, Greg, after Guilliam and others had spoken to him several more times, had just shrugged.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re looking for,” Greg muttered. “It was me all the time. I’m still pissed off at Granddad about that.”

“If he lied about the money, would he have lied about other stuff?”

Greg stopped and glared at Guilliam, then his shoulders slumped. “I wouldn’t have thought so, but now?… Now I’m not so sure.”

That was honest at least, and Guilliam could understand why the young man was upset. When you spend your life acting on very risky decisions to help out, expecting to get a massive payday sooner or later, only to find out that massive payout will never happen, that was bad enough. But to also find out how dear old granddad was counting on dying before any of it came to light as far as Greg was concerned, that had to be a terrible shock.

“He was such an asshole,” Guilliam said, watching Greg. “He was supposed to be dead by the time you found out that no money was left for you. Guess we ruined that for him.… So is your granddad’s impending death the reason that he wanted revenge now, some four years after Gabe was killed?” It made sense to Guilliam, but he wouldn’t mind getting it confirmed.

The younger man just nodded, but he didn’t say anything.

“If you’ve got anything to say, this would be a good time to clear the air.”

He waved his hands. “I got nothing to say.”

“Even though your granddad will die in jail?”

“Granddad will go to jail,” he stated, with a snort. “You think I won’t?”

“Of course you will. After all, you did murder several people.”

He winced and stared off into the distance. “It’s not murder when you’re just fixing problems,” he muttered, “and they were all problems that needed to be fixed.”

“Do you think the families of those dead people saw it that way?”

He shrugged. “I don’t give a fuck about those families. My family is completely screwed up.” He seemed fed up and pissed off.

“Sounds like it. What about your aunt? Is she the same?”

“She’s already messed up and a royal bitch besides. I told you that.” He turned and glared at him. “Go ahead and blame her for all this, as if that will be of any value. She’s very sick with cancer and can’t do anything anyway,” he snapped. “And, when it comes to business, she never could do anything.”

“How did the death of her son affect her?”

“How do you think?” he asked, looking at him in disgust. “She went off the rails. Her only kid, her perfect little boy. Christ, that guy was a complete fuckup. If he just hadn’t gotten involved with Mason, he probably would have been fine.”

“And yet do you think he would have just gotten worse, gotten more adventuresome in his little escapades?”

“Maybe. Granddad was trying to straighten him out.”

“So, your grandfather knew?”

“Sure, he knew, but he hadn’t told my cousin that he knew all about it. So, the idiot just continued to do his little stunts, thinking Granddad didn’t know. He thought that Granddad might know small parts of it, but nothing that mattered.” Greg shook his head. “That’s the thing. Granddad always had a backup plan, and he always knew shit about everybody. I don’t—I don’t even know how he did it.

“Take me for instance. I cheated on a test one time way back in high school. He told me that it wasn’t the time to cheat, that the time to cheat was when it really mattered, and that doing shit like that was a waste of energy. And I could get caught and damage my reputation, when it shouldn’t even be impacted by something so dumb. He basically told me to get in, to do the work, and to get out. And when you cheat, make sure it’s something that you really need to cheat on because there’s no other option. You get in, get the job done, and you get out,” he repeated, with a shake of his head. “That was Granddad’s model all the way through. Get the job done and get out, and nobody else needs to know.”

“Which, when you think about it,” Guilliam replied, “sounds like exactly what he taught you.”

“Sure. But what he’s teaching me now is that, in the end, family just screws you over too.”

“Which isn’t a bad lesson to learn in this case because that is what happened. So now you have choices. You can hold it against him, you can get over it, or you can tell us some more. It doesn’t matter because obviously you’re not going anywhere but jail for a very long time.”

“See? That’s what’s fucked up because it’s just not fair. I lived up to my end of the bargain. I never even cheated again in school,” Greg wailed. “It was all about being fair and honorable at that point in time, honoring Granddad’s wishes. But, in the end, he didn’t give a shit.”

“No, it sounds like he was all about manipulating his world to make it happen just the way he wanted it to.”

“Yeah, you’re not kidding.” Greg stared at him. “How did this get so fucked up?”

“Either he decided that you weren’t doing a good-enough job or that somebody else could do a better job.”

Greg stiffened at that. “What? That’s just bullshit. I was doing a damn-good job.”

“So why would he have had somebody as a backup, for just in case then? What if you got killed? Would he have left it to chance? No way. He had a backup plan.”

With that, Greg frowned. “You’re right. No way he wouldn’t have. Killing Mason was all that mattered to him. It’s what he intended to happen, whether Granddad lived or not.”

“Okay,” Guilliam replied cautiously. “Then if you got killed, who would have been his backup?”

Greg just stared at Guilliam and eventually shook his head. “I have no idea. It never even occurred to me that it would be the case with me. However, what you just said makes a lot of sense.”

“Why don’t you help yourself and us by thinking about who he would have used as your replacement.”

“Nobody,” Greg declared. “You don’t understand. I’ve been doing this for him for years. He didn’t need anybody else, and he knew it.”

“Right, but things were getting dicey. More dead bodies showed up, connected to Mason’s sniper attack, and so your granddad would have known that it was getting harder and harder to keep a lid on things. Plus, you kept failing.”

“I didn’t fail,” Greg snapped, glaring at Guilliam.

Guilliam changed his approach. “No, not you personally, but those people you were taking out had failed. And your granddad would have seen it that way, right?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, but Granddad wasn’t happy. Things were going on that worried him. They weren’t going down the way he wanted them to.”

“That’s what I mean. So, taking that into consideration, who else could he have called on? Somebody at the home?” he asked questioningly. “Somebody in the family?”

“There is no other family,” Greg muttered, with a wave of his hand.

“What about—does your grandfather have any illegitimate kids?”

The grandson stared at him in shock. “No. At least I don’t think so.”

“But you don’t know so, do you?”

He slowly shook his head. “No, I guess not. And in a sick way that could have been something he would do, but it would also take somebody he had to train almost as long as me,” Greg explained. “And I don’t know anybody along that line.”

“But that doesn’t mean it’s not possible.”

“Sure. But that’s like saying his sickly daughter could have done it. It’s not impossible, but it’s not very plausible.”

“Right.” And that did make a difference.