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A Tangled Ball of Yarn - A Dafydd Owen story - Ep3

Having agreed that whatever made Kelli vanish wasn't to be found at her office, Sarah was off closing out that side of the investigation. I was back in my usual business suit and was looking respectable while acting distinctly otherwise. The last transaction Kelli had made before closing out all her known accounts was prepaying a years rental on a storage locker. The place had a reputation for security, and there was no way to have look through official channels. The only way in was with Kelli's personal passcode and the key to whatever lock she had used to close it up. Time to play a little dirty.

Thing about security systems is they are only as strong as their most vulnerable point. In this case the most vulnerable point was the zitty kid in the office on the evening shift. I had watched him for half his shift, waiting for him to be alone and to get bored. Now it was time. He was leaning back in his chair playing some game on his phone and the coffee pot in the corner was all boiled down to a toxic-looking sludge. I left my vantage point, tossed my spotting scope in the back of the rented car and drove up to the storage office quite openly and walked in.

"Can I help you, Sir?"

I answered him, not in my native accent but that of Stirlingshire.

"Aye, I hope so. My company has the lighting contract for a small show off the strip, but they made an arse of the booking and neglected tae inform us that they'd extended the previous shows run. I need tae book some space fer the gear. I'll need it a couple weeks, maybe a month."

"How big a space do you need"

"If you got a ten by eight that's climate controlled that'd do."

He handed me a couple of forms, turned around and looked at the coffee pot. I followed his gaze, hoping for the payoff I was looking for.

"I was going to offer you a coffee while you filled them out, but this doesn't look like anyone would want to drink it. I'll get a fresh pot started."

"Thanks."

As soon as he was gone, I grabbed two small devices out of my pocket and went to work. One of them went between the USB socket and his keyboard cable, the other between the socket and cable for his monitor. He'd have no idea they were there and hopefully I'd have them gone before anyone a little more diligent was in a position to discover them.

Back came the lad with a fresh pot of coffee and I filled out the forms, offering him a fake ID in the name of David Wallace. Provided I didn't raise any suspicions nobody would find out that the real Mr Wallace was currently fast asleep at his home in Edinburgh and that the flight cases we'd be wheeling into that locker did not contain theatrical gear. Paying him in cash would have been exactly the kind of red flag I was wanting to avoid so the months rental was covered by a prepaid card in the same name. I gave him my 4-digit passcode, he logged it into the system and took me back to show me my unit.

All the ten by eight units in their climate controlled building were at the south end of the second floor. After pulling the seal from the door and opening it to check the unit was empty, he watched as I secured it with my own lock. I now had a legitimate reason to be within a few feet of the unit Kelli had rented. The kid was giving me the usual chatter about how the alarm system worked and not to screw up because the cops billed them for false alarms and they passed on that cost to the renter responsible. I wasn't listening. It was all in the boilerplate on the forms I'd filled out anyway.

A couple of hours later I was parked around the back, checking that the two devices I'd planted were working correctly. They were. I quickly dumped a copy of them and the program he'd used to update mine and went on my way. The passcodes were certainly encrypted but with a copy of the encryption program as well, Jase Carlson could crack 'em by brute force before morning.

Last order of business was to make another quick circuit of Kelli's old apartment block, her office and a couple of other places where somebody might look for her. I'd been past each earlier in the day, without stopping or showing interest, now I was revisiting them the same way. I was dressed differently and using a different vehicle to the last time I'd rolled past these places, so assuming one or more of them to be under surveillance I was unlikely to get made by the watchers. On the other paw, I was hoping I'd get a chance to spot them.

Her health club and her office were either clean or the watchers were being exceptionally careful. The apartment complex, however, not so much. There was a beaten up blue van parked in the same place where there had been an almost identical gray one earlier in the day. Since the chill of the desert evening was now quite pronounced I snapped a shot of the van with a thermal camera as I drove past. Once I was safely out of view I pulled over and took a look. Sure enough, when I punched up the contrast there were two distinct thermal signatures in the back of the van. We weren't the only ones on the trail so this was looking a lot like Kelli was running from something rather than to it.

When I got back, Sarah was already cooking supper. We updated each other on our days activities as we sat down to eat. When she heard the news about the apartment complex being watched her ears went up.

"Dafydd, that's almost certainly not an official surveillance setup. The gear in an official surveillance van puts out enough heat that they take a lot of care to make sure the thermal signature is normal. Even with a high contrast cold background you'd pick up the gear long before you did the people."

"So whoever is in there might just be representatives of whoever Kelli is trying to avoid. I'm thinking we keep that in our back pocket - it's a little early to risk having a chat with them and tipping their bosses to our presence yet."

"Have you sent the data you captured to Jase yet?"

"Yep. The office is theoretically closed tomorrow but I'll drop in to retrieve my gear when we inspect Kelli's unit. Their office alarm system is a couple years old and I know the manufacturers code for it. I mapped out the camera dead zones when I was in there so they shouldn't be any the wiser."

Showtime. I arrived first, punching in the code for my own unit, unlocking it and moving in a few (mostly empty) large battered flight cases. One of them, however, was far from empty. The first items out of it were a quartet of small cylindrical devices with a flattened portion on one side. All of them had lenses on one end and two had small wire antennae dangling from the other. The strong magnets within them held firmly to the steel posts that were a visible part of this buildings construction. Now I'd have advance warning before anyone turned the corner at either end of this row of units. The cameras in this building were all watching entrances and exits, so I wouldn't be seen unless somebody physically walked in on me.

Next items out of the case were a fiberoptic scope and some associated gear. I stepped down to Kelli's unit and slid the scope under the door. Flipping it into night vision mode, I took my first look around.

Neatly stacked boxes on one side, a couple of pieces of furniture on the other. Nothing visible that gave me any cause for concern. I manipulated the scope so that it curled back on itself and took a look at the inside of the door. Nothing there that wasn't the same as on my own unit. Looked like weren't going to get any nasty surprises when Sarah showed up and we opened Kelli's to examine what was inside. At least, not from merely opening the door.

Right on cue, my phone buzzed at me and Sarah informed me she was on her way in and had used Kelli's access code, disabling the alarm on her units door. I pulled a roll of picks from my pocket and set to work on the lock.

Thirty minutes later we were both sweaty and frustrated. We'd been through almost every box, searched all the furniture. Only thing we'd found of any significance was a stack of photos showing Kelli with a handsome bear about her own age. Boyfriend, we presumed. Everything looked real innocent, so it was only half a lead, but still at least a half. We'd never had any hint of a man in Kelli's life.

"Dafydd, we're getting close to the limit of believable time here."

"Got it. Close up this place. I'll see you back at the trucks. I've some spy gear to retrieve."

I left Sarah to close up both units and get ready to bail. I retrieved my early warning devices on the way. As I'd suspected, I was able to retrieve my gear from the office without incident. About two minutes after driving out trucks out of the place, my phone buzzed. Typical Sarah. She just can't let shit rest if it's bugging her.

"Dafydd, something is seriously off here."

"Yeah. Who and what is the boyfriend."

"The kid looks clean. Just like she does. Which one's dirty Dafydd?"

"I've no idea, but five will get you ten one of them is. I'm betting it's him since he has been so completely under anyone's radar."

"All we have is a damn picture. This sucks."

"But we DO have a picture, Sarah. That's a start. We may have no idea who he is, no idea what his background may be.. but we know he's out there. We can find him."

"I'm not so sure, Dafydd. This guy is a cypher, a zero"

"So we track him down the hard way. Either he's better at vanishing than Kelli is - in which case we assume he taught her - or he isn't, in which case we find him."

"Dafydd, how the fuck can you be so pragmatic?"

"Practice."

"But where do we go from here?"

"We exclude possibilities. If he's the dirty one he's got to have contacts in the local underworld. I'll talk to Jake tomorrow."

Back in the biker gear, back to the repair shop, this time with Sarah riding along. As we parked our bikes she was getting more looks than I was, and a grin from Jake as he wandered over to greet us.

"Damn, Dafydd, if this is the partner you were talking about you shouldn't have kept her hidden for so long. I'm Jake.. Pleased to meet you."

"Call me Sarah, and he wasn't keeping me hidden. I was busy acting respectable elsewhere."

"Glad to hear that respectable is just an act."

Sarah smiled sweetly, leaned in and hugged him. Only he and I heard what she said into his ear. "Anyone expects to find out how much of an act it is apart from my mate, I'll feed him his own balls." He laughed, he knew she was serious.

Inside the shop, in Jake's office we passed him a copy of a photo showing Kelli and the mystery bear. I wasn't expecting the frown on his muzzle as soon as he saw the image.

"I dunno who he is, but I can tell you two things. First is that you're not the only folks looking for him."

"We're not, we're looking for his girlfriend, but it's starting to look like he's the reason she's missing. What was the second thing?"

"Whoever he is, he's going by the name of Peter Johnson and the other folks trying to find him look like seriously bad news."

"How bad?"

"Russian accents, mob ink. The words going about pretty fast that 'Peter Johnson' isn't a safe guy to be around."

Cannon chimed in at that point.

"Yeah, the Russian mob are pretty serious players dude. Military hardware and no hesitation to use it."

Sarah gave him the sweetest smile. "Well, now we know they are in play, I think we can match that. What do you think Dafydd?"

"Yeah. Jack, you might want to let Don and the others know that this could get a little loud."

to be continued...