Dagger ~ An AID Spy Novel

~Chapter 8~

~Chapter 8~

“What was he doing here?” Ben questioned as soon as I entered the Wire. He was already seated in front of the monitors, but was faced towards the door to wait for my appearance.

“Well,” I slowly started, “I met with him for coffee and when I left to answer Julian’s call, he followed me here.” I calmly sat down next to him and faced the monitors to signal the end of the conversation.

Ben didn’t see the gesture or ignored it and continued pushing for more information. “He followed you?”

I sighed and met his eyes, seeing that he wasn’t going to overlook the subject. “To make sure I was alright.” He scoffed in detest and trying to alleviate the situation, I mentioned, “Does it help if he asked me out on a date?”

Ben straightened in his chair. “Really? When?”

I smirked at his new interest. “Now, that’s the funny thing. Tonight.”

His eyes widened in shock. “But what about the IMO Op?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t seem anxious at all about missing it.”

“Did you say yes? Please say no, because we do have to go to the meeting.”

“I didn’t answer him; instead he gave me his number to respond.” He sighed in relief when I paused. “So, thoughts?”

He pondered. “We were ordered to go to this meeting, no matter what. I scoped out the area and everything. We have to go, Van. Call him and say no.”

I nodded in agreement and added, “Better yet, I’ll move it for tomorrow.”

“Good. Now we have to plan for tonight.” He swiveled the chair to face the monitors. He logged into the AID database and pulled up bird’s-eye-view pictures of a collection of buildings from the satellite.

I sat up in my chair, studying the pictures. “Is this where the meeting is going to be?” He nodded. “Where exactly is this?”

“Nelson’s,” he answered as if it was an obvious fact and I rolled my eyes at him.

“Yeah, I know that, that’s what Peter said. How did you find the right place?”

“Oh, that was easy. When I got home after losing Kellin, I looked up any type of place with the word ‘Nelson’ within 100 miles of the college. And with 3 hits, I narrowed it down to Nelson’s Warehouse & Storage, because it offered privacy.”

“Really?”

“That and one of the other ones was a daycare center – not a very good place for top secret meeting – and a bar in the city, which is way too public.”

“Oh, you smart boy,” I smiled and reached over to ruffle his hair. He slapped my arm back and I settled back into my chair. Pouting, I mumbled. “And all I have done is skip class and flirt.” He laughed and we planned for the events for tonight.

“Have you seen anything yet?” Ben whined for the hundredth time.

We have been on the roof on one of the warehouses, facing the parking lot for almost an hour and have not seen anything yet. We arrived early to set up cameras that we were going to leave once we left to keep an eye on the place. I looked at Ben, who was lying down with his precious sniper propped up. The firearm was mostly for surveillance with the scope on it, but just in case, he did put a case of bullets in it. I sat down next to him with a pair of night-vision binoculars. I sighed and leaned forward, resting my elbows on the edge of the roof.