Douglas Dorow - The Ninth District

“Are you OK, Jack?”

“I’m fine.”

“You catch the pendejo that did this?”

“Not yet. That’s what Junior and I are working on. We were just down at the river. It was a freak shot to hit you from across the river with us running. He was probably aiming at me. Or shooting towards me. Trying to scare me.”

“My luck.”

The room got quiet as they all took a break from the nervous talking.

“Find anything at the river?”

Jack shook his head. “No, nothing obvious. Have you thought of anything that you saw or heard this morning that might help us?”

Patty shifted herself in bed and grimaced. “I peeked after you ran and he was shooting at you. I couldn’t really see anything. I wanted to get out of there, but the leg hurt too much. I think he was shooting from a sandy spot across the river.”

“That’s where we just came from. That was the spot.”

“Do you have some info for me?” Jack asked.

“Just shoot me again, Jack.” Patty stuck out her lower lip and pouted. “The video we shot at the press conference showed nothing. I was hoping I could learn some more from you. I’m sorry.”

“Getting shot once is enough. We’ll see you later, Patty.”

Jack was exhausted. The mental strain of the investigation, lack of sleep, and the excitement of the morning built up. He sat in the car waiting for Junior to call him and let him know the coast was clear to the room so that his family wouldn’t see him going into the room across from theirs. He needed some sack time for both his body and brain to get reinvigorated. He was still disappointed by how little they knew and bothered by the attacks on Ross, Patty, and him. The Governor knew who they were, where they were, and had shown he would go to great lengths and personal risk to get at them. They needed to catch up. Jack closed his eyes and tried to unfocus, to let his subconscious work on the details while he physically rested.

Settling into the seat finding a position that was somewhat comfortable, Jack remembered back to when Lynn was born. He was a young agent in his first field office, new at his job and new at fatherhood. He woke often in the night, alert to sounds that he normally would have slept through. He also got the duty of getting up and bringing Lynn to bed so Julie could feed her. There were many days he drove to a quiet spot during lunch, parked the car, and tried to catch a nap, like he was now, propped in his seat. His old FBI car had a lot more room than this car did. His legs were bent, and the steering wheel pressed into his thigh.

The cell phone on his belt vibrated and Jack reflexively twisted to grab the phone. His thigh jammed into the steering wheel, jarring him back into reality. The phone slipped from his hand and fell to the floor on the passenger side of the car. It continued to ring and Jack stretched, his fingers probing the floor for the phone, trying to locate and answer it before it went to voice mail. He found the phone, grabbed it, and answered the phone while he raised it to his ear.

“Hello.” Nobody responded and Jack looked at the small window on the phone. There was not a connection. “Damn it.” Too impatient to wait to see if the caller left a voicemail message, Jack poked buttons to get to the list of who called and called back. With the phone at his ear he shifted to a more comfortable position in the seat.

“Sleeping, Jack?” Junior asked.

“Dropped the phone. Can I come up?”

“Come on in. Julie and the kids are swimming. The geeks are here. You’ll like what they’ve done.”

Jack cautiously walked through the halls of the hotel, listening for the tell tale voices of his kids to let him know if the coast was clear or not. At the door to his room, he lightly knocked and the door opened. Sure Thing and one of the other geeks sat on the end of the bed playing a video game. Junior sat in a chair and watched the contest.

“Hey, Jack,” Sure Thing said.

“Hey yourself, ST. You guys enjoying yourself?” Jack couldn’t keep the frustration from showing in his voice. These guys were playing games? “Junior says you’ve got stuff set up for me to keep track of my family?”

Sure Thing turned off the game.

“What’re you doing? I had you,” his video game opponent said.

“Rematch later. Time to get to work and show Jack what we’ve done for him.” Sure Thing stood up and asked Jack to take his spot sitting on the foot of the bed. He handed Jack a larger remote that required Jack to use both hands to hold it.

“I’m not playing,” Jack said.

“Don’t worry, Jack. The family is safe. We have one of our crew down at the water park reading a magazine and watching them.” Sure Thing reached down and pushed a button on the remote. “And you can watch them too.” The television screen lit up into split screens with views from four cameras showing on the television at the same time. Two of the screens showed video from the water park. One of the other two showed a hallway in the hotel and the last showed an empty hotel room.

Jack was looking at the water park views. He was able to pick out the kids sitting in the hot tub.

“We’re patched in to the hotel’s video system as well as a number of our own cameras to pick out views we need,” Sure Thing said. He walked in front of Jack to block his view. “Jack, pay attention.”

“What?” Jack tuned into what Sure Thing was saying. “Right.”

“Push the right arrow and you can cycle through the views.”

Jack followed Sure Thing’s instructions and went from the water park to reception area of the hotel. Next, he was in a hotel hallway.

“Hold it there, Jack.” Sure thing turned to his video game opponent. “Go stand in front of the door across the hall. Then go on in and walk around.”

Jack watched the screen and saw the man in front of Julie’s hotel room open the door and enter the suite. A quiet beeping sounded from a speaker on top of the television.

“That tells you their room door has opened. Scroll over a couple, Jack.”

Jack pushed some buttons on the controller and two of the views showed the inside of a hotel room. On the television, one view showed the man entering through the door. The other view was from the corner and showed the beds. The man waved at the cameras. “This is great. I can’t believe what you guys have set up.”

“There are a couple of other things to show you.” Sure Thing pulled his cell phone from his pocket, dialed, and walked into the bathroom. A few seconds later, the sound of a ringing telephone erupted from the speaker on the television and Jack watched as he answered the phone across the hall and listened to the conversation. “Time for a rematch. Get your skinny ass back to the office and I’ll educate you on the finer points of the game.”

“Cool,” Ross said, leaning forward in his chair.

Jack used the controller to flip back through the screens. The beep from the speaker told him he had left the room. Jack stopped at the view of the hot tub. The kids weren’t there. He scrolled through a couple of other views and found them in the arcade playing skee ball.

“Not as good as being there with them, but pretty cool,” Jack said.

Sure Thing rejoined Jack and Ross in the room. “I hope this gives you a little better sense of security.”

“Beyond what I expected,” Jack answered.

Sure Thing shook Jack’s hand. “I’m glad you’re OK and glad we could help. Just let us know what else we can do. We want to keep your family safe and catch the bastard.”

“What the hell you doing, Junior?” Jack stood over Ross, who had stretched out on the bed with his shoes off.

“I thought I’d get a nap in so I could give you a break later.”