The Perfect Candidate: A Lance Priest / Preacher Thriller (No. 1) (5 page)

The secret to playing and winning hide and seek is knowledge of the terrain. Young Lance Priest became the neighborhood expert, the aficionado in the intricacies of “hide n seek” by the age of seven in Winter Park, Florida.

He and the other children living on and around Monmouth Way participated in some of history’s epic hide n seek battles. Lance was almost always the final hidden participant. The rules of competition were even changed because of his skill in locating and occupying the most secret of places. The traditional rules of the game, as most will recall, involve one seeker setting out to find the hiders after closing his or her eyes and counting slowly to the pre-determined number, usually 25. The counting was followed by, “Ready or not, here I come.”

The seeker would leave home base and work methodically to locate others. Hiders could either stay hidden or come out and make a break for home base. When they reached it, they were deemed “free” or safe.

This is where young Lance changed the rules of the time-honored game for those on Monmouth Way. His prowess at hiding became so absolute that the seeker was allowed to enlist the help of the others he or she discovered along the way to search for Lance. The rules clearly stated that kids could hide anywhere on the block, but not inside any of the houses or garages. Lance followed these rules like everyone else. But his advantage was knowledge of the environment, terrain, landscapes and any new developments.

His dedication to the sport demanded his total commitment. He would awaken at 4:30 a.m. some mornings and sneak out of the house to search for the next great hiding spot while others slept. He had several unique locations that had befuddled the other kids, but he was always seeking that one perfect location that could simply never be discovered. On many occasions, the other kids were heard saying that Lance just plain made the game no fun at all.

Eventually the seeker and his enlisted searchers would return to home base and call out the inevitable, “Ollie ollie in come free!” The dreaded surrender. Lance would take as much care in emerging from his hiding spot as he did finding it. He would climb a fence, cut through a back yard and appear three houses down from where he had been concealed.

And another rule Lance changed about the sport, at least in Winter Park, Florida, he was never allowed to be the seeker. The other kids had learned by the time little Lance was six that you simply could not hide from him. He would find kids up a tree, down a hole and easily behind a row of bushes in front of the Munroe home. It was useless to even try.

Lance thought about those legendary hide n seek games during that first night’s stay in the Adolphus Hotel. He had done the legwork on this particular location a couple of years earlier during OU-Texas weekend when he was 18.

After sneaking into the hotel through the hush-hush door around back, he wandered the halls for half an hour or so mingling with a few groups, chatting with employees and ducking out of view of hotel security. All the while, a classic song by The Who was on repeat in his head. He hummed along as he crept about like a burglar in training. Lance found the VIP-only staircase and the permission-only elevator and stepped on to ride to the top floor with an elderly and obviously well-to-do Texas Longhorn patron.

Stepping off the elevator, young Lance ran into a group of ultra-affluent college age offspring of Lone Star State aristocracy. The group of boys and girls reeked of wealth and privilege and a good bit of arrogance. They were gathered in the hallway outside their rooms as late evening turned to early morning and the partying was still in high gear. Security kept their distance and turned their heads when these young adults, many definitely under the age of 21, consumed alcohol, a lot of alcohol. As Lance stepped up to the group and grabbed a beer from a cooler, several of them noticed his crimson colored shirt.

“Hold on, hold on, what the hell are you doing here?” A stoutly built boy of approximately 20 turned and puffed up his chest to Lance.

“Got bored with the party downstairs and heard they were still kickin it up here,” Lance replied with a warm and trusting smile as he twisted the cap off the bottle.

“No way, no friggin way we let a dang Sooner up here.” Another young man stepped over beside the stout gent. The girls in the group giggled. They had been bored a few moments earlier and now this looked like it might be interesting.

Lance looked down at his shirt and then back at the two fellas standing in front of him and did a completely unexpected thing. He handed the beer to a boy and pulled the shirt off to reveal a burnt orange shirt with a large UT and longhorn pictured on the front.

“Sorry about that. It was an OU crowd downstairs and I didn’t want anyone to be uncomfortable.” He kept the smile on as he took the bottle back from the boy.

“Wait a minute. You don’t just change colors and say everything’s okay. Either you’re all for Texas or your against.” The guy slurred the word “against” so it sounded like “ahginn.” The beers and tequila and whatever else his daddy’s money had paid for showed up in his speech and wild eyes.

“You see, that’s the beauty of it. I am truly not for either one,” Lance looked from the big boy to the other and the three more standing behind. His survey of the group told him they all came from money and had known nothing but privilege in their soft, short lives.

They knew nothing about living in apartments with their divorced mother and annoying younger brother. They had never eaten a bowl of cereal sitting on the floor using a cardboard box as a table. They couldn’t know that one bowl was the single favorite meal that one would ever eat because it was born of freedom. The constant fighting and violence of the relationship between mom and dad had taken so much away from him that a mere bowl of Cheerios eaten while kneeling on the floor amid moving boxes had left an impression that would never be replaced by filet mignon or poached salmon.

Yet none of that flashed across Lance’s face as he looked from face to face in the group in front of him and smiled. “I’m just here for the party mates.”

“Where do you go to school?” A particularly cute young lady standing to the left and behind the puffed up boys asked and bit her lower lip.

“Notre Dame.” Lance perused a mental database in the flash of a moment to select a school about which he knew several key facts learned from movies and books.

“What the hell are you doing here then?” The boys demanded.

“To party with some of my friends.”

“Just to party? You came all the way to Dallas to party?”

“Where the hell else would a professional partier be? This is it man. I’ve been coming down here since I was a kid.”

“Where are you from?” The girl asked and inched closer.

“Wichita.” He extracted another element from his limitless database of facts and smiled back at her.

“Wichita sucks.” Stouty blurted out.

“Damn right there. That’s why I got the hell out and went to Notre Dame.” Lance’s smile was brilliant. He’d already won this one.

This particular conversation lasted another few minutes but Lance had altered the mood of the crowd and turned it into a monologue he delivered in perfect pitch. Lance was required to tell them a few more particulars about Notre Dame, Wichita, his major and other “shit.” He passed the test and moved into the middle of the crowd to share their beer, shoot their tequila and sneak off with the cute girl who had to give Stouty the slip.

At about 4:15 a.m., Lance pried himself apart from the sleeping young lady and left the room. He grabbed some rich kid’s navy blue sports coat flung over a chair to be sure he looked the part. For the next hour, he wandered the Adolphus picking the best hiding spots, just as if it were the old block on Monmouth Way. On the 6
^th
floor, he found the door to 614 standing wide open and not a soul inside. There were suitcases and clothes on the bed, but no one home. He stepped in and inspected the room. It looked like a couple had started the evening together and then either left or split up during the night and found other quarters to shack up. He spent just over a minute in the room to catalog details and then stepped back out into the hall.

As Lance stepped into the same hall three years later, he surveyed both ends of the corridor for any activity. Nothing. It was about 4 a.m. again and he wanted to investigate the premises for anything that should make him worry. This time, however, he had a gun in his pocket. “Come on trouble,” he snickered to himself.

In the lobby, he smiled at the female attendant behind the opulent front desk. A fast scan of the space showed it to be empty as it should be at this early hour. He kept his hand in his front suit jacket pocket gripping the handle of his gun as he crossed the room to look out a front window at Commerce Street. Nothing.

Lance smiled at the front desk gal and again fought off the urge to go tell her a series of intricate lies all aimed at learning any and everything she knew. He wound his way back to the private staircase and privileged elevator and back up to room 614. He passed out quickly after laying his clothes out on the chair.

He awoke later that morning and stepped out the door to welcome room service for three ordered the night before. Over the next several hours, he wrote down everything that had happened the previous day. Every detail he could recall.

Two things stood out. First, he had been handed a loaded gun and just minutes later he held the gun to Seibel’s head. But Seibel’s response was approval; not fear or anger or panic. Strange.

Second, everything he had been through yesterday was more than likely an act, a play, a charade put on for his benefit. Not all the players were in on it. Seibel was the director giving the other actors directions. Lance wanted to walk down the block and back into the building to see if there would even be anyone there. Had it all been fake? Who were these people? CIA? FBI? KGB? Some big scam? Certainly not State Department or Foreign Service.

Right about now is when most people would call or at least think of calling the police. Not Lance. It never crossed his mind. He was going to figure this one out on his own.

In reviewing his notes, another prominent question came into focus. Where did this start? How did they learn about him? Seibel said several months of surveillance.
When did it start?
He wrote the question and circled it.

It had to be either during the written exam or just before. Marsco, or whatever his name was, had given himself away there. Was he in Tulsa during the exam only to watch Lance or was he picking others as well? What did they really want from him? He didn’t have much money and most of what he did have he owed to the University of Tulsa.

He took a break and stood up to stretch his back, then took a shower and put his clothes back on. He considered walking over to his car parked just a few blocks away to retrieve his stuff, but thought it unwise. He’d already missed his morning class back in Tulsa and luckily wasn’t scheduled to work at the dealership until Thursday afternoon. He picked up the phone and asked the operator to connect him with the concierge.

Six minutes later, there was a knock at the door. Lance grabbed the file folder from the desk and opened the door only inches to step out. Philip greeted him with a new North America road atlas. Lance thanked him with a high five.

Lance learned Philip hailed from Montreal and chose to relocate to Dallas for the climate and the women. Lance agreed with him about the women, but Texas was even hotter than Oklahoma and there were plenty of days over 100 in Tulsa. That was hot enough.

“How are your meetings progressing? I hope your party is finding our accommodations acceptable. I hope the private entrance is working for those not staying with us.” Philip said.

Lance liked that. Philip obviously knew that four people, especially executives, were not staying in the room together. “Everything is moving at a good pace. No real breakthroughs, but lots of positive dialogue that required face-to-face conversations. The accommodations are perfect and the private entrance is indeed working well.” Lance replied in a tone that reflected complete confidence in Philip. “I trust our presence here has gone undetected by anyone other than yourself?”

“Room 614 is registered to Mr. Buckner as you requested. No one has inquired about the room or its guests to my knowledge.”