Wrong Place (The Wrong Series) (6 page)

“Of course I do.
I’m not completely clueless!”

“I’m beginning to wonder.”

“Yeah, yeah thanks for the ‘unofficial info.’ Bye.” 

“Bye, and good luck, Sam.”

* * * * *

Several hours
had passed back at the solar plant. Adrian had been taken to the hospital. Fields had screamed at his assistant, and then he had been severely scolded by Mr. Boyd. Sitting at his desk, it all became clear to him. With one thought, he was slowly connecting the dots of what truly occurred that day. Wasn’t it just too big of a coincidence that I was led out of my office at just the right time? Surely Mr. Driver would be worth investigating, he thought. He got up from his seat and walked out of his office. He briefly saw a worried looking Margaret, but had no time to deal with her. He quickly went to a cubicle that contained a big bulky man.

“I need your he
lp with something. Walk with me,” Fields said.

“What’s
this all about, sir?”

“I don’
t have time to explain. Just come with me.”

The two men walked over to Dan’s small cubicle.

“Come with us. I’ve got a special project for you and Jacob,” Fields said with a wicked smile.

“What kind of project?” Dan asked nervously
.

Dan knew that this was very suspicious. He had easily flown beneath the radar before now, and it made him feel even more worried that this hulking man named Jacob was accompanying them, but he followed Fields anyway. What choice did he really have? They all stepped into an elevator, and Fields took out a key and inserted it into a small slot beside a button labeled B1. It had always troubled Dan that there seemed to be no way to get to this B1. There were no stairs leading down
, and without a key, there was clearly no going down this way either. When thinking about this in the past, he had often told himself that maybe the panel was simply made to have a basement button.

“Where are we going, sir?” Dan asked.

“Oh, you’ll see.” 

The elevator doors opened. What Dan saw was bizarre to say the least. Upstairs was a typical office setting, but right below that was a place that looked much more like it would be a serviceable military base. There were people who didn’t sport the standard army uniform associated wi
th a soldier, but they were all obviously in the shape that a military serviceman would be expected to be in.

“
Well, go on, Mr. Driver,” Fields said.

“I think
this is as far as I’m comfortable going.”

“That’s okay.
Jacob remove him, if you would be so kind.”

Right then Jaco
b grabbed Dan and threw him out of the elevator. Dan was shocked. Yes, this guy was huge, but he had never been accustomed to being thrown around like a rag doll. He immediately jumped to his feet and readied himself for a fight. This guy was strong, but he was also likely slow, or at least that’s what Dan was hoping would be the case. Dan raised his fists into a fighting position.

“That won’t
be necessary, Mr. Driver,” Fields said and laughed.

With a motion of his hand, four men surrounded Dan.

“Now, let’s just go the easy way. What do you say?” Fields asked.

Without even
acknowledging the question Fields had asked him, Dan threw the first punch, which connected to the jaw of the biggest of the four men. A loud crack could be heard from the man’s jaw. Dan’s hand was already throbbing. Something they never show you in the movies is the fact that if you hit a man hard enough to break his jaw, it does a number on your hand, too. While he grabbed his hand in pain, the man behind him jumped on his back. Dan spun around trying to sling him off and felt a punch to his face from the man who had initially been to his left. He and the man who was on his back fell to the floor. The jar from the floor separated the two. At least he’s off my back now, Dan thought. He swung himself up, and in an upward motion connected with the man’s gut who had previously knocked him to the ground. The man doubled over in pain. Dan felt a pain in the back of his head and then collapsed to the floor. He hadn’t been knocked out, but what had hit him, a train? There wasn’t much, if any, fight left in Dan after such a crushing blow. As he turned his head, there stood the towering Jacob.

“I’
ll kill you before this is all over,” Dan said.

Jacob knelt beside him and whispered, “I’m going torture you until you beg me for your own death, and then, and only then, will I slowly let your life expire.”

“Take him to a cell,” Fields said.

Thre
e of the four original men Dan had fought collected him and drug him to his prison. Once he was inside, they tied his hands and feet tight enough that he couldn’t move in the least bit. Dan feared the hell that would almost certainly come next. He sighed and simply said, “God help me.”

Chapter 6

“Nice story, Nathan. Where in the world did you come up with all that?” Michael asked after Nathan had finished telling him about what happened in the solar plant.

“No
, honestly, that’s seriously what just happened. It was really bizarre.”

“Really? Well
, in that case, you have to see what’s on that flash drive.”

“Well, obviously, but I just wonder what that girl could have done to
make them shut the place down. I mean, it’s hard to believe she could be a threat to anyone.”

“It’s a solar panel
plant, Nathan. What could she have taken that was so important from there?”

Nathan had no answer to Michael’s
question. The place did seem too irrelevant for anything of any importance to possibly be housed there, and the girl seemed far too harmless to cause any real damage, even if there were something of importance there. The most puzzling question in all of this, however, was how Michael was asking all the right questions. He was normally all over the place in their conversations, but today he seemed to be spot on.

“So have you talked to Lee lately?” Michael asked.

“No. Isn’t he in Georgia with you?”

“Nope. H
e’s been back in Mississippi for a few days now. I’m surprised he didn’t let you know.”

Honestly
, upon hearing the news that Lee was back in town, Nathan couldn’t help but feel a little offended that he hadn’t come by or even called, but he understood why. Lee has always had one problem. He’s brilliant. If anyone ever needed anything from a fake passport to a hacked cell phone, he was the guy to go to. While his many skills had benefited him in the past, they had also come with a price. Every time he saw anyone he knew, they wanted him to do something for them. If they weren’t asking him to hack a phone or game system, they were asking him to hack their cable box so they can get all the channels for free. Then there were always the high school and young college kids who wanted fake ID’s made. He simply refused to make such ID’s for them, but it still didn’t stop anyone from asking him to do it. Nathan had always tried to leave him alone and not ask for much, but he even caught himself at times asking, “Hey, can you do this?”

“He’s
probably just busy,” Nathan said, while visually shrugging to no one in particular.

“Yeah
, probably.”

“Wait a minute. How did we get off on this? I thought I was telling you some potentially really important information. Like conspiracy theory stuff.” 

“I have no idea, but let me know what’s on the drive, and if you see Lee, tell him he really needs to get around to looking at my phone.”

“I will. I’ll talk to you la
ter.” Nathan responded and hung up the phone.

As he neared his house
, he felt the anticipation growing. He had to know what was on the flash drive that the mysterious girl dropped. Honestly, though, he still thought this would all be a misunderstanding, and he would only find a ton of useless information on the flash drive. After all, nothing exciting ever happens here, or so he thought. Boy, was he about to be proven wrong.

* * * * *

Later that night in her hotel room, Sam was desperately going through any and all files that she had taken from Mr. Fields’ office. She was hoping she would find some relevant information, incriminating information even, that would make her efforts worth it and keep her from really having to worry about the lost flash drive. As time went on, one thing became clear. She had nothing. The files that had looked irrelevant were just that, irrelevant. The files that had caught her eye appeared to be records of different business transactions and they were. The only problem was that they were fake records of fake transactions for a phony business. There was nothing incriminating here at all. Maybe I’m just on a wild goose chase, she thought. She was discouraged, but hadn’t quite given up on this assignment yet. There was still one more opportunity to come out of this ahead, and though it seemed like a long shot, even to her, it was ultimately worth exploring in her mind.  She pulled a laptop out of one of her bags. The laptop was small, but she very vividly remembered receiving it a few weeks ago from an agency tech. The woman had gushed over the computer’s specs. She spouted off all different types of numbers and figures, but truthfully, Sam hadn’t understood any of it. After all, Sam was trained to be street smart, athletic, cunning, and had even been trained to kill. A computer’s specs meant little to her, but nonetheless, here she was using this supposed cutting edge computer to try to find someone. Social networking? How would I know what that is supposed to be, she wondered as she turned the laptop on. Sam had been highly educated on everything, including English, math, science, history, and psychology. She just couldn’t understand what could be so odd about not knowing what something so irrelevant was. She pulled up a search engine and typed in social networking. The site was easy enough to navigate. Upon searching the name Nathan Grey, she found that there were only six people by that name within a fifty mile radius. With a very small amount of investigation, she found the photo of the Nathan she was looking for. This was just too simple. His address and phone number were all right there. She wrote down the address, grabbed her phone, and then she was off. Sam had made up her mind that either she would find that he had the flash drive or she would return to the plant that night and find what she had lost.

* * * * *

Nathan entered his home and found that his mom was already gone. She had recently gone back to school to be a nurse, and his dad was an over-the-road truck driver so it was no surprise that on today, a weekday, he found himself with enough privacy to view what was on the flash drive alone. He examined the flash drive and found that it was a very odd device. There was a switch on the side that clearly said
Copy
and
View
. It was odd, but he flipped the switch to view and inserted it into the computer. Immediately a screen came up that was asking for a password. Great, he thought. He typed the only thing he could think of, which was password. Of course, it wasn’t so simple, and he immediately got a denied message.

“
Well, great,” Nathan said to himself.

At that moment
, he heard a car drive up. The car was rather loud and had obviously been customized in such a way that would make it sound much louder than the manufacturer had intended it to. There was no mistaking it. It was Lee’s car. He went back through the house and walked to the front door to greet his old friend, and a thought occurred to him. Lee could probably crack this password for me. As Lee came inside, Nathan greeted him in the typical way you greet an old friend. He asked all the basic questions that most people would likely ask, and when he could wait no more, he very hesitantly asked.

“So
I’ve got this thing, and I was hoping you could help me out with it.”

“Already? I just got here,
” Lee said with a half laugh.

Nathan
explained the strange things that had happened throughout the day, and told him how he was locked out of the flash drive.

“Well
, I can’t do anything from here, but I have a program to get through stuff like that back in Atlanta. I’m driving back tonight, and I could take it with me and mail it back to you when I unlock it.”

Lee may have hated always having to do stuff for everyone
, but even he was curious to see what was on this device after hearing Nathan’s story. Plus, he couldn’t help but think that this particular device looked a bit strange. The flash drive was different than anything he had ever seen, and he had seen just about every electronic device you could possibly think of, so that was saying something.

“That sounds great,” Nathan said.

Lee and Nathan talked for a couple of hours, and then Lee began to make his way to the door. Before he left, Nathan remembered that he was supposed to tell him something. 

“O
h, Michael wanted me to try to convince you to hack his cell phone if I saw you, so pretend that I made a strong case for him the next time you see him.”

“That guy
. . . I don’t see how you lived with him for two years.”

“Hey, he’s
your idiot now, man,” Nathan said while laughing.

“Don’t I know
it!”

And with that, the two friends said their goodbyes.

* * * * *

Back at the solar plant, Fields was satisfied with his capture of Da
n. Soon they would make him tell them who he really was, and then later he would let Jacob have his fun with him. First he had a job for Jacob, though. Nathan Grey may or may not have been a part of all this, but at the very least, he could have seen something. Fields needed Jacob to bring him in, and from there they would interrogate Nathan. If he knows something, we’ll get the information out of him, and if he doesn’t, well, we’ll just kill him, Fields thought. In his sick mind, this was just a win-win situation. He would need one more person to help; someone who was a bit smarter than Jacob. Sure, Jacob had his uses. As a matter of fact, he was easily the strongest man Fields had ever encountered, but if he sent Jacob on his own, he feared that Nathan would not even live to see an interrogation. Jacob had a certain bloodlust that Fields shared in, but the difference was with Jacob’s extreme strength, he could easily kill a man without even meaning to. He decided to send Trisha Morris with Jacob. She was young and a bit too much of a moralist for Fields’ liking, but perhaps that would make these two individuals balance each other out. She was a genius, and she was very athletic, but lacked the overall strength or size that would usually be expected of a soldier. In fact, she was only 5’3” and weighed almost nothing. Fields called both of them into his real office that was located in the large underground area below the solar plant.

“I’ve
summoned both of you here because I need you to find this man and bring him back here,” Fields said as he held up a picture of Nathan.

“I don’t need any he
lp. I can handle this on my own,” Jacob said while glaring at Trisha.                                                                                                                                      

“Where will you find him? Who is he, Jacob? Do you even know?” Trisha asked.

“Well I . . . I,” Jacob stuttered.

“All
the information to find him is in this file,” Fields said as he handed the file to Trisha.

“See, I’ve got this, so you can just relax
and let me handle this one solo,” Jacob said.

Jacob had always hated working with others. Anytime he was sent to capture a target
, he liked to have a little fun with them first. It was a good thing if their tongue was already loose, or at least that was what Jacob told himself. The problem was that the majority of people didn’t approve of his actions, so he didn’t approve of being paired with someone, especially someone so small and obviously weak.

“Oh no, I
am
going! Do you actually think you can leave this up to this idiot? I doubt that he can even read what’s in that file.” 

“What did you just call me?”

“Okay. Let me spell it out for you. I think you are an I-D-I-O-T. Is that simple enough for you?”

Trisha had always hated big hulking men such as Jacob
, and she had heard stories of his brutality. That wasn’t something she was willing to be a part of on this mission, or any other one for that matter.

“Look
, you two are going to work together. Trisha, you will not refer to him as an idiot, and Jacob, you will learn to work with her and incorporate her methods into your own,” Fields said in an authoritative voice.

“Yes
, sir,” they both said in unison to Mr. Fields.

“Good. You’ll
do this as soon as possible, preferably before night falls. I want to get both interrogations over with quickly and get home.”

They both nodded to Fields and left the office. Upon exiting the office, Jacob turned to Trisha.

“You just stay out of my way or you might end up dead. Trisha, is it?” Jacob asked.

“First of all, I prefer to be called Trish and second of all, I’m just surprised that you haven’t already found a way to accident
ally kill yourself. I swear, sometimes I really do wonder how some people survive so long.”

“You! He just said for you to quit calling me stupid.”

“Technically I didn’t call you anything, but I don’t expect you to understand that.”

One thing was for sure that
day. The partnership between these two was going to be interesting.

* * * * *

As night approached, Nathan found himself bored and alone in his house. His mother would normally be at home by now, but today was Thursday. Thursday was the day she bought groceries. As he lounged around the house in his boxer shorts, he heard a car outside. It’s probably just Mom, he thought. He heard a knock at the front door.

“That’s o
dd. Mom normally just uses her key,” Nathan said to himself.