The Dragon and His Wrath (Paxton Locke Book 5) by Humphreys Daniel

Author:Humphreys, Daniel [Humphreys, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DJTC Media
Published: 2022-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Valentine—Saturday morning

Leesburg, VA

The last time Valentine surveilled Paxton Locke, he’d had the benefit of a team and an empty house to set up shop in. The neighborhood around the Menagerie was a popular one with the DC commuter class. As such, there were no vacancies.

In the end, Val made do with something from his gear bag in the trunk of his car. He didn’t need to record the kid. He just needed to know when he was home so he could drop by. The conversation he intended to share with the other agent wasn’t suited for the Division M’s halls.

The motion-activated camera was no bigger than a phone charger plug. Valentine plugged it into the outlet below the credenza in Paxton’s foyer, synced his phone to it, and headed back to the office to think.

Paxton hadn’t put anything close to approaching an actual plan down on his scraps of paper, but Valentine thought he had the bones of it. Vengeance itself wasn’t a complicated act. The logistics behind it, though, were a different story, and that was where Val exerted most of his effort in between glances at his phone to see if Paxton had returned.

He lost himself in the work for a time, but not so much that he didn’t notice as two people walked in the open door of his office. One fidgeted in place for a moment, and before the other could clear his throat he said, “What is it?”

“Hell!” Jake Harris exclaimed. “How did you know we were here, sir?”

“Practice,” Val deadpanned. He locked the screen of his laptop and turned in his chair. “What do you need?”

Simmons was the fidgeter, and he continued as Valentine watched. Finally, Harris slammed an elbow into his partner’s ribs. “Spit it out, man.”

“One of our people found something we missed,” the nervous man said, finally. “We’ve been focusing on the, uh, specimens, so we didn’t have time for some of the other stuff …”

“Understood,” Val said. “I get that we’re short-handed. It’s not your fault and I’m not going to jump you for it. Out with it.”

“Crowe thinks she found—no, she did find something about the Wyoming event.” He handed Valentine a pair of photo prints. “The top one is a satellite image of Baggs after it turned into a lake. The crosshairs indicate the exact center of the circle.”

Simple enough. Val flipped the pages, bringing the second to the top. “And this?”

“That’s Baggs a few days before the event. The crosshairs are superimposed over the same area.”

The sheets weren’t all that big. Val brought them up to his nose and squinted. “Looks like a construction site of some sort?”

“Exactly,” Harris said. “Crowe pulled permits—one of the wireless carriers contracted a company to put in a new tower and all of the associated infrastructure. Now, no way is AT&T working with inter-dimensional monsters, right?”

Val frowned. “The contractor, though?”

“They’re shady as hell. Crowe and her people are still digging, but it looks like they’re held by a shell corporation, not unlike the one that owned the cold storage facility we raided in Arizona.

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