Grave Mistakes by Chris Fritschi

Author:Chris Fritschi [Fritschi, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-05-21T23:00:00+00:00

* * *

Tate walked into the gloom of the workroom as Nathan hunched over a pool of light on his desk.

He didn’t look up as Tate peered over his shoulder at the splay of electronics. The tracker was laid open like a dissected alien with wires stringing out to a confusing array of equipment.

“Impressive,” said Tate.

“Most of this is standard stuff,” said Nathan. “Function and protocol analyzers. I’m boosting the signal generator for longer range.”

“I meant that you know how to do this.”

Nathan smiled, but kept his attention on his work.

“After I freed you from San Roman,” said Tate, “I had my doubts I’d hear from you again.”

“That cartel boss had psycho written all over him. You took a big risk for me. That’s not something you see in my world.”

“When you said you’d let me know if you got any good intel on The Ring I didn’t expect to see a message on my sat-phone,” said Tate.

“It seemed the quickest way to reach you,” shrugged Nathan.

Tate watched Nathan study a scrawl of alpha-numeric characters on one of several screens.

“And all you had was my name,” said Tate.

Nathan said nothing as he kept his focus on the tiny components of the tracker, but Tate saw a Nathan’s eyebrow arch.

“Even as an outsider,” said Tate, “I can appreciate not everyone could have hacked my phone. Isolating a satellite’s transponder codes. Bypassing NSA security and getting past my sat-phone encryption.”

“You forgot lifting your fingerprint to program the biometric lock my GPS,” added Nathan. “That wasn’t easy.”

“Yeah. I didn’t see that coming,” chuckled Tate.

Tate pulled over a nearby chair, its legs screeching across the floor. Nathan resisted the urge to lean away as Tate sat down uncomfortably close to him. He silently watched Nathan work, indifferent to his claustrophobic presence.

Nathan shot Tate a meaningful look as the impulse to squirm eroded his concentration.

“Uncomfortable?” asked Tate.

“Was I obvious?”

“It’s human nature,” said Tate. “Having someone too close makes people instinctively feel vulnerable. There’s no time to react to an attack.” Tate looked squarely at Nathan. “It’s like how you could find me; hack my phone; get my fingerprints. It makes me feel vulnerable. That’s a problem,” said Tate, gravely. “For both of us.”

Nathan stopped his work on the tracker and looked at Tate with sigh. “Is there a threat implied?”

“I don’t imply,” said Tate. “Besides,” he said as he shifted his chair back giving Nathan room to breathe, “you and I are on the same side. In order to fix our problem you and me are going to devote the next few minutes to improving my level of trust in you starting with who you really are and where you learned your skills.”

“I’m disappointed, sergeant major,” said Nathan. “Enhanced interrogation doesn’t seem your style.”

“It’s not me you have to worry about,” said Tate as he leaned forward. “I’ll put it in perspective. Twice I’ve stood between you and a bullet in the head. The next bullet is inevitable. If you don’t get me to trust you, well…” Tate gently tapped Nathan on the forehead, “I may not be there to stop it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.