The Current Between Us

He took the stairs back down to his office located to the right of the front doors. He chose an ultra-cool design and spent the most money on the walls of his office. They were newly synthesized sound and bullet proof smart glass panels. They darkened with a simple touch of the remote control. He loved the look of them and would press the buttons only to watch them darken during the long boring hours of watching the construction men work. The glass panels, along with his security staff, helped make his workplace secure. His office turned out to be his own little panic room, right there in the front of the building. How cool is that?

He took a seat behind his chrome plated desk and booted up his laptop. He flipped on CNN by remote control, but his gaze was drawn to the street. The rain had come to an end and the morning barely began to make its presence known. The outside windows in his office were the same glass panels, but the panels opened to the street for those times Gage felt trapped. It was one of the only drawbacks to returning to the real world. He loved wide open spaces, for the breeze to blow across his skin as he worked.

He released the security on the window beside him and opened it to let the fresh smell of rain fill his office. The breeze this morning blew crisp and a little chilly. The rain must have blown in a small cold front as it drove through this morning. Chicago in May could go either way weather-wise and you never really knew what to expect or how to dress for it.

The only other drawback he found to retiring lay in the photo frames now scattered across his desk. All of his family stared back at him. His mother had brought these photos by yesterday to help remind Gage he needed to spend more time with them. One of the pictures sitting in front of all the others must have been more of a dig than a reminder. His entire family stood in front of the building which housed their family-owned business. He was the only one not there to stand in the photo.

The Keurig sat strategically close to his desk, within easy reach, and he leaned over, clicking the button on. Within seconds the faint rich smells of coffee filled the room, dominating the earlier scent of rain. With an effort, he forced his mind off his family and back to the schedule lying on his desk. From now until the grand opening his schedule looked packed with appointments, meetings, and contractors. The laptop went through its motions and finally dinged to let Gage know it waited for him.

He pulled up his email and market reports, hating them both with a passion. Throughout the years, he pretended to be electronically dumb merely to avoid replying to the many messages and reports sent his way. Today turned out better than expected, every email in his inbox dealt with his last investigative report. He gave a big smile at the screen. This investigation held every bit of his interest, more than anything else these days. After six long years in the making, at a cost of several hundreds of thousands of his own personal dollars, it really looked to be coming to an end. Gage footed the entire bill and as the story grew, he knew this would be the pinnacle of his career.

In the beginning it was all about the hunch and then over the years as the pieces fit together, he knew, he needed to end on this story. It became a go-out-on-top-in-a-blaze-of-glory kind of deal, because he definitely didn’t see it getting any better than this from a news reporter’s stand point. Some of his top employees knew portions of the story, but no one knew the whole thing. Gage did all his own videotaping and photo work. He never left it to anyone else, because that was where the story always came from. The thousands and thousands of photos taken were reviewed over and over again until the pieces came together and the interview questions were formed.

Gage sifted through the messages in the inbox until he found his director of security’s latest email. He pulled it up and launched the latest video on his subject. They were in surveillance mode now. The target found and watched, twenty-four/seven. A smile crossed his lips at the images he saw. Regular plastic surgery over the last couple of years, small nips and tucks here and there with ever changing hair and eye color, had made it a challenge, but they’d finally made a positive ID. Now they were fully in undercover mode and infiltrating the area.

As Gage sat there watching, his palms itched to be on site doing this work himself, but he’d become too famous, too recognizable; forced to sit on the sidelines, he watched from a distance. It killed him, but nothing was worth the risk of getting recognized while undercover and blowing the entire operation.

Even not being there, Gage made sure he still held all the control. He watched every detail closely, calling the shots from this laptop. He viewed the videos and photos over and over again, exactly like he did while in the field, piecing it all together. With a little more patience, he would be moving in, blowing the doors off this guy and all those supposedly civilized countries paying him to do their dirty work.

After only having the dozen or so aliases the guy used around the world, Gage recently stumbled on his birth name, Ahmed Abdulla. Abdulla was a professional and his attacks weren’t about any religion or political view; it was only about the money. Once hired, Abdulla could successfully move from country to country, changing his look, his speech, and his alias while creating a new documented past, then infiltrating the different militaries across the world. He could strategically place himself where he needed to be to get the job done while always falling just under the radar.