The dreams continued. They didn’t come every night, but nearly so. Patton would react to the dream, which would wake Jennifer. Some nights she woke him, but others she let him get through the dream by himself. After another week of almost sleepless nights, she begged Patton to get help. He refused, claiming that no one, especially in Blue Creek, could help him. They just needed to get out of town, or get rid of David Asher. Neither seemed realistic, so they continued to deal with the dreams.
Patton began to spend less and less time at work—turning operations of his business to an associate—and spending time in his workshop. Every time she went out to see what he was doing he asked her to leave, noting it was his way of decompressing. Little did she know that he was building an arsenal for what he thought was an inevitable showdown with David Asher.
“You’re sure?” Asher asked, wide eyed.
Brian White nodded. He opened a file and laid it on the desk in front of his boss. Asher leaned forward in his plush leather office chair and looked down at the surveillance photos.
“Construction. Across the hills?” Asher asked, pointing towards the west.
White nodded again.
“How many workers? How much equipment?”
“I’d say about a hundred workers or so. Maybe more. Tons of equipment. About everything you could imagine.” He picked up the photos, shuffled through them and then handed one to his boss. “As you can see here, this place is going up pretty fast. Don’t ask me where they got the money for this, but this company is top notch. They’re out of Ogden, Utah.”
A pensive David Asher leaned back in his chair.
With his eyes still on the photo he said, “Those guys have been raking in the cash ever since they got here. I wouldn’t doubt if they had millions. Wilson made a fortune trading on the outside. That’s part of the reason we shut it down. These guys were getting too rich and powerful.”
Brian White nodded. Personally, he’d never had more than three thousand dollars in any account he’d ever owned. Now, because of the city’s largesse, he was becoming very wealthy.
“What should we do about this?” White asked.
Asher stood and walked towards his liquor cabinet. He poured himself a drink without offering one to his subordinate. He took it down in one swallow and poured himself another.
“I’m not sure. I don’t think it would send a good message to stop them, but it would show people that we’re weak if we don’t,” he said pensively. “Either way it’s going to be bad, I just think we need to decide which set of people we can afford to piss off.”
White stared at Asher and watched him pace back and forth. Asher continued.
“If they go through with it, we’re going to lose a lot of people and a lot of money. The richer people support Larsen. The bastard would have beaten me without that little pissant Redding in the election.”
White smiled, remembering the day he’d put an end to Tyler Redding. It had been his pleasure to personally fulfill that little duty.
“Nope,” Asher said, finally. “We need to stop this. We need to shut it down and quick. Plus, we need a pressure point on Larsen. Something that will let him know we can control him, no matter how much influence he thinks he has.”
The “pressure point” immediately came to Brian White’s scheming mind. Hell, she worked in City Hall. He saw her almost every day.
“The wife?” he asked his boss.
Asher stopped pacing and grinned wickedly. He nodded and White walked out of the office.
The light for line two on Jennifer Larsen’s office phone lit up, accompanied by a low buzzing sound. She’d been concentrating so hard on her paperwork she didn’t noticed it.
“Jennifer,” said her pretty brunette office mate, “you gonna get that?”
“What?” she said confused. “Oh, the phone,” she said, smiling at her own absent-mindedness. She finally answered.
“Larsen,” she said tersely. She had no etiquette in the office. What were they going to do, fire her?
“Jennifer. We’re about to start that meeting downstairs. Didn’t you get the memo on that?” came the voice of her bitchy, frumpy boss.
Jennifer shuffled through some papers that were on her desk but didn’t see any memo about a meeting. “No. Sorry. I’ll be right down,” she said hanging up without a goodbye. She shut off her monitor and pushed in her computer chair. “You coming?” she asked her officemate, who looked up at her with a confused expression.
“Where?”
“To the meeting. The beeyotch just told me I’m late,” she said, grabbing her attaché case and her jacket.
“She told you, not me,” the brunette said, not meaning to sound snotty, but did so anyway.
Jennifer walked out without a response and made her way to the basement. It really was a beautiful place to work. The office she had with the Department of Agriculture in Los Angeles was old and run down. Although she hated almost everyone she worked with, Jennifer Larsen didn’t mind the surroundings.
Instead of taking the elevator, which was slow and full of people she didn’t want to talk to, she used the stairs. The stairs were closer to the basement conference room, anyway. Jennifer made her way down a long hallway and turned left to find an empty conference room. She walked inside and found a phone on a small table on the side of the room. As she dialed her boss’s extension, a figure approached her from behind. Without a word, and nearly without a sound, the man clubbed her on the back of the head, knocking her out cold. Unable to cushion her own fall, Jennifer hit her head again on the floor.
Jennifer’s assailant picked her up in a fireman’s carry and carried her to an isolated area of the basement. He laid her down on the thinly carpeted floor and rolled up her sleeve. He removed a leather case from his back pocket, opened it, and pulled out a syringe that was already prepped with a heavy sedative. The assailant stuck the needle into Jennifer’s shoulder and watched her go limp. All he had to do now was wait for darkness to fall and for everyone to leave the building.
Patton was annoyed when Jennifer didn’t return his texts or emails. When she didn’t call at five on her way out of the door, something she always did, he was even more annoyed. But when five-thirty and then six and then seven o’clock rolled around with no contact, Patton began to feel very nervous. They were both sticklers for their routine, and she was definitely breaking it right now. When the clock hit seven-thirty he grabbed his keys and charged out to his truck. Rocks flew as he tore out of his driveway. He frantically dialed her number again but it just rang and rang. He called Frank.
“Have you seen or talked to Jennifer?” he asked frantically.
“No Patton, what’s wrong?”
“She’s always home by five-thirty. And when I say always I mean always!”
“Where you at? Come pick me up and I’ll help you find her.”
“Okay,” he said breathlessly, “be there in five minutes,” he said and ended the call.
Six minutes later, Patton screeched to a halt in front of Frank’s house. Frank was already waiting outside and he jumped into the large pickup.
“Calm down, Pal,” Frank said, but when he saw the look in Patton’s eyes he decided that talking him down would do no good. “Tell me what you know.”
Patton looked at him and then back at the road. He pressed the accelerator and headed towards City Hall. After a loud and violent stop in front of the city building, Patton jumped out and made his way to the front door. It was locked but he could see a uniformed security guard inside. He pounded on the glass to get the guard’s attention. The guard saw him but took his time getting to the door. From the inside he pushed a button to an intercom.