The Paranoid Thief (17 page)

With expert military training in hand to
hand combat, Jill used the muscle man’s tight grip on her forearms like
supporting straps and gave the native boss a rude kick to his pride and joy between
his legs. Then she use her other leg to connect solidly with his lowing face,
sending him backward, crashing into the wall and side table before making the
floor. To this treatment of his boss, the muscleman’s IQ registered surprise to
actions he’d never had to consider while holding a frightened female, but
Randolph held no time in witnessing her next moves as he was a bit busy
reacting to her distraction. Jumping up, he shoved the muscle man behind him
into the wall with all his strength and grabbed the cheap suit’s jacket in both
hands to
sent
him stumbling into Jill’s favorite
chair, over balancing him into his struggling boss.
We’re dead meat now if either one makes it to their guns!
Randolph
grabbed a potted plant to bounce off the muscleman’s skull when he saw a light
beam burn a hole into the man’s temple, frying the brains inside. This action
caused the newly dead man’s body to slump over the boss with his massive body,
pinning the boss in place for a brief second. To this Randolph risked a look
over in Jill’s direction, and he saw her put the pistol up under the jaw of the
other muscleman and pull the trigger, then she deftly stepped away from the
mindless body that slowly crumpled to the floor and looked at Randolph, taking
note of his frown.

“Hey, don’t blame me,” Jill defended
herself, raising her hands, allowing the pistol to dangle on her finger tip.
“Numb nuts here had the thing set on max.”

Randolph rolled his eyes skywards to her
declaration, and shook his head in some pain as he knew they both were in deep
kimchee
once the boss got out from under his man. Never
mind it was the boss man’s fault this all happened, his kind never considered
the consequences of their actions could ever result in retaliation, kind of
like the woman crying her eyes out, declaring her son to be a good boy at his
execution for murdering the school teacher who flunked him for not learning his
lessons.

Jill eyed the boss, who was taking stock of
his current situation, and asked Randolph, “So what do we do with him?”

The fact she actually asked surprised
Randolph, causing his thinking to short-circuit a moment before he said calmly,
“Well, I’ve a few more hours of work here, which pretty much renders letting
him go out of the question, as he’ll become a problem later if we do.” Still
considering, Randolph glanced down on their unwanted guess, whose eyes looked
over Randolph trying to figure out how he’d killed his men so efficiently—that
is till he saw Jill standing not far off with his bodyguard’s gun dangling from
her small index finger.

Randolph turned to look out the fourth
story window so he could think in terms of
Now
what?

But when his back was turned, Jill
proclaimed calmly, “Okay, problem solved.” To which he smelled the odor of
ozone and meat burning.

Randolph Jerked his head her way, seeing
the gun she acquired being tucked down the back of her bikini bottom. With
dread, Randolph turned to look on the native boss, finding his lifeless eyes staring
up at Jill with a clean little hole in his forehead. Randolph turned hardening
eyes onto Jill. “Will you please stop
that!
”

“Calm down, Randolph, we both knew he had
to be killed if we were to leave the island alive,” Jill told him in a level
voice, walking over and relieving the other bodyguard of his gun before she sat
in her favorite chair. “I was just hoping you would come to the same conclusion
and allow me to do what was necessary.”

With a sigh, Randolph looked about the
remains of humanity’s burden on a growing society and rubbed his face and
cheek, going over the other possibilities they might have had.
Rather redundant now,
he considered, but
instead of facing the truth, Randolph stood there, thinking.
There just has to be another way this could
have been solved without killing them.
But no matter how he approached the
matter, Randolph came to the same conclusion she’d already reasoned out. The
fact that she was right, knowing she was right, was what stuck in his throat,
because taking someone's life was always against his principles.
Thusly not saying aloud she was right makes
me, oh I don’t know, “a hypocrite” comes to mind.

“You’re not going to give me the
satisfaction in admitting I’m right, are you?” Jill asked, annoyed, watching
how Randolph was now starting to pace with his growing agitation. “You’re just
going to pace about and blame me for introducing you to the real world.”

“Give me a break Jill,” Randolph snapped,
“you’ve killed four people since breaking me out of jail, and now I have to
justify in my own mind the growing body count of my freedom.”

“Well, while you’re at it, why don’t you
flex those wonderful muscles you have hidden under that suit and help me stuff
these three in the closet for now?”

“Yeah sure,” Randolph mumbled with a shrug,
knowing if anyone happened to come in, the sight of three dead men might make
leaving the island a bit tricky.

By four in the morning, Randolph had all
they would need. The laser printer he’d modified did a right fine job to the
scroll work on the front and back of the passports, set in place to make such
forgeries impossible to copy, but how they reasoned that out with all the
forgers in business was beyond him. As for customs stamps, they were not as
critical to match, for the bored customs agents tended to smear the activation
of the archaic hand-held stamp. Next
came
video
pictures, IDs, credit accounts originating in Scandinavia which he filled with
10 percent transfers from his few clients’ credit accounts, which provided them
a modest 230 credits from three clients. Their uninvited guests supplied them
with a meager 468 hard credits between the
lot
, but
later when Randolph held more time to do some poking around, he’d check into
their personal accounts and see what could be withdrawn. For now, it was a
small matter of popping by a bank on their way to the skimmer port and
depositing half of their hard credits before boarding their flight.

Once finished, Randolph stretched tired
arms and rubbed his eyes before he nudged Jill, who’d fallen asleep in her
favorite chair. When Jill's eyes slowly opened and she began the process of
orienting herself, Randolph saw a sight he’d never seen before. Perhaps he’d
never really looked in them before, but he swore he saw both personalities, one
looking out of each eye, before the softer Jill retreated and the colder Jill
completely surfaced.

This Jill took stock of her surrounding,
stretched and yawned, asking, “What’s up?”

“I’ve got all we need. Now what do I do
with the bodies?”

“Oh them.”
Jill
yawned again, standing, bending over backward and forward to wake up her
resting muscles. “That’s easy. The boss man goes in the chair behind the desk.
The cronies are placed thusly, one in a chair across from the boss and the
other draped over the desk.”

“And this is supposed to do what?” Randolph
inquired.

“Silly boy, it’s for body placement after
the fire crews put out the blaze.”

“Jill, they’ll never believe they simply
allowed themselves to be burned up.”

“Well of course not. The autopsy will show
the laser holes, but that won’t happen till sometime tomorrow. By then we’ll be
well on the way to where, uh, hmm…where are we going?”

“
Telangrade
County.
It’s
a hundred miles from the city of
Willing, where Mr. Hilden resides.”

With time delay incinerators set and the office
sprayed with DNA residuals—gathered over the course of their stay—to render
their own DNA impossible to discern out of the mix, and the specialty equipment
Randolph acquired or procured from other offices neatly restored back in their
original offices, Randolph disconnected the fire retardant for the office
they’d rented only and started walking out. Jill, however, gave Randolph an
annoyed look, as she’d seen he’d made sure only their office would go up in
flames, but he guessed she decided it wasn’t worth arguing over. After pressing
the two guns in the goons’ hands, she followed him out to a rental car.

After boarding the skimmer, Randolph figured
Jill’s softer side most have emerged. She snuggled up to him once they were in
the air, placing both her arms around him possessively before falling back
asleep. Even though he was becoming attached to her warmth, Randolph wondered
what in hell he was going to do with her. She was rendering his justification
in clearing his name a bit moronic, for what did it matter who the records
showed he’d murdered? Because of her, he was now just as guilty of murder as if
he really had killed the Henderson family and servants.

Once back on firm ground, the pair
disembarked the atmosphere skimmer for a regular hovercraft which took the
couple to an old outdated hotel where Randolph kept his emergency funds
stashed. Closing the door to their room on the 23rd floor, Jill looked about
its simple appearance and plopped herself on the bed, testing its firmness,
while Randolph took off the ventilation cover and crawled into its dusty
interior with a pen light in his mouth. Over his many years of research,
Randolph discovered corporations came and went depending on their
accountability to their owners. But hotels tended to stay hotels no matter who
owned them, so unless the owners were willing to drop the building, it was a
relatively small gamble to stash hard credits and IDs in the ventilation shaft.
Updating the HVAC system was always the last resort in a refurbish job.

After emerging, Randolph dusted himself off
and dumped the contents of the dusty box out on the bed Jill was lounging on,
reading a home fashion magazine she’d picked up on the way to the elevator.
Jill looked on the pile with little interest and laid her magazine down to
point at a picture. “Honey, what do you think of this?”

“Of what?”
Randolph picked up an account card, tapping in the twenty six digit code to
allow him access to its total funds.

“The color of this wall
design.
Don’t you think it would look nice in our den?”

To the word ‘our’, Randolph lost his
sequence then looked skyward for patience. “Jill, aren’t you being a little
premature? It’ll take months before I’ll be ready to move on Mr. Hilden, after
which we’ll decide if we’ll stay together.” He tried the pin code again, but
Jill shifted her position, dropping her magazine and sitting up so her back was
to him. To the distinct sound of sniffling, Randolph lost his cool and his
place a second time.
Of all the—
“What’s
the matter?”

“I want a family, John,” Jill’s softer side
said with sorrow in her voice as her shoulders shook. “Jill promised I could
have my family once she’d established her carrier and to that end I’ve given up
ten years of my life.” Jill raised her chin and used her arm to wipe her face,
saying with some heat, “Now because of her cold-hearted ways we’re condemned to
death should the court system catch up to us, which is really only a matter of
time.” She turned some so he could see her profile. “I don’t want to die, John!
I want my time in the sun. I want a home, children and—and a husband! And that
husband has to be you!” Jill stood and cleared her eyes once again before she
turned fully to him. “You know exactly who and what we are. With you there’ll
never be inquiries into our past. John, please, I’m begging you. I do love you
and I want your children, our children. Please don’t push me aside, I’ll be
good to you, I’ll—I’ll—”

To his blank stare, she began balling in earnest
and ran for the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

Still confused, Randolph held no idea what
to say or do. He even felt like a heel, though he’d done nothing wrong. Then
the bathroom door jerked open and Jill came out, striding his way with murder
in her eyes! Randolph knew full well who was in control, and remembering the
last time she looked at him in that way, Randolph panicked and held his hands
up in submission, trying to get his throat working while backing up.

But he received a right cross before he
could, sending him into the bedside table, to which Jill growled just below a
yell, “What did you do to her?”

“
Ow
! Jill, I did
nothing!” Randolph declared in innocence.

Back handing him next to keep him in the
corner, Jill snarled, “What did you do? I can’t even feel her in the back of my
mind!”

“Honestly, I didn’t even touch her!”
Randolph looked into cold and deadly eyes which he desperately wanted to calm
before he became her punching bag. “In fact, you should know that; I thought
you told me you two talk to each other.”

She folded her arms instead of abusing his
face more then turned around, taking a couple of steps away. “It doesn’t work
that way. I get glimpses like pictures now and again while she’s in control if
she allows it, then a video of all that’s happened when we change places, but
this time I fell in control without a single thought!”

 
Randolph ran the back of his hand against his
stinging mouth, tasting iron saltiness in his mouth, and come away with blood,
grimacing to the pain. Jill looked back on him, sighing with annoyance; she
walked over as Randolph tried to meld back into the wall holding his hands up
in capitulation.

“Oh, quite acting like a baby,” she
accused, picking up a tissue box on the way and handing it to him. “I didn’t
hit you that hard. Now take this and sit down, I want to know what you two
talked about.”

“Sure, if you’ll move to the other side of
the bed,” Randolph said, still trying to protect himself.

“For crying out loud, Randolph, I’m not
going to hit you again. I’m now in complete control of myself.”

“Well, I’m not saying anything till you
do,” Randolph argued, dabbing lightly on his split lip.

“All right!
Fine!”
Jill snapped in exasperation, throwing her hands in
the air.

Once Jill settled on the far corner of the
bed, Randolph began his recital of her softer side’s words and feeling, being a
bit cruel in tone, holding nothing of that conversation back.

Jill turned her back to him and faced the
room’s entrance, making no sound or comment. Standing after a bit, she
straightened her shoulders, thanked him for being truthful, and headed for the
door.

“Where are you going?”

As the door closed behind her, she said
with just a hint of emotion, “I’m going for a walk.”

Once he heard her footsteps recede along
the outside hallway, Randolph was able to sigh and relax, though now for some
reason he felt like a total heel. He grumbled, and reminded himself Jill was a
big girl now and if she had half the report with her other side, his news was
no revelation. So as he had tons of work to start, Randolph called room service
for medical supplies, hot tea, a turkey sandwich and picked up the old standby
stationary tools the hotels always supplied to make a list of common items he’d
need to begin his newest and possibly last adventure into the world of
documentation, security measures, and credit accounts.

After verifying he held ten thousand
credits in his own account, Randolph authorized payment for the room with an extra
300 credits to draw on from the hotel for incidental living expenses. Then it
was off to the local electronic building for a mobile computer and the few
things he’d written down to occupy his time while he thought out minor details
during the intervals between his search programs and finding a suitable place
to set up shop. When he returned to their shared hotel room with the required
equipment, Randolph’s mind had already categorized possible avenues of basic
surveillance he considered Jill to be perfect for, and only remotely noticed
she hadn’t returned from her walk. With a glance about the room, Randolph
shrugged her out of his thoughts, and set up his equipment on the provided
table, hard wired the computer to the net, then cracked his fingers out of
habit before he let fly his fingers, as his mind settled in on this grand adventure.

When Randolph sat back in the cheap
upholstered chair to rest his eyes and roll his neck about, he took notice of
the time.
1:00 a.m. and Jill isn’t back
yet?
He stood to stretch his legs and open a window to take in somewhat
fresher air and had a moment of guilt roll around in his mind.
Surely she wouldn’t have taken off for such
a minor argument? A bit painful yes, but—

Letting his thoughts drift, parking his
butt on the windowsill, Randolph absently activated the video screen and
flipped to the local news. He looked out over the neon-lit city as the broadcast
rambled about the day’s news.
Having only
a few credits on her, she couldn’t have gone far, but then again she did
survive for years without me.
As his stomach complained of malnutrition,
Randolph decided to try room service and finding it still open even at this
time of night, ordered up a snack platter of cold cuts and cheese along with a
light beer before sitting back down to reason further; he could do nothing till
she showed up. With his conscience settled, Randolph tapped on the keys to read
up on any latest advances in computer technology, thus his attention was
diverted when his ears picked up part of a news story of a woman trashing a
local bar.

Quickly turning his head to the video
screen, he saw the smartly-dressed woman behind the news desk saying, “As
details become known, we’ll update this story at the top of the hour. Next up,
why is city hall so desperate to—
”

Tuning out the video, Randolph raced his
fingers across the keyboard to search out any reference to the news broadcast.
While his search program popped up with the most likely articles he sought,
Randolph hoped his concerns were wrong. But when the video came up, and there
on the top of the list was Jill’s picture, Randolph’s heart took a flying leap
into the well of guilt. With a sense of dread, Randolph punched up the article
and listened to the news broadcast.

“It was a chaotic scene today as violence
broke out in a midtown bar. After interviewing police officials, had this to
say.”

The camera trained on a uniformed police
officer. “This unidentified woman,” he said to Jill’s face posted to the left
side of the screen, “having had far too much to
drink,
began a brawl, leaving customers to run for cover. At present we’re still
gathering evidence at the scene which can be used in a court of law.”

The scene changed and a smartly-dressed
fellow filled out the remainder of the story as Randolph sat back heavily in
his chair, his mouth dropping wide open.

“As this had been reported some hours ago,
we now have fuller details on this incredible story through our public
relations liaison, Lieutenant Morison. Lieutenant Morison,” asked the anchorman
of a hard-nosed man in his fifties, “can you now elaborate more on this
unidentified woman?”

“Yes I can, Mr. Taller. As your viewers
learned earlier, an unidentified woman in her early thirties, with obvious
combat training, set about wreaking havoc in a local bar. She is currently incarcerated
in the downtown public enforcement building on charges ranging from inciting to
riot, property damage, assault and resisting arrest. Presently, as she has yet
to give a name, we are running a DNA test to gain her identity for official
documentation and booking. In the mean time, we are asking your viewers if
anyone happens to know this woman, please come forward to help us sort out her
reasons for such a destructive display.”

Randolph mechanically turned off the video
report and rubbed his face, over whelmed with anger and hopelessness.
A DNA report will take 24 hours as long as
no deaths were reported, and depending on the work load at the facility, that
could push the results back a few hours but no more, and I can’t count on that.
With a glance Randolph saw it was now 2 a.m., and she’d been picked up around 5
p.m.; this left him with less than a day to figure out what he should or could
do.
Once they get the results, it will be
a simple thing to put her in the computer and discover exactly who they have on
hand. If only she’d carried her ID or gave them her new
name,
that
would have given me more time to investigate what options are
available. Now by afternoon, regardless of what she or I tell the police, the
DNA report will be in, and in a matter of hours Jill will be picked up by the
military for completion of her execution.
Not liking the time crunch,
Randolph drummed his fingers on the table, trying to reboot his brain for what
by necessity would be a fast and dirty job.

He hit the escape key and dumped all
current programs to type out possible scenarios. Not holding at bay his
imagination, Randolph created even the most ridiculous ploys, and developed ten
choices in minutes. Next
came
common devices he’d
need, programs, tools, IDs, vehicles and clothing. Strapped for time, Randolph
accessed the nearby electronic store by net and placed an order for the
required equipment, adding in a large tip in order to guaranty prompt delivery.
Then
came
the accessibility of vehicles, clothes and
incidentals which made any job look just that bit more legitimate. Next came
forging prescriptions for the pain killers he’d need for resupplying his arms
with tools and down loaded this to an all night pharmacy with credentials of a
the medical doctor he’d done a job for. After which, sitting back in the chair
with over-tired eyes, Randolph ignored how many hours he’d been working. He
ordered up additional sandwich supplies to add to his plate of cold cuts and
cheese, which he knew would help energize his
lagging
energizes and took a long hot shower.

After finishing his meal, Randolph looked
over the last of his inbound packages, and set to work unpacking, arranging,
familiarizing, setting up, plugging in and all the other necessary acts before he
truly could buckle down and weed out by availability his options for carrying
out the possible campaigns open to him. By 6 a.m. Randolph chose his path, set
appropriate tools in his arms, and dummied up fake IDs in the name of a
military colonel who fit his body description; that should withstand normal
inquiries, as long as they failed to require a retina scan for Jill’s release.
With all this accomplished, Randolph yawned deeply, stretched, and reasoned he
could catch two hours’ sleep before places he needed to visit opened for
another business day.