All Chapters of Drengr: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

I dialed Bluebird’s number from the new phone. Jennifer Yang was the most brilliant hacker I knew. She was even better than Jack. She was a silver spoon baby and worked for nobody. We met in college and she did everything for me that I couldn’t do through Jack or didn’t want them to know about.“Hey, Bluebird,” I said when she answered.“Hey Jericho. What do you need?” She was always straight to the point and a no-nonsense type of woman. I smiled.“Phone trace on Charles Huxman, sending his details now,” I said.“I’ll send you everything I find. I assume you want his live location?” dhe asked me.“You know me too well. Send it to this number. I’ll send you four more names,” I said.Jennifer laughed. “You plan on being busy.”“No rest for the wicked,” I said and ended the call. I closed the laptop and put it back in the backpack.“Bo!” I called out to him. He popped his head around the corner, his phone glued to his ear. “Call me with a drop when you’re ready.”“I got you, man,” he sai

I walked back to where I’d left my bike and drove back over to Skokie. I walked into the hotel and up to my room. I put the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door and went inside.A dull headache thumped behind my eyelids and I knew it was exhaustion speaking. I got into the shower and stood there until the water became tepid. I got clean underwear from the bottom zip of the backpack and sat down on the bed and opened a bottle of water from the mini fridge in the room. I sent the next name on the list to Jennifer. Kade Kominski. I took the laptop and opened it again and accessed my emails.There were four from Jack. ‘Check In’ – ‘Are you safe?’ – ‘Bro!’ – ‘Jericho!!’ I opened the most recent one and typed a message to him.‘Extraction complete. Safe.’ I sent the message and closed the laptop. I looked at my watch. It was close to 2 a.m. I wanted to call Charlotte but she would be sleeping and she didn’t want to talk to me. She had great timing though and I was glad she was mad enough at me

I swung the strap of the rifle across my chest so the rifle was hanging down my back with the barrel downwards. I got up and ran to where the ladder was located. I kept count in my head and I was twenty seconds in. I descended the ladder quickly and ran across 54th Avenue and stood with my back against the warehouse building. I took one of the Jericho’s from the shoulder holster and felt human again.They could come from either side or both sides, there were two of them. That’s what I would do. I’d move in from either side. ‘Left or right, come on, Jericho.’ The left side had more cover. I looked around the corner of the building once more and ran past the construction debris that littered the ground to the next warehouse.I looked around the left corner and the shot clattered against the wall above my head. They were using silencers, a bit louder than mine. I knelt on the ground with one knee and looked around the corner again as Dillinger peeked around the corner and my shot hit him

I briefly closed my eyes. I knew she was watching Robert’s funeral as well. Jennifer had loved him, just like I had. I forced the memories away, focusing on the present and the situation I now found myself in. “Hang on.”I plugged the earphones into the phone and put the earpiece in my ear. I put the phone back inside my jacket and kept it open. I was going to need access to my guns.“Where am I going, Bluebird?” I turned away from the sight of Robert’s coffin being lowered into the ground. I didn’t want to see it anymore. It was the final goodbye, Robert’s final resting place and it broke something inside me.“Goodman is on the other side of that lake and Black is on your left, right in those clusters of trees,” she said.I turned to the right and made my way through the graves and back toward the entrance. I would circle him from behind. “Thanks Jen.” I disconnected the call because she wouldn’t want me to hear her cry.I saw him standing between two trees with a pair of binocular

“I’m not armed,” she said from behind the wall. I wasn’t aiming the gun in her direction but kept it in my hand on my lap.“Neither am I,” I said. She looked around the corner of the wall and something in her eyes changed. “Let’s talk.”She moved to the closest couch and sat down. “How did you figure it out?” The despondency in her voice might have made me feel something if she hadn’t tried to kill me.“It wasn’t that hard, but I knew for sure the moment Dillinger and Mendez came for me,” I said.She lowered her head. “They’re dead.” Her voice was softer now, almost like she was talking to herself.“You always were the sly one,” I said to her. “The fox in the chicken coop.”“It is what it is,” she said and looked up.“Why though?” I asked her. “We’re supposed to be a team.”“The fucking rejection, Jericho! Everyone else always being in your shadow, pick one!”“What rejection? You were always part of the team!” I said angrily.“I was good enough to sleep with after Nataly, and then the