thundered as he hastily settled himself down into his booth. “I can’t talk about this right now, but I want to get it resolved as soon as possible. Meet me at nine tomorrow morning at the mill.” He punched a button on his cell phone and slammed it down on the table. He pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped the sweat off his brow. Something had flustered the normally even-keeled judge, and Piper was determined to find out what.
Over the last few weeks, she had been able to identify which school young Chris Donavan attended by researching the crest she had seen on the picture Sean had shown her. She had finally settled on Chris being the linchpin, that, if pulled, would collapse the relationship between the judge and the Donavans. Her best bet was to combine two cardinal sins, “don’t mess with the kids and don’t have an unhealthy interest in young boys.”
Determining how that would play out had slowed Piper down a bit. She was certain that she never actually wanted Chris to be in any danger, it would only need to look as though the judge was targeting him. She had begun spending time watching Chris’s comings and goings. He was a simple boy who didn’t seem as though he had been tainted yet by the power of his family. He played fairly on the playground and took time to stop and watch the bugs crawling across the sidewalk on his way home from school. He was always accompanied by someone. It was either his father or another man who Piper didn’t recognize.
She thought that she may, at some point, have to lay eyes on Sean again if he was ever appointed to walking-home-from-school duty, and she had decided it didn’t matter. She intended to seek retribution at some point, but she could be patient. She wouldn’t let her personal vendetta overshadow her main objective.
The judge’s presence at the diner tonight and his cryptic conversation had Piper’s senses tingling with excitement. She didn’t know what had upset him or who was on the other end of the line, but she was pretty certain she knew which mill he was talking about. Back when she was tailing him more closely he had pulled into the old complex of mills that had once housed a textile company years ago. She wasn’t able to follow him into the long empty parking lot, but from the street she had seen him pull up to a loading dock and climb the stairs to a side door.
She had become savvier at using the database at the cable company to find the information she was looking for. Both Christian and the judge had a GPS system on their cell phones that was tied to their data plans. The information ran through a sister company of ComCable. She had access to their information and could track their past locations as well as anytime they had been in close proximity to each other. After seeing the judge enter the old mill she had cross-referenced their two phones to see if Christian had ever been in that area at the same time. With this information she was able to determine that the mill was a preferred meeting place for the judge and Christian.
She paid her bill and hustled out the diner while the judge was chatting with the waitress. Piper slipped out the door and quickly crossed the street. If she was going to be ready to do surveillance on that meeting tomorrow she’d need all night to prepare.
Chapter Thirteen
God bless search engines, she thought to herself. Over the last few weeks the Internet had provided her with ample sites that sold interesting spy gear. She had invested in a small hearing enhancement system that would help amplify any conversations she was trying to overhear. She decided she needed some form of protection so a stun gun had been her weapon of choice since she assumed her background, or lack thereof, may keep her from being able to secure a gun permit. She had two micro cameras that she still couldn’t figure out how to work. Hollywood had certainly made all this espionage stuff look much easier than it was.
She pulled a dark pair of jeans, a black sweatshirt, and a baseball hat from her closet. The key to all of this would be to continue to maintain anonymity. The advantage of not being a professional was she didn’t have to pretend to be