“What if they then just ice you themselves?”
“There is that. I can almost certainly beat them, but that blows my cover spectacularly. Let’s save that one.”
Something else occurred to me.
“He’s hunting us, now.”
“Um, yes,” she agreed.
“Okay, we need a massive DNA distraction, and use vehicles only once.”
“Urine?” she asked.
“Yes. Piss in a bucket, pour it all over the landscape as we drive. Saturate the area.”
She said, “I’ll visit the hardware store.”
I hoped he’d make the amateur mistake of trying to catch up with me. That’s exactly what I wanted. He might manage a clear shot from a hundred meters, but his M.O. was to get close and personal. While I couldn’t predict what trick he’d use, I was confident of knowing them when I saw them.
Given that, I went out to conduct a reconnaissance. I needed to know the area, so I could look for anything unusual.
You probably don’t see things the way I do. To most people, this was an area of comfortable but basic inns, franchised restaurants, fuel and charge stations, and a few hectares of weed-covered basalt awaiting development.
I saw it as a combat environment.
It would be difficult but not impossible to advance on foot through those weeds. It would work better at night, and take heavy clothing. It would also be too slow. Still, launchers could be hidden in cracks, though they’d be compromised in use.
All these inns could be sniper points on any facing window. Some didn’t open, so that would require drilling a hole. That reduced their efficacy. It would take time to track said hole, but there would be some DNA and probably other evidence. The ones that opened were prime positions. I took some images, so we could assess angles and risks. There were the roofs, of course. A couple of video pans would establish shadow areas and cover.
Trash receptacles and privacy and sound barriers offered locations. There was the power terminal that fed the area. These were easy places to stash gear in discreet packages for later use. I’d have to make sure they were stirred up or examined.
There was a slim risk of toxins being slipped into food. We wouldn’t eat in this area.
I walked through the lot, examining the vehicle charge posts. One could be boobytrapped, so I would not take a convenient slot, or the last one left during busy hours.
Just in case, we’d need a distorter on the window of the room to obscure our conversations from a vibration reader. We’d keep the dark screens down and the window polarized. We’d do our own housekeeping.
I felt comfortable. I knew what threats we could face and how to prevent them. Of course, feeling comfortable indicated I’d missed something. I’d keep studying.
By the time I patrolled the area, just a couple of kilometers by eye and a kilometer radius on foot and returned to the room, Silver was done. I noted the vehicle’s presence, tapped on the door in code, opened it by key, nodded at the stun wand she held, and closed it.
She pointed to a couple of buckets and some spray bottles. Good. We’d dissipate our scent all over the valley.
“In other news, I have this.” She pointed at a graph, gestured and elaborated.
“This account opened right after the first hit we’ve tracked back to him. It got a large initial deposit. It gets occasional trickles of dividends, other small deposits, then it got another large one here, after his next kill. After that, he got smart. As you said, he started having the funds trickle in, from several alleged contractees. It’s ongoing, but there are noticeable peaks after each job. No way it’s coincidental.”
“Why hasn’t anyone found this before?”
“We may not have been looking. But, there’s not enough here to justify what you speculate. Either he gets paid a lot less, or he has other resources.”
“Other resources,” I said. “He’ll have some in Earth cash cards, some in bullion, some in tools and other infrastructure. He’s likely living high when he can. However, this is his nest egg. How much is it?”
“Currently about eight hundred thousand.”
“That is a not lot of money, really,” I said.
“I have no idea how to seize it, with our laws,” she said.
“We don’t need to. The government will. It’ll be snagged for escrow, put to earning interest, and if the owner comes forth and identifies themselves, he gets it back. Otherwise, it’ll default to the Freehold along with the interest. It’ll take a Citizen’s signature at the very least, but it’s doable.”
“How is it possibly constitutional?” she asked.
“That one rarely referenced section that prohibits entities from creating local government not respecting of the Constitution, exploiting minors and acts against the Freehold. Easy to prove he’s not the former, all he has to do is ID himself, show up and claim the money.”