The Kingmaker

16 - Bigger Picture

 Why hadn't she thought of it before? With Alexandria being a seaside city, it should have been the first thing she considered. Out on the water, after all, there were no prying eyes, and harbor patrol was hardly a concern when most officers could be bought off with a few hundred bucks. And even if anyone happened to be looking out over the sea from the shore, the smoke production was hard to see through the heavy fog that always sat over the choppy waves.

Now, there was the issue of unsteady water making it quite unsafe to make crystal meth, but criminals rarely cared about safety measures when profits were at stake.

God, how convenient. Eden peered through her binoculars at the cabin cruiser boats that drifted to and fro over the water, wishing she had a boat to get closer with. But of course, that would only lead to her getting shot as soon as they saw her. Too bad she wasn't a stronger swimmer. A pair of floaties and she would have easily jumped into the waves.

But now this presented a problem: how was she supposed to get anywhere near there? She didn't stand a chance of interfering with the operations from the boardwalk. And trying to intercept the shipment hand-off in the morning would be even more difficult - she was only one person, after all, and all she had was a small handgun with seven bullets in it. Scarcely enough to face down what would be a small army standing guard.

She sighed and narrowed her eyes, still staring through her binoculars as she mulled over the possibilities. She had hoped things would turn out easier than this, that maybe they would set up shop in some c***k house that she could easily sabotage. Three days of inactivity wasn't enough. She had to keep them out of the game for a week, maybe more if she wanted to have a shot at creating a true supply vacuum and sticking her foot in the door.

Or maybe, she thought, she was looking at this wrong.

She nibbled on the tip of her thumb, pondering her choices. She still had the cocaine bricks at home, one completely intact while the other was half-cut. She hadn't been intending to start selling them on the street, that would attract far too much attention and suspicion from whoever owned the turf she tried to deal on. She well knew that suppliers often put trace amounts of signature chemicals in their batches so that they could identify them later on, distinguish them from foreign batches. Who knew what would happen if someone discovered that she was selling from Nate's lost stash?

But she had been planning to use the blow to carve out a friendly niche for herself with the street communities. Everyone loved a stranger with generous hands who could supply treats on a regular basis.

But maybe she was looking at it from the wrong angle. Maybe the picture she was looking at was too small...

Maybe, Eden thought with a smile, she could put all that cocaine to better use. If she started doling it out a fraction of an ounce at a time, where would it take her once it was all gone? Shaky, questionable relationships with the drug addicts on the street who might turn on her the second they realized she didn't have anymore? Sure, they might give her valuable information while they still thought they could get a reward out of her for it, but that would end as soon as she became unable to shave the edge off their addictions with little gifts.

No, she needed something more long lasting. An investment more sound than the good will of people she couldn't rely on.

She needed to think with a little more ambition.

And ah, if the perfect idea hadn't struck her just now like a lightning bolt -!

Eden leaned back and set the binoculars down on her lap, no longer interested in how to get to those cabin cruiser vessels anymore. She wasn't even interested in intercepting or sabotaging the sale whenever it happened - in fact, the sooner it was, the better. As it was, the hooker had said it would be a few more days, so Eden knew that she might as well bide her time and execute it with care. As simple as it was, the margin for error was far too small to dismiss. She had all the time in the world to prepare; it would be that much more of a shame if she f****d it up.

The cocaine - she was glad she hadn't cut up both bricks. The half-brick she would have to use for this too; it would make what she intended to do far more convincing.

With a smile, Eden turned on her heel and departed from the beaches, her mind whirring as she considered what she would need to do tomorrow. If everything went well, the supply vacuum would widen even more, giving her all the time she could possibly want to slide into the jungle of the Underground. And she wouldn't have to rely on cocaine stolen out of a dead man's condo to do it, either.

----------

"You heard about the fire?"

The sun was coming up; night duty was over. Zero had just slid into the front passenger seat of the SUV with two other mercenaries to head back to where they were staying. One of them had volunteered to drive, the other planted himself in the back.

"No," Zero said. "Dunno about any fires."

His partner had refused to ride with them, saying that he couldn't abide the stink that clung to Zero's clothes. The other two in their assigned squad had only shrugged and left it at that. They were closer to his age, part of the less rigorous newer generation of private security contractors who didn't rely on discipline so religiously when it came to personal habits.

"Yeah, they busted a meth ring working out of there. Students, you know? Man, if you knew where I come from...small town, God and country first, if you got caught with anything that wasn't a tobacco pipe, you got your ass beat black and blue by your mama and the preacher."

"You a midwest boy, Sam?" the man in the backseat asked, speaking around a cigarette in his mouth. "You sound like my girlfriend's husband."

"Yeah? What's her name? You sharing?"

"Her husband sure is."

Both men laughed aloud until the driver suddenly looked over at Zero. "You good, man? You're pretty quiet, makes me nervous."

"Leave him, he's high as a kite right now. Red Chief says he walked off saying he needed to piss and came back smelling like he smoked six joints inside a shoebox."

"Red Chief? You talking about -"

"Yeah. He's half-Cherokee, you didn't know that?"

 Sam glanced back over his shoulder. "No. So what, that's his Indian name or something?"

"Don't be an i***t. I call him that because he goes red as a f*****g chili pepper whenever he gets pissed. Anytime he gets off post with Zero, for one."

They laughed again.

"Ben, leave him alone, man just wants to relax a little. Ain't that right? Zero?"

That was the downside of being in the company of men like these. They expected camaraderie, conversation. He was prepared to provide neither - that was the whole point of his charade, to drive everyone off and keep them at a distance. He didn't need Ben and Sam sniffing around whenever he left in the middle of the night. That was the surest way of being exposed, and then his employer would have a lot more questions about what he was up to than he would be able to answer.

And once they figured out something was awry, others would find out too. It was just the nature of these things.

He remained staring out the window, keeping his body visibly relaxed and unresponsive.

"Man, he's gone. Guy couldn't wait."

They laughed again and turned the conversation to other topics while they drove on, leaving Zero to contemplate his plans in peace. Tomorrow night, the old Ingram property. But he would need to find out what he could beforehand, snoop around on the internet to find out specific information first. He was sure he could unearth at least the names of whoever lived there now.

All in good time, he thought as he watched asphalt whiz by in a blur on the other side of the glass he leaned the side of his head against. The mark couldn't stay hidden for long.

He'd find her.