The Chasers - Chapter 2

The previous post was titled as the prologue but I'm now going to consider that the first chapter. I would recommend reading it but to be honest the action picks up early enough here that you should be able to get the jist. Hopefully I'll have an action scene for you soon, but I'm really enjoying setting up the plot at this point. Enjoy and please review!

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CHAPTER II

“I don’t even know this guy!” screamed Daphne, her peroxide blonde hair now scooped up in a tight bun, “I have seriously never seen ‘im before in my life.”

She was wrapped in a bathrobe from the hotel now that most of the blood had been scrubbed from her skin. She was young but thankfully of legal age and seemed barely phased by the fact she had just been covered in brain matter from her most recent client.

“We know, we know,” said Cassie, trying to control Daphne’s frantic pacing. Cassie was only 28, a young legal aide before joining Chase after he had assisted her boss in a messy gambling debt gone wrong. Her eyes were a deep and mysterious brown and her delicate face was framed by hazelnut hair in straight and flawless bangs.

“Daphne, you need to tell me what happened,” pleaded Cassie, pushing a seat towards the young prostitute and motioning for her to sit.

“He picked me up just near the airport,” she began, burying her face into her fake tanned hands and long acrylic nails, “He picked me up in his Merc and asked if I’d ever been to the Royale or sommin’. I said no and he said it was heaps pretty and stuff and like told me he was well rich.”

Cassie held up a hand and raised her eyebrows, “The shooting. Tell us about the shooting Daphne.”

“Oh right, yeah. Well I was performing my services as I do right, and then I hear the door open but didn’t think any’fing of it or nuffin’, but then I see the gun and then there was a sound that sounded like a snap and then his head was just everywhere, and the guy came over and shot him more and then he left. He didn’t even check me out or nuffin’.”

“The shooter,” said Chase from across the room, looking out onto the street for anyone watching the hotel, “What did you manage to see of him, what was he wearing, what was the gun like?”

“He was in a suit, but he wore a mask like he was skiing. The gun… The gun I dunno, sorry mista, but he shot it with one hand.”

“Rules out the wife,” said Link from the hallway, “Residue on the wall here means the gun was fire from here. No way is she hitting him in the temple with a one handed shot from this distance.”

Chase moved around the room, the pistol had to have been a small caliber, none of the rounds had gone through Alex Moore, and it had to have been silenced otherwise someone would have heard the shots.

“Why were you handcuffed and gagged?” asked Chase.

“I do whatever the client asks. He was paying double so I didn’t mind.”

“Do you need to be compensated further?”

Daphne was startled; she panicked as she tried to think of a figure that was both worth her silence and not too big to scare away these intimidating suits.

“I want a million otherwise I go to the news,” she said, eyeing off Caroline Moore who was in the corner in tears.

“You get 250,000 and we don’t destroy you in court.”

“Yeah deal.”

As Daphne left Link showed in Randall and Bull, two more of Chase’s field guys who were experts at clean ups. They began to remove the evidence of Alex Moore’s murder. Cassie was taken in convincing Caroline why it was a good idea to give a quarter of a million dollars to a London prostitute.

The banking information that they had found definitely suggested a more sinister motive than a woman scorned but Alex Moore must have seriously pissed off whomever he was involved with if he had been so publicly executed.

“Mrs. Moore, how much longer is this room booked for?” asked Chase, moving away from the window and dialing numbers on his phone.

“A-a, it’s booked for a week, until the end of the conference.”

“Good, we work from here. Caroline you stay with us for now; Cassie will take you out tonight to buy anything you need. Link, once Randall and Bull are done find a way to get everyone else here,” he raised the phone to his ear, “It’s Chase. I need you all in London.”

***

Barely 24 hours after Alex Moore’s heart had stopped beating, Ryan Chase had turned Room 701 into his own little command center. Link had four computer screens lighting up the room from the windows and was typing feverishly on a roll out keyboard. Randall and Bull were busying cleaning and loading pistols that they hopefully wouldn’t need during this visit in London while Cassie went through emails, text messages and memos pulled from Alex Moore’s phone with her team.

Chase’s team had seven members total. There were Chase’s hard fixers, Link, Randall, Bull and himself as well as the soft fixers Tim and Kelly led by Cassie. Between them, they had helped clients from all around the world, from politicians at the wrong end of slander campaigns to high-profile sport stars caught with a little too much magic dust on their upper lip.

They had become renowned for solving problems, for putting to bed those issues that end careers and destroy marriages. Chase was very good at what he did and very rarely did he fail. He’d been in trouble before while working and handled himself just as professionally when under fire. Anyone who contacted him knew his team as the Chasers. They didn’t just make the problem go away, they chased it until it was gone.

Caroline had calmed down and was experiencing therapy at the hands of reality TV. She hadn’t said a word since she had wired what was pocket change to her an unimaginable fortune to Daphne. She was still processing everything that had happened.

“I’ve got something here, maybe,” said Kelly who was their business advisor. She knew how to set up deals, how to win over billionaires and enthuse entrepreneurs. She could sit you down for half an hour and convince you it was in your best interest to swap your first-born son for half a packet of gum.

“He was a good businessman,” she said, “He was keeping track of his competitors through a PI. He’d found out that SwifTEL CEO James Chinner was meeting with a contact that Mr. Moore had met with three times before in the last six weeks.”

“Who’s the contact?” asked Chase, sitting down at the round table that was now drowned in paper and coffee mugs.

“Not sure. He doesn’t use any names in any calendars for those meetings,” said Cassie, “They’re linked to the emails that he receives from dynamic email addresses. All we know is that this PI must had recognized Moore’s contact visually.”

“Alright, Bull, you’re with me, we’re going after Chinner. If he and Moore were both wrapped up with the same anonymous contact, he could be on a hit list too. Cassie, you take Link and find that PI. See what he knows. Call me if any of you find anything else in the mean time.

“Let’s go.”