Hitman's Creed - 18

 

Glenn walked into the coffeehouse on the dot of eight to find that it was filled with customers with not one vacant table, and there was a line at the counter eight people long. Not wanting to interfere with what was obviously the morning rush, he wended his way over to the corner of the pastry case to wait. Joey looked over and smiled before he turned back to take the next order. It took twenty minutes before things calmed down enough that Glenn felt he wouldn't be interrupting and went over to talk to the kid.

Joey took a key ring from his pocket and gave it to Glenn. As their fingers touched Joey felt a momentary rush of desire that he quickly tamped down. "This one's for the front door," he said, not quite looking at Glenn, "and this one goes to the back door."

Glenn, being by necessity a student of human nature, picked up on Joey's feelings and bit back a smile even though it wasn't a smiling matter. The last thing he needed was what he thought was happening, that Joey was becoming too interested in him. 'Or is that just my ego speaking?' he thought with wry amusement as he thanked Joey and told him he'd bring the keys back when he was finished.

Fifteen minutes later he let himself into the house and began doing a walk-through. "This place is about as safe as Central Park at midnight," he muttered while he took notes on what had to be done to make it secure.

When he went into what was obviously Joey's room he got a bit of a jolt. He knew the kid was studying criminal justice but apparently he hadn't really processed that fact. The bookshelves were filled with relevant research material and there were a couple of posters decorating the wall over Joey's bed. He walked over to look more closely at them. Both were prints of photos taken maybe seventy to one-hundred years ago of police officers in action. "History buff too, huh?" he murmured with a smile.

Unable to quell his nosiness he crossed to the computer sitting on the desk opposite the bed and booted it up. It didn't take him long to decide that it was primarily used for Joey's class work. The kid didn't seem to do any web-surfing other than what was related to his studies. Or maybe he did, Glenn discovered as he scrolled though the history file of Joey's homepage. He was not happy with what he found there. Joey had done a search for 'Glenn Tanner'. 'How the hell do you know my last name? I didn't tell you.' It took only a minute for him to find out. Joey had done a search of the county assessor rolls. 'Clever, kid, and stupid on my part. I'll have to have my friendly hacker change that.'

Glenn did smile when he saw the long list of 'Glenn Tanners' Joey had come up with. There were even more than Glenn thought. Why Joey was doing this was something Glenn wasn't ready to think about right now, however. Especially after the way the kid had reacted at the coffeehouse this morning. He shut down the computer and got back to the business at hand.