Chapter 14
James showed up at a brick Craftsman house in Empire, west of Harbor City. It was a drab looking building, the brick a depressing shade of brown following years of neglect. The yard looked like it was similarly neglected with large patches of brown scattered throughout. The house was a two-story on a level lot with a small front porch. A detached garage stood to the left of the house. Three vehicles sat in the stone driveway. The first was a Dodge Magnum sitting on jack stands which was parked close to the garage. The next vehicle was a white Quad Cab RAM 1500 with “Red Briar Security” blazoned on the side. The third vehicle was an older red Toyota Tacoma access cab with “Mapleton Realty” on the doors in white vinyl. James parked his “Harbor City Contracting” F-150 work truck in front of the red Tacoma.
James hopped out of the truck. He was dressed for a workout, just like Steve invited him over for. Gym shorts, gray t-shirt, and tennis shoes. He carried a bag with a change of clothes and some stuff to shower with him to the door. He rang the doorbell, but it made some weird buzzing noise. He knocked instead.
“Door’s open!” A male voice came in from inside. James didn’t recognize it, but followed the command and entered.
The house was relatively bare. The living room had no furniture in it, only a couple boxes on hardwood floors. James called out. “Hello?”
“Come downstairs!” There was the same voice again.
“Close the front door, go through the living room and dining room, then down the door in the kitchen and the steps, basement door is open.” That was Steve.
James walked through the dining room. It was empty except for some boxes. The kitchen looked like it was remodeled sometime in the 90’s and was pretty bare. James saw the basement and headed downstairs. The basement was unfinished, but was set up with several workout machines, a free-weight bench, a stationary bike, a treadmill, and a wall of full-length mirrors. A stereo was playing heavy metal, and a TV hung on one wall by the furnace.
In the center of the room, two men were working out on the free-weight bench. Steve, dressed in a sleeveless t-shirt and black shorts, lay on the bench as he pushed a weight bar up. Above him stood another man. He was on the heavier side with thinning hair, and was dressed similar in an old t-shirt with the sleeves cut off and a pair of black workout shorts.
“Okay, one more, you got this.” The chunky man said to Steve as he pushed the weight bar up one last time. James saw the weight on it. 2 full plates of 20 kilos on each end, with a 20 kilo bar. 100 kilograms. Or as the Yanks say, 225 pounds. Steve pushed the bar up, then the chunky man helped him put the bar on its rest. “Good job, bro, good job.”
Steve leaned up and rubbed the sweat off of his face with his shirt. James had to admit, Steve was even more jacked without any sleeves.
“Oi, did ya rob a Planet Fitness or somethin’?” James said as he walked over to the two men. As he approached the chunky man, he extended his hand. “James St. Croix.”
“Sam, Sam Mapleton. Good to meet you.” The two shook hands. James was taller than Sam who stood about or 1.75 meters or 5’9”. Steve was a couple inches taller, and James was the tallest of the three by two more inches.
“Sam’s a friend of mine. He comes over, works out.” Steve said as he stood up off of the bench and shook James’s hand. “Thanks for coming over.”
“Thanks for havin’ me.”
“Yeah, with Steve’s help I’ve lost about a sixty pounds in the last year. Still got a way to go, but not as big as I once was.” Sam said. James looked up and did the math quickly in his head to convert. Even after living the States for years, he thought in Metric for almost everything.
“Sixty pounds, that’s 27 kilos. Quoite impressive.” Steve walked over to a mini fridge he had in the corner and grabbed a couple bottles of water. James turned to Steve and kept talking. “So, how long ya been ‘ere?”
“About a month. Closed on the house a month ago, been unpacking ever since. Bedroom is set up, kids rooms are set up, but the rest of the house is a work in progress.” Steve handed James a bottle. “What’s your normal workout like?” James opened the bottle and took a sip before answering.
“Normally, I work all day. Cloimb steps, scream at fuckwits, chase down wankers, shit like that. Maybe a little cardio here and there. Nothing like what you were doing.” James pointed to the weight bench.
“That’s okay, everyone at their own pace. We’ll work out for a bit, then get some food, maybe a drink or something later on.”
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The three men worked out for the next hour, rotating through the various machines. James hadn’t been this tired in a while. The three men bullshitted with each other to break the ice. It seems like Sam and Steve met about a year ago and that Sam helped Steve buy this house for a discount. They made a joke about how the last tenant was a single woman who was “extremely motivated” to move. After she left, Sam sold the house to Steve. The way they joked about her made James pay particular attention to how they described her. She was single, in her 30’s, brunette, very skinny, and was apparently a screamer.
They talked about women for a while, and the three seemed to have a mutual fondness and displeasure of the fairer species. They loved women, but hated putting up with their shit. All three were single, though Steve asked Sam about his “Bubbly friend, Kim.” Sam just said it was complicated.
James really wanted to know what they were talking about when his phone rang. It was Tommy. He answered it on speaker.
“The fook you want?”
“I gotta problem James. I don’t know what I’m doing. How do I install this thing? I mean, how does this shit work?” Tommy sounded flabbergasted. A loud scream came from the other room, a woman yelling about some blind cunt being offside.
“Da fook?” James asked.
“They’re watching rugby in the next room. Well, she’s screaming at the TV and he’s watching quietly.”
“Oi, you’re on speaka ‘ere. You on speaka?” James asked, still hearing the screaming over the phone.
“No.” Tommy said.
“Wait, she’s that loud?” Sam said.
“Whose playing?” Steve said.
“Who was that?” Tommy asked, his voice sounding scared that other people were listening.
“Never mind them. Whose playin’?” James asked.
“I don’t know. Storm and cats. They’re wearing a bunch of purple.” Tommy said, sounding a little scared.
“Melbourne Storm. NRL. They’re playing the Panthers. Fook the Panthers.” James said.
“Fuck’em.” Steve said.
“Fuck the Panthers. Who are they?” Sam added. James chuckled a bit.
“James, I’m scared here. I’m not sure how to hook these up. There’s nothing to clip these these things on to, and they look shady as fuck.” As Tommy said that, Steve stood up and walked towards James. This sounded familiar to him.
“Just clip’em on to the wires, white to white and black to black.” James said over the phone.
“I don’t want to cause a fire or short these things out, then cause a fire.” Tommy said. James was ready to call him a fanny or a daft twat, but Steve spoke up.
“Hey, mind if I…” Steve pointed to the phone. James handed it to him.
“Tommy, it’s Steve. You alone? No one hears this?” Steve said in a calm voice.
“Yeah.”
“Good. I set up those cams you’ve got. They’re a piece of shit, but they’ll work easily by ripping or cutting off the gator clips, stripping the wires a little, then connecting them in to the main wiring that the rest of the light fixture uses. You should be able to connect them using the wire nuts provided for the light fixture. Wrap them up with electrical tape to insulate them. Then, slide the camera into position and connect it there. Problem with those cameras is they only have a small battery and run best when the light is on. They’ll have power for about 30 minutes in night mode before cutting out and recharge when there’s power from the switch. Can you rip off the gator clips?”
“Yeah. One sec.” Steve could hear a little struggle come from over the phone. “There, done.”
“Good. Now, you have three wires on that camera. One is the blue transmitter wire, one a black electrical and one a white electrical. You’re going to connect the black wire to the black wire on the fixture and the white wire to the white wire. Then, once those are connected, you’ll fit the camera into place.” Steve kept his cool as he talked. James was confused, and Sam was intrigued.
“What if I’m doing 2 with this fixture?” Tommy asked.
“What do you mean?” Steve responded.
“Well, these fixtures have 5 places this will fit and match. I was thinking of having one out the side and one out the bottom.” Steve was shaking his head before Tommy finished talking.
“Don’t. Those are little fisheye lenses and the microphones will interfere with each other. Best case scenario they’ll cancel each other out. Worst case, they cause so much feedback that your target hears it and takes a look. Just put one in either the bottom or the side.” Steve said. Tommy was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, he used hushed tones.
“The side. It’ll cover most of the room and see the bathroom, too. Her side is the left side of the room and bed. One second.”
The guys listened for a moment as Tommy did something on his end. It sounded like he was putting the camera in place.
“Good, in place and connected. Now, that third wire?”
“Try to make sure it’s not touching an unshielded wire. Feed it in slowly into the light box then carefully connect the black and white wires to the connections you made earlier. Use the wire nuts and tape.”
“One sec.” A longer pause as Tommy did the wiring on his end. Sam walked over to James and whispered.
“What’s going on? Installing spy cameras?” James stood for a moment, not sure how to react. “She hot?” James nodded, surprised by the question. “Nice.”
“Okay, wires are connected. Now I just screw the light in place, cover everything up, then put the power back on and test it?”
“Yep. Once you do that, let me know, and I’ll test the connection from this end. They’re pre-configured, but I don’t trust these ones. Might last a month if you’re lucky.” Steve said, not letting his disdain for these cheap cameras be hidden.
“One minute.” Tommy was silent for a moment, then it was loud as he walked through the Living Room. Morgana screamed something unintelligible at the television. Tommy opened a door, flipped a breaker, then walked back to the Master Bedroom, closing the door behind him. He turned the light on. “It’s on. And, I don’t see any smoke or fires yet.”
“That’s a good sign. How many more lights you working on?” Steve asked, sounding like he’s spent a decade walking people through setting up spy equipment over the phone.
“Two more, but I’m not touching the Dining Room chandelier until after this game.” Tommy said. Steve nodded along.
“Good call. Cut the power during the game and she might just kill you with your own tools. Let me know when you get the others installed. Call James back and I’ll make sure they’re working. Talk to ya later.”
“Later. Thanks.”
“Bye.” Steve hung up the phone and handed it back to James. “You know those cameras might last a month, maybe two if you’re lucky, right?”
James nodded. “Yeah, I’m gettin’ some better ones, but they won’t be ‘ere for a couple weeks. Then I need to get back in to install them. That’ll be easy, though.”
“Why’s that?” Sam asked as he walked over next to Steve.
“They’re smoke detectors, too. I can put one in every room, tie them together, they’ll never know they’re there. And I’ll make sure that the whole building gets new ones installed so there won’t be any suspicion.” James said, slightly proud of his plan.
“Nice.” Sam said. “Grab a few extra of those cameras. You know, just in case.” The chunky man winked.
“Depends on the bandwidth. There’s only so much traffic I can hide through the company router. Anything more than a few streams here and there and it’ll draw suspicion.” Steve said.
“What about another network, or hiding them among other streams? Doesn’t the building have a security system of some sort?” Sam asked.
“Not with cameras.” Steve responded.
“Not yet. What if we added cameras to the site? Maybe even give people a chance to have ones installed in their apartments? Then any feeds that come in would look like just normal customers.” James replied. Steve’s eyes lit up.
“And, some people will pay to do that. Much easier to mask a stream among a couple hundred than a couple dozen.”
“Fook, make a pitch for this upgrade, I’ll see that it goes through.” James smiled as he said that.
“Hell yeah. This’ll be much easier to hide in the long term. I can configure the servers from the Red Briar end of things to push to the other server for safe keeping.” Steve replied. Sam had a surprised look on his face while James looked a little confused.
“Yeah, what the fook was that about? I followed the IP as far as I could, and I was on a secured server hosting a blog about roadkill recipes. Ya got some strange hobbies if that’s yer soite.”
Sam’s face changed from surprised to petrified. He knew something that he wasn’t telling James. Steve turned and was about to say something when he received a notification on his phone. He pulled it out and checked it.
“Looks like your boy did a good job. First camera is up and showing a live feed.” Steve pulled it up. His eyes went wide.
“Holy shit! Now I see why you did this. Check this out.” Steve showed the phone to Sam. He whistled.
“And this is with that shitty little camera?” He asked. Steve nodded, then turned the phone to James. It showed Morgana, wearing a tight purple polo shirt and very short shorts, looking up at the light, admiring it for a moment. She then walked to her closet, bent over showing off her tight little ass, and picked up something from the floor. It looked like a hoodie. She threw it on the bed, then turned to the dresser next to the bed. She opened a drawer and pulled out a sports bra.
Morgana turned toward her bed, in full view of the hidden camera. She grabbed the bottom of her polo shirt and pulled it up and over her head. She was naked from the waist up, showing off her full, beautiful tits. She tossed the polo shirt on the bed, then pulled the sports bra on. After a quick moment to adjust the girls, she grabbed her hoodie, a purple one with a Melbourne Storm logo on it and pulled it on over her head. A quick adjustment of the sweater and pull of her hair from inside of the collar to free it and she was good to go. She left the room, turning the light off behind her.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, please tell me ya saved that.” James said, breaking the silence.
“Yeah, it’s saved on the server.” Steve replied.
“Who was that? I’d like a piece of that ass. Fuck.” Sam said, admiring the hot blonde.
“Her name’s Morgana. Tommy boy’s had a crush on her for a while, and I talked him into installing those cameras. He’s gonna help me fuck’er.” James said. He couldn’t believe what he said. He had no clue-
“Need a hand with that? I’d love to make her scream.” Sam said, barely taking his eyes off of the screen as they re-watched the footage of Morgana dressing.
“She’s probably more of a moaner. We’ll find out later on, assuming these cameras don’t break.” James said.
“I’ll cut my bid for the security install to cost plus expenses if I get to fuck her.” Steve said.
“I think we can work out a deal on that. Y’know, she’s probably not gonna root ya by choice.” James replied.
“And?” Sam and Steve said in stereo. James smiled. Sam and Steve looked at each other for a moment, then backed off for a second. They spoke in hushed tones for a moment. James couldn’t make out what they were saying. Then they returned. Steve spoke first.
“How serious are you about fucking her? Like, how far you willing to go?”
James thought for a moment before he spoke.
“Considerin’ we already committed a couple felonies here with this little camera stunt and we’re going even further to have an excuse to bug’er pad, I’d say pretty fookin’ serious.”
Steve and Sam looked at each other and both nodded.
“Let’s talk about this over lunch. You help build that IKEA table in the dining room, and Sam and I will make a couple calls. We might be able to help you with this. If you’re serious. I can’t say more until lunch gets here. Let’s go upstairs.”
With that, the three men walked upstairs. Once in the kitchen, Steve grabbed his laptop and navigated to the Club’s website while Sam pulled up the burner phone app on his phone and talked to Pedro, the IT guy who seemed to run the Club. James went to work on putting together a dining room set.
