After going through everything they had on the guy, Gavin could find absolutely nothing on Dave's whereabouts. Gavin found so little, he was convinced that he had made negative progress. Dave hadn't been to his apartment, he hadn't paid for anything with a card, and the military grade face recognition software that Gavin had "borrowed" from the feds hadn't picked up anyone matching Dave's description on any city security cam.
Gavin was not amused, to say the least. It was usually his job to track down targets for the Crew using his above average knowledge of computer and camera hacking, a skill he frequently wrote off as simply pressing buttons. Previously, only one person had been able to hide from Gavin longer than a few hours; Ryan, on one of his Murder Breaks, had successfully avoid being found for three days by knocking out the city's entire power grid so he "could get some peace and quiet."
However, as Dave hadn't incapacitated the city's power supply yet, Gavin was forced to assume that Dave had fled the Achievement City immediately after the shooting. A nagging thought at the back of his brain forced Gavin to consider that he had been outsmarted. Being the circumstantially smartest person on the Crew, Gavin did not enjoy that thought. He ran one final scan of the cameras, knowing that his search would come up empty, and scowled at his monitor.
Meanwhile, Jack, the impromptu leader of the Fake AH Crew, was very quickly learning how much micro-management had to be done to keep everything running decently smooth. There were so many teams and teams within teams that it was nearly impossible to keep everything straight without a highly detailed spreadsheet detailing exactly which member of the Crew was on what team. Not to mention the fusion teams, consisting of two or more teams, going on a job together. Jack was gaining a whole new kind of respect for Geoff.
A giant whiteboard was set up near the couch, where Jack was drawing out a diagram of each team and the jobs they had taken on for the week. He could practically feel Kdin's annoyance; Kdin had been the go-between for the Main Crew and the large outer fringe for years now and probably knew everyone outside the Main Crew so well that he sent them birthday cards on time, a feat the Main Crew had never bothered to attempt even among themselves. Jack could barely keep the newest Crew members straight.
A hastily set up Skype call let Kdin see the disorganized monstrosity Jack was scrawling on the whiteboard. Occasionally, Jack would stop and stare at the board in total bewilderment. Neither he nor Kdin knew exactly how Geoff had managed everything, but damn it if they weren't doing their best to pick up the pieces left behind. Everything would settle eventually, or so they hoped.
If there was one person in the entire Crew who didn't know what to think about the whole situation, it was Jeremy. He had only been inducted into the Main Crew two months ago, and was still walking on eggshells, despite everyone's friendly attitude towards him. Hell, it was possible that everyone hated Jeremy, and only put up with him because Geoff told them too.
With Geoff gone, Jeremy had reason to believe his life was in danger. He had locked himself in his room under the pretext of mourning, counted his bullets, and readied his parachute should he need to make a quick getaway and jump out of the penthouse window. Geoff had been the only one that Jeremy fully trusted in the Crew, not that the others knew that. Jeremy had always prided himself in his acting ability.
Still, the others seemed very serious about this whole avenge Geoff thing. That was a plus of being in a tight-knit Crew, if one of us dies, the others go on a suicide mission for revenge, Jeremy thought. People died every day. The Crew killed people every day. Just because it was one of their own this time shouldn't be much different, right?
Ryan and Michael had decided that they didn't want to sit around waiting for Gavin to find something, they were too selfish and clueless about running the Crew to stay and help Jack, and they didn't want to break their bad-ass motifs around Jeremy, whom they were still cautiously unfamiliar with. So, they went down to the Nothing But Ducks Ice Cream Parlor and decided to get answers for themselves.
Unfortunately for them, the shop was closed, having been turned into a crime scene and in need of some serious clean up. The pair stared at the police tape blocking the door solemnly, knowing that they might never get revenge for Geoff, if the muttered cursing from Gavin all morning had been any indication. The bright police tape clashed horribly with the soft pastels of the shop, drawing the gaze and making it that much harder to look away.
The two stuck out almost more than the police tape, with Ryan in his mask and Michael with his assault rifle. They didn't stick out more than the weirdo with a paper bag on his head walking towards them, though. Michael moved towards his gun, ready to take out this threat. In his mind, it was probably Dave, and the bag was why Gavin hadn't picked anything up with his fancy software.
"The Vagabond and Mogar, isn't it?" the man asked, making a big show of looking at his watch.
"Who's asking?" Ryan replied.
"Oh, no one," the man singsonged. "An Inconvenience wanted me to give you this." He tossed a wadded up towel at Michael's feet.
"Fuckin' who?" Michael asked, nudging the towel with his foot. There was something rather solid inside, but neither Michael nor Ryan were taking chances bending over with this bag-headed dude staring them down.
"The man who killed your precious boss," the man said. "He goes by An Inconvenience now. Don't go looking for him. Or me."
"Look, I don't know who you are, and I don't want to know, but I do want to know what you know, because you know what happened to Geoff, and I want to know what you know about that," Michael spat, leveling his gun. He paused and glanced at Ryan. "Did that make sense?" Ryan shrugged in response.
"It doesn't matter what I know, since you'll be dead or irrelevant before you find out," the man stated, making a show of checking one watch, then the other. "Oh, look at the time! I really must be going. You understand how it is." The man saluted the Crew members, and then took off running down the street.
Michael raised his gun to shoot. Ryan held his hand out, signaling for Michael to stop. "Wouldn't want him to be too dead to talk, would we?" Ryan said, pulling a few throwing knives out of his pocket. He tossed one casually down the road, sticking it deep into the man's side.
Yet the man did not slow. Ryan threw another knife, to a similar effect, and the man kept running even though he had two puncture wounds bleeding steadily down his torso. Ryan took off sprinting behind him, Michael following closely. Michael dared to take a few shots at the man, but missed much to his and Ryan's annoyance.
The mystery man led them on a wild chase through the sidewalk and alleys before somehow managing to lose them in a move that made Ryan wonder what kind of low-budget, poorly written film he was living in. The man had turned a corner, and when the pair followed seconds later, he was nowhere to be seen. The turn lead to a dead end brick wall, with nothing but a dumpster occupied by an absolutely vile cat that attacked Michael three times while he and Ryan searched for any sign of the man.
Eventually, the two accepted defeat, and, at Ryan's request, they trudged back to the dropped towel. Ryan poked the lump with his foot, and being satisfied with not exploding, he kicked off the top fold, revealing the barrel of a gun. He knelt down, unwrapping the rest of their 'present', as he called it, and uncovered a gun with a sticky note attached to the handle.
Thought you might like this. I mean, I took Geoffs life, so here's a little somethin in return. Its the gun that killed him if you couldnt figure it out.
-An Inconvenience
Ryan carefully re-wrapped their present. They had finger prints now, and a writing sample. If Gavin couldn't do something with that, the Crew may have already lost.