“Doc, Ray’s on 3 for you.” He watched Emily walk away, enjoying the way her body filled out her dress. LaRue remembered their first meeting. He had been interviewing just a few. He had only been out of culinary school for a year, but with his confidence and a loan from Tommy, the young chef felt ready to open his first restaurant, and needed an assistant.

        Emily had been his fourth interview and, honestly two of the first three were more qualified than she was. It was a basic mistake that made the difference. She had been running late, a trait that would haunt her off and on no matter how much she worked on it. She had misread his name and thought it was Devon Rue. To be clever, Emily thought she would make a joke and say since his initials were ‘DR’ she should just call him ‘Doc.’ One LaRue figured out her mistake, he knew she would be the one to hire. Not because of her mistake, but because she had chosen to make such a cheesy joke and had had the nerve to actually follow through with it.

        Once she learned of her mistake, she almost didn’t accept the job. “I can’t work for you now. Not now. You’d be laughing at me every day.”

        “That’s why you have to accept my offer,” LaRue explained. “I’m an egotistical ego. I take myself way too seriously. I ask that you work for me because I would not be laughing at you. You would help me laugh at myself.”

        “Doc? Ray’s on 3” Emily interrupted, bringing him back to reality.

        He rubbed his eyes as the familiar itch began.

        He picked up phone. “Ray? Sorry I made you wait.”

        The voice on the line “I know you are a busy man Chef D, you’re one of three people I hold for.”

        Over the course of twenty plus years working with The Agency, LaRue had talked with Ray, his real name X-7, hundreds of times. Sometimes with Tommy knowing, sometimes not. Ray was the one you called when you needed information that would be impossible to find through traditional channels. One their first conversation, they were both neophytes. Now Ray ran a very successful company that, well, no one knew about. If you wanted information from the dark web, you called Ray.  

        “What’d you find out?” LaRue asked.

        “All the information McCoy gave you was accurate. Tommy was using you for his own purposes. While many of the targets you took out over the years were enemies of the state, some were enemies of the Agency.”

        “I’m sending you back some files onto who some of the individuals were. Also, McCoy not who he says he was.”

        “Who is he?”

        Ray paused for a long time. “I don’t know.”

This time, LaRue paused. To his knowledge, Ray had never uttered that phrase before. He had one called Ray the ‘G****e of useful information.’ “I don’t understand.”

        “Neither do I Chef D, I went through my files, I then contacted everyone I knew. Lastly, I talked to people who I had only heard only. People who live in the shadows. Nobody has heard of either Special Agent Russell McCoy, or any variation of that name of The Agency. I don’t know who he is.”

        Normally LaRue would have a plan by the end of his call to Ray. For the first time in a long time, he had no idea how to proceed. “One final thing Devon.”

        Ray had also NEVER called him Devon. “What is it Ray?”

        “Be careful.”

        Another first.

        For the first time in a long time, LaRue sat by his phone for a long time.

Finally he stood.

        He moved to his desk. His only thought was to buy some time. He loaded his needle. For the first time in a long time he loaded two. He loaded the ten percent in both, making one the sunrise solution, and adding Vitamin E to the other. Once done, he moved on to building his weapons kit. While he did, his mind drifted.

       “What ya doin’ D?”

        “Working on my aim Grandpa.”

        LaRue had lined up aluminum cans and was using the slingshot Lou had made him when he had first come to live with him.

        He had been eighteen, Grandpa Lou had shuffled out to the small porch to watch his grandson. Although neither talked about the cancer that ravaged his body, both knew the old man did not have long to live.

        LaRue would soon be attending the culinary arts school in Texas. He didn’t know that Grandpa Lou had mortgaged their home to pay for it. Lou knew he would not be around long, but he wanted to give Devon the best possible future he could. Although he was saddened he would not be with Devon when the end came, Lou knew Devon would be doing what he loved.

        LaRue had gotten into cooking because it reminded him of his time with Grandpa Lou. “If ya don’t turn that down, ya gonna make glue and not sauce.” He had told him in one of their first cooking lessons.

        The boy laughed. He would find it easy to have a smart-ass comment everybody else in life, but he never had one where Grandpa Lou was concerned.

        As he went farther back in his memory, searching for every trace of time he had with Grandpa Lou. His hands were busy putting together his tool kit. Inside the first knife kit, he put the .25 ACP Tommy gave him. To this he added a few vials of poison, Tetrodotoxin,  Cyanide, Abrin, and Aconite. His favorite coil of rope, one he had for over a dozen events. He would slide his switchblade into the hidden pocket of his cowboy boots. LaRue would also, for the first time, include the slingshot Grandpa Lou made him.

        When he came back to the present, although he had no idea where to find McCoy, he at least had an idea of where to start.

        The idea was to start with the files Ray sent over. LaRue thought that the companies of those he had killed worked for might give him a starting point. Those companies, in turn, he would gather enough information on to may an educated guess as to the identity of McCoy.

        The files had been ran through at least one scrambler before Ray sent them. He probably had more than one giving the level of trust X-7 had. Any files that LaRue received from Ray had always gone through fourteen different systems. The final result came to him one word at a time, and never in order. This was to ensure that even if someone had gotten this far and had killed him, the final product still could not be used.

        He spent the next seventeen hours reading files. He only stopped twice. Once for an injection, once for an expresso brought by Emily. After that he grabbed a few hours’ sleep.

        The next day he sat in his darkened office preparing. He had not had to gather information in any traditional sense for over a decade. Because of this, he had had to break a rule he never had to before. He had to enlist Emily’s help.

        “You don’t think I’m capable, do you?”

        “No, I know you can do it. You can kick the ass of anybody I’ve ever known, mine included. You can read people, remember anything said in conversations dating back to before I knew you. You know how to threaten, cajole, bribe, or flirt to get into or out of any given situation that I could put you into. I have never worked with a partner before, although you would have been my first choice if I had needed to. The simple truth is I love you and don’t want anything to happen to you.”

        Emily stood 5’10” and she had, according to an old boyfriend, ‘a body like a straw.’ Therefore, she had never dated much. LaRue stood 6’4”, had shoulder length blonde hair and a body kept in in shape by his four day a week workout regimen. His millions of women fans fantasized about him. Those who knew him feared him. But he had never shown her anything but tenderness. Even at her height, she had to tiptoe to kiss his cheek. She knew anything more would result in them spending the day in bed. Even in his fifties, LaRue had the stamina of someone half his age.

        “I will stay safe.” Emily assured him.               

        “You know everything you’re to do?”              

        “We have gone through it. You have ran through every possible alternate scenario with me, in case something goes wrong. I have watched you prepare for the events since you started. I have transcribed your notes as to how you prepared, how each one unfolded and have read how you changed your plans as needed, what you did, and why you did them. The only other person that knows your methods better is you.”              

         He wanted to say something. He wanted to tell her he didn’t need her help. He wanted to say anything.               

         Instead he kissed her cheek.              

         That night, just as total darkness began to blanket the surroundings, LaRue slipped into St. Michael’s Catholic Church. The church had sat on the corner Main St. and Piedmont Avenue for over one hundred years. There were a few inside when he arrived. From his years of observation, the non-religious chef knew he should kneel at the alter and make the sign of the cross. Once done, he then picked a seat away from the others and waited for his turn at the confessional.              

          The first two individuals, a man who appeared to be in his eighties and a young woman possibly in her twenties, were not in long and possibly received a short penitence. LaRue could tell little about the last one. They also seemed to be with the priest much longer.                

          Finally, it was his turn.              

          “Bless me father, for I have sinned.”              

          “How long has it been since your last confession, my child?”               

           “Father Callahan, I came to talk to you about Operation Raincloud.”              

            “I think you have the wrong priest, my son.”              

            LaRue stood. “If I do, then you will not object to my making the story, and Callahan’s involvement, known to both to the FBI and the press.”              

            “WAIT.” There was desperation in his voice. Father Callahan had lunged toward the partition.               

             LaRue stopped. “Does this mean you know about Operation Raincloud?”               Father Callahan paused. Mentally, he was arguing with himself. He had not been that person in a long time.               

             “I don’t have all day. Do you know or not?”              

             “Please sit down.”              

             “I have been Father Patrick Callahan for a long time. What you are asking about happened when I was someone else.”              

             “Yes I know, your name was Matthew Daniel Johnson.”              

             The priest stopped. “If you know that much, why are you asking about me about Raincloud?”              

              “Because there was holes in my information. But you’ll never know what I know and what I don’t. Now, what I want to know is, the idea for Raincloud was started in a fraternity at a small college in the southern part of the United States. Most of what they would accomplish, including the murder of several ambassadors and a coup d’état of at least one government was never fully known. Even among many of the members. Matthew Johnson held a prominent role in the organization and was responsible for overseeing Operation Raincloud.”              

             “Now, Father Callahan. You were one of four individuals that founded the organization. I need you to verify who the other three were.”              

             Callahan thought for a several minutes. That part of him has long ceased to exist. He was being asked to resurrect the dead. Two of the three, he had heard, were dead. The fourth, everyone just referred to him as The Founder, was not. It was this last one that would kill him if word got back to him that he had talked.              

             “Father, I have a weapon pointed at you. The shot won’t kill you, but it will immobilize you. That will give me enough time to break through here and kill you silently.”                Callahan knew that if true, his body wouldn’t be discovered for several hours.              

              Father Callahan told LaRue the name of The Founder. He also told him everything he knew about him.