Season One, Episode Three: Camry

'Hitchcock it ain't, but it will do,' said the man.
He looked at the fading image of the woman looking up at the camera in the parking lot, and then clapped the laptop shut.
He was sitting in the back of the Mercedes F700, only barely acknowledging the presence of the bulky man in the front passenger seat who was trying to face him.
'Do you know how to get this to him?' he asked.
'The old-fashioned way, Mr. Camry.’
Camry disliked strangers using his name. Or using names anywhere, for that matter. Camry looked away to the chauffeur's neck, then to the passing cityscape outside. Five-lane highways.
He was wearing a nice Italian suit, but he still looked like the scrawny Eastside punk he grew up as. He'd rather be lounging around the house in shorts and Hawaiian shirt at his private pool, but today it just wasn't possible. There was work to do. The Brother Hotel wouldn't take types like him in half underwear.
'Make sure it's clean ten out of ten,' he said as he reached across the car to hand the laptop to the passenger.
The fat guy mumbled something. In another place, Camry would've slapped him for being disrespectful, if not worse. But he needed his suit to be immaculate for the meeting. So all he allowed himself was a look of disdain. Make the guy feel like he's shit, Camry thought.
He waved so the chauffeur caught the gesture. The car left the highway and stopped at the next intersection. Out stepped the passenger, clutching the laptop as if it were a treasure. It was.

Markus Bentley was reaching for a stick of marzipan on the plate next to his laptop. He was going through one of those forums for whining and homesick expats in an Asian country. He had never liked the word expat, it made him think of spoiled brats in suits, living in luxury apartments with swimming pool and chauffeur-driven cars paid for by the company back home. If they had kids, they sent them to astronomically expensive schools where they grew into the perfect copy of the spoiled brat their father was. Bentley had never been an expat of this type, and he didn't miss the life. He just wanted to stay aware of what was happening on his former home turf.
The sound of the car penetrated his spatial awareness like a fly suddenly turns up in your peripheral sight. You know there's something there, but it's only later you notice what it is and you know you don't like it. He looked up at the window on his right, even though you couldn't see the road from there.
Dry fields with lines of dry knob trees stretching between them, providing his place with a false sense of privacy. That was the reason he had chosen this place. Fortunately, he was not the one who had to get up early and toil in those fields all day long. That was the task of the farmer who lived across the road and who owned this place.
The farmer drove a truck and a couple of nasty-looking vehicles farmers drive on the fields. None of those machines produced the type of rhythm he was hearing now.
Bentley folded the laptop screen and stood up while munching on the marzipan.
At the end of the lane he could spot the mailbox. The farmer's house was hidden by apple trees and brushwork, a natural screen to stop curious looks in both directions.

'Here comes Mister Paranoia,' Markus said to noone in particular.
The dark red car drove up to his mailbox. With the engine still running, a fat guy in a suit stepped out, carrying a rectangular black object. Markus kept himself in the background, so the guy couldn't spot him. Even from inside, he could tell the guy was carrying a laptop or something like it. The fat man seemed to be checking the number on the mailbox, and then deposited the object at its foot. Before Markus had the chance to recover from his surprise, the man turned around and drove off.
Markus waited until the car had vanished and counted to ten. Then he grabbed a knife from the kitchen and walked out, digesting the last of his marzipan.
He approached the mailbox like it was a snarling mountain lion. With one more look in the direction of the empty road, he crouched on the dusty ground and looked at the object. It was a laptop alright, without a bag. Just sitting there in the dust. What kind of freak dumped a laptop like this on a stranger's front step, in the middle of the countryside? He must have driven here especially for him, otherwise he just could have dumped in a river or in the sea, or somewhere behind the bushes. Markus looked around once more and did the human thing. He picked up the thing, turned it around to see if it wasn't boobytrapped, and took the thing home. The battery had been taken out, so he had to plug it in.
While the thing warmed up, he went for another stick of marzipan in the fridge. If this were a movie, the laptop would blow up and smash his house into a fireball. Instead, it went on forever loading up. No password requested, but it ended with the arrow of the forward sign for a video recording. Was this guy going to share his exploits on YouTube?
Markus took another bite and risked it. He clicked the arrow.
Bentley swore and sat down. His appetite for marzipan was taking a break.
What was she doing, and what was that fat guy showing him this? Was this a new way of delivering a ransom note for a kidnap victim? He watched as the woman walked around the office and started packing up everything in sight. Markus had never been to her office. In fact, he hadn't met up with her in years. A phone call here and there, around Christmas if he remembered, because that was the old way of doing things.
One thing was certain. The laptop wouldn't blow up, not before the ending anyway. The fat guy in the car wanted him to see all of this.
Just like the guard at the office block had done before him, Markus peered at the screen trying to discern the objects the woman was taking away with her. Office equipment, pictures, but then there were the knickknacks to think about. Bentley leaned closer.
He froze when he saw the guard in his room watching the woman on camera. He tried to memorize his face, but there was not that much to go on.
He recognized the small porcelain effigy of the three men which the woman put in her cloth bag. He didn't recognize the faceless red doll. Was that a cat, or a red snowman, or what other creature. The thing wore Chinese characters on its chest.
He saw the guard reach for his gun. The woman in the elevator. Not getting out through the front door. The woman alone in the parking lot. The camera turned away.
Markus pushed his chair backward and slammed his fist on the table next to the laptop. The screen returned to the arrow. He could watch it all again if he wanted to.

A low buzz reached him from under the table. He had installed the sensors in the middle of the night, to avoid attracting his only neighbor's attention. Country folks could be nosy. The sensors didn't cover the mailbox and the side of the street, only the immediate vicinity of the house.
Markus stood up and pressed himself against the wall, near the same window from where he had watched the fat guy dump the laptop. Was he coming to take back his prized possession?
Bentley moved ever so slightly forward. The door bell rang. It sounded like a waterfall compared to the whisper of the alarm buzzer. Why hadn't hear the car approaching?
Markus edged closer to the window. Until he saw his uninvited visitor. Definitely not the fat guy with the laptop. A wiry thin guy, shaking, holding an object in his left hand. The porcelain figurine of the three men Bentley had seen his sister remove from her office.

NEXT: A Riot comes down in Episode Four of Concentric before October 12.

Season One, Episode Two: Four Weeks Earlier

The woman was young, on the eve of her thirties, but she didn't show it. No visible tattoos, no shiny studs in any visible parts of her anatomy. Not that you'd see much, she was wearing the power suit reserved for female managers and executives. A small Louis Vuitton Damier Azur bag was resting against the back of her chair.
Her office was the only one on that floor still showing activity, her colleagues had left their offices and turned the lights out. She unbuttoned the top end of her blouse, an impulsive consequence of management's decision to use less air conditioning in order to reduce carbon emissions.
The woman looked out of the window, at the flow of traffic on the boulevard five stories below. She logged out of her computer and waited until the screen went dark with a floop.
She pulled a cloth shopping bag out of her desk and started putting in everything that was on her desk. First the files she had last been working on, then the computer USB sticks. Slowly, methodically, like it was something she did every night before heading home.
Writing implements, a ruler, a block of yellow adhesive notes. When her desk was bare, she stood up, left the bag on her chair, and walked up to the window to glance outside. Traffic was thick, as it should be when people leave work, head home, or head for pleasure.
The woman went to the closets behind her desk, where she had used a flat cut-out space in the middle to put some knickknacks.
She looked up to the camera in the corner next to the door as if seeing it for the first time.

The guard put down his corn soup. His hand hovered over his cream bagel, then over the cell phone on the table beside it. Did he have to call this one in?
They had had some really cracking customers at this company, and he didn't want to overplay his hand and sound more paranoid than management were.
If he called this one in, he'd better have a good reason. More than just a woman dusting off her own place. Maybe she was taking a vacation, and felt unsure about leaving her stuff unattended for so long. Damn right she was, that smart lady.

The young woman looked at the objects in the space in front of her. A portrait of her with a young man against a Rocky Mountain kind of backdrop. She let her hand stay a bit too long on its frame before shoving the picture into the cloth bag.
She handled the exotic stuff next. A porcelain white cat, something which looked like a small red animal with Chinese writing on it, a small porcelain effigy of three people, a piece of brown colored glass with a plant in it.

The guard took another sip from his corn soup and a bite from his bagel before he put his face closer to the screen. He couldn't figure out what kind of stuff she was putting into her bag.
He knew he had to use his cell for this kind of thing. They would give him another one tomorrow.
'We've got one subject moving,' he whispered into his cell as if she could hear him.
'The neat lady on the fifth.’
He put down the cell without a word and reached for the gun in his holster.

The woman went round the room, putting almost anything that could move into her shopping bag. An expensive pen. A bottle of water from the cool black dresser on the other side of the office. Even a bottle of water?
When she was done pulling stuff off the furniture, she checked her bag for a bulge. Nothing. All her stuff was small so it wouldn't attract attention as she walked by any acquaintances on her way down.
She started wiping fingerprints off furniture and door knobs with a handkerchief. Then she left the office, putting one step back into the room to turn off the light. A stupid mistake.
She hit the button to call an elevator. One was on the first floor, the other on the tenth. The one on the tenth was coming down.

The guard's hand hovered over the elevator controls. He watched the woman on another screen. The gun was lying next to the empty soup bowl. As soon as he saw the woman enter the elevator, he pushed a couple of buttons on the console under the screens. Several lights turned from green to red. He watched the screen showing the lobby on the first floor.
The woman exited the elevator with her cloth bag and the small brand-name bag which was too small to hide anything in. She headed for the front door, as the guard had expected. He grinned as she tried to pull it open and failed.
She looked around her, wondering why the main guard had left the front desk. She went to the back, round the elevator block, to a long narrow hallway with a heavy steel door at the end.
The guard turned the camera showing the parking lot away from the cars, in the direction of the ceiling. He hit a button, turning the light from red to green, took his gun and left the room.

The woman held the two bags pressed against her side as she pushed the steel door open. At least it wasn't locked. She sighed once she was outside. The covered parking lot was in front of her. The exit to the alley behind the office complex was somewhere straight ahead, right at the other end of all the cars. Considering the hour, there were still a lot of cars around.
Instead of following a straight line, she went round the back of the second row of cars. She looked around and saw nobody. She looked at the pillars but nobody seemed to be hiding. She looked up at the ceiling.
She saw the camera turned upward and knew what it meant.

NEXT: Find out about Camry and reconnect with Markus Bentley in the next episode of Concentric before September 30.

Season One, Episode One: Speedokiniland

Markus Bentley was sweating. Admittedly, it was hot. Sun shining, brewing hot. But he was only wearing tiny swimming trunks and carrying a towel. Like most people here outside the Brother Hotel. Welcome to Speedokiniland.
He stayed on the path winding its way through the palm trees and the other subtropical vegetation he knew nothing about. Smiled cheesily at the couple of young girls drifting by in the opposite direction.
The deep house music told him which direction the pool was in. The mood was very different from his previous visit.
Bentley saw the young women on the left of the pool, but pretended not to notice. He let his eyes drift to the company across the water, on the right, a bunch of dark tan men with women swooning around them. Two retired couples at the far end of the pool, obviously trying to stay away as far as possible from the deep house drifting out of the pool bar, on his right before he hit the pool. Always put the pool bar at the front, so you get first choice of the arriving customers. Two middle-aged men were waiting for their orders right now. Markus didn’t recognize the barman.
He stuck to the left edge of the pool and the obviously predictable happened.
'Hi, Bent.’
'Ola, chica.’
He wished she had remembered not to mention names. With a bit of luck, the sound of his name was drowned out by the house music and nobody would remember after the panic. He looked back at the other guests, she thought he was checking out the ladies. He preferred Markus or Bentley, but the stupid abbreviation had stuck.
'Bent.’
There, she did it again. He thought about showing off that little finger as a friendly warning, but that would have meant revealing what he was holding under the towel.
Bentley crouched next to the three young ladies and one young man in the group. Joking and bantering, that’s what he was here for. So they had to think. She introduced her friends but he forgot their names as soon as he was letting his eyes wander away from them. They were gorgeous people, but that was not what he was here for.
He nodded vigorously at the end of a question. One of the women started talking. Bentley smiled at her and looked at the pool bar. One customer was staying on, the other one was wading across to this side. Not good. Bentley smiled back at the speaker and looked again. The guy with the pinacolada or whatever was sticking to the side of the pool like a jellyfish. Not good.
'Bent, do you think they’ll make a good couple?’
Fortunately, the woman speaking was pointing at the young dude and the brunette sitting on his chair. Bentley nodded.
'You’re beautiful people. Sure.’
A brutally loud laugh resounded from behind them, from the other side of the pool. A perfect excuse for Bentley to turn his body half around and look at the source of the commotion.
The guy with the dark mustache and the gold-framed shades was having the time of his life, slapping the bikini babes and the shady guys crowded around him like shoppers around a market stall.
Bentley counted three bodyguards around the man. One guy swimming down there in the pool could also be a member of their entourage. But Markus had no time to wait. The loud laugher was fondling one of his lady friends, gross.
Bentley shot another look at the pool bar. An elderly woman was inquiring for the specialty of the day.
Bentley turned to the young woman closest to him.
'Too bad but this is where my vacation ends, now I have to start working.’
He took hold of the woman, gently but convincingly. As he turned her around to face the opposite side of the pool, the towel slipped out of his hands. To reveal the Glock he had been holding awkwardly underneath.
The young people in his group screamed as they saw what he was doing. But he had no time for them.
He raised his arms around the woman, pointing the gun straight at the loud bozo across the water. Fired as he stood still for a long second. Then pushed the woman forward. Fired some more as he saw the bodyguards around the man reach for the towels on their chairs. Where they had been hiding their own firepower.
Bentley pushed the woman forward as he kept firing at the men. Only the men, not the women, please. Those men treated them as decoration, so he didn’t want to harm them.
Around the pool, pinacoladas and other pseudotropical juice clattered against the ground.
The guy who had gotten his drink from the pool bar just minutes ago dropped the glass into the pool and clambered out, slipping back in again.
Bentley didn’t pay him any attention. He held on to the woman, whispered something into her ear, and together they jumped into the pool, still firing at the men.
Just in time, because one of the bodyguards had finally gotten hold of his 9 millimeter, and was firing it at the surface of the pool, where Bentley and his companion had been just seconds before.
The guy kicked a woman out of the way, nearly tripped over the blood of one of his colleagues, and fired into the pool.
Under water, Bentley held his lady friend tighter as he saw the bullet pierce its way to the bottom of the pool.
The swimmer looked at them and saw the gun. Instead of being scared to death, the guy headed straight for Bentley. Keeping low, trying to place the woman between them.
Markus let go of his friend, fired the gun at the approaching shark. To his amazement, things worked like they had told him. The bullet found its target, and blood started leaking out of the man’s head into the water.
Bentley turned his attention up and fired a couple more rounds out of the pool.
When there was no reaction, he took the woman’s hand and made a sign to go up. Enough water for today. The woman surfaced first, gagged, and saw the remaining bodyguard point his gun at her head. She screamed.
Bentley was next, his hand with the Glock in front of him, firing. The man fired a bullet into the side of the pool, millimeters clean over the woman’s head. Bentley’s bullet didn’t miss. The bodyguard joined his colleagues.

'Run out of here, but not with me,’ Bentley shouted at the woman as they climbed out of the pool, which was gradually coloring red with the blood of the dead swimmer.
Bentley didn’t look back but ran away between the palms. On bare feet, the Glock and his swimming trunks his only possessions.
He tripped over a root. Landed with his face in the grass. Looked around him. The barman from the pool was behind him.
How could he have been so stupid. That’s why he hadn’t recognized him. It wasn’t the regular barman. At least, the guy didn’t look like he was armed.
Bentley could outrun him, so he wouldn’t have to kill anybody anymore.
He was approaching the front of the hotel. He came round the corner, saw the valet handling the keys.
Bentley rammed the guy, sending him against the pavement and his keys all over the place. He grabbed a key straight blind, hoping it wouldn’t be a Smart. Nope. The keys had the blue and white squares from the Bavarian flag.
He ran under the straw roof protecting the cars from the sun. he flashed the remote around, trying to find the right car as the barman arrived at the front door.
The lights flashed. On an X7X, a heavy dark SUV. Thank God for that. From the corner of his eyes as he climbed into the vehicle, he saw the barman grab a set of keys from the pavement.
Bentley screeched out of the parking lot, into the two-lane street in front of the hotel. Heading north like he’d planned.
As he was passing the intersection, he saw the car behind him. A Chevrolet Ganache. The women’s version of the Corvette. Low, sexy, red, convertible. Top down, a good target if he wanted to have a go at his pursuer. The barman.
The SUV was an automatic, that was fine with Markus. Less time needed to be spent on shaking around. Keep your eyes on the road and on your pursuer.
He felt silly driving a heavy vehicle wearing nothing but a pair of downsized swimming trunks, but hey, this situation was out of the ordinary. The barman wasn’t exactly dressed for a hot pursuit either.
Bentley saw the guy swerving to the left and coming past him as they careened across an intersection. Bad idea. Bentley went left himself, hitting the sports car. The barman slowed down but stuck close.
Markus looked at the Glock on his dashboard, but thought it would be a bad idea to handle it while driving. Don’t Glock and drive.
Instead, he tensed and watched the road ahead. There it was, the pedestrian crossing from the hotel zone to the beach.
Just as the lights turned red, he braked, turned the car left and went right on to the beachfront walk amid screams from the tourists. The barman was still following him.
Bentley turned on his headlights and honked like it was snowing in hell. The tourists dispersed alright, but not all of them as fast as Markus had expected. Scared parents pulled their kids into the sand, skaters went right into the boardwalk café and rammed the waiters, sending the hamburger and pizza plates shattering around.
As he was guiding the car around a fountain, his swimming trunks were emitting an electronic noise. He grabbed into his crotch and pulled out a cell phone.
'I did what you told me to, how you told me to. What more do you want?’
His lips tightened. He threw the cell on the passenger seat. The barman was still following.
Bentley suddenly braked, forcing his pursuer into a maze of fruit stalls, paintings, fitness equipment and musical instruments left behind by buskers who had seen him coming.
The stuff was flying around, but Bentley wasn’t watching, he was hurrying to get some distance between the barman in the red convertible and him.
The next pedestrian crossing over the main road was coming up. Markus picked up speed and saw the surprise on the face of the truck driver who was going parallel with him on the main road.
Bentley honked at the family ready to cross the road. They moved into the sand, good for them. He pulled the SUV to the right, left the beach path with just inches left, saw a bus coming but drove across the road to put himself short in front of the truck.
The barman followed him but he wasn’t fast enough. The truck hit him with a full broadside. He careened back across the road and hit the bus. The red convertible was propelled onto the beach, but the barman was already flying through the air with the life out of him. Not wearing seat belts in a convertible. Bad idea.
Bentley saw the wreckage in his rearview mirror. He shook his head.
He would do anything for his sister. Even shoot a thug in a crowded swimming pool. Camry thought he would. He was right. But now he had to do things for himself.

NEXT: Find out what happened Four Weeks Earlier in the next episode of Concentric before September 20.

The Friday Writer

So I'm busy with the final preparations to launch my action thriller series on this blog.
The changes included a new name - "Rio" Moss instead of Sean Moss. The three-letter word is short, as pseudonyms are supposed to be, it's easily pronounceable, it's Spanish for 'river' and therefore a bit exotic which I like, and it's not completely off the charts because there's a famous British football player called Rio Ferdinand.
I also changed the story title from 'Hermetic' to 'Concentric.' First of all, because the former word featured already in blog and website names. Secondly, you'll have to wait and find out when you read the story.
I also have my final design ready for the structure of the story. It's still going to be freeflow, so part of it I will make up as I go along. That's the fun of it, writing one bit each week. So that's what it's going to be. Like a TV series, but on the computer screen, on a blog. One episode each week. An action thriller, with inspiration from everything from Snatch to Die Hard to Prison Break, 24, and maybe even Lost, though I'll try to keep the supernatural out of it.
I have the first episode pretty much completed in my mind, the second episode as well, the third one is taking shape. I had hoped to promote my undertaking on MySpace and Facebook, but I doubt those are really the right tools for that. There are still the forums, though many ban links to blogs. So I'll have to make up my promotion campaign as I go along as well.
Friday will be my first day of writing, though I can't promise the first episode will be on there by Friday night. I hope to reserve each Friday for writing 'Concentric,' finishing one neat episode each week and putting it on the blog either by Friday night or at least Saturday.
The rest of the week will be dedicated to my day job and to my 'real' thriller, i.e. a book I want to get published and therefore cannot reveal anything about on this blog. It's a real 100,000-word book that I hope to finish and send around to publishers in a European country by the end of the year. The subject is topical, the style is - I hope - Lee Child and Daniel Silva, but in a different setting.
See you later this week for 'Concentric,' Season One, Episode One: Speedokiniland.

By Rio Moss.