We cut back to the Delamain where Max, Henry, and Suzi were catching their breaths from their encounter with this strange group.

"Holy shit! Henry and Suzi, are both of you doing alright?" I asked with relief evident in my voice after we had escaped from the danger behind us.

They both nodded their heads in response, and I took a glance back to ensure that we weren't being followed. To my relief, we were in the clear, and I felt a weight lifted off of my shoulders.

Sitting down to catch my breath, I started checking my back pockets as I wanted to show them the letter I found but it wasn’t there.

“Nooo. No no no no... Fuck!”

“What's wrong Max?” Henry asked concerned about why I was freaking out.

“The letter. It must have fallen out of my pocket. We need to go back.”

“No, we’re not. Max, we’re lucky to have got out of there alive just accept the fact that it's gone and in their hands. What's so special about the letter.”

I told them how the letter was from the wife of the man that the strange group was looking for.

Henry and Suzi understood why I was concerned about the letter and why I wanted to go back and get it, but Henry said that it’s most likely that they now have the letter and it's best if we move on and question who those people were.

Suzi had no information to offer, but Henry had a theory. He suggested that there was only one person who could know those streets inside and out and that individual was none other than Reese.

When we first joined the Knight Riders, Henry and I were assigned a mentor named Reese. Unfortunately, Reese did not seem interested in guiding us and often left us to fend for ourselves during dangerous situations.

Despite this, Reese did provide us with some valuable advice that has stuck with me to this day. He emphasized the importance of lending a helping hand to the innocent and taught us how to assert our dominance during negotiations as well as never fire at innocent people.

We needed Reese's help to find out more about the strange group but we had no idea where he lived.

Reese was known for arranging meeting places himself as he was a bit paranoid and felt "more secure" that way.

However, Suzi had a genius idea of how we could find him and proceeded to ask if any of us knew his last name.

Henry responded with "Connors," which Suzi used to narrow down our search to one location. With a quick scan for recent purchases, Suzi was able to find Reese's address and prompted Delamain to head to the location she managed to find.

Suzi's netrunning skills have proven to be incredibly useful yet again.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

To be honest, she fits right in with our line of work, heck I might even consider her part of the team, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Suzi mentioned that finding people's locations was not difficult for her, and she even revealed that she had been able to find me at the No Tell Motel because I bought a room for one night when I was with Rita which is kinda scary thinking about it.

Henry was immediately curious and began asking me questions about my time there.

Such as “Why was I there?”, “Who was I with” and weirdly “Did I get intamint with a woman?”

I shut down his inquiries, reminding him that my love life was none of his business and that I didn’t ask him questions about his love life.

Silence fell short after that, Henry didn’t know whether to be quiet or think of a witty comeback. The silence was finally broken when Del informed us that we had arrived, and we got out of the car,

Upon exiting the vehicle, our eyes were met with the picturesque image of a perfect suburban American home.

The front lawn is bright green and recently cut, and the smell of freshly grown well-kept flowers from the windowsill. The windows cleaned to perfection reflected the sunlight, creating a dazzling display of warmth and radiance. The house could easily be on one of those highly coveted home-selling shows.

We began walking towards the front door. “What’s the chance that Reese is in there with a little tiny brush cleaning,” I said in a joking fashion.

Henry laughed. "Given the fact, he’s massively paranoid I'd say 100. Wouldn't be shocked if he’s wearing a special cleaning outfit.”

I began to laugh. “Only one way to find out.”

I arrived at Reese's house and knocked on the door. When he answered, he screamed at me and abruptly shut the door. "Charming." I said, however, a few moments later, he opened the door again and acted as if nothing had happened.

He greeted me and Henry, asking how we were doing and why we were there. I couldn't resist mentioning his earlier behavior, saying, "So we're going to pretend that you didn't just slam the door in our face?"

Reese apologized and explained that he was busy cleaning the house, as evidenced by his special cleaning uniform he was wearing. Henry and I struggled to contain our laughter at the sight of him.

He invited us into his home and proceeded to ask what we wanted.

“You know the streets of Santo Domingo well?” I asked.

Reese nodded his head confirming my first question and allowing me to follow up with my second.

“You ever see the military around here?”

“You're going to have to be more specific Max. Kang Tao? Arasaka? Militech?”

“That’s the strange thing. The people that we encountered weren’t representing any of them. It's almost like there is a new military group. And seeing as though you know these streets inside and out you would have a pretty good idea of who these people are.”

Reese began taking his cleaning outfit off. "Henry, you remember helping me with an issue I had?

“Yeah, I remember. It was mostly heading to locations that looked like it was recently raided and it's there where I found a leftover Redeye vile which you started telling me about The Patriots. And that led me to call you Max, to let you know that Redeye is in the hands of The Patriots.” Henry said.

I started asking Reese about what he knew about The Patriots as I wanted to learn more about who these people are.

“The people who you encountered were The Patriots. They are a PMC founded by a man named Rick Walker, they mostly protected the innocent but that all changed with one man, Sergeant Wolfhart codenamed Wolf. When he joined The Patriots a more ruthless approach began showing within the PMC, this led to one incident that caused Wolf to obliterate an entire unit of men with one LMG magazine while holding the actual LMG in one hand. Because of this Wolf wanted more power and started going crazy, to cut a long story short Wolf overthrew Rick and took charge of The Patriots. You want my advice Max. Stay the fuck away from them. Don’t ever! Get involved in their business. Ever!"