Read Daniel Ganninger - Icarus Investigations 01 - Flapjack for Free Online

I realized what he was doing, I heard a crash of glass.  Galveston had broken a pane of glass on the front of Rick’s porch with a rock.  He jumped out of sight behind the back of the car.
    “ Oh, there’s our boy, here he comes, faster than I expected,” I heard Galveston say loudly.
    Rick came darting out the front door, down the steps, and hopped across the grass, looking for the culprit.  He moved rather elegantly, like a cow dragging a bucket it got a hoof stuck in .  He definitely wasn’t a man in extreme pain.  I sunk down in the dirt behind the bush as far as possible, hoping Rick wouldn’t see me.
    Rick huffed and puffed outside his house for five minutes, turning, bending, squatting, all the things he shouldn’t have been able to do.  Rick finally gave up and returned inside, obviously perturbed he didn’t get to punch someone in the face.
    “Run back over here, will ya?”  Galveston yelled to me in a whisper from behind our car.
    “ Okay, hold your horses,” I yelped back at him.  I moved from behind the house and raced across the street.
    “ I think I see him coming,” Galveston said, pointing at the door of the house.
    I felt a rush of adrenaline and crouched low, like that would help conceal my position.
    “Oh sorry,” Galveston yelled, “I guess it was a mirage.”
    I stood up, peeved, with my hands on my hips and began to walk back.
    “Okay, now you do need to hurry, I really do see him coming,” Galveston yelled again seriously.
    I once again went into a strange run, looking both ways as I crossed the street, and flew into the passenger side door, breathing hard.
    “ Where is he?” I gasped.
    “ Oh. Sorry about that.  I’ve got to get my eyes checked.  It was just a bird, a really large, fat white bird,” he laughed.
    “ Haven’t you heard of the boy that cried wolf?  The wolf ate him,” I scolded.
    “ I’m sorry, it was just too easy.  I apologize.  I actually really needed to see how fast you were, or was it how gullible?”  He laughed again and rubbed his chin in fake thought.  “That was even better than I thought,” Galveston quipped as he put away the video recorder.  He noticed the consternation on my face. “What are you worried about?”
    “ I’m worried that we could get arrested.  This isn’t what I signed up for.”
    I’m not sure which laws we had broken during this little operation, I’m sure there were many.  I couldn’t remember if it was against the law to impersonate a water and power man; I sure hoped not. 
    “ Don’t sweat it.  That was a good time,” Galveston said slowly, nodding his head. 
    I would get him back at some point, but right now I was glad it was mostly over.  I had a sinking feeling we would be ramping it up a bit f rom this point on.  The pre-game warm-up was over, now it was on to the big game.  If only I had known what we were getting ourselves into.

-Chapter 9-
     
    We returned to Galveston’s humble abode, the headquarters of Icarus Investigatory Services, or as we called it, Icarus, or more simply “Ick!”.  Galveston and I had come up with the name after a study of Greek mythology.  Our business name was an ode to the mythological boy who flew too close to the sun with wings of wax.  The wings melted, he tumbled to the earth, and went splat on the ground.  Galveston told me this is probably how we will feel every day, flying too close to the sun.
    The insurance company award ed us with a check in the mail along with a bonus I had stipulated in the contract for bringing the case in under our scheduled time.  We had potentially saved the insurance company hundreds of thousands of dollars.  They would have settled quickly due to the abysmal safety record of the construction company Rick worked for and a need for it just to go away.  For our two days of work we received eight thousand dollars, and it was plenty of money to split fifty-fifty.  I now officially liked my new job.
    I was in, all in.