The Thirteenth Legion (A James Acton Thriller, #15) (James Acton Thrillers) by J Robert Kennedy

damned thing, then we part our ways. You’ll
have no reason to be after us since Martin will never trust us again, so will
never be found near us, and he’s a good man, so he won’t take revenge on us.”
Acton glared at the phone. “I want the Triarii out of our lives once and for
all.”
    There
was a pause, Acton beginning to wonder if the signal had been lost.
    “Professor
Acton, I think that can be arranged.”
     
     

 
     

     
     
    British Airways Flight 289,
London, United Kingdom
     
    Reading buckled his lap belt, trying to get comfortable, it an
impossible achievement with his long legs and the ridiculously inadequate
legroom found on most planes today. He could have gone first class, hell, he
could have chartered a private plane and Acton and Laura wouldn’t have
questioned it for a moment, but that wasn’t him.
    He felt
guilty enough having paid a ridiculous amount for a last minute flight.
    Why
do they feel they can jack the last minute fares when they have the seat
available? Don’t they want it filled?
    He
growled slightly, the young girl sitting beside him staring at him curiously.
He winked at her. “Might have been my tummy.”
    She
giggled, burying her head in her mother’s side.
    He
stared down the aisle, his right leg stretched out in it, giving at least half
his body some reprieve as he continued to obsess over the cost of his ticket.
Why was it when the price of jet fuel went up, ticket prices went up, but when
fuel prices dropped, the ticket prices remained high? It was the same with
gasoline for the car, groceries, or any other bill nowadays.
    But he
knew damned well why it was happening.
    Consumers
had shown they were willing and able to pay the inflated prices.
    He
didn’t fault companies for raising their prices when their own expenses went
up. The problem was they no longer seemed to pass on the savings when things
changed. Now they would lower the price slightly, then edge it back up to the
full price consumers had been forced to pay previously.
    It was
highway robbery.
    He
wasn’t anti-one-percenter, anti-capitalist, or overly political, but it cheesed
him off every time he ordered something and there was a fuel surcharge that
hadn’t been there before, or a delivery charge when none had existed before oil
prices had run up.
    He had
taken to lowering his tip, he feeling a bit guilty about it at first, his own
son delivering food part time for some extra spending money. But he told the
delivery boy every time what was going on. “I tip ten percent less any
surcharges. Talk to your boss about getting those included in your tip.”
    They
never went away happy, and he sometimes wondered if his food was spit on the
next time he ordered, but he didn’t care.
    It was
the principal.
    He was
being ripped off, and he was going to fight back in some little way.
    Like
when gas prices spiked the first time. He had refused to pay it, instead
putting five or ten quid in the tank, and immediately switching to regular from
premium, a mechanic buddy of his telling him modern cars didn’t need premium,
even if the manual said they did.
    It’s
a hedge against the car being driven in the third world where the octane is
very low.
    He
hadn’t used premium in almost a decade and his car was none the worse for it.
    And it
had saved him thousands, meaning the gas companies had lost thousands. If they
hadn’t tried to rip him off in the first place, he’d have kept pumping premium.
    But no
more.
    He was
one man in an ocean of consumers, but he was doing his part to fight back
against the unchecked greed that seemed to be the norm today. He often thought
of some of the “lectures” Acton would give about history, and how what was
happening today in many instances echoed the collapse of many an empire
throughout it, not the least of which was the Roman Empire. It was Acton’s
opinion that Western civilization as it was today was on the decline, and risked
disappearing this century if voters and their