Spiderstalk

by D. Nathan Hilliard

  “Very well, Mr. Sellars,” she sighed. “Follow me. And I would appreciate it if you didn’t mention this conversation to Antonio.”

  “Understood.”

  The elevator doors slid open, and they stepped inside.

  ###

  “Come in, Adam!” Antonio rose from his large hardwood desk. “I apologize for your earlier accommodations, but the situation was unusual. I trust this time our conversation will not be interrupted.” Aside from the head bandage, which gave him a rather rakish appearance, he looked fresh and rejuvenated in a new white business suit.

  Adam suddenly had an idea where his white terry cloth robe came from.

  He stood at the large double doorway, taking in the sumptuous suite Antonio called an office. He had assumed the man was in charge of some form of business, but hadn’t expected anything like this. The shades were drawn on the large windows, but he knew from riding the elevator they were at least fifteen floors up. Antiques, many of them Native American, decorated the walls while thick carpeting covered the floor.

  The sight of the thick carpet made him wince, and make a mental note to lift his feet higher. The last thing he wanted to do was stumble around in a room full of valuable antiques.

  “Well Antonio, I understand I’m going to be given some answers. If that’s the case, then a nap in the ladies room seems an odd but not overly high price to pay. I would appreciate it if you warn me before sedating me in the future, though.”

  “Fair enough,” Antonio replied, his face uncharacteristically serious. “We are about to cross the threshold where such things will no longer be necessary.”

  “That sounds kind of ominous, actually.”

  “It is, Adam. I’ve decided to assist you in your cause to help your nephew. But in order to do so, I will need to make you privy to information you must never share with anybody for the rest of your life. And I mean never.”

  “I guess this is in regards to that secret society stuff you mentioned last time.” Adam tried to keep his tone casual but Antonio’s new demeanor unnerved him a little.

  “Yes, Adam. And in the real world these ‘secret societies’ kill at the drop of a hat to keep those secrets safe. Our enemies do so, we do so, and I have personally done so. I will not hesitate to do so again if the need were to ever arise.”

  The threat hung in the air for several seconds before Adam spoke.

  “You know, just a few weeks ago that would have probably scared me onto the first plane to Canada. But I’ve been bombed, shot, and had good men die for me in a situation I don’t even understand. I can’t get any more scared than I already am, and it’s far past obvious something extraordinary is going on. So if I need to keep your secrets to get a handle on this, I can do it.” He hobbled up to Antonio and looked him in the eye. “And I no longer care if you are the good guys, bad guys, or if the terms even apply. If working with you helps me save my family, then so be it. The world can continue in ignorance. Is that good enough for you?”

  He stood there, leaning on his cane, waiting to see how the larger man would take this. Antonio stared back at him intensely, as if trying to read his mind.

  Then he broke out into another one of his brilliant smiles.

  “That will do, Adam.” He beamed and stuck out his hand. “That will do just fine. Why don’t you have a seat right over here at my desk.”

  Adam accepted the invitation and hobbled over to the proffered chair in front of Antonio’s massive desk. He eased himself down into its leather confines, and wondered how much a luxury like this went for. Across the desk, Antonio settled into his own throne of a seat with Olivia taking her station behind him and to his left.

  “Well, Adam,” Antonio opened a box to his left and pulled out a cigar and a tiny bottle, “I know you are eager for some answers, and I don’t want to waste a lot of your time, so I will explain how this will work. I will give you information on a need to know basis but…” He held his hand up as Adam started to object. “I’m going to operate on the premise you need to know at least a good portion of the basic truth to understand why I do the things I do. After I have told you what I consider both important, and acceptable for you to know, then I’m willing to hear whether or not you think I’m being reasonable. Fair enough?”

  Adam bit off the objection he had started to make, and leaned back into his chair. He had no desire to say anything that would give Antonio second thoughts about talking to him now.

  “Fair enough,” he responded.

  “Excellent!” The big man put the cigar in his mouth but didn’t light it. “If you would like a cigar, help yourself. They’re Cuban. But I’m afraid we can’t light them at the moment since Olivia is allergic to smoke.”

  “No problem. I’m fine.”

  “Very well, then let’s get started.” He held up the tiny bottle then placed it on the desk directly in front of Adam. “This is the first thing you need to know about. It is what dictates a lot of the parameters I, and you, will be operating under and it is one of the most valuable substances in the world. It is rare and its very existence is one of the things both we, and the people already after you, would kill without hesitation to keep secret.”

  “Okay,” Adam stared at the little bottle for a second before lifting his gaze to meet Antonio’s. The man looked serious as death itself, and behind him Olivia had returned to her statue-like reserve. As he stared at the pair of them, Adam had never felt so far over his head in his entire life.

  These are big fish, he reminded himself. They are sharks and you are a guppy that’s about to dive into their pond. Never forget that. But you already have sharks after you, and these people are all you’ve got. So it’s time to dive, but just remember to swim with your eyes open.

  “Okay,” he repeated. “Is it a drug, or what?”

  “It’s the way I knew what you and your friend Ellen were talking about on the phone back at the condo. It’s the way I knew you had the .380 in your pants while we were talking on the couch.”

  “But I thought you saw me get the gun through my laptop.”

  “Your laptop wasn’t facing the fireplace, Adam.”

  Thunderstruck, Adam realized the man was right. The laptop, and its camera, had been facing toward the front door. Antonio couldn’t have seen him get the gun from the fireplace with it. He now stared at the little bottle on the desk with intent interest.

  “What is it? What does it do?”

  “We call it veneno,” Antonio reached over and picked up the little bottle. “It is a very mild neurotoxin that has a remarkable side effect on a rare percentage of the populace.”

  Adam was staring at the bottle, almost hypnotized by the way Antonio held it, when the import of his words struck home. Antonio’s behavior back at the condo rose in his memory.

  “My God, it makes you telepathic!”

  Antonio nodded.

  “Then…” Realization after realization thundered through Adams mind. “That’s how you knew everything I was going to say back at the condo. And…holy shit! That’s how the woman at the hospital could shoot people through walls when she couldn’t see them! She was sensing where they were by reading their minds! And she knew where they were aiming and when they were going to shoot before they ever pulled the trigger!”

  “She’s a bit of a special case, Adam,” Antonio murmured. “There’s a little more to it than that…a lot actually…but suffice it to say you’ve got the basic gist of the situation.”

  Adam leaned back in his chair and stared at his hosts. More ramifications of what he had learned settled in, and he began to understand how truly trapped he now was.

  “Alright,” he whispered, “I can definitely see how you would never want the knowledge of this stuff to surface. I imagine it gives you great advantages in your business dealings, if nothing else.”

  “It does at that!” Antonio suddenly broke into another one of his bright smiles. “Although we seldom use it for such things anymore, you are starting to see its poten
tial. But,” his smile vanished again as suddenly as it had appeared, “do you see its threat?”

  Adam thought hard for a moment.

  “I’m guessing general knowledge of this would be a bad thing.” He worked his way through it slowly. “The effect of everybody being able to read minds would be disastrous on society.”

  “Not everybody, Adam. Remember, it only affects a rare group of people that way. It’s genetic, and outside that certain group of people it would only make somebody slightly sick…if it had any effect at all.”

  “And being one of those people, you don’t want everyone knowing about it.”

  “Very true…imagine what would happen if the government found out about this.”

  Adam looked down at his hands and thought about it for a moment. He thought of the CIA, Homeland Security, the FBI, and military intelligence. He pictured anonymous hospital rooms with lots of needles and soft beeping equipment. His stomach sank as he followed this line of thought to its logical conclusion. He looked back up at the pair in front of him.

  “That’s why you’re so willing to kill to protect this stuff. You’re not only protecting a great source of income, you’re protecting yourselves as well. You don’t want to become guinea pigs.”

  “Or slaves,” Antonio responded quietly.

  “Or slaves,” Adam breathed, almost disbelieving the conclusion he was coming to. “They would make you agents, or like you said…slaves. And since governments can never keep a secret, soon other governments would know. They would start screening programs, trying to find their own people to use. My God…the world would change.”

  “Yes.”

  Silence fell between the three of them as Adam digested the situation. Antonio chewed on his cigar, watching Adam intently, while Olivia regarded the pair of them with her usual feline dispassion. Nothing but the hum of the building’s ventilation disturbed the air.

  Adam mulled through all the possible ramifications he could think of regarding this new information. The possibilities, and perils, seemed endless. He knew it was going to take a long time for him to come to grips with all the nuances of the situation, and reminded himself that Antonio had flat out admitted he was still withholding information. There was still a lot more to this he didn’t know.

  At the moment, though…it was enough of a start and he reminded himself he was in this situation for a reason.

  “Okay,” he addressed the pair of them, “I understand your secrecy…and for what little it matters, I actually agree with it.”

  “It matters a great deal, Adam.” Antonio leaned forward, beaming around his cigar. “It helps me trust you, if I know you appreciate the stakes on your own. Do you understand?”

  Adam nodded.

  “I understand,” he conceded. Then he leaned forward, clasping his hands together on the desk. “But what I don’t understand is how all this relates to me…or David, Karen, and Tucker. We’re just ordinary people…nobodies to people like you or those others. I still don’t know what’s going on, who these other people are, or why they are trying to kill me.”

  “We’re working on that.” Antonio shrugged. “Since the people in question are enemies of ours, we don’t have a lot of information regarding what’s going on with them.”

  “Any guesses?”

  Antonio frowned in thought for a moment, then looked up at Olivia. The young woman obviously took this as a cue to take over his end of the conversation, for she was the one who answered.

  “Currently, with what little information we have, I can only hypothesize. Right now, I would venture that somehow David and Karen were killed in an incident or manner independent of our adversaries, and they stumbled across the situation and took young Tucker in. When your detective showed up months later, Tucker already knew too much for them to give up, so they chose to kill the detective and then you so you wouldn’t hire another one. I confess I’m not entirely happy with this scenario. It’s weak on several points, but it fits the facts at hand.”

  Adam gazed thoughtfully at the assistant for a moment, reminding himself to focus on the matter at hand and not on admiring her. Even with Antonio present, it wasn’t easy.

  “So,” he frowned, “you don’t think they killed David and Karen?”

  “I can’t assure you of that, but it wouldn’t be consistent with the few facts as we know them. They do not make a habit of killing ordinary people without reason, any more than we do. It’s dangerous and can bring unwanted attention on them. And if they had that reason, they wouldn’t have hesitated to kill the boy along with his parents…hence my current hypothesis they came onto the scene after the fact and took in the boy.

  “So maybe the police were right and the drug dealers really did kill David and Karen.”

  “No.” She shook her slightly. “I believe they killed the drug dealers much later and put them, and the brick of cocaine, in your brother’s car when they needed to get the attention of the police elsewhere…especially after that woman made such a scene shooting up the hospital. They knew once she killed those officers the police wouldn’t let the case go until they had some kind of answer. So they gave them one. Everything in that situation was staged to get the authorities looking at the Mexican cartels. I’m quite confident, Mr. Sellers, that other than their use as a distraction, the drug dealers are entirely tangential to this matter.”

  A small part of Adam’s soul gave a sigh of relief at this assessment. He could feel the rightness of it, and it also meant his brother wasn’t a criminal. He had never really believed David would involve himself in something like that, but hearing it spoken in such a logically concise manner from this woman gave his belief the weight of reality.

  But it still left the matter of Tucker unresolved.

  “Okay, I’ll take your word for it. But what about Tucker? How do I go about rescuing him from these people?”

  Olivia didn’t answer, merely folding her arms across her chest and looking pointedly at Antonio. Again, Adam got the distinct impression she was unhappy about something, but found her so hard to read he couldn’t be sure.

  “Well…” Antionio leaned back in his chair. “We’re going to try something unusual. Something that could be very dangerous, and it’s going to involve you taking a calculated risk and exposing yourself to their attention again. You’re in this now, so I hope you’re up for it.”

  “I see.” Adam braced himself. The last thing he ever wanted to do was see that woman and her enormous gun again. But if it would get Tucker free of them… “What exactly is it I have to do?”

  “Talk to them, Adam.” Antonio smiled around his cigar. “Nothing much more to it than that. You and I are going to take a drive up into their territory, say hello, and ask them to give him back.”

  “What?!” Adam gaped at the man across the desk.

  “We,” Antonio beamed, “are going to introduce ourselves, so to speak, and try to arrange a meeting between you and them. Only this time without bullets flying around…hopefully.”

  “Hopefully?”

  “There are no guarantees. But since fear of exposure by your detective may have been what launched this little crusade of theirs, perhaps they will be willing to simply give the child back if they know he and you will now be with us and no longer pose a threat to expose them. Then they might cease these attacks on you that endanger us all, and everything can return to normal.”

  “Which is why you’re willing to help me,” Adam sighed but at least felt better with this clearer, if still incomplete, understanding of the situation. “At least you’re honest.”

  “Exactly. As I said, I harbor you no ill will, but I will act in the interests of the people who depend on me. Fortunately, it appears we have the same interests, and if that allows me to be the good guy and reunite you with your nephew, then I confess to taking some small satisfaction in it. I value family, and I can respect a man who does the same.”

  Adam didn’t know what to say, so settled for nodding.

  “
Very good.” Antonio pushed a button on his desk, and a slender, young Hispanic man opened the door to his office. “Now, before we go on our little jaunt I have a lot of work to do and you need to rest and recover. While the bullet merely sliced you, I’m sure you’re already aware how much getting shot takes out of a man.”

  Until Antonio mentioned it, Adam hadn’t realized how exhausted he truly was. Now he discovered he would like nothing more than to crawl back into that cot down in the basement and sleep for about a hundred years.

  “Cristobal,” the man behind the desk gestured at the new arrival, “will show you to the room I’ve had prepared for you down the hall. If you need anything, push the button on the table beside your bed and he will come. I’ll have Olivia check in on you later. I doubt the opportunity will arise, but please don’t discuss any of the things we talked about here with anybody but Olivia or me. Understood?”

  “Understood.” Adam seriously wondered for a moment if he would have the energy to get to his feet and hobble out the door. With a tremendous effort of will, he managed to push himself to his feet without unduly lurching. “It’s just good to know, whatever the reason, that I’ve got somebody on my side.”

  “Trust me,” Antonio beamed.

  ###

  “Trust me?” Olivia arched an eyebrow after the door closed on Adam Sellars.

  “Shouldn’t he?”Antonio leaned back and chewed on his cigar as he stared at the door. “It’s not like he has a lot of choice in the matter. Besides, I would hate to think you’re implying I’m not trustworthy.”

  “In light of this recent insanity, I choose not to answer that.”

  “You don’t think it will work? If not, say so now and support it.”

  “Uncle,” Olivia paced from behind the desk and over to the darkened display window. “There are so many unknown factors at play here I cannot begin to give a complete risk assessment. The behavior of the Spider People cannot be satisfactorily explained by the scenario I gave Mr. Sellars, nor any of the scenarios posited in the Council either. They are acting on motivations we are unaware of, which takes this venture of yours outside the sphere of risky and into the realm of madness.”