“I’ve already dispatched two uniformed officers back to your premises, though I’ll be damned if I know why there wasn’t someone there already. I don’t know what it is that you’re mixed up in, Mr. Adler, but it’s a rum game. A rum game,” Badger said. His cut-glass accent filled the carriage, and I felt the scrutiny of the other passengers slide off of me. I was still speechless.
“How…” Almost speechless.
“It’s the end of the line, Mr. Adler.” I gulped involuntarily as Badger continued, “Paddington, that is. The end of the Great Western line, so when the man I had shadowing you indicated that you were looking agitated and waiting at the door, I was able to easily deduce that you would either be hurrying into the city or to another train. If you are heading into London, then I’ve no problem, but if you are getting on a train going west, then you could be trying to make a break to Heathrow to flee the country. Ergo, I came to the westbound platforms and waited to see where you were going. Mere logic.”
I goggled at the man. “You actually still think that I’m guilty, don’t you?”
Badger gave me a puzzled look and rocked back on his heels. “It is neither here nor there what I think. I have a duty to ensure that a weather eye is held on someone connected to as many strange goings-on as you have been in the last two weeks,” he said.
I had to admit that Badger had a point, and the guilt that I’d tried to ignore since waking up crashed back in. Half a dozen people had died at the hospital because of my rash actions, and now I’d put my family in danger.
“I don’t have time for this, Badger,” I said. I managed to hold my temper back and avoid swearing at the little detective, but I felt foolish as soon as the words left my mouth.
He quirked an eyebrow at me before responding, “You have precisely seven minutes for this, young man. Seven minutes in which you can either stew in your own juices or in which you can attempt to convince me that I should do more than simply my duty. Seven minutes for you to convince me that I should go out of my way to help you.”
I cursed my own idiocy. I’d done enough business to know that relying only on the letter of the law will leave you fighting for everything that you get. Making things really happen is all about personal relationships.
I'd told Dana and Father O. about my secrets, and their help had been instrumental in giving me the chance to stop the machinations of the partners at OMG. I decided to try the same with the detective. I gave him a seven-minute précis of the situation, complete with dreamwatching, pucas, and jumps from second-story windows.
“…and then I got a call from Ena about needing to go to the office. I went, but then I realized it was a trap and got back onto the train home, which was right because someone was attacking Dana,” I finished.
The little man stared at me with a serious expression on his face and his watery brown eyes intently focused through his Coke-bottle lenses as the train pulled into Greenford station.
“You’re mad! I expected something about threats, bribes, and corporate blackmail, but you give me a tale of nightmares and fairies. It’s fitting that you live so close to Hanwell because when this is over, I’m going to make sure that they put you in an asylum and throw away the key,” Badger exploded, his mustache flaring out in sympathy with his indignation.
“But you’ll still make sure my family is safe?” It was the reaction that I’d always feared getting if I revealed my secret, but with Dana and Olivia in danger, it was amazing how little it mattered that this man doubted me. The people I cared about believed me, and that’s what mattered…but something about his words set my mind racing.
“Of course, I’ll make sure that they’re safe. There’ll be a car waiting for us outside the station.” Badger was clearly insulted that I had questioned his willingness to do his duty to uphold the queen’s peace, but I hardly heard his words. I almost had it…
“Detective—I agree. Hanwell Asylum is exactly the place for me,” I said. He quirked an eyebrow again, and we stepped out of the train.
I wanted to sprint all the way back home, but the officer walked at an infuriatingly slow pace as we made our way out of the station. After that, however…let’s just say that Kimi Raikkonen could take lessons from the officer that drove us back to my house. We careened from Greenford station to the junction with the B455 in about two minutes, and sweat broke out on my fevered skin as I spotted a plume of smoke in the distance.
“Boy, put your foot down.” The detective’s words somehow conjured a further level of driving skill from the young man behind the wheel, and we whipped through the last mile of traffic in about half a minute, which was a good thing because I think that my heart had stopped beating at that point.
We pulled up outside my house, and the police bailed out of the car almost before it stopped moving. I distantly heard Badger shouting something to the uniformed bobby who had driven us, but I ignored it in the rush to reach my house. My burning house. Smoke billowed out of the windows and through the roof as fire visibly licked out of the door.
“Dana! Dana! Olivia!” I sprinted toward the burning front door, and I think that I would have crashed right through it in the mad rush to find my family. It was the gunshots that stopped me. Most people don’t recognize the sound of a bullet. I’m not talking about the explosive crack of gunpowder igniting, but about the actual buzzing whine of a chunk of metal splitting the air around you. I recognized the sound from a near miss during a boyhood hunting trip, and once you’ve heard that noise, it’s impossible to forget. Moreover, it’s almost more impossible to reconcile that hearing a sound like a large bug going past your ear indicates that you’ve just avoided a trip on Charon’s boat by mere inches. I dropped to the ground instantly, and the next shot spanged off the stone fence in front of me.
“In the trees!” The shout burst whipcrack clear from the detective inspector, and he and the uniformed officer charged toward the direction of the fire with a virtually insane disregard for their own safety. I wasn’t going to complain about my tax dollars—er, pounds—doing me some good and rose to my feet. I was just summoning my courage to charge into the burning house when I heard a shout in the distance.
“Julian!” Tears came to my eyes. It was Dana. My ribs still hurt, my back was a mass of agony, and my neck still wouldn’t turn more than twenty degrees in any direction, but I took off at a pace that would have put the officer that drove me home to shame, and I nearly knocked my wife off her feet when I embraced her.
Dana’s face was covered in streaks of makeup where rivulets of tears had streamed down her cheeks, but although she was trembling, she seemed unhurt. That only left one important question.
“Olivia?”
“She’s okay, she’s okay,” Dana sobbed. I held my wife for just a moment before she continued. “I’ll take you to her; she’s with Father O. at Our Lady, but Julian…” She trailed off and looked away as we hustled the short distance to the church. “We lost the chain. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s my fault. The call from work was a diversion to get me out of the house. I shouldn’t have left you here alone,” I said huskily. We stepped into the church rectory, and the priest raised a hand while Olivia sat contentedly in front of the small television in his study, watching some show with an obnoxious pink pig. I loved her so much, and I loved Dana. There was really only one thing I could do. “You need to leave.”
She reacted like I’d slapped her, and the hurt in her eyes was like a knife in my stomach.
“You need me, Julian Adler. You never would have put this all together without me, and you’ll do something stupid on your own, and I love you, damn it. If whatever is wrong with you can’t be fixed, then I want to be here with you for as long as I have you.” She sniffled and turned away before continuing, “You’re not perfect, but you’re mine, and I want to be with you as long as I can,” she finished, so distraught that she repeated herself. The knife twisted.
“We already have our vacation tickets. I can’t go, but we
have the money to change the date. Just head down to Heathrow and get yourself and Olivia on a plane. We don’t have a home. You’re not safe here, and I’m not sure you’re safe with me.” I mentally begged Dana to just say yes and get herself on the plane.
“Home is wherever you are,” she said. The line was cheesy. The line was appropriate. I had to cross the line.
“I lied. I was with Kelly. Have you seen her?”
The old priest in the corner closed his eyes and shook his head. He knew what I was doing. I was pretty sure that Dana did too.
“You’re just trying to get rid of me.” Her lip quivered, and fresh tears coursed down her cheeks. The metaphorical knife was yanked out and chopped me to bits.
“Just keep lying to yourself. I’m going to go meet her right now,” I said. I took one long look at Olivia, turned on my heel, and strode away. One word followed me out of the church.
“Liar.” In that one word, I heard that she denied my claim; I heard that she recognized I was trying to push her away…and I heard doubt.
CHAPTER 43 1700, Wednesday, August 5–0005, Thursday, August 6, 2015
***Julian***
I left the church and ran almost directly into Detective Inspector Badger. He explained that they hadn’t been able to apprehend the shooter and that the uniformed officer that he’d had watching the property had been found knocked unconscious in the small graveyard down the block from my house. Or where my house used to be. I think he expected me to act more concerned, but after what I’d just done, I frankly didn’t give a shit about what happened to anyone else. He had to stay behind to deal with the paperwork on the arson/shooting/assault, and I headed back to the train station.
I gave Kelly a call from the bus, but she didn’t answer. I quickly left a message explaining what had happened and where I was going. I asked her to meet me at the office. Not everything I’d said to Dana was a lie.
I arrived at the station to find that even with the bombing in Shepherd’s Bush the previous day, the Evening Standard’s front page still carried coverage of the “Saint Mary’s Massacre,” and I winced at the small inset picture of Kelly and I pasted into the lower right-hand corner.
I wasn’t sure where exactly I was heading when I got on the train, but I eventually decided that it was worth trying to go into the office. It had obviously been a distraction, but there was at least a chance that the meetings really were happening, so I might be able to catch Ena there and confront her. I tried to call Kelly again on the way, but it went straight to voice mail once more, and I started to worry.
Just after five thirty, I arrived at Paddington for the second time that day and passed through a crush of people going in the opposite direction for their rush hour journey home. Muscles screaming in protest, I hobbled to my office and stopped by the security desk. When I placed my palms on the desk expectantly, the guard had my badge ready, confirming that at least part of what Ena had told me must have been true. While I was leaning across the desk, I sneaked a peek at the visitor’s book; Ena had signed in at three and hadn’t signed out yet. I thanked the guard, signed for my pass, and hurried to the elevator.
I was physically and emotionally a wreck; I hadn’t really expected Ena to still be at the office. My plan at this point was almost nothing, but if the best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry, then maybe my bullshit had a chance of success. I pressed the button, and the recently repaired elevator whooshed up to the meeting.
I didn’t get any extra time to come up with a plan; as the elevator doors opened, I saw Richard, Janice, and our company’s freaking CEO sitting with Ena in the same glass-fronted conference room that we’d used for the meeting a few days and a few lifetimes before. At the front of the room, Ena was presenting a display of the last few points of a contract, and she was able to spot me immediately. She didn’t lose her place, but I did see a little smile play across her face.
That smile puzzled me, and I almost decided to duck around the corner before anyone else spotted me. But then she gave me a wink and gestured toward me. Everyone else turned, so I didn’t have any choice but to stride into the room decisively. Okay, I limped into the room, but it was a decisive limp, damn it.
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but I’m afraid my walk has become rather sillier recently. What did I miss?” I said and pasted on my most convincing smile like a suit of armor. I sat down next to Janice, heart hammering and wondering how long it would be until the puca made an appearance. If it followed the pattern that it was establishing, I figured I had maybe two or three minutes before I was under attack.
Ena gave me a brief and professional synopsis of the meeting so far; it had comprised an hour of her presenting the same plan that OMG had produced before, but this time with a reduced cost and three of the four decision makers on the recommendation in her pocket. I was sorely tempted to roll my eyes but kept my face impassive, nodding sagely. If they would have simply come in with this offer to begin with, I would have had a much harder time raising any doubts about the company. I waited. Nothing happened. Ena resumed her presentation on the last several points and then finished.
“That was a fantastic presentation. I know that we’ve only taken the recommendation to downselect this afternoon, but I’m going on vacation, and I’d like this to get under way while I’m gone. This is my personal project and part of my mandate from the shareholders. On that basis, if you can have a contract on my desk by noon on Friday, then I’ll happily sign it and we can get this project under way,” the CEO said in a smooth, confident voice. He turned from Ena to the rest of us and continued: “I want this deal done, and I trust you all to put this together in time. Mr. Adler, I understand that you might be upset about having been put on leave, but I think we were hasty. Put your concerns behind you and help me get this deal done; I think we’ll forget any other irregularities.” He turned back to the room and graced us with a wide smile that showed snow-white teeth. “I hope that I’ll see all of you on Friday, and feel free to get some food ordered in this evening while you’re working on the contract.” He walked out decisively. I sat dumbfounded, Janice and Richard perched mutely in their high-backed chairs, and Ena cackled. Literally. Like a witch. Probably appropriate, really.
“Might I have a word with you?” The curvaceous woman smiled at me and brushed up close as she went into the hallway; I was disgusted to feel myself respond to her touch. It was like being groped by an evil Jessica Rabbit. I followed. Totally for noble reasons.
“It looks like we’re going to be working closely together,” she said. Her smile was smug, and she took a sip of diet soda. I didn’t move a muscle or react in any way, and the Irishwoman continued, “You’re probably wondering why we didn’t have any special visitors during that meeting.” She was clearly enjoying this, but I wasn’t going to interrupt her; I’d always hoped to run into a real monologuing villain, and it brightened my day so much that it almost wasn’t the worst day of my life anymore. “The creature and I have reached an…understanding. I’ve given it somewhere else much more interesting to be tonight, so we have plenty of time to work on the contract. You may have noticed that Janice and Richard aren’t going to be much good for heavy mental lifting, alas. All of the time the shadow man has spent chasing you around in our reality has made him very hungry,” she purred. Ena smirked again, and the notion that my actions might have hurt even more people forced my eyes to close as I dealt with the pain. When I opened them, I knew that it hadn’t gone unnoticed.
Ena continued to grin like that cat that had got the cream, “And before you think of attacking me now, keep in mind that I'm the only one who knows where the silver chain is. If something happens to me, then you and your colleagues are doomed.”
“So if you want to keep your job and have any chance of surviving, then you’ll have a lot of drafting to do tonight. I hope you didn’t have any other plans. I could stay here to keep you company, though, if you’d like? Or are you going to work from home?” With that last wor
d, she let out a rolling cackle again, causing her chest to wobble in evil and distracting ways that I steadfastly refused to notice.
It was sickening, but on some level, she was right. I wanted to keep my job; it was a part of who I was, and to be honest, there wasn’t any home to go back to tonight, and I didn’t have any other plans. My shoulders slumped.
“Get me the files. I’ll get to work putting something together based on the presentation and get it to our legal team ASAP,” I said. I considered her offer to stick around and, although I knew that it had been a joke, I wondered if I could get her to do it; it would be much easier to make sure that she didn’t do anything else horrible if she were sitting next to me. In the end, I decided against it; she was probably the sort of person who would spend the whole time checking her mail and shopping on her phone. For fur coats. Made of dead puppies.
I looked her straight in the eyes, with only a minor detour past her chest, and said: “I’ll get your contract ready, but you will never see it signed. I promise you that on my mother’s grave.”
“An interesting thing for you to promise on. Oh, don’t be expecting any input from Nick in Executive Support either. He cast his vote for the recommendation and then had to drop off the call. I think he’ll just be hanging out at home tonight,” Ena sniggered. With that, the OMG partner turned on her three-inch heels and headed down the elevator. I was worried for Nick by the suggestion in the woman’s words, but honestly at this point, I just couldn’t summon up a huge amount of concern for a casual work acquaintance; even one who had helped me over the past couple of days.
I wandered off to my desk, leaving my colleagues staring blankly at the screen in the meeting room. I wondered when, or if, they’d find the will to wander back home and if they’d be safe when they did. I tried to call Nick on the way, but there was no answer. Unsurprised, I decided to give Badger a call and, for the first time since I’d met him, he actually sounded tired as he answered the phone, but he promised to send a car out to Nick’s house.
Dream Job (The Dreamwalker Chronicles Book 1) Page 27