by Michael Todd
“I can basically guarantee Dr. Coleman will be surprised to see me there,” he responded with a grim chuckle and took another sip of his drink. “She didn’t even let me know she was back in town,” he grumbled and sipped his beer as if to punctuate his thoughts. “But you know what? This has all been about learning and growing through experiences and shit. I bet meeting her is probably the best thing to do, right?”
“It makes sense to me,” the other man said and kept his voice soft. “So will you be there tomorrow?”
Savage nodded. “Yeah, I think I will. But I think that’s enough emotional talk. My DVR is filled to busting with games I missed while I was in recovery. Let’s do that and not talk.”
“It sounds good to me.” Anderson chuckled as Savage turned his TV on, selected one of the first games he had missed, and leaned back in his seat.
Chapter Three
Mistakes were made, Savage realized as he settled into his seat in the conference room where the presentation would be given.
First of all, he felt like a fish out of water. The other men and women in the room looked like they belonged in an environment like this. Three-hundred-dollar haircuts were somehow the cheapest parts of their attire but still managed to be understated at the same time. They looked serious and talked in hushed whispers about what might as well be quantum physics for all he really knew about it.
He wore a suit with no tie and felt as uncomfortable in it as Anderson had been in casual clothes. Admittedly, the coat he wore was a good cover for the pistol snuggled into his side. It was good to be armed again. There was a certain reassurance to it, he realized. The people around him seemed as comfortable in their expensive clothes and with their overpriced watches as he did merely having that oddly-shaped pistol tucked into the underarm holster hidden beneath his jacket.
That was the difference between him and them, he realized and leaned back in his seat, a little more at ease now that he’d thought things through. The feeling almost immediately disappeared when he looked up to see who walked over to the head of the conference table.
She hadn’t changed much, but there was still a hint of a jolt in his chest when he saw her there. Her hair was different, he realized and decided that platinum blonde suited her. It gave her an edge, a rigidity that lent her confidence. She wore a pantsuit instead of a lab coat, and the glasses looked new too.
Jessica had changed, Savage amended and focused his gaze on the table. He suddenly didn’t feel quite as confident as he had a couple of seconds before. She looked around the table and touched her glasses the way she had when they had talked before. It was a trick, she told him, which gave her a moment to think and to look around at everyone she was addressing before she actually spoke.
Her gaze settled on him and she paused for a half-second. She looked momentarily startled and her right eye twitched before she adjusted her glasses again quickly. Her finger pushed them onto the bridge of her nose as she turned and looked around at the rest of the assembled group, who had apparently missed her little pause.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for taking the time to be with us here today,” Coleman said. Her voice carried well, and she didn’t sound at all fazed by her audience.
“Here with us?” one of the board members asked, a hint of hostility in her voice. Savage made a note to look into her later. Carlson still had many loyalists on the board, and while they were content to keep their heads low and follow the status quo, he didn’t doubt that they would surge forward at the first chance they had. People like this could sense weakness the way sharks could smell blood in the water.
“Yes, here with us,” a voice said from the screen behind Coleman which displayed Monroe, speaking from the Zoo. She looked tired and a little bruised besides and wore glasses and a lab coat as she listened in on the meeting. “I’ll be here to oversee proceedings, but Dr. Coleman will run the meeting. You can treat her words as if they came from my own mouth.”
“Thank you, Dr. Monroe,” Coleman said, and her lips quirked up as she turned back to the others. “Shall we begin?”
A handful of assistants and aides entered the room and passed the meeting’s agenda around to each participant. Savage took a moment to peruse the details. There wasn’t much said on the paper he was given. He doubted that much of the conversation would be about him anyway, despite his assumed status as a security consultant. Protecting wasn’t really in his job description these days unless you counted the best protection as a good offense.
In which case, he was a fantastic protector.
The meeting proceeded and from what he could understand, she went through the paces of delivering the status of each of the labs. Part of this was to make sure each of the board members knew that despite the attempts at sabotage and robbery, they were still on track to resume work on the projects they had been given. He noted that most of the projects affected by robbery or attempted robbery were those dealing with the government contracts sent to them by the Pentagon and delivered almost directly from the Zoo. There would undoubtedly be a fair amount of contention about it, but he’d learned to trust his gut.
And right now, his gut told him that anyone who tried to interfere with Zoo projects did so on Carlson’s orders.
Educated guesses were still guesses, right?
Savage sucked in a deep breath as Coleman finished her presentation and immediately opened the floor to questions. There weren’t that many, he realized and wasn’t sure whether to be surprised or not. They might be in charge of the running of the company, but that didn’t mean they knew what they were doing. What they were good at was delegating all the actual work to competent individuals like Coleman and himself and reaping the rewards.
They didn’t have much to say. After a couple of questions, mostly involving the cost of her proposals—which were almost entirely covered by Courtney as she had the data on that—the board members all began to leave. He’d been engrossed in his own thoughts and didn’t realize the meeting was over until he saw them all stand.
He had no intention to be caught in there alone with Coleman because he wasn’t good at dealing with old flames. One of the reasons he had elected to take on a couple of extra tours in some of the most dangerous places in the world was so he wouldn’t have to deal with his ex-wife and the complications that had separated the two of them. It wasn’t something he was proud of, but he wouldn’t try to hide that truth about himself either.
His attempted retreat didn’t work, though. She saw him try to slip out without talking to her, and she stepped between him and the door with a smile. Her quick thinking had him caught and she knew it. He tried to force a smile, but it came off poorly and he gave up the attempt after a couple of seconds.
“Hey there, Jer,” Coleman said and cocked her head to the side as she watched him look around hastily as if to find another way to escape.
“Hello, Jessica,” Savage said finally and resigned himself to his fate. He would have an uncomfortable conversation one way or the other, it seemed. “Your hair looks great.”
“Thanks. It’s nice to see you again too,” she said and squeezed his shoulder lightly.
“I honestly hoped you wouldn’t see me,” he replied with an awkward chuckle. “I’m not great at this kind of conversation.”
“Well, that’s obvious enough,” she replied with an understanding smirk. “Although in the future, if you find yourself in a situation where you would rather not be seen, I would suggest you try to avoid sticking out like a sore thumb. You could not have been more out of place in the meeting.”
“I don’t disagree.” He had actually begun to wonder what it was he had hoped to accomplish by attending, and with no answers forthcoming, he shook his head.
“I think we need to talk, Jer,” she said with another firm squeeze to his shoulder. “I’m not too happy with how we left things, and I want to set that right.”
His jaw tensed instinctively, even without him thinking about what that might mean. He had pract
iced this conversation a hundred times in his head, and he had always alternated between cold and hot burns. In one scenario, he’d always be cold and collected and cut her off with his calm yet icy retorts. In the other, he’d be hot under the collar with a few curses tossed in for good measure and play to her guilt for having left him behind when a better offer showed up. Neither was particularly classy, but he’d never been classy, to begin with.
The lack of class was a moot point, however, since neither seemed to fit in this situation. She did seem genuinely regretful over what had happened and how, and the look on her face pleaded for a chance to explain. These effectively swept aside the need to vent at her and release the emotions he’d successfully repressed over the past few months. In all honesty, he wasn’t actually angry at her. He understood why she’d made the choice, and he wasn’t about to criticize her for putting her career in front of her love life. It wasn’t like they had even been in a long-term relationship.
He sighed and nodded. “Yeah, I think we need to talk too.”
She noted his hesitation but didn’t appear to want to press him for an explanation. She smiled and ran her fingers down his arm before she let her hand drop to her side. “What do you say—should we have dinner tonight? It’ll give us time to talk over a nice meal and in a location that can provide enough booze if the night demands it. And I’ll pay for myself, obviously. It’s not like it’s a date or anything.”
“That sounds fair. Should I pick you up?”
“I think it’s better if we meet there,” Coleman said as they made their way toward the elevator. “Do you know the Marmont? On Market Street?”
Savage nodded. “Around eight? That should give us time to talk and drink if that’s the case.”
“It’s…not a date,” she replied with a grin as the elevator arrived. She stepped inside and narrowed her eyes when he hesitated. “Are you going down?”
“Yeah, but I think I’ll take the stairs.” He gestured vaguely at the stairwell door. “It’s not that I don’t enjoy palpable tension, but…I think the walk will do me good. I’ve been in a hospital bed for the past three weeks or so and I could use the exercise.”
“Suit yourself,” she replied, chuckled, and pressed the button for the lobby. The doors closed to hide her from view. He nodded and remained where he was for a few long seconds before he stared his reflection in the elevator doors in the eye.
“Yeah,” he grunted and headed over to the stairs he remembered all too clearly from his first visit to this building. “That went about as well as you could have expected, dumbass.”
He sighed, shook his head, and began a slow descent. It wasn’t the worst decision he’d ever made. He could feel his muscles begin to loosen and limber up after the first two floors. It seemed he really did need exercise and he decided he might actually visit the gym before going out to dinner. If nothing else, he could work up an appetite so he wouldn’t dread the meal quite so much.
Banks hated being in Washington—the capital city, not the state. He actually liked the state. It provided a variety of open spaces to go fishing, where he could spend long hours in silence while he waited to catch something he could cook with his own two hands. There was a cause and effect aesthetic to the idea which he found appealing.
The city, on the other hand, was something else entirely. It was populated with the people he held responsible for why he disliked humans and any interaction with them. And they seemed worse around there too. There was something about this city that made everyone a little greedier, a little meaner, and a little less understanding. If he didn’t know any better, he would have said each one of these bastards hated other people as much as he did, and this was their punishment for the rest of their race.
If that was the plan, well…it was one hell of a plan, he had to admit.
He looked up from where he arranged his folders on the coffee table in front of him when Congressman Alfred Jenkins stepped out of his office. The man laughed with a couple of aides and other members of Congress as he sent them off with messages to be distributed to their various colleagues and subordinates. There were a couple of bills they needed to pass before they could retire for the Thanksgiving weekend—or fail, possibly. Banks wasn’t sure which and honestly didn’t care.
He wasn’t there to talk politics. Jenkins was a long-time member of the House Armed Services Committee, the kind of person who would oversee the financial spending in the Pentagon and the perfect person for him to meet. He had studied Jenkins for some time to determine what kind of price the man would demand when someone asked what Banks had to ask.
It hadn’t taken very long for him to decide the price was too high and he would go a different route. His choice wasn’t based on any dislike for the concept of bribery per se. It was a necessary, if skeevy, element of how governments were run. But time was of the essence, and they didn’t have enough of it to cater to the demands of a sly and greedy politician.
“Congressman Jenkins,” he said and offered his hand, which the congressman took almost automatically. “I’m Mason Banks, Esq, and I’ve come at the request of a client of mine—friends of yours, I understand. Pegasus Incorporated?”
“Pegasus, of course!” Jenkins exclaimed with a laugh. “I always have time for my friends at Pegasus. I’ll catch up with you guys later.” The other aides nodded and made their way out as the congressman invited his visitor into his office.
“Well, the appropriations committee is due to meet in a week, and I think you folks will be quite happy with the contracts that will come your way,” he said with a chuckle.
“I’ll be honest with you, Congressman,” Banks said and closing the door. “I don’t actually represent Pegasus itself. There is enough time to run through the various problems that come with this, but I’m sure they will be irrelevant by the time I’ve finished saying what I’ve come here to say.”
The man tilted his head and opened his mouth as he reached for his phone, probably to call security. The lawyer calmly withdrew a file from his briefcase—which he’d stored above all the others so it could be easily accessible—and placed it on the desk. Jenkins examined it intently and narrowed his eyes when Banks drew one of the pictures out and slid it on top of the folder. The image was of the congressman himself, very clearly drunk and stepping out of a building downtown with a woman who was equally as clearly not his wife—and semi-nude, as well.
“Before you launch the inevitable questions of how I obtained these and your denial that it’s you, I’ll point out that it wouldn’t take much to convince a jury to believe that young woman there is underage.” He retrieved a couple more of the pictures. “Do I have your attention, congressman?”
Jenkins looked like something dark had passed over his grave and leaned forward. He frowned as he touched the edges of the pictures as if to make sure they were real.
“What do you want?” he asked finally.
“I need you to find someone,” Banks replied and pulled another picture out of his briefcase. With a slow, deliberate movement, he placed it on the desk and turned it so Jenkins could see it. The headshot was obviously blown up and what he assumed was the selfie it started out as had been cut from the finished image. It presented the face of a man in his…well, he had to assume it was his thirties, although it could have as easily been late twenties or early forties. He had brown hair and green eyes and was of average height and build—nothing overly dramatic about him. Banks felt he could come across the man on the street and not recognize him.
He still didn’t know how his client’s resources had found the original picture considering the weak description Carlson had provided him with. Then again, he no longer underestimated what his client could do.
“And who am I looking at?” Jenkins asked quietly.
“I don’t know. That’s what I’m asking you.” He smiled to hopefully soften the blow. “Now, these pictures of you wetting your dick are the stick, as it were. There is a carrot to this whole thing too. You’r
e running a reelection campaign that could be severely damaged by the evidence in front of you. Well, except this one, I suppose.” He pointed out the picture of Savage. “The kind of campaign that could use a generous amount of anonymous donations as well as endorsements by my client.”
“And who might your client be?” the congressman asked.
“The person who has your balls in a vice,” Banks said, repacked his briefcase, and turned to the door again. “Carrot and stick, Congressman. I know you’ll make the right choice. When you do, you can find my comm line on the back of those pictures.”
Jenkins wasn’t even remotely brave. He was accustomed to being in charge, but when he lost his power, he wasn’t the type to bend.
“Aren’t you going to take the pictures?” he asked as his visitor reached the door.
“Those are printouts, Congressman.” The lawyer turned to face him again. “We have the original images stored online. You should keep those, though, to remind you who has your balls in a vice.”
He gulped and Banks smiled, stepped out, and closed the door again. He had no doubt that he would hear from Jenkins again.
Chapter Four
Savage had to admit he wasn’t sure how to do this. He hadn’t been on a date in a long time, which made the fact that he wasn’t going on a date rather fortunate. Still, the fact remained that he didn’t know what he was supposed to do in terms of dress code.
He shook his head, irritated by himself and the situation. While he hadn’t been alone since Coleman had been gone, there had never been any dating involved. His love life had mostly been drunken encounters that had culminated in quick one-night stands in hotel rooms or the women’s homes, which had enabled him to leave hastily the next morning. As it turned out, being dark and mysterious overcame his usually unobtrusive appearance. He didn’t fully understand the apparent allure but he had no desire to argue with it.