by Bob Blink
She let the sheer curtain drop back into place, muting the light from the bright morning sun as she stepped back into the center of the room. She wasn't hungry, but needed something to settle her throbbing head and sour stomach, so she made her way toward the gourmet kitchen, a room she used only sparingly. Her brother Jeff had prepared more meals in the well laid out and fully equipped facility than she had.
As she passed the large mirror hanging on the wall she examined herself critically. There were slight bags under her eyes, not surprising her. The light brown eyes flecked with gold looked dull this morning, in part because of her restless night, but mostly a sign of the stresses the day before had brought. Even so, the face that looked back at her was still stunningly beautiful. The gene pool had treated her well, and her looks had always made her path easy. Men had noticed her at an early age, and she'd taken advantage of what they offered. Why not? She liked sex, and if it opened doors, then why not use the gifts she'd been born with? Until Paul she'd usually had a couple of men on the line. But that had changed. Paul wouldn't accept sharing her, and he was, despite his cultured outward appearance, a rough and dangerous man. Sometimes she wondered if she'd made a mistake becoming so involved with him, but at the moment his talents were important to her.
Returning to the living area with a tall glass of cold mango juice, she considered her situation. At thirty-two years of age, beginning from a family of modest means, she had done remarkably well. While many would believe she'd brokered her looks into the position she now enjoyed, it was her brains that had really been responsible. As attractive as she was, as generously as she'd been endowed with good looks, her greatest asset was her mental ability. She'd advanced through the lower grades effortlessly, and had won several well paying scholarships to the best colleges. In the end she'd chosen Harvard, and had graduated at the top of her class in biochemistry.
Now, less than eight years since graduation, she was a partner owning a full third of the firm where she was employed. As head of their medical research division and a key member of the board, she influenced the direction the company was moving, and shared generously in the profits being made by the firm, which marketed a couple of very lucrative products. If her expectations proved correct, within a year, two at the most, they would release the most important product yet. That would change everything. The new product would be worth hundreds of millions to her alone.
That was unless something happened to upset the carefully managed path she had set in motion a couple of years before. One didn't rise to such a fortunate position on the basis of talent alone. Natalie had manipulated her way into her present situation, and despite what everyone believed, the product that was in the final stages of testing was not really the product of her fertile brain. She'd used all of her talents, and been quick to take advantage of a situation that provided her with the opportunity to move into her current lucrative position. People had paid for her advancement, and even in her current firm, where she'd moved carefully, she'd made enemies. Some of that was simply envy on the part of others, but not all, and she knew that Anne Barker, the CFO, distrusted her and was the cause of her current predicament. A dilemma that was proving far more difficult to resolve than she'd believed possible.
Natalie checked her watch, noting the time. Why didn't they call? They must know she was awake and would be concerned. She picked up her cell, and was about to call Paul, when she remembered that she shouldn't use that phone. She set it back down in the padded basket where she left it along with her keys while in the apartment, and hurried back into her bedroom where she'd left the other phone in her jacket. A burner, Paul had called it. Something that couldn't be traced back to her.
When she pulled out the phone she realized that Jeff had tried to call her several times, but the ring was still muted, and she'd been away from the cheap cellular device and unable to sense the vibration. She checked the times of the call attempts and realized Jeff had called most recently while she'd been in the other room. Quickly she activated a call back.
Jeff answered almost immediately.
"Where in hell were you?" he asked harshly.
She and Jeff were nothing alike. She had the brains and beauty, and he had been granted neither. Big, strong, and rugged, but far from handsome, her brother had made his way based on the loyalties their father had made. Chance, and their father's position in the Organization had made him a friend of Paul's. Paul was the son of the Organization leader's brother. The Mob, the Mafia, Organized Crime, whatever one chose to call it, those involved were more circumspect than their ancestors, but no less heavily involved in illegal and profitable ventures than their kin had been in the past. Their father had been a soldier for the Organization, and Jeff was one now. Paul, of course, was being groomed for something more, and had met Natalie through Jeff. He had been immediately interested, but it had taken time before she'd decided he might be useful to her and accepted his advances. As it turned out he was an aggressive and experienced lover, a pleasing side benefit.
"I forgot this phone was on vibrate only," she replied, annoyed at his tone, but uncharacteristically admitted she'd been in the wrong. "I expected you back last night."
"It's taken longer than expected to get matters under control," Jeff said. "The second shooter was already traveling, which made contacting him difficult. Paul had to talk to one of his uncle's lieutenants, which meant his uncle must have learned that something was up. I'm not sure how that's going to work out yet. There might be some fallout from him. Paul didn't exactly advertise he had contacted one of the group's best hit men. I wouldn't be surprised if he's getting an ass reaming."
Natalie cursed softly. She might have to take action to reverse this situation if it turned out to be a problem. She didn't want Paul to be in trouble with his family. She might need him, and frankly she discovered she cared more about him than she'd realized. She hadn't considered the possibility when she acted to turn off the proposed killing.
"You could have told me about this earlier," she chastised her brother.
"Screw you," Jeff replied. "I tried to call you. It's not my fault that you didn't think to have your phone at hand like we agreed."
"Why didn't you come back to check on me?" she asked. "It doesn't sound like you are busy like Paul."
"You kind of spooked me with what you told us earlier. I don't know if I believe you or not, but if you told the truth, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the idea."
"I showed you how it worked," Natalie protested.
"Parlor tricks," Jeff protested. "I don't know how you managed them, but it has to be that. I can't figure what your game plan is, but I don't want to be in the middle when Paul's uncle decides to shut down whatever you are really up to. Just don't expect any more help on this from Paul. Once his uncle gets done with him, I don't think he'll be agreeable to playing this game any more."
Natalie was immediately concerned.
"Paul wouldn't tell his uncle what I revealed to you, would he? I made you both promise to keep it secret."
"I don't know what he'll do," Jeff admitted. "What's so important about keeping such a ridiculous claim secret?"
"What I told you is the truth!" Natalie almost shouted. "I can understand that you don't believe. Just get Paul to come back here and I'll prove it to you. We have to decide what we can do."
Jeff muttered a series of curses, and said he'd look for Paul, but couldn't promise what the other would agree to. Then he hung up the phone.
Natalie looked at the cheap device, and carefully reactivated the audible ring in case Jeff called back, or hopefully Paul. A quick check through the missed calls directory showed only Jeff's number thus far. Then she put it in the pocket of her robe and went in search of some more aspirin.
The call had left her agitated. She didn't want anyone else to know about her unusual ability. She hadn't wanted to tell her brother and Paul, but until she did, they weren't agreeable to terminating the project. She'd hoped the story she told would
get them to stop, but in the end they wouldn't really believe in her strange claims. That had apparently worked with her brother, but who knew what Paul might reveal under the circumstances.
Natalie rubbed her temples. Her head still throbbed from the effort she'd needed to expend, and she could consider what it would be like if she'd tried to do more. This had seemed like it would be back far enough, especially since the day they activated the plan to shoot Carlson was beyond her reach.
"Nobody can do what you claim," Jeff had countered, expressing his doubts.
Natalie didn't know how she'd gained the ability, and probably wouldn't have believed such a claim if someone else had told her in the past they were able to do what she now could, but her ability was real. She'd been forced to perform a Backslide, as she called it, once she'd discovered that once again Carlson and her people had known about their intentions and had captured both Paul and the second shooter before they could take any action. Once they had Paul, it would have only been a matter of time before they figured out it had to be her behind the whole thing.
She couldn't understand how matters had come to this. Initially she'd wanted to kidnap the FBI agent. She'd asked Paul to arrange for a place they could interrogate her and find out how much she knew and who she might have told about her suspicions. Natalie had hopes that Carlson really hadn't been told very much, and more importantly hadn't revealed any of what mattered to anyone else. There was a good chance that was the case, since the agent's involvement was not through official channels, but through an old friend asking for help. If Carlson, who hadn't actually visited the firm yet, had spoken to no one, then they could have killed her, and also eliminated the witch who had called her, and no one would have been suspicious of her. With those two out of the way, there would have been nothing to point toward her.
But it hadn't worked out as she'd expected. After convincing Paul she was serious, he'd reluctantly agreed to help her. With her brother, Paul, one of his tech savvy soldiers, and another gunman they'd planned to take her unaware in her apartment.
But it turned out that the situation was a setup. Somehow, Carlson and her people had known about the attempt. That seemed impossible given that only the small group of them had been involved in the planning. Actually more people knew of their planning, she learned later, when Paul told her about those he'd had to involve to make arrangements for the safe-house where they planned to interrogate the agent, and later kill her off. There had also been several who had helped with the surveillance that helped them learn about her routines. That might be the source of the leaks.
When they thought Carlson was returning home, Paul had called and indicated they were preparing to take her. Then there was silence. Natalie had been hardly able to contain herself as she waited for them to arrive at the safehouse with their prisoner. But that hadn't happened. Finally, she'd had to admit something had gone wrong. It didn't take her long after that to realize the only hope for her was to Backslide and call the whole thing off. She'd done so, and had an awkward time convincing Jeff and Paul that they should shift their approach. She'd finally managed to convince them that the risks were too high with the kidnapping, spicing her argument with the false impression that her contact within the firm who had alerted her to Carlson in the first place, had indicated he'd overheard that Carlson was suspicious of something. She hadn't had to reveal her secret, and reluctantly Paul had set the plan to shoot Carlson from ambush in motion. They wouldn't have a chance to learn what the agent knew, but that was a luxury that no longer seemed important. If they could shoot her now, and then arrange the accident for Anne Barker, the firm's CFO who had started all this, odds were good she and her secrets would be safe.
It had taken Paul some time to arrange for the second shooter. Natalie had asked why he needed two, and why he was insistent on being one of them.
"Because I'm a superb shot, and I want to make sure this is done right," he said. "I don't think the second man is actually needed, but it's good insurance just in case the situation forces one of us to stand down. It'll also confuse the investigation afterwards. I have an uncomfortable feeling this agent knows more than you suspect."
Paul had been right. The day of the attempt, just as the shot was about to take place, a situation that Paul had used one of his uncle's most carefully placed contacts inside the White House to help arrange, both Paul and the second shooter had been caught again. Their carefully managed plan was known to Carlson this time as well. In a panic, Natalie had Backslid to yesterday, as much as she hadn't wanted to attempt such a thing so soon after the last instance, and found stopping the plan was harder than placing it in motion in the first place.
Paul had been pissed, something she seldom saw, at least with regards to herself. She'd finally had to reveal her ability, and convince them with some simple examples, which really compounded her headache, before Paul had finally agreed to call it all off.
"Now you are telling me this is the real reason you wanted to stop the kidnapping once we had it all set up?" he'd asked angrily.
Natalie had nodded.
"Somehow they know what we are planning," she explained miserably. "If we go ahead, we'll all be captured."
"Then why don't you simply use this ability or yours to go back far enough that they can't have contacted one another, and have us eliminate this Carlson person and your CFO before any of this can become a problem?"
"I can't go back that far," Natalie had tried to explain.
"Of course you can't," Paul had replied, looking at her doubtfully.
"Perhaps the first day I was told that Anne had contacted her friend in the FBI I might have had a chance to do that, but you were out of town on business with Jeff then," Natalie explained. "Remember I approached you about the kidnapping the day you arrived."
Natalie knew she had screwed up. She should have dealt with the matter immediately, but hadn't been comfortable acting without Paul or Jeff's support.
Paul had been silent a long time, then had said, "I can't see how we solve your problem then," he said. "If they know about us, we will all end up in jail. At the moment, they are only aware of you. You might have to simply disappear,"
"I don't understand how they have been finding out about our plans, but I don't think they know about me," she'd said, and explained why she felt that way.
"There's something odd about this," Paul had said finally. "We need to talk through everything that has happened."
First, however, had been the need to clean up the planned attack, and that had resulted in Jeff and Paul heading off the evening before. And Paul had still to return. Natalie worried that maybe he'd decided to leave her to solve the problem on her own.
Chapter 7
She took four of the tablets, knowing she would pay the penalty of an even worse upset stomach for doing so, but hoping the dull throb in the base of her skull would fade away so she could think better. She didn't know why, but aspirin worked better for her than any of the other headache medicines she'd tried, and even better than some of the less commonly available stuff that she had access to through her work. She felt far better than she had the night before, but past experience warned her that it would be a few days before she was completely rid of the persistent ache, no matter what she did.
She returned to her bedroom in order to change into something more reasonable now that she was up. Nothing fancy. She wanted loose, relaxed clothing for the day. Jeans, but not the tight designer kind, and perhaps a loose sweater. While she changed, she considered the Carlson situation, and what all of this was leading towards. If it hadn't been for Chuck, Anne's assistant, she wouldn't have known about the situation until it had become a problem. And she was certain it would develop into something she didn't wish pursued.
Chuck hadn't known any details beyond the fact Anne had contacted her old friend Susan Carlson, a highly placed agent within the FBI. He'd told Natalie about the call because he was aware of the bad blood between the two of them, and hoped he migh
t gain some points with her as a result.
Natalie had been certain what the matter was about. Anne had been unreceptive to her for some time, and must have finally made some connection that she wanted to have her FBI friend pursue. Natalie could only hope that Anne hadn't revealed much, if anything over the phone, or if she had, this Carlson person had chosen to hold it close at least until they had met in person. She'd decided that something must be done to eliminate the Anne Barker problem once and for all. She'd realized that any action she took would be complicated by what Chuck had overheard and relayed to her. If something happened to Anne, however innocent it appeared, questions would be asked, and that would almost certainly lead to her as a person of interest, as they liked to say.
She'd gritted her teeth, and performed a Backslide, the first in nearly a year. The ability was there, but she was loath to use it. The side affects were unpleasant, and she worried if they weren't an indication of trauma of some kind she was inducing in her brain. Frankly, she was a little afraid of the ability, and used it sparingly. Without revealing what she could do, she could hardly seek out expert advice to discuss the matter, although she'd once consulted an expert on her sometimes severe headaches. Nothing had been found, but somehow that hadn't soothed her worries.
She'd gone back only far enough to arrange for Chuck to run an errand for her, which delayed his getting to the office until after the critical call had taken place. As a result, Chuck was now completely unaware of the call to Carlson, and therefore made no attempt to inform Natalie. She, of course, still retained the memory of what he'd told her the first time around. Now, when something happened to Anne, there was nothing to link the two of them.