Conspiracy Unleashed

by L. Danvers

  “I always carry a backup,” the cabby said with a smile that revealed four missing teeth.

  He scanned her tattoo, and he called for a tow while Cal ran for cover under the awning of an old coffee shop. The smell of roasted beans permeated through the rain. Her teeth chattered as another gust of wind rushed past. Her wristband flashed again.

  “You promised you’d be here on time. Where are you? We’re waiting. Quinn won’t tell us a thing until you get here. My pot roast is getting cold. Hurry up!”

  Cal didn’t respond. It was best to let her mother cool down when she was like this. Instead, she hailed another hovercab and was relieved to see the one that pulled up was one of the newer models, paint intact and windows clear as crystal—or in this case, glass. The sleek vehicle hovered motionless a foot above the ground while Cal climbed inside. It had that new leathery smell. The white cushions were plump and pristine. Best of all, there was no driver. It was automated. Cal reveled in the silence. As the hovercab sped away, she wondered what Quinn’s news could be.

  Whatever it was, it would give her parents one more thing to use to compare their two daughters. If Quinn was getting married, they’d ask why Cal hadn’t found a good man to settle down with. If Quinn was moving, they’d wallow in despair and find a way to criticize Cal for not being more independent. No matter what Cal did, she could never measure up to her big sister. At least not in the eyes of her parents.

  And it wasn’t like Quinn’s and Cal’s relationship had been smooth sailing, either. Sure, there were peaks and valleys like any relationship, but there were mostly long stretches of valleys. It started when Cal was five. Quinn got the chemistry set she’d pined after for months for Christmas, and Cal got her beloved Curly Shirley doll. She enjoyed two magical days with Curly Shirley, pulling a ribbon tight around her red ringlets and playing tea party with her collection of stuffed animals, before the doll was burned to a crisp in one of Quinn’s failed science experiments. Quinn claimed it was an accident, but Cal wasn’t so sure. What’s more, instead of punishing Quinn, their parents chastised Cal for not being more responsible and keeping track of Curly Shirley’s whereabouts.

  Before she knew it, Cal had arrived at 19 Cambridge Place, Level 2. The hovercab glided to a gentle stop, and Cal pulled back her sleeve to pay. The scanner read her tattoo and completed the transaction. The door slid open, and she stepped onto the slick disc hovering in front of her parents’ door. The hovercab whizzed away, and Cal took a deep breath before turning the knob.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she announced, slipping her arms out of her soggy coat and hanging it in the closet.

  “You’re sorry?” Her mom sighed, slamming the dishwasher door. “That pot roast has been sitting on the table for forty-five minutes. Look, the fat’s congealing. I try to put together a nice—”

  Cal’s dad, Howard, interrupted her. “You look awful,” he said, peering at Cal over the top of his unfolded newspaper. The tips of his fingers were stained with black ink. Quinn rested her FlexTab on the table and stared at her sister.

  “Oh, there was a bit of hovercab trouble,” Cal said, wringing out her long, raven hair. A puddle formed beneath her feet. She grabbed a towel and sopped it up before her mother had a chance to scold her. “You know how it is.”

  “Come, everyone,” her mom said, not giving her younger daughter’s disheveled appearance a second thought. Her focus remained keen on her ruined dinner. “Let’s eat before it gets any colder.”

  Cal rested her elbows on the wooden table, which wobbled under the weight of her arms. She folded her cloth napkin and propped it under one of the legs. The room-temperature meal was spread out before them on the white tablecloth Cal’s mother had crocheted by hand. Janet’s famous pot roast was, of course, the star of the show, joined by mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, bread and butter. Cal’s mother had her flaws, but the woman could cook. She loved nothing more than stuffing her family with good old carb-heavy, heart attack-inducing comfort food.

  “Everything looks great, Mom,” Quinn said, piling a mound of creamy mashed potatoes onto her plate, oblivious to everyone’s focus resting on her. “Now that everyone’s here, I guess I’m ready to share the big news.”

  “You’re getting married,” Cal interrupted.

  “You’re not pregnant, are you?” Howard said.

  “Daddy!” Quinn gasped. She pulled her wavy blonde hair back into a ponytail as she continued. “No, no. Nothing like that. What I wanted to tell you was that I got the job! The dream job.”

  Howard and Janet jumped from their seats and ran to hug their daughter. Cal smiled. Quinn had dreamed of working for NASA since she was a little girl. She became obsessed with space when an astronaut came to speak to her third grade class. It was all she talked about for months. And when the Sunspotter, the space elevator ascending far into the heavens, was built, she begged and begged their parents to take her to see it. She put together an entire presentation on why the trip would be both fun and educational and presented it to the family. So instead of going to the beach for vacation that year, the Camerons went to Huntsville, Alabama, a city in the heart of the Tennessee Valley filled with rolling mountains and fresh summer air. They went on the Sunspotter four separate times that trip. Though Cal wasn’t afraid of heights, rising high above the Rocket City in an elevator made of glass was enough to make her head spin. But Quinn couldn’t get enough of it. It was a magnificent sight. The hazy purple and pink sunset was a stark contrast to the white and black Saturn V rocket, the main attraction of the city’s skyline. They toured the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, a museum dedicated to the space program, and Quinn spent every bit of the allowance money she’d saved on souvenirs. She bought everything from a solar system display for their bedroom to an assortment of stuffed green alien dolls making peace signs.

  Years later, when the world’s nations’ space programs first colonized other planets and made contact with the most basic of lifeforms (bacteria, worm-like creatures and the like), the whole family thought Quinn’s head was going to explode. Granted, it was a spectacular discovery. It was all anyone could talk about for a while. But in time, the excitement dwindled, and most people got back to focusing on their day-to-day lives and moved on. But not Quinn. She became more obsessed with space. So while none of the family doubted she would achieve her ambition of becoming an analyst for NASA, it was exciting to learn that her lifelong dream had finally come true.

  “Why did you wait so long to tell us?” Janet said. She gave Quinn a playful shove.

  Quinn adjusted the collar of her floral blouse. The light of the fixture overhead reflected off the shirt’s warm yellow tones, giving her an angelic glow. “I wanted to see the look on your faces when I told you.” Quinn beamed with pride, unable to contain her pearly white grin. Even without the light, she radiated from within. As much as Cal was ashamed to admit it, she envied her sister’s success. Especially after the day she’d had.

  “That’s great, sweetheart,” Janet said, scrunching her face so that it appeared more wrinkled. She squeezed her daughter once more. Quinn’s ear met her shoulder as she pried out of her mother’s grip.

  “I’m happy for you, Quinn,” Cal added. It wasn’t a lie. She was happy for her sister, but she wished things were going as well for her. This was Quinn’s moment, though, so she kept the focus on her. “When do you start? You’ll be working at the office here in D.C., I assume?”

  “Oh yes, of course. You know I couldn’t leave home. I start in a couple weeks.”

  The family threw question after question at Quinn, eager to learn more about her new career. Pink tones spread across her cheeks while she deflected the many compliments thrown her way. She lit up while telling her family every excruciating detail about the interview process, the new friend she had already made while she was waiting in the lobby and what she would be doing at NASA. She gave a satisfied sigh. Quinn took a long sip of water, then turned the attention to her sister.

  “Enoug
h about me. Cal, what about you? How’s work going?”

  “It’s alright. Same shit, different day.”

  Janet swatted her napkin against the table, her eyes ablaze. “Cal, language.” Her dad chuckled. Janet’s face twisted so tight Howard’s laughter came to an abrupt halt.

  It was an old family joke. Cal learned that saying from him. Howard used to say that every evening when Janet asked him about his day at work, which drove Janet mad. So of course the kids started saying it, too, to get under her skin. It worked.

  “What about that big story you were telling us about?” Howard asked, chewing a chunk of meat with his mouth wide open.

  “Oh, that?” Cal flicked her hand, trying to sound nonchalant and ignore her dad’s disgusting chewing habits. “My boss tabled the story.” Cal was embarrassed she’d talked about it so much only to have it cut. As she feared, Quinn’s news presented her parents with the perfect opportunity to compare her spectacular life against Cal’s, which was stuck in second gear.

  “You were so excited about it,” Quinn said. “I thought it was going to be a big deal.”

  “Me, too.” Cal stabbed a macaroni noodle with her fork. “Katz wants me to drop it and focus on the White House instead. I don’t know. It’s frustrating. I feel like I’m hitting dead end after dead end at work.”

  “The White House isn’t a dead end,” Janet said.

  “And even if it was,” Howard added, “you know what that means. It’s not the end.”

  He didn’t have to explain. Cal knew what he meant. He was referencing her grandpa’s—her dad’s dad’s—favorite saying: “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” It summed up Grandpa Jack’s outlook on life. He believed everything would work out the way it was supposed to. She remembered the first time he shared that expression with her. She and her family had gone to the Smithsonian Gardens Butterfly Habitat, and when he uttered those words, a monarch butterfly landed on his face. Its delicate orange and black wings tickled him. He grinned from ear to ear while the butterfly rested on his wide, rosy nose. That was the last time any of them saw Grandpa Jack. He passed away a few months later. From then on, whenever she saw a monarch butterfly, she thought of him and his favorite saying. She liked to think he was sending her signs. It had been many years, though, since she’d seen one. The monarchs were going extinct.

  “What about that guy you were seeing?” Quinn asked, fishing for something positive for Cal to talk about. “Are you still dating him?”

  “No, he was a jerk. I’m pretty sure he was cheating, so I dumped him.”

  “Oh.”

  “The right guy will come along when you least expect it,” her mother said, her thin lips curling into an insincere smile, like she herself didn’t believe a word of the stereotypical garbage she was spewing. “Who knows? He could be right under your nose.”

  Chapter Three

  Cal stepped from the telepad base into the lobby of the new restaurant Hello Chelo. Intoxicating aromas of warm rice and exotic herbs teased her senses, and mesmerizing melodies filled her ears. Handmade silk Persian rugs spread across the floor, and gold-framed mirrors lined the back wall of the restaurant, making the small space feel twice its size. She spotted a familiar face in the reflection. She joined Flynn at a table for two.

  “Good to see you,” she said, smiling as she smoothed a wrinkle in the burgundy tablecloth. It had only been a couple weeks since she saw him last, but that was unusual for them. They had become best friends on the first day of kindergarten. He shared his fruit snack with her, the mark of a true friend by kindergarten standards, and they had been inseparable since. It was a good thing they had become so close back then. Sometimes Cal wondered if they would have been friends had they met later in life. They couldn’t be any more different from one another, but they balanced each other well.

  A waiter filled two gold-rimmed glasses with steaming tea that smelled of cardamom while Cal and Flynn caught up with one another. A family of four passed by their table while Cal was finishing placing her order. The salt and pepper-haired father with a muscular build hushed his children in Farsi. The kids giggled and played all the way to their seats. He looked over his left shoulder, and he made eye contact with Flynn. It was purposeful. There was recognition between them.

  “Do you know him?” Cal whispered, jerking her head to the man.

  “Who?”

  “You know who,” she said. “He looked straight at you a few seconds ago. Like you had met before.”

  “Oh, him?” Flynn said. He gulped. “No, I’ve never seen him.”

  She wanted to press him further, but Flynn changed the subject before she had the chance. “So, how are things with what’s-his-name?”

  “You know his name is Luke,” Cal snapped. “We broke up.”

  Flynn rested his hand on his chin, waiting for the inevitable explanation. They had a bit of a routine going at this point, and he knew the drill. Cal would vent about her failed relationships and analyze every detail, and Flynn would try to be supportive because if he offered too much advice she would bite his head off for not listening to her.

  “You know how I am,” she said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “I couldn’t resist.”

  “You didn’t go through his stuff, did you?”

  Her smile faded. “It’s a good thing I did. That jerk was cheating on me. Can you believe it?” She huffed. “And it wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t kept lying about it after he’d been caught. I saw the messages with my own eyes, showed them to him and he had the nerve to deny it.”

  Her blood boiled just thinking about it. For someone who prided herself on having killer instincts, she had a knack for choosing the wrong guys. She hated that she wanted so desperately to be loved. She had high ambitions, but she longed to have someone to share her life with. Though her experiences cautioned her otherwise—Janet and Howard Cameron weren’t the embodiment of romance—she believed love did exist. And as hard as it was to put herself out there over and over again only to be let down, she did it anyway. She treated her love life like her work life. With enough persistence, she’d get what she wanted.

  She was relieved to be interrupted by the waiter, who placed a large dish of chelo kabob—steaming saffroned basmati rice, beef kabob and chargrilled vegetables—in front of Flynn. He sprinkled sumac, a classic tangy Mediterranean seasoning, over his dish. Cal had ordered ghormeh sabzi, a Persian herb and lamb stew that was served with a golden pile of rice on the side. She had to keep herself from devouring the whole dish at once. It was the perfect thing to warm her up on a chilly Monday afternoon.

  “The thing is, Cal,” Flynn continued, picking the conversation back where they’d left things while pushing the bridge of his rectangular-framed glasses over his large nose, “you can’t treat relationships like your investigative pieces. Yeah, the guy was a dirt bag and was lying to you, but if you felt like you had to snoop, that was a good sign it was time to end the relationship.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Cal said between sips of tea. “I’m going to take relationship advice from a guy who’s had, like, two girlfriends his whole life.”

  “Hey, that’s by choice.” He snorted.

  “Whatever.”

  “Listen,” he said, his cloudy blue eyes avoiding contact with hers. “I wanted to—” He stopped himself mid-sentence.

  “What?” Cal asked, half-listening as she glanced at her wristband. She had a while before she had to get back to work.

  “I wanted to ask you,” he began again, stumbling over his words. “Um. Are you going to finish that?”

  He pointed to her bowl with his spoon. She smiled and slid the bowl toward him. She was full anyway.

  “So, how’s work been going?”

  Flynn cleared his throat. “Good.”

  “That’s it? Good?”

  “Yeah. Good.”

  He ran his fingers through his messy brown hair. Cal cocked her head to the side, expecting him t
o divulge a bit more than his one-word answer.

  “Something interesting has to be going on in the world of engineering.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t talk about it.” He coughed. “You know, because of my clearance. But, uh, what about you? What happened to that big story you were working on?”

  Cal rubbed the temples of her forehead. She was getting sick of talking about it. She wished she had never told anyone about the story in the first place. She went through the whole spiel again.

  “I don’t understand why no one else thinks it’s important,” she complained, burying her head under her arms, which rested on the edge of the table. Frustrated that Flynn wasn’t saying anything to make her feel like he agreed her point of view was valid, she popped up her head once again and prodded. “You think it’s important, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re a smart guy. Do you have any theories?”

  Flynn checked his wristband. “Sorry, I have to get back to work.”

  UPON RETURNING TO THE newsroom, Cal made countless phone calls in an effort to get the latest information on how the negotiations were going between France and Spain. The short answer from her most trusted source in the White House was “not good.” War was inevitable at this point. The lingering question, however, was what role America would play in it. The president had said on more than one occasion that he had no intention of involving the U.S. in battle. But that was what every president said until there was some inciting incident significant enough to make them change their minds.

  As what was becoming the norm, Cal’s workflow was interrupted by the excited intern. Cal looked up at the bright-eyed college girl. She remembered when she used to be that psyched about work.

  “I have a great story idea for you,” Sue said. Her eyes were so wide Cal thought they would burst. “My friend Harold is a graduate student, and he was telling me that researchers at his school think they may have discovered this new atomic particle.”