Here we were, a beautiful girl in a diaphanous skirt with a breeze ruffling the edges. Does nature favor them over all others? Does their mere existence make the forces of the world bend and twist to create a breeze where none had existed before their entrance?
As was the nature of these girls, Vicky didn’t seem to notice her skirt’s shenanigans. She had her eyes firmly set on her boss, all innocent and attentive to his needs. He returned her smile in kind and for a brief moment, I felt guilty that this would probably be their last day together. There was something between them even if they hadn’t taken it further.
He opened the door wider and moved aside for her to enter, “Thank you, Vicky, please put the tray on the table.”
She placed the tray on the dark wooden coffee table in front of me, which no doubt had a firearm of some sort hidden within easy reach. My guess was that I could easily bend forward for a cup and get to the gun in mere seconds if I needed to.
“Will that be all sir?”
I was tempted to drop down and take a peek under her skirt. Was it possible that the girl was moving ever so slightly to generate a ruffle? I wondered if there was a way I could ask her later.
“Yes, thank you, Vicky. How about you take an early lunch, there is nothing else due until much later,” he said and briefly made eye contact with me.
Clever little bastard, I hadn’t planned on hurting anyone other than him if I could help it. But I guess since I paid so much attention to her the assumption was that I would, in fact, hurt her. The logical step from his love or lust-driven heart would be to protect her.
“Oh, thank you, sir! That would be fantastic,” She left much quicker than she had entered, maybe she was going to buy more breeze inducing skirts.
When she had gone, I leaned forward to help myself to a cup of coffee. It smelled nicer than what I had earlier this morning.
“So that you know, I wouldn’t have done anything to her,” I said when I sat back with my cup in hand.
He was still at the door handle in hand. His knuckles were white from gripping it so tightly. Abruptly he let got and stomped the short distance to the coffee table.
“What do you want Miss Dawson?”
I almost couldn’t make out what he was saying; his words forced past tightly clenched teeth.
“Relax Denny, have a coffee. You could do serious damage to your teeth if you keep doing that.”
Six
––––––––
Denny dragged one of the chairs over to face me, with the perceived safety of the coffee table between us. He dropped slowly into it and crossed his arms over his chest, looking like a sulking seven-year-old. His mother would be rolling over in her grave at his display and treatment of the furniture.
Denny looked a lot like my ex-husband, his siblings took after their mother, but he was all Richard. It must be one of those things that skipped a generation.
I didn’t resist the petty spitefulness when I let him stew while I drank my coffee. In truth, I was acting as immature as he was but I bet I could outlast him. Finally, he leaned over and glared at me.
“Well, what do you want?”
“I want many things Denny; comfortable high heeled boots, lip gloss that stay where you put it. An endless clip for my pistol and I actually would love world peace.”
I stopped to take another sip of my coffee; he glared at me in disgust. I decided that it was time to stop playing games with him.
“What I want with you Denny is more complicated and challenging than any of those,” I said.
I could see him going through a mental checklist; no doubt one of all the people he has been pissing off lately. It seemed to be a long list judging by the length of the silence we sat in. After a time, he sat back with a frown.
“Who?” He asked.
“A man by the name of Alex Travis came to see you, and you worked up an insurance deal for him. You then turned around and blackmailed him.”
Instead of filling the silence after I had spoken he sat watching me. I was quite proud of him, instead of rushing in to deliver the punch line he waited.
Many people got uncomfortable when confronted with a dangerous lie, even more so when it was an inconvenient truth. Their tendency was to fill the silence that followed with something. Inadvertently they trapped themselves further and made matters worse. I didn’t expect it from Denny as a consummate professional, but sometimes one got lucky.
“You found some things you shouldn't have, things that are dangerous. Not so much for us as this happens every once in a while. But you Denny, are in terrible danger.”
“Its part of the business, bad things can happen at any moment,” he said.
“And which business would that be? An insurance peddler or that of a confidence man?”
He rolled a shoulder noncommittally, “Either really, you would be amazed at what people would do to an insurance salesman given half a chance.”
“That may be, but I bet you have never come up against this sort of bad thing,” I said.
I decided that Vicky made excellent coffee, worthy of another cup. Pouring more, I felt rushed but worked at not showing it. I needed him to go with me willingly, and I was hoping to give him enough time to process the danger.
“Look, how about we get to the part where you tell me what you want, we can even negotiate a bit if you want. You’ll get what you want and go away,” He said through clenched teeth.
“If only it were that simple,” I said sitting back, cup in hand. “But, that isn’t what my employers are after Denny.”
He went pale, and his body tensed; now we were getting somewhere. He finally realized just how much trouble came knocking today. I could see him weighing up options, escape or attack?
“Please don’t try and escape, I honestly don’t feel like kicking your ass right now. How about we discuss options?” I suggested.
“What’s to discuss? You are apparently here to kill me. Why shouldn’t I just shoot you and leave town? Plenty of good places to start over.”
He leaned forward expectantly, should I just put him in his place now? He was so poised for action that I had to revise my thoughts on his weapons cache.
I stayed where I was, assuming a relaxed posture to put him at ease. There was no point in pushing him into reckless action. I was enjoying my coffee too much to spill any.
“There is plenty to discuss Denny, like what you know for example. Does Vicky know anything, who are you partners and how for heaven’s sake you thought you would get away with it?” I was getting very annoyed with the pup; his stupidity irked me.
“Nothing. Don’t have any and easily.”
Cocky little shit. I felt just a tiny bit proud of him; he appeared rattled, but he, at least, managed not to buckle too much under pressure.
“Okay, now for one of the tougher ones. What exactly do you know about Alex Travis?” I asked, peering over the rim of my cup.
He sat back in the chair, the leather and wood making a pleasing sound.
“Quite a bit, but not as much as I would like.”
His hands were spread wide, a plea? More likely it was a distraction to draw my attention away from something.
“Details, I need to know exact details. And please sit still, I am not sure what you’re trying to do, but it is irritating me.”
“It was worth a try; many women like to watch me move.”
He managed a twinkle and a cheeky grin. I suppressed a shudder, not in a million years.
“Indeed, focus on my question, please. What exactly did you find out about Alex Travis?”
“The usual initially, it all checked out brilliantly. I did a deeper check and things got weird. Bits of information that made no sense.”
He leaned forward, and I tensed, but he was only helping himself to the excellent coffee. I prepared for him to do something stupid, a cup of hot coffee could do some serious damage.
“And what would that be?” I asked.
“For starters, h
e didn’t seem to have been born Alex Travis or in 1978 for that matter.”
Whoever cleaned the files had been sloppy. The more paranoid part of me knew the possibility existed that Alex was being used to set me up. But was that megalomania talking or were they out to get me?
“I couldn’t find more on Alex Travis, but he had a direct link to a man called Ned Wallis.”
“And did you discover about Ned Wallis?”
How the hell did Alex’s information get linked to Ned? Was this in fact not about me but Ned? Did someone want to get rid of him and I just happened to get in the way?
“No, his files were heavily protected, I could see it but couldn’t get past the encryption. Not even my hacker could, and she is very pissed about that.”
As expected for such a high rank, our defenses were supposed to be ironclad across the board. They shouldn’t have been able to find it in the first place. I put my cup down and looked gravely at him.
“But she got something didn’t she Denny?”
Seven
He suddenly appeared much older to me than he was in reality. He must be holding on to the mother of all tidbits.
“Crumbs that led this way and that with no indication who left them.”
Stranger by the minute, someone had gone to a considerable length to lead him down the correct path. But was it for Ned or me? Or was it just all a coincidence that involved Denny by accident? Too many questions and not enough answers.
“What did it lead to Denny?”
“A place, somewhere that doesn’t exist on a map. I looked, and I googled and no matter how I searched it wasn't there.”
He sat forward and stared at me intently, “only, it is, I drove out there, and it is there.”
“And what did you find when you got there?” I asked.
He pushed a hand tiredly across his face. This day was starting to take a toll on him.
“Nothing initially, it looked like any piece of the desert, scrub and wasteland. I drove around a bit, but nothing jumped out at me. I was about to leave but figured I would stop and relieve myself behind some rocks.”
He shook his head and stood, and started pacing in a tight circle. A right then a left, around and around only to suddenly stop and reverse direction.
“Did something happen while you were watering the rocks?” I asked.
He stopped mid-pace and looked around his office, searching. Deciding that there was nothing, after all, he flung himself back into the chair. I was expecting nothing less than aliens and mother ships at this point, and I found that I had scooted forward until I was sitting on the edge of the couch.
I was about to demand the information from him when he spoke.
“I was standing there, paying attention to the rocks and not looking around. When I finished there, it was, this massive fucking building. It appeared while I was taking a piss. Thirty-seconds max for some big monstrosity to pop up behind me.”
“Surely something so large would make a terrible noise?”
He shook his head quickly, “All I heard was water hitting the rocks, I swear it.”
“Not to doubt you Denny but perhaps it was just a mirage? The desert messes with people, and you had been out there for a while looking for something.”
This time he shook his head more violently he was highly agitated.
“You don’t understand; it was solid, very solid. I went right up to it and touched the wall to make sure. I somehow drove through it and didn’t notice.”
I couldn’t tell him that it wasn’t possible; there I sat, the epitome of impossible. What the hell did he find?
“What did your hacker learn about the building? Was there any indications of what it could be?”
He was staring down at the carpet, this time, possibly locked in the memory of touching a building that he drove through but never noticed. I reckoned that the possibility of a very real mirage was still on the table.
“The building was some manufacturing site, a plantation, and depot.”
I stopped breathing for a moment, could it be? Did someone leak the holy grail of information? I was sure that I wasn’t the only immortal searching for the home base of my drug of choice. If this was it, I sure as hell was the only immortal that could finally get my hands on the mother load.
I had visions of rolling around in a lake of the injector chips that housed immortality. I had to deliver a mental slap; it was depressing how quickly I had gotten distracted. The possibility of getting my daily kick whenever I wanted in a twenty-four-hour period had completely obliterated my focus.
“Is that what you saw Denny? A manufacturing depot, plantation adjacent?”
He was flexing his left hand absentmindedly; possibly he used a stress ball and was out of habit reacting to this stressful situation. He nodded, his hand flexing slowly with what appeared to be the internal rhythm of his stress.
“Yeah, the building as much as it creeped the hell out of me looked like any warehouse would look except at least three times the size of any I have ever seen. The plantation was something else entirely.” He shook his head and flexed harder.
The poor boy was spooked; I had to know, though. What did my salvation look like? Certainly not the simple injector I knew, I had never seen the liquid that got dispensed into my brain. I knew that must be something incredible, and I held it in reverence.
After all these years I still momentarily looked up in case a lightning bolt came down to smite my ass.
“In what way was it unusual?” Gently Eliza.
“I can honestly say I have never seen anything like it anywhere, except maybe in a graphic novel or a sci-fi movie.”
He fell silent and stared deeply into the fibers of the carpet. Bloody hell, I wanted to get up and shake him until his teeth rattled in his head.
“How so, was it purple and green with spikes everywhere?” I said, hoping that some absurdity would get him talking again.
Still lost in his inspection of carpet fibers he slowly shook his head, “No, nothing like that. It was small, looked more like rosemary or thyme would but the leaves looked all wrong.”
“Wrong how Denny?”
If I sat forward anymore, I would fall off and land on the carpet.
“They looked more like something you would see in the ocean like they were floating in water except in the desert. The colors were also curious, bright luminous green with red flecks.”
I tried to picture these plants; it did seem more suited to a sci-fi movie than something one would find on a drive in the desert. I had to see them for myself; I could figure out how to distil them later.
Eight
“Could you see how many plants there were Denny?”
I fervently hoped that there wasn’t just a small patch of plants. Or would that be better, easier to farm and less time to distill it to Shi? My mind was racing, a million possibilities running through it. It had to be massive to support all of us and who knew how many others in the Man’s organizational structure.
I heard a bird of some sort at the window, pecking at its reflection and getting worked up. Denny was rubbing his hands together, and the sound was like a whisper, not of skin rubbing over skin but a promise.
He held my immortality in his hands, and suddenly my task didn’t seem like the end of things but a beginning. It had the potential to free me from my reliance on the manufacturers, freedom from having to earn a sponsor. I could go anywhere and do anything, do all those things movies made people believe about immortality.
I could almost not breathe, my throat constricted with the knot of hope lying in it. It was almost too much to believe. Sure; I’d been dreaming about it for much of the last fifty odd years, but that sort of a thing didn’t just happen.
Not to people like me; like I said I attracted crap rather than good. Even immortality held a barb instead of the light and glorious freedom I had envisioned. This information could be the famous “it”, the ultimate game changer. All these things raced through my min
d while I waited.
“As far as I could see; it was the desert, of course, so I don’t know how far it spread.” He abruptly stopped rubbing his hands and pushed to his feet. He stretched out to his full height as he looked at me.
“Is this worth killing me for Miss Dawson? This ridiculous bit of information?”
I stood as well, “No Denny, this is worth far more than that. If my bosses knew what you found, you would have died the same time you found the Manufacturing Plantation.”
I walked around the table and to the window where the bird was still pecking away frantically. I tapped the glass, giving the poor thing some company. I looked at Denny in the glass’s reflection.
“Someone is playing a game with both of us Denny, they want something from us, and I don’t think it involves my bosses.”
The bird gave up and flew away, maybe to find a worm or maybe to find another reflection to harass. For the second time today I leaned against the glass in search of sense, perspective, and answers to everything.
“What the hell kind of game and why couldn’t they leave me out of it? I just minded my own business,” He retorted, the pacing had started up again by the sounds of things.
I turned and took in his desk, the supposed center of the office. Artfully arranged to appear as the active workspace of an insurance salesman. The papers, at least, didn’t appear dusty, but the laptop was the only thing that looked like he used it regularly.
“How did Travis find you? Why did he approach you for insurance? In general, we don’t need that sort of thing, too many complications in the long run.”
He shrugged, “A friend told me he found someone ripe for the picking that he ran into at an art auction. He gave him my number, and I waited for the call, my friend gets a referral fee, so I thought he was upfront. Why would he mess with his paycheck?”
“I don’t know, but I think your friend was either duped or in on it. Maybe he is planning a move into insurance and eliminating competition.”
Shi: A Dark Adventure into Living Forever Page 3