Audra’s stomach roiled and her face became pale as a ghost’s as the weight of Detective Ronson’s words sunk in. She was at a loss for words. Dear Lord, what had happened that night?
Detective Ronson recognized the look on Audra’s face, as he had seen it many times before, and he grabbed the water pitcher and refilled her glass. “Please, take a sip before you pass out.”
Audra shook her head no and just stared at the bag in front of them, her eyes frozen on the bloodied clothes inside. As Detective Ronson looked at her, trying to read what she might be thinking, it dawned on him that she had obviously never pressed charges against Olin for raping her, and he wondered why. He also wondered how she had come about being in possession of internal email exchanges between Olin and Robert, so he cleared his throat and asked, “Audra, would you mind telling me why you never reported your rape to the police, and exactly how you came into possession of these emails?”
They must have been the right questions to ask because as soon as the words left his lips, Audra seemed to snap out of her trance, and he saw the expression on her face shift from the odd, far away gaze she had before to stern concentration, her eyes suddenly piercing with intensity. The lean contours of her face became almost hardened as she said, “Well, Detective, let me tell you what I’ve been working on for the past five years and what I have in store for Olin and my firm.”
Audra had stayed with the detective for another three hours as she laid out her plans for him. By the time she left Summerset, she was exhausted, and didn’t remember much about her long drive home that evening. She was still in shock at the turn of events that her life, once again, had taken. When she finally pulled up in her driveway that night, she realized she was lucky to be alive. Detective Ronson had been very supportive and appreciative of the information she had provided him, promising to call and let her know the results of the DNA testing, and she had to wait on pins and needles for five days, almost hoping that she was wrong about all of this. Dear God, what kind of monsters were they?
Five days later, Detective Ronson called her back with news that changed everything. No longer was the course she had been plowing through all about her and her vengeance. The addition of Gina caused a paradigm shift in Audra’s plans, and they were now more about a lost soul, one that never got the chance to destroy her attackers or make them accountable for what they had done to her.
SHE shook those memories out of her head and forced herself back to the task at hand. Here she was, her plan finally coming to fruition, and she needed to put the finishing touches on the explosive packages for today and not lose herself in random memories.
Her cell phone buzzed with an incoming text, and she smiled as she looked down. It was right on time. The text from Detective Ronson simply read: “Once signed docs are in hand, text back to this number the words ‘snake charmed’ & unlock door.”
This was the last bit of information she had been waiting for. The couriers had all been given their time bombs and waited, each with their own separate set of instructions as they sat, spread out all over the city, awaiting the green light from her to set off their explosions simultaneously.
The mongoose was ready to strike the unsuspecting cobras.
Her moment of glory was less than two hours away. Her vision blurred again briefly as she realized all of her pain and suffering, the retched hoarding of sorrows and computer equipment, and the self-imposed loner’s life she had been living, were almost over. Her voice was going to change the lives of everyone today and give peace to a broken soul silenced so long ago under mounds of debris and dirt. A chance at reclaiming her life that would include no more sleepless nights, fighting off the nightmares that constantly plagued her, eyes burning red from reading enough words to fill volumes of dictionaries and watching video images until she fell asleep. The ability to regain her life and actually live it, once again, rather than spending every waking moment searching through piles of data, hidden in her back bedroom like some old, damaged goods that no one wanted or missed.
Most importantly though, she had the chance to give Gina closure from the thirty-three years of deathly quiet solitude she had spent alone in the woods, hidden in the ground where no one could hear her ghostly cries for help.
Audra felt hot liquid on her hands and lap and glanced down and realized that her hands were shaking, which had caused her to spill her coffee. She figured that was her internal cue to get up from her chair and start preparing herself for the meeting. Standing up, she walked over to the small table on the other side of the room and gingerly picked up the opened high school yearbook that held the long-ago image of Gina. Staring back at her was the sweet-faced girl whose life had been violently stripped away at such a young age by hateful, uncaring hands. For several minutes she basked in the strange kinship she felt with this hauntingly beautiful creature that she had never met and never would. She forced herself to inhale deeply as she returned the book to the table and slowly made her way back to the computer screen, turning her intense eyes back to Olin’s live feed. He was sitting at his desk now, frantically typing away at his computer, mumbling quietly under his breath. Her first instinct was to hack into his computer and peek at what he was typing, but then she realized that after today, she never needed to do that again. She had all the ammunition she needed to cause an explosion big enough to rock this city to its core and be felt as far away as the off shore drilling rigs in the Gulf. Her lips contorted into a snarling smile as she leaned in until her head was touching the screen and whispered into the screen image of Olin’s ear: “Tick tock, tick tock.”
CARL AND KEVIN RODE the elevator down together as they headed to the conference room for the meeting of a lifetime. Carl glanced over and noticed that Kevin looked even more withered and drawn than he usually did; his face and ears were both beet red and his eyes were swollen and red-rimmed, almost as if he had been crying. Good God, the man needs to grow a pair, or at the very least, a backbone! Carl thought to himself.
“You ready for this, Kev?” Carl queried, hoping to snap Kevin back to reality.
“Huh? Oh, ah…yes,” Kevin replied, stumbling over his words. He hadn’t said one word aloud to anyone since finding out just a few short hours ago that he was Edward’s dad, and while still reeling from that blow, he had been bombarded with emails and phone calls about the news article, although he had refused to answer his phone except for when Carl had called him. Kevin’s mind was on the verge of shutting down, and all he could concentrate on was the thought that if the company collapsed because of this, and he lost his position, then how the hell was he going to pay Miranda hush money?
“You sure? You look a bit peaked around the gills there, buddy. We need to have our heads clear and figure out what we are going to do, and fast, before Olin finds out about our meeting and before the media comes knocking at our doors, which could literally be any minute now. No second chances on this one, so get your game face on!” Carl said, harsher than what he intended. He was having difficulty controlling himself as well; he was just as worried as Kevin obviously was. For God’s sake, he had a new wife that lived to shop, three ex-wives worth of alimony payments and a stepson to put through school.
The elevator doors opened as Kevin was vigorously nodding his head “yes” to Carl’s question, afraid to open his mouth and actually attempt to answer him since he couldn’t trust his words to come out coherently or his stomach to not spew its churning contents. Rounding the corner, Eric almost bulldozed them over as his hulky frame strode down the hall toward them. None of them said a word to each other as they entered the conference room.
Robert was already sitting at the end of the long table, still dressed in his flight attire of jeans and a cowboy hat, looking visibly shaken like the rest of them. Nicole sat across from him, her curly blonde locks disheveled and flowing around her as her head was bent over, buried in a pile of papers spread out on the table, frantically flipping through the pages in a last ditch effort to hopefully find somethin
g she might have missed before. Carl shut the door behind him and faced the room.
“Where the hell is Audra?” Carl asked no one in particular.
“She called right before I got here…said she was on her way,” Robert said quietly from the back of the room.
“She needs to hurry the hell up! We don’t have much time. I say we start without her. It’s not like she will offer up much help anyway. So, what’s our game plan here? Any ideas?” Carl said, his nervousness seeping into his words as he desperately hoped that someone had an idea because he sure as hell didn’t.
Nicole didn’t remove her eyes from the papers she was perusing as she chimed in, “His Partnership Agreement states, in Subsection 4A that ‘…if, at any time, during the managing partner’s tenure, he or she causes, by either action or lack thereof, irreparable damages, monetarily or otherwise, to the firm, he or she may be voted out by a majority vote of the remaining partners; however, he or she will remain entitled to any and all monies as per Section 2B – Profits and Losses, of this agreement.’”
“Sonofabitch! We still have to buy him out?” shouted Carl.
“Don’t act like you’re surprised, Carl. As I recall, we all signed this agreement, which is the same format as what mine had been,” Eric piped in as he flopped down in the seat next to Nicole, trying to read over her boney shoulders.
“That’s not what I meant, Eric,” Carl snarled back as he walked over and leaned on the edge of the table, directly across from Nicole and Eric. Ignoring Eric, he looked directly over and said to Nicole, “Is there any loophole in there that we can use to not buy him out?”
“Not one fucking thing unless he voluntarily resigns or dies,” came Nicole’s clipped response.
Carl leaned all the way across the table and jerked the papers away from Nicole as he said, “You sure? Let me look.” Nicole just threw her hands up and said, “Have at it, Buster, but I’ve dug through every inch, and unless that money hungry bastard resigns, which we all know will never happen, or he falls over dead today, there is nothing there for us. Nothing!” she yelled as she stood up quickly and began pacing the floor, her nerves completely shot, the urge to snatch up a cigarette and the lighter from her purse overwhelming her. The thought of becoming poor again at this stage in her life was making her a nervous wreck.
As Carl scanned the pages that Nicole had already thoroughly searched, Eric said, “I think the issue with Olin, at this point, is secondary. We need to concentrate on the Sprigg issue and whether or not we can get out of it after this unbelievable nightmare without losing our asses—or worse yet, our licenses. Robert, you worked the closest with Olin on this deal. Was there any type of an escape clause in the event the merger failed?”
Four pairs of stressed out eyes turned and focused on Robert, who slowly shook his head from side to side as he stared at the floor, unwilling to look at all of those ravenous sets of eyes. Eric roared, “How can this be happening? How did we all miss this? How could this not have been discovered by any of the other people working on this audit? How in the fuck did Olin hide all this, and it’s just now news to us? And who is the sniveling bastard that informed the press?”
The room remained silent as they all just stared at each other, each one eyeing the other with suspicious eyes which finally settled on Robert. Robert sank a bit lower into his chair as the weight of the tension in the room fell upon him, covering him like a death shroud.
Before Robert could find the words to answer their questioning stares, the door burst open and Olin came barging in and slammed the door behind him. Carl closed his eyes for just a moment as he silently cringed, angry at himself for neglecting to lock the conference room door.
“What the fuck is going on here? Which one of you had the responsibility to notify me and li’l Miss Audra about your impromptu meeting?” he said, glancing around at each partner, his frosty blue eyes glaring out from his hooded lids, immediately picking up on the fact that Audra was missing. As he spoke, he strode over and sat down at the head of the table where he normally sat during meetings, leaned back and kicked his feet up on the edge of the table, folding his hands behind his head, his arrogance permeating the room with its stench.
“No one forgot, you pompous ass, you just weren’t invited,” Eric said, automatically moving to stand in front of Nicole, as if some inborn instinct told him he needed to protect her from danger. “And not that it’s any of your business, but Audra is on her way.”
“Wasn’t invited? Not any of my business? Hmm, seems quite incongruous to me that you should attempt a partner meeting without the managing partner in attendance!” Olin shot back, quickly jerking his legs off the desk and standing up, leaning over the edge of the table, his un-calloused palms planted firmly on it. “Just what in the world could you be discussing that wouldn’t include me, other than maybe planning me a surprise birthday party?” Olin said in feigned surprise.
“You know damn well, you fucking piece of shit. What have you done to us? And how in the hell did the press find out?” Eric shot back, the hair standing up on the back of his neck as the electricity level in the room rose. “I have just one question for you, although why I’m expecting you to tell us the truth is beyond me. Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Why, whatever do you mean Eric?” Olin replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm as he moved slowly away from his chair and began sauntering toward Eric, their eyes locked together, the hatred between the two powerful men filling the room with an almost palpable black cloud. “Do you mean why didn’t I tell you about this small hitch with Sprigg? The fact that we stood to make millions on just one client if we could get their books to pass muster for just one audit and merger? Is that what you are referring to, my old friend?”
“Small hitch? Are you high on some mind-altering drug Olin?” Nicole shot back from behind Eric’s shoulder, her voice dangerously close to screaming. “This is going to ruin us!”
“High only on life, you overbearing, obnoxious, screeching howler monkey! Eric, you better reign in your whore before something bad happens to her,” Olin said, standing toe-to-toe with Eric, his eyes drawn down to slits barely open enough to see the sparks flying from the frozen blue lake of his eyes.
Eric’s vision suddenly swam in red as he lost all control, grabbing the edge of Olin’s collar with his right hand, his left arm cocked back, ready to release his fury into Olin’s stone-cold face. Before he could unload his wrath on Olin, Carl leapt into action and dropped the papers from his hands as he dove over the desk, crashing headfirst into Olin and Eric, knocking them backwards into Nicole, and all four of them tumbled to the floor with a loud thud. Nicole let out a shriek of pain as her back smashed into the end table behind her, shattering the delicate crystal glasses that sat on top of it onto the floor and spraying the entire corner of the room, as well as each of them, with their razor sharp shards.
Kevin sat frozen in his chair, unable to wrap his mind around the scene in front of him. This isn’t happening, he thought. Robert finally sprang to life, jumping up from his chair and running over to the tangled mob of flailing arms and legs and latching on to Carl’s belt loop, lifting him up off the top of the pile. Nicole was screaming at the top of her lungs, “Get the fuck off me, you idiots! I’m bleeding!”
Years of pent-up anger and unleashed aggression between Eric and Olin had finally ignited, and they were locked together, like two gladiators fighting for their lives. All those football drills suffered during the hellacious summer heat long ago had been memorized by Eric’s muscles. He rolled off of the love of his life, yanking Olin with him, and kept rolling until he finally ended up on top of him, the full weight of his heavy frame crushing down on Olin’s slender one. Even if Olin had been the slightest bit athletic, as opposed to the scrawny book nerd that he really was, his lithe body would still never have stood a chance against Eric’s solid one.
Robert and Carl bent over and helped Nicole off the floor as Kevin, who had finally snapped back to reality a
t the site of her oozing blood, stood up and grabbed some paper towels that were still sitting in the middle of the table and clamped down hard on her thin arm, trying to contain the blood flow. Nicole grunted in pain and looked down, frantically noticing that one of the larger shards was still embedded in her arm. She quickly jerked her arm away from Kevin, yelling “Don’t touch me, you fool! The glass is going deeper!” She used her long, cherry red nails as tweezers and successfully dug out the glass, but as soon as she pulled the piece out, blood began flowing rapidly again. Kevin ignored her this time, covering her wound with the paper towel again and applying pressure. Nicole didn’t offer up any arguments this time.
Meanwhile, Eric had both of his meaty hands firmly around Olin’s neck, squeezing hard on his larynx as he bellowed, “You worthless motherfucker! I’m going to kill you!” Olin, who never had been a winner in a fistfight in his entire life, much less had someone on top of him, choking the life out of him, flailed like a fish out of water underneath Eric’s mountainous legs, his sinewy fingers desperately clawing at Eric’s face in an attempt to sink his fingers into Eric’s eyes in a last ditch effort to get him to let go.
Although all of them were accustomed to heated meetings and a few minor shoving skirmishes, never had any of them come down to this type of physical altercation before, and for a brief moment, Carl, Nicole, Robert, and Kevin watched in awe, each secretly enjoying the view of Olin being manhandled by Eric, which each of them had, at some point in their lives, wanted to do to him themselves. Carl was the first to snap out of the daze, and he moved over in front of Eric’s beet-red face and yelled, “Enough! Eric, let him go. The prick isn’t worth prison!”
Eviscerating the Snake - The Complete Trilogy Page 9