by A. G. Riddle
But Conner McClain had created a cure. Was he going to give it to his chosen few? Peyton had to find that cure, for her own sake, and the sake of so many others.
“McClain has a cure. He told me on the ship.”
“It’s true,” Avery said. “They informed everyone on board that it had been administered recently in our routine vaccinations. All employees at Citium companies received it.” She glanced back at Desmond. “Including you.”
He only nodded and glanced out the window, staring at the horrific scene, a hint of guilt on his face.
Avery moved the helicopter inland, away from the city. It was obvious that landing in Mombasa would likely be a death sentence. The helicopter would be mobbed, rushed by people hoping to get out or hoping for help to arrive. And once on the ground, they would find no way out of the city, and no help for Hannah within.
Avery reached under the seat, unfolded a map, and studied it.
“What’re you doing?” Peyton asked.
Avery didn’t look up. “Trying to figure out where to go, Princess.”
“Don’t call me Princess—”
Desmond held a hand up to Peyton. “Ladies. We’re all on the same team here. Let’s talk. What’re you thinking, Avery?”
“I’m thinking we’re screwed.”
“Okay, so nothing new there. What do we need? A satphone and a plane, correct?”
“And a hospital,” Peyton said quickly. She glanced at Hannah, asleep, helpless, taking shallow breaths as she lay in the floor of the helicopter. I won’t let her die.
Desmond spoke before Avery could.
“Right. So, what, we fly along the coast, try to find a city still intact?”
“Dani Beach is close by,” Peyton said. “They’ve got a great hospital and an airstrip. Lots of other coastal towns along the way. Once we cross the border with Tanzania there’s Tanga and Dar es Salaam farther south. Plus the Tanzanian islands off the coast.”
“They’ll shoot us,” Avery said flatly.
“Who?” Peyton asked.
“The Tanzanians. Think about it—you’ve got a raging outbreak to the north. Step one is to close your airspace, shoot anything flying in from Kenya. And the Kenyan coastal towns are no good either. They’re probably in the same shape as Mombasa, and I’m sure Conner is enlisting search parties there too. The American government has no presence or assets in Dani Beach that I’m aware of. There’s a CIA station in Dar es Salaam, and an embassy for that matter, but we’ll never reach them.”
“So we go inland,” Desmond said. “Nairobi?”
“Suicide,” Avery said. “If Mombasa looks like this, imagine Nairobi. And Conner will assume that’s our only move. I think…”
“What?”
“I think we’re trapped.”
“We’re not,” Peyton said. She had an idea. It was a gamble, but it just might pay off.
Desmond studied her.
“I know where we can go,” she said. “It’s inland, in Kenya. It has an airstrip, satphones, and a hospital. My guess is the outbreak is contained at this location. And McClain will never think to look for us there.”
After Peyton told them her plan, Avery studied the map.
“It’s at the helo’s max range. Fifty-fifty odds we have enough fuel to get there. If it’s a bust, we’re stranded for sure.”
“Flight time?” Desmond asked.
“It’s about three hundred and fifty miles away. Two hours, roughly.”
Peyton looked down at Hannah. She didn’t know if the young woman had two hours, but she felt like her plan was their only hope.
Chapter 65
Desmond sat against the back wall of the helicopter, side by side with Peyton. They glanced at each other for a moment, then stared forward, riding in silence. Out the window, the last rays of sunlight were receding behind the mountains in the distance.
The helicopter rotor’s rhythmic drone was almost hypnotic, and before long, Desmond felt Peyton’s head fall on his shoulder. The woman was worn out. He tried not to move; he wanted her to get some rest.
For him, sleep was elusive. Questions ran through his mind. What he had learned on the Kentaro Maru had shocked him. If what Conner had said was true, he was partially responsible for starting the outbreak. He wondered if somewhere buried in his memories was the key to stopping it. Or if it was buried in the Labyrinth Reality app he had found in Berlin. Or both. He closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to remember his past.
The morning after the Halloween party, Desmond stopped by xTV’s accounting department. His investigative work had revealed that Peyton was a sophomore at Stanford, and that Andrea, an xTV intern who had graduated from Stanford in June, was a friend of hers.
Desmond found Andrea in her cubicle, staring at her computer screen, twirling a strand of sandy brown hair around her index finger.
“Hey, you know Peyton Shaw, right?”
“Uh-huh.” She seemed to be tabulating figures on the screen. Finally, she turned. “What’s up?”
He shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant. “Nothing. Just thinking it would be cool if you invited her to the company party on Thursday.”
Andrea smiled. “Really? You do? You think it would be ‘cool’?”
Desmond sighed. “Andie—”
Her tone was taunting now. “Somebody’s got a crush.”
“Oh, please. What grade are you in?”
“I could ask you the same thing, lover boy.”
“Will you do it?”
“For a price.”
Desmond stood there, dreading her next words.
She handed him some papers. “These are the time sheets for hourly employees and contractors. I have to type these in every week and verify them. I want a web form where they enter their hours and it automatically downloads to our payroll system.”
Desmond opened his mouth to respond, but Andrea had more.
“And, I want error checking and validation. No non-numeric characters, verification on values outside expected ranges, the whole nine. And it better work in Netscape and IE.”
“Is that all? Automate your entire internship?”
“It’s a wicked world, Des. Even love has a price.” She eyed him dramatically. “And it don’t come cheap.”
“You’re a lunatic.”
“Email me the link for testing.”
He finished the web form before lunch.
The xTV party was a celebration of a new round of funding, a new release of their software, and half a dozen milestones they had hit. They were barreling closer to their vision of taking over television forever.
Desmond found Peyton at a round table with Andrea. Two half-empty champagne glasses sat before them.
“Ladies,” he said as he reached them. “Can I get you a refill?”
Andrea looked at him with a sadistic smile only a torturer would wear. “You waiting tables now, Desmond?”
“What can I say? Stock options don’t buy groceries.”
Peyton laughed.
Andrea rolled her eyes and grabbed her champagne glass. “I’m just gonna go smash this champagne glass and eat the sharpest pieces. You kids try not to kill anyone with those puppy love eyes.”
Desmond sat down as she stalked off to the bar.
“She’s very subtle,” he said.
“Very.”
“I think she may have a lot of pent-up aggression.”
“Bad breakup last semester. And she sort of hates her internship.” Peyton smiled. “Heard you helped her with that.”
“Ah, well, all in the line of duty.”
“Part of your case?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Any new leads?”
“Working on something now.”
“Promising?”
He studied her. “Too early to tell.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure.”
She took another sip of the champagne.
“You like working at xTV?” she said.
“Yeah
. I do.”
“Why?”
“I like solving problems. Going home every day knowing I made some progress on something. Waking up every morning with a new set of problems to solve.”
“What’d you do before?”
“Worked on an oil rig.”
She smiled, about to laugh, then squinted at him. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Interesting.”
He figured he might as well be up-front with her; no sense going down this road if it was a dead end. Better to get the deal-breakers out on the table.
“I didn’t go to college. Just moved out here from Oklahoma.”
He knew she was a biology major and wanted to become a doctor. Her pedigree was a little more sophisticated than an orphaned oil well driller who had recently killed a man.
“Why?”
The question caught him by surprise. “Why what?”
“What brought you out here?”
Since he’d been in the Valley, no one had actually asked him that. “The work.” He thought a moment. “The people. I wanted to meet people like me.”
“You want to meet some more of them?”
“Yeah. I do.”
The coy smile returned to her lips. “Hold out your hand.”
He extended his hand. She opened her handbag and drew out a pen, then scribbled an address on his palm.
“What’s this?”
“Another clue for your case. There’s a house party in Menlo Park Saturday night. With lots of people like you. I think you’d like it.”
“Will you be there?”
“Yeah.”
“Then so will I.”
The house party in Menlo Park was quite different from the raging Halloween party where Desmond had met Peyton.
He was a little nervous walking up to the Mediterranean-style home, but that disappeared when Peyton opened the door and smiled at him. She wore a black dress, diamond earrings, and a light gray cardigan to ward off the chill in the November air.
She had been right about the partygoers. Desmond found the conversations incredibly interesting. It wasn’t idle chat. No gossip. No talk of what was on TV. They discussed big issues—everything from technology to science to politics to world history. Most of the attendees were Stanford students like Peyton, or recent graduates. About half had the next big idea for a startup that would change the world. Their certainty grew with each beer can opened, every bowl smoked. On the whole, it was an inside look at how founders thought about their startup ideas and shaped their vision. Some of the people there were just dreamers, big talkers; but he thought, maybe, some would actually start a company—and succeed. He just had no idea which ones they were.
Outside, on the porch, he found Peyton standing alone.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
She turned, a smile forming on her slender face. “Only so much hyperbole I can stand in one night.”
He let out a laugh.
“You’re loving it though, aren’t you?” she said.
“I am.”
“I knew you would.”
He studied her a moment.
“This is what you’re after, isn’t it?” she said. “Starting your own company or being part of a hit startup.”
“It’s not the only thing I’m after.”
They stared at each other.
“What about you, Peyton? What do you want?”
“Right now, all I want is to get out of here.”
Desmond stood there, watching her walk closer to him.
“This is the point where any normal guy would offer to take me home, Desmond.”
“I’m not exactly a normal guy.”
“I know.”
She took his hand and walked off the porch, leading him.
“My truck…”
“Is beyond scary. I saw you pull up in it.”
She reached in her bag, tossed her keys in the air, and he caught them.
“We’ll take my car.”
In her dorm’s parking lot, he leaned over and kissed her. Her hand moved to his face, pulling him closer.
At the outer door, she swiped her card.
They were kissing again, her walking backwards as they stumbled into her dorm room. Desmond saw everything in flashes as his shirt came up and they resumed kissing before her shirt came off. Biology and chemistry books littered the floor. She tossed an IBM Thinkpad off her bed. He winced, hoping it would survive the fall. The place smelled of candles and something sweet he couldn’t place.
He glanced back at the door. “Your roommate—”
“Is home in Seattle.”
That night was like the first computer program he ever wrote: a series of run-time errors followed by a quick compilation.
He was thankful that it was too dark for her to see his scars.
In the morning, however, sunlight blazed through the window. He saw her eyeing the burns on his feet and legs, the knife wounds on his chest and abdomen, and a dozen other small scars.
She said nothing, only went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth, washed her face, and threw on some clothes. She was a lot less chatty than last night. Desmond wondered if she regretted it. Wondered if he should say something.
“I’m late,” she said.
He sat up.
“I have lunch with my mom and sister every Sunday.”
“I…”
“Relax, cowboy. Just pull the door shut when you leave.”
She handed him a small slip of paper.
“What’s this?”
“The last part of the case you’re working.”
He unfolded it. It was her phone number.
Chapter 66
After the night he spent with Peyton, Desmond’s life settled into a pattern. He worked his heart out at xTV, saw Peyton in his off-hours, and read when he wasn’t spending time with her. He found a new library and began requesting books on finance and investing. He read Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor and Security Analysis and everything he could find on the subject. His inheritance, roughly three hundred and twenty thousand dollars, was still hidden in a sack in the Airstream trailer. His only real expenses had been the trailer, the suit, and the legal costs of settling Orville’s estate. He became obsessed with how to invest the remaining money.
At lunch one day in the company break room, a solution of sorts presented itself. He overheard two of the company’s early employees, a programmer and a database developer, discussing skyrocketing home prices and the outrageous cost of daycare. Their startup salaries were meager, and their wives were pressuring them to bail and get a job at a larger company like Oracle or Sun.
Desmond took a seat at the table.
“Gentlemen, I think I might have a solution for you.”
That night, he told Peyton his plan.
“It’s a bad idea, Des.”
“Think about it: with the money I have, I could buy a huge chunk of options. They get the cash they need, I get more options. It’s a great idea,” he insisted.
“Okay. It’s a good idea—”
“Exactly.”
“But it’s the wrong approach.”
“What do you mean?”
“You need to diversify.”
“No. xTV will be huge. I need to concentrate.”
“And if xTV goes under?”
“It won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
He sat there, wondering why she wasn’t more supportive.
“Be prepared.”
“What?”
“The Boy Scout motto. Surely that was big in Oklahoma.”
He exhaled heavily through his nose. “My uncle wasn’t keen on extracurriculars.”
She looked away, sensing he didn’t want to talk about it.
“I like the idea, Desmond. I just think if you buy options, you should do it in other companies. You already own plenty of xTV options. I’ve got a bunch of friends who work at other startups. I can
ask around, see if anyone is interested.”
The more he thought about it, the more he thought she was right. And he liked that she hadn’t given up on her point. He needed someone like that in his life.
In the following weeks, Desmond met with dozens of startup employees in coffee shops and at their homes. His lawyer read their employment contracts to ensure that they were free to sell their options, and drew up a purchase contract that Desmond used to buy stakes in a few companies within a month. Those companies were happy to cooperate; they wanted to keep their employees happy, and the cash from Desmond allowed those employees to maintain their lifestyle while staying at the company.
A few months later, all of his money was invested. He owned stock options in fourteen companies. He was more selective after that. He used every penny left over from his salary to buy options in the most attractive companies. And he insisted Wallace send him a bill for the legal work, which he paid promptly.
Every morning, Desmond checked the website for the Norman Transcript, the local paper for Norman, Oklahoma, and the closest thing to a local paper for the Slaughterville area. He skipped the news, focused on the classifieds. As promised, the local lawyer ran a notification opening the estate of Orville Thompson Hughes. A few months later, a story ran under the local news section entitled Library System Receives Surprise Donation.
Yesterday, the Pioneer Library System was pleasantly surprised to receive a donation for $32,000 in the name of Agnes Andrews, a long-time librarian who passed away ten years ago. Even more unexpected was the source of the donation: Orville T. Hughes, a recently deceased oil rig worker. Upon receiving the sum, the library found that Mr. Hughes had no library card, and as best anyone could remember, had never even visited one of the libraries in the system. Even more confounding, relatives of the deceased Ms. Andrews weren’t aware that the woman had ever known Mr. Hughes.