by Thomas Locke
Robin and Chester struggled with the bland masks all Wall Street aides were expected to maintain. But clearly they were as baffled as the group clustered at the table’s far end.
Lena’s gaze was different. Blank. Dark. Oriental.
Beautiful.
Brett went on, “We all know you’re not going to invest in anything Ms. Fennan pitches today. If she had shown up with an option to acquire Kuwait for a buck fifty, you’d still find a reason to shoot her down.”
The woman gathered her items like a general removing her troops from the field of battle. “Really, Roger. This is hardly a reasonable use of our time or—”
“Give him a minute.” Roger did not actually smile. But his features had settled into different, more comfortable lines. He asked Brett, “So tell us what we’re doing here.”
“Ms. Fennan is making this investment,” Brett replied. “She has uncovered what everyone else missed. Again. She also has the funds. You know this for a fact, since she made her money from another investment that you thought was a loser.”
“Not me personally,” Roger corrected. “My question still stands.”
“Ms. Fennan needs to know what percentage your firm requires to carry this on your books. Grant her the human resources and the legal basis for moving forward.”
The woman protested, “We can’t possibly be party to some harebrained—”
“Forty percent,” Roger said.
“Try again,” Lena said, not looking up from her hands resting upon the table.
Brett actually felt a zing of energy shoot through him. He loved how they were in tandem here. Just loved it. “Give Ms. Fennan a reason to stay with your group instead of taking this to Colorado.”
Roger was watching Lena now. “You tell me.”
Lena met his gaze. “Twenty percent.”
“Done.” He asked her, “What do you need?”
Lena shot Brett another zinger of a glance, then turned back and replied, “A lawyer and a company jet.”
27
The broad conference entrance hall had been remade into a very attractive lounge. A coffee area was stocked with energy drinks and pashmina blankets and pastries. Reese recalled how her previous teams came back shivering from a cold only they could feel, and drained by an experience that was visible only to them. Her current crew of voyagers was gathered around a pair of sofa sets and stressless chairs. As soon as she spotted the woman seated on the central sofa, Reese knew she was trouble. The woman was seated in the middle of the group, which meant everyone was forced to drag their gaze over her as they turned from one to the other. Reese saw how the female took genuine pleasure over their fear and their dislike.
Reese waited until Carl and Ridley had entered and settled into the far corner, over where the mock shoji screen masked the hall leading to the front foyer. Then she asked the woman, “What’s your name?”
The woman was aged in her mid-twenties. Her blonde hair was shellacked into a tight helmet, her brown eyes flat, hard, and lifeless as glass. She said with a false cheeriness, “We’re all about redefining ourselves here, you know? I’m thinking I’d like to change names. What about Heather?”
The words confirmed everything Reese had suspected. She had dealt with bullies like this woman in every prison where she’d landed. She said, “I want you to go collect your team.”
Heather pretended at confusion. “But these are my team. Right, everybody?”
“You have five minutes,” Reese said. “Otherwise I’m taking you off-line.”
The cheery smile was slightly canted now, as if the muscles on her face’s left side were unable to fashion the mask. “You are threatening me?”
“No threats,” Reese said. She liked how the other voyagers were focused on her. She could almost feel their desperate hope that she might actually make a difference. She went on, “Twenty minutes from now, I start these voyagers on their new mission. If your crew isn’t gathered so we can talk before that happens, you are gone. Finished.”
The snakelike change was almost refreshing. “You can’t do that.”
“I can. I will.”
“The rules—”
“I make the rules from now on. Five minutes.”
Reese had spent a great deal of the past fourteen months reading. Most prison libraries were pitiful. The books were passed around until they fell apart, and even then they were wrapped in rubber bands and kept on the shelves. It was better to need both hands to turn a page than have nothing at all to read. Reese preferred nonfiction, but when the time lay heavy she read anything at all. She always looked first for books on psychology, especially those written about prison populations. She was interested in trying to understand what made herself tick.
Four people were seated with her now. They occupied one corner of the broad lounge that fronted the former conference rooms. Ridley and Carl had drifted back in and were perched in the corner. Watchful. Focused. Giving Reese a chance.
The four had almost nothing in common. A guy with dark hair slicked to his skull bore an astonishing array of metal piercings. The second woman was Indian or Pakistani. The other guy was Latino. He had eyes that burned with a very dark fire. He studied Reese with the intent pleasure of a hungry carnivore taking measure of his next meal. Then there was Heather.
The four shared just two traits. One was their age, mid- to late twenties. The other was their gazes. Flinty. Sharp. Fractured. Filled with a barely suppressed rage.
Reese had read how there was no clinical designation for the word psychopath. But the term had become widely used in criminal justice and prison settings. It was first introduced as an analytical criteria by Hervey Cleckley in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a book that had fascinated Reese for weeks.
Criminal psychologists had developed what was referred to as a triarchic model for assessing psychopathic tendencies. Patients were graded on three factors. The first was boldness. A psychopath showed very low fear levels. They were extremely tolerant of stress. They actually enjoyed unfamiliar settings that carried a significant level of danger. This was matched by a very high degree of self-confidence. Psychopaths considered themselves the supreme ruler of all they surveyed.
The second factor was disinhibition. Psychopaths had virtually no impulse control. They showed no interest in planning and foresight. They had very poor behavioral restraints. What they wanted, they took. What they disliked, they destroyed.
The third measurement factor was meanness. Psychopaths lacked empathy. They developed close attachments only with those who could further their aims, feed their hungers. They exploited everyone else as sources of momentary pleasure. They were defiant of all authority. In extreme cases they found intense gratification in causing pain.
Reese had been fascinated by the work of one criminal psychologist in particular. This prison counselor described working with inmates who showed extremely high levels of factors one and three, and yet maintained a very tight control over their impulses. The social worker classed these as the most dangerous category of psychopath, because they could go virtually unnoticed in society at large. For all intents and purposes, they looked and acted entirely normal, until they struck. They used their environment like a carnivore in the jungle. They stalked, they attacked, they disappeared.
Reese had always considered herself one of these. She took no pride in the admission, felt no shame. She was what she was. Prison had not remade her. It had only distilled her down to her core essence. Which was why she felt so comfortable among this group. It was why their rage did not disturb her. They were all after the same thing.
Her job was to bring them around to her way of thinking.
Reese launched straight in with, “The key to surviving prison is joining a gang. I’m not talking about time some of you might have pulled in a county lockup. I’m talking about life in the boneyard. In general population, gangs are called either clicks or cars. The tag depends on the prison.”
The guy wi
th all the piercings asked, “You did time?”
“Your job is to stay quiet and listen,” Reese said. She held to a casual tone. Her mask was firmly in place. Just like theirs. “Do that and you might survive.”
The guy and Heather shared a smirk. But the Indian woman remained focused on Reese. As did the Latino.
“As I was saying, you find a car. You do what it takes to enter. My second lockup had just one car that accepted Anglos. They were led by a woman who enjoyed starting fights. In the boneyard, this type of woman was called an agitator. Her favorite tactic was to enter the yard, choose her target, and give them a chin check, a blow to the jaw. We called her Bug, which is the prison term for someone with serious mental problems. Bug liked to have new members of her car spend a week or so watching others get chin-checked, building up the scare factor. Anybody in the car who got hit was supposed to take it with a smile. When it came my turn, Bug waited a week, another, a third, and finally in the fourth week she came for me.”
Reese went quiet. She was willing to wait all day. The rest of her team on the clock were chattering out beyond the shoji screen. Reese didn’t care whether they heard or not.
Finally the Indian woman asked, “What did you do?”
“I jammed a pencil into her carotid artery and walked away. I don’t know whether Bug survived or not. What I do know is, I did my time in solitary, then I took over that car and ran it until I got shipped out.” Reese met the blank and angry gazes one by one. Then she said, “There’s a new leader to your click. I don’t chin-check. I’m not after aggro. I don’t have time for it, and as soon as we reach an understanding, neither will you. Either you fall in line or you’re out.”
“You get rid of us, people die,” the guy said.
“Maybe. For a week or two. Then my new car will have figured things out, and we’ll be up and running. Only without you.” She scanned the crew another time. “Now, I want to know two things. Straight up. First, how do you keep them safe. Second, how much are you scamming.”
The crew faltered. The response was unified. They all showed the same instant of uncertainty. Reese had pulled away the veil and seen them. Done so calmly and without warning.
Even Heather showed a rare breakage to her cheery nonsense. “What are those two behind us doing here?”
“They’re going to tell all the others about the dawn of a new day,” Reese replied. “Here’s what I think happened. You saw in each other a rare ability to transit without fear, even when some voyagers fell into those unexplained comas. Most of the others here just freaked. Only not you. And when that happened, you realized there was the chance to do something new. Something big. Join together and see how far you could take things. And it turned out to be pretty far indeed.”
“Further than you could ever imagine,” the Latino said.
“I don’t need to imagine,” Reese said. “Know why? Because you’re going to tell me.”
The guy hated it. His face worked with the bile of rising fury. But the Indian woman said, “We made friends.”
The Latino ground his teeth, but something he saw in Reese’s gaze kept him silent. Reese asked, “What kind of friends?”
“They welcomed us. They do what we ask.”
The guy with all the piercings said, “They want something in return.”
“Of course they do,” the Indian woman said. “What in this life has ever been free?”
“But it isn’t about this life,” the Latino replied. “They haven’t. They don’t. Live.”
Reese said, “So they’re not real.”
“Esteban didn’t say that,” Heather replied. “He said they haven’t lived.”
The Indian woman asked, “You know this how?”
“They told me,” Heather replied.
“You asked them?”
“Of course I did. What, you’re not curious?”
The guy with the piercings snarled, “Why are we telling her anything at all?”
“You heard the lady. She’s hearing or she’s kicking us out,” Esteban replied. “I want to stay in.”
Reese looked from one to the other. “So let me get this straight. You have allies who are . . .”
“Monsters. Something.”
“And these allies, when you transit, they . . .”
“They anchor us,” the pierced guy said, doing his best to melt her with his eyes. He hated being exposed. Just hated it.
Reese could no longer remain seated. She startled them when she bolted to her feet. But it did not matter. The potential was huge. The dangers even greater.
Finally she turned back and demanded, “So how much protection money are you scamming off the other voyagers?” When they responded by exchanging glances with each other, Reese pressed, “In or out. It starts now.”
The Indian woman replied, “Two hundred a week.”
“As of today, it’s over.” Reese halted their outburst by chopping the air. “You dance to my tune or you don’t dance at all.”
Reese was crossing the conference lobby when Ridley approached her. The woman was a couple of years younger than Reese, but her eyes were ancient. “In case you haven’t heard, I don’t play nice with others.”
Reese liked having a reason to smile. “Thanks for waiting to spring that one until those four took off.”
“I figured, you know, there was something going down.”
“There is.”
“Something the four in there didn’t need to hear about.”
“Right again.”
Ridley wore her dark hair in tight curls, the only soft thing about her. Her tattoos formed a ring of fiery knives that encircled her neck. “So what’s in it for me?”
“What do you want?”
Uncertainty flickered behind her eyes.
“Figure it out, then let’s talk.” She motioned to Carl, who hovered just out of range. “Join us.”
Ridley asked, “You think the big guy here is going to make me behave?”
“This isn’t about behaving. This is about taking it to the limits. I need a team of forward observers. Scouting out the terrain. Assessing risks. Checking out our options. Smart, savvy, alert, and born to think outside the box.”
Ridley seemed to have all sorts of responses, tight and ready as her fists. But none of them fit. “For a bonus?”
“I told you, figure out your price and let’s talk.” She indicated Carl. “The best observers work in teams of two. One to spot and the other to watch both your backs.”
Ridley had still not looked directly at Carl. “So what’s with teaming me up with a trainee?”
“He hasn’t been infected with whatever it is that has the others semi-terrified.”
Ridley chewed on that. “I might be interested. What do you say, big guy?”
“His name is Carl.” When Ridley did not speak, Reese gave her voice a hint of an edge. “Say it.”
“What’s the haps, Carl.”
Reese went on, “I want you to work as Carl’s personal trainer. Two loners working in tandem. Building trust out there where it counts. Introduce him to Indian country. See how far and how fast you can take him. When you’re both satisfied, come back. Carl, the same offer stands. Whatever you want. The word I need to hear now is, are you in.”
28
Brett had never been on a private jet before. The copilot served as steward and offered them a very polished welcome. He ushered them into their seats and offered drinks and pointed out the facilities. Then the jet took off and climbed with smooth ease to cruising altitude. The seats were pale doeskin. The tables were burl. The restroom was finished in onyx and burl and had a shower.
Lena spent the first half hour of the flight talking with Robin and Chester. They were gathered at the table closest to the pilot’s cabin. Brett was not invited to join them, so he made himself a sandwich of thin-sliced filet mignon and creamy horseradish on bread that still smelled of the baker’s oven. He ate standing up in the galley, wondering what it would be like to ta
ke such splendor for granted.
Finally Lena rose from her place and started back toward him. Brett was expecting rebuke, criticism, even perhaps rage. He had, after all, publicly usurped her position as leader of their team.
Instead, she gave him gratitude. “I owe you,” Lena said. “Big-time.”
“You don’t. At all.”
“There I was, trying to figure out all the wrong things. How to keep my job, whether I should move to Colorado. Or if I stayed, how I could build decent relationships with the Baker Meredith partners. Then up you pop and say exactly what needed saying.”
Brett hid behind another bite of his sandwich.
“What I don’t get,” Lena went on, “is how you knew. Because you weren’t talking to them at all. You spoke to me.”
“You went at it as a professional analyst,” Brett said. He used a starched linen napkin to wipe his mouth. “You wanted to present the bottom line, the risks and benefits, whatever you call it. But there’s a problem. You and your team had already come to the same conclusion as everybody else.”
Lena turned and looked back up the aisle to where Robin and Chester sat and stared glumly out the windows. “But it’s not about that. Is it.”
“You know it’s not.” Brett set the second half of his sandwich on the counter. “You’re meant to make this deal. It’s the last thing your temporal self said to you.”
She spoke to the empty aisle. “Not the last thing.”
Brett felt his face grow red. “Your temporal self said, ‘Do this.’ And how did you respond?”
Lena remained silent.
“You said yes. Not, you’d check it out. Not, if things looked good on paper.” He gave her a chance to respond, then went on, “Lena, your job now is to find the reason to move forward.”
Lena merely continued to inspect the central aisle and her two morose teammates. “I can’t tell them how I know more, though.”