by S E Holmes
“You’ll come out behind the building you entered into the staff car park. If you scale the fence and head to the left, the Mini is a block away.”
It seemed a contradiction to all the security, but that wasn’t my concern. “They don’t seem worried at all, which really worries me.”
“Bear,” Andie said sympathetically, resting an arm about my shoulders. “We’re the type of people who routinely jump off cliffs. We get meticulously well prepared or we don’t survive. And trust me, we’ll be ready for anything those—” she uttered several highly offensive words in Mandarin—“Anyway. We’ll be ready and waiting.”
We made arrangements for the trio to meet us at the warehouse later that afternoon. Smithy and I returned to the car unmolested, the cruising guards no longer invested in a fruitless search. Once belted firmly into the passenger seat, I turned to him.
“Are they always so overconfident?”
Resigned, he nodded. “Usually, for good reason. But this time … I don’t know.”
I didn’t know either. How did one prepare for the inconceivable? Even with the added help, the Trinity was an entirely inadequate match for the Crone and her fiendish hordes.
Twelve
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Ty?” Andie beamed at Bickles from her workstation across the lab.
“I believe I am thinking what you’re thinking, dearest.” Bickles grinned back.
“Field experiment!” they exclaimed.
Hud sighed loudly from his chair. They were King and Queen Geek of Nerdsville. Her fleet fingers programmed at light speed, although she seemed to pay little attention to what she was doing. Bickles draped his lanky frame over the couch as he worked the keypad at his wrist.
It had not been long since Vee and Bear left the robotics lab. It was hard to believe everything they’d seen, hard to think he wasn’t mired in some elaborate conspiracy or TV-inspired prank. But, being a simple creature, Hud decided to bite off small chunks and chew one mouthful at a time. He’d grown up with Vee and was unswervingly loyal. Vee had stuck by him after the death of his father from nicotine poisoning in his orchid hothouse, never deserting his grieving mate to depression.
Weirdly, engineers Andie and Bickles, who addressed every problem with empirical rigour, embraced this Trinity business with the zeal of Deep-South evangelists. They’d efficiently pinned down the most vulnerable individual at Judge Smith’s party, a person most likely to attract the attention of an Anathema hunter on the prowl for new recruits. Tate was loitering in the garden the night of the art showing for a reason other than accosting Bear. She was one unlucky Keeper-in-waiting to come across that mongrel rock-spider accidentally.
No one was surprised when the answer to Andie and Bickles’ digital detective work returned Spencer Junior, Tiffany’s father. It didn’t take much more exertion than tapping into social gossip: he was the only guest present with financial and personal problems so obviously in need of a solution. And no other family represented such a gold mine in high-level contacts and resources for exploitation than the Spencers.
Their assignment was to monitor him for the proximity of enemies, as was remotely tracking down Maya. Hud considered himself thoroughly inadequate for either task.
“We’re in. I’ve hacked his computer. Anytime he so much as blinks, we’ll know about it,” she said. “I’ll try for Maya when we get back.”
Right now, the three of them planned on paying him a highly illegal visit to access Spencer Junior’s office, leaving a calling card from the insect world watching in their absence. Hud glanced from one friend to the other. Twitchy, bright-spark Andie and her polar opposite in personality, Bickles, who maintained his usual laid-back approach.
“Vee said nothing about interfering. We’re supposed to gather information and report. That’s all.”
“Oh, piffle. If we’re going to help, we’re going to help. And you need to put on your acting clothes, Hud. Plus, you’re driving.”
Hud perked up instantly. “Excellent!”
He’d wrecked a few cars and his mother’s tolerance of his antics had taken an abrupt dive, aggravated by the arrival of a new ‘extended date’. This one, a crispified accountant so uptight a signature on a disclaimer was required to use a fork. As a consequence of this novel commitment to responsible parenting, Astrid had suspended his allowance and refused to buy him another vehicle, until he attended driver-ed. Hud soon discovered a sentence including the words “depend on” and “public transport” was an oxymoron.
“Before you get your racing gloves out, come and look at what it is you’ll be piloting.” Andie smirked in a way that implied Hud was the butt of an insider joke. “It’s worth more than your last Evo, but that was replaceable when it rolled off the car-park roof.” She chuckled. “Who forgets the handbrake?”
Must he be constantly reminded of that fiasco? She and Bickles sniggered, as he loaded bags with bits and pieces Hud failed to identify. He trudged to Andie’s side to look at her computer screen.
“This beauty is irreplaceable. She carries our electronic gear and the competition is none the wiser.”
He peered with apt pessimism at her screensaver and groaned internally. If the calamity on tires he saw before him was a real female, she would be seventy, toothless and not wearing a bra.
“Are you serious? I was under the impression we were aiming to travel incognito. You’d stand out less if you christened that wreck the Mystery Machine and glued Scooby-Doo to the roof.”
“Oh, this from a guy who wears a powder-blue trilby worthy of P. Diddy,” she scoffed.
“Have you checked out your boy’s lime duds recently? Looks like he skinned a tree frog. No offence, man.”
“None taken,” Bickles drawled. “Anyone who wears that hat lacks even a scrap of fashion credibility. What do you think, Andie? Should we test Buzz?”
She nodded enthusiastically. “Time to saddle up, partners.” They weighed themselves down with equipment-stuffed duffle bags, thrusting another two his way and exiting via the back stairs. Hud complained nonstop as they headed out to the back car park towards an ancient jalopy that appeared to have materialised directly from the 1960’s psychedelic era.
“The company couldn’t have coughed up some cash for a decent van? Does that junker even have an engine? I don’t mind if it’s the boring combustion variety. You know, not some advanced microwave propulsion system or whatever.”
“I take a dim view of anyone who criticises Jezebel, Hud.”
“Jezebel, Andie? Really? You do know Jezebel was supposed to be a seductress. Based on that rationale, I’d christen your truck Muriel. She’s older than my mother.”
Flowers and peace signs covered every visible plane of the VW van, including the windowless back compartment. Any area not swathed in floral was painted mauve. There was a small satellite dish perched on the roof, where numerous antennae bristled like the quills of a patchy echidna.
A short drive later, they situated several blocks from Sebastian Spencer’s office, parked in a quiet alley with a disabled sticker prominently displayed on the front dash. Bickles kitted Hud in unobtrusive surveillance gear.
“We can communicate with you via your ear-buds, which double as a microphone. Those sunnies show us everything you see. Don’t take them off or we’ll be blind until Buzz is operational. Probably best you don’t talk unless you have to. And if you lose Buzz, you owe us two million dollars,” Andie said through the partition demarcating the back from the front.
“No sweat. The magnetic field isn’t going to fry my brain, is it?”
“Only people with a brain need worry about that,” Bickles said.
“It’s the world’s loss you didn’t become a comedian.”
Hud squirmed into white overalls and a cap, overjoyed his part involved a stroll in the fresh air, rather than levered into the back of a cramped, baking-hot tin can. Mauve. Their van was mauve!
“You know what you’ve got to do?”
; “Flowers.” Hud waved the huge bunch from the front seat. “Deliver. How hard can it be?”
“Hud?”
“Yes, Bickles?”
“Don’t do anything dumb.”
“You seem to imply it’s a forgone conclusion.”
“Let me see. Roberta. Quay. Your Evo. Need I go on?”
With a disgruntled grimace, Hud disembarked and trekked several streets until he approached the towering glass and steel spires symbolising the business precinct. Who’d have guessed Roberta was a woman? She honestly resembled a sumo wrestler with a moustache. Bickles’ older brother Jethro went out with her sister (Roberta’s opposite in every way), and wasn’t pleased when Hud managed to insult Roberta’s fashion sense, sexuality and gender in one swoop.
And it wasn’t Hud’s fault Vee had left the jelly-wrestling early, forcing him to crash Andie and Bickles’ two-year anniversary dinner at Quay with a couple of the star attractions. The maître d’ had a conniption about the blueberry jelly trail they’d left and the whole lot of them were promptly kicked out.
Well, he’d prove them wrong and get this done smoothly. The ‘bug’ nestled within the bouquet bound for their target’s executive suite on the highest level of the tallest building. Hud wondered how Spencer could afford it with such a vacuum in finances. Of all the bankrupt gigolos in the city that Tate lowlife had found Spencer. What a stroke of utterly craptastic luck. But then, maybe luck had nothing to do with it.
He crossed the wide plaza. Long shadows from surrounding skyscrapers rendered the landscaped gardens and nooks murky. Professionals swarmed for benches abutted by hedges, sipping lattes and carting lunchtime paper bags.
“Base to Gadget. Come in, Inspector Gadget.”
“I answer only to Bond, James Bond.” Hud impersonated Sean Connery. He approached the massive, glitzy revolving doors to Spencer’s skyscraper. “No, wait Jason Bourne.”
“How about Nancy Drew? We’ve hijacked Spencer’s phone line, so when front security calls to check access, you’ll be allowed up to the thirtieth floor.”
“Do I want to know why you have all these spy skills, Andie?”
“Better not to ask.”
As Hud entered, he failed to notice a striking couple, conspicuous in their curious outfits and white hair, peel from a park bench. They shadowed him and waited while he cleared security, sticking slyly as he made the elevator. ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ piped tinnily from the speakers. Turning to face the doors, Hud noted the strange twins for the first time and his mental warning radar blipped.
He kept the flowers up, giving the creepy duo the once-over in the mirrored tiles. She was willowy in the extreme with a fair complexion and a cropped Mohawk. Her features resembled a Siamese cat – slanted pale eyes, broad high cheekbones and bow lips – the type of look favoured on Paris runways. She wore a white singlet under high-waisted, tailored grey pants with suspenders, and the flat, two-toned, lace-up shoes in black and white golfers wore.
The male closely matched his sister in facial structure, but his hair was shaved, jarhead style. He too was lithe, but a sleeveless white t-shirt showcased hard, defined arms and a muscled chest. He wore black and grey snakeskin pants and steel-capped biker’s boots. Their skin was almost translucent, an unsettling tracery of arteries pulsing beneath that reminded Hud of a living foetus.
Neither of them moved, not so much as a twitch on the ride up. Their stillness was utterly extraterrestrial. And prolonged time in their company became uncomfortable, charged with foreboding. Hud clenched his teeth and adopted the same oppositional attitude that had him regularly BASE-jump the Blue Mountains cliffs. They were just people, he repeated silently. People who didn’t appear to breathe, let alone fidget.
Threat grew to smothering, until the lift halted one floor below his. They animated like shop-front mannequins coming alive. Before alighting, the girl turned a full one hundred and eighty degrees to pinion him with a hostile glare that felt like ice chips down his spine. Then they were gone. Hud’s shoulders relaxed, surprised to take a deep, relieving breath, realising belatedly he’d been holding it. There was no way she could know anything about his purpose. Perhaps her scowl was the equivalent of flirting. He shuddered.
“I didn’t like the look of them. Abort. Get back to base.”
“No,” he murmured. “They’re not going to Spencer’s office. I’m finishing the job. It might be the only opportunity to go through his files.”
“Oh, please, Hud! We can remote pilot Buzz.”
Now they informed him. “No, Andie.”
Bickles joined in. “Andie’s right—”
Hud pulled the ear-buds out and removed the glasses, secreting them in a pocket. He was in for a roasting, but Jason Bourne would not give up so quickly, regardless of intuition yelling to abandon the job. Immediately. The lift doors slid open and he proceeded to the end of the corridor, which according to blueprints, looped this level in an internal square. He rapped on a corner door with large gilt lettering announcing ‘Sebastian Spencer, Esquire’. Esquire! What a douche. After a prolonged pause, no one answered, which Hud interpreted as an invitation to enter.
“Delivery!” He made the deserted outer secretary’s station and pounded on the door to the inner office.
“What d’ya want?” A voice slurred from the other side of solid wood. Hud checked his watch; it was barely one o’clock. A tad early to be blotto. He wriggled the doorknob, discovering it locked.
“Flower delivery for Sebastian Spencer.”
“Dump ’em on the desk and get out.”
“I guess this means I don’t get a tip?”
Something sure had him spooked. Or maybe he was just a lazy drunk. Hud spoke into his pocket, “Okay. Flowers are in the outer office.
He placed the flowers and made a show of his pretend exit by rattling the outer door, then concealed himself behind the floor-to-ceiling sliding panels disguising banks of filing cabinets. They’d already decided any information Spencer had on Tate would be in his office. Minutes dragged by. Hud didn’t want to get stuck, jammed between metal drawers in a dark, locked space. Just as he’d decided to emerge and skedaddle, the inner door unlocked. The flowers rustled and the outer door opened and then closed. The phone rang and rang, Spencer ignoring it to make his getaway.
“I told you. Easy-peasy,” Hud murmured, stepping out into the reception area.
An authentic-looking bumblebee droned past Hud’s face, an exact replica right down to its fuzzy pollen floaties. It hovered at eye level, dive-bombed his forehead and then flew off to disengage the security pad to Spencer’s office.
“Was that necessary?”
He supposed he was fortunate they hadn’t chosen the stinger end and rubbed his head; the little sucker still hurt. A moment later found him immersed in the luxury of Spencer’s inner sanctum, dominated by an ornately carved desk the size of Antarctica and a kingly, high-backed swivel chair. Thankfully, the phone’s incessant ringing had stopped. Buzz had already disappeared.
Hud went to work, locating Spencer’s private filing cabinet, picking the lock as he’d been shown, and eventually extricating a thin manila folder on Tate. He took it to the desk, poised to go through it, when his phone vibrated against his leg. It was probably an abusive text from Andie and Bickles, but it could be further instructions, so he pulled it out and checked it.
The message was from an old girlfriend, the exotic dancer named Cherie. It announced her return to town for a limited engagement and invited him to watch her show later that night, after the fights. He smiled and put the mobile on the desk. Reinserting the ear-buds, stony silence prevailed while he flicked through the file.
“Looks like Tate offered to bail Spencer out for a majority share in the company. Spencer Senior would never go for it.”
A slight scraping at the door was Hud’s only warning. He barely had time to yank the rollered chair from its space, dive beneath the desk and drag the chair back to position. He blessed Spencer Junior’s c
olossal narcissism.
Even though he’d not heard them speak, he knew instinctively who it was. His heart galloped spastically. And he was trapped in an open box, barely covered by a framework of wheels and leather.
“Are you certain he’s not close by, Rebel? There is an open file on the desk. The cabinet drawer is still extended. And see, he left his mobile.”
Hud scrunched further back into inadequate shadow, cursing his own stubbornness and stupidity. He listened in horror as footsteps neared. Golf shoes materialised in front of his nook and Hud stifled his fright. Pages flipped and a scratching on the desk forecast they had his phone. Were Andie and Bickles aware of this grievous blunder?
“I rang. No one picked up. Perhaps, he is simply sloppy. He will return for his mobile, though. Read the last text. It might tell us where he went.” Her voice was more a growl and gave his goosebumps goosebumps.
“Another conquest, Cherie the Snake-charmer. Something about fights. Why did Tate bother with this silly, little man? He is a philanderer, yet does not seem to offer us advantage. He’s clearly broke and powerless.”
If she decided to take a seat, he was done for. And he thoroughly deserved whatever they did to him. It was just reward for his moronic behaviour, treating the whole episode as some pretend game of intrigue. He’d been involved in the Trinity for half a day and already buggered it up. So much for proving his competence. Sweat moistened the shirt to his back.
“The photographs on the wall, brother. This is the office of Spencer Junior. Look! His father is Sebastian Spencer Senior, billionaire finance-broker and industrialist. He is pictured with politicians, presidents and others like him. Tate may have been an excellent Blood, but we are the premium negotiators and there is many a deal to be harvested here.”
She emphasised the last two words and Hud shied from the insinuation of violence. Biker boots sidled next to her Oxford loafers.