by RJ Johnson
“Then you must realize the implications of this moment, Mr. Howell.” Kline asked as he opened the spigot once again, rinsing the dirt off the cup. Satisfied that it was clean, he poured more water, releasing the spigot after filling it halfway.
“I’m not sure I understand,” Red replied, thoroughly confused. The man was insane, or off some strong medication.
“My point, Mr. Howell,” Kline began dramatically, “is that three billion years ago, less than a quarter of the total age of the universe today, one atom of oxygen was synthesized by one of the galaxies’ hottest and largest stars. Running through its life cycle, the star explodes in a glorious supernova, blowing all those new heavy elements like oxygen out into the universe in a shimmering display of power. After drifting through space for a few hundred thousand years, one by one, those oxygen atoms begin hooking up with leftover hydrogen from the Big Bang, forming what we learned in primary school. H2O. Or...” Kline paused as he began dripping water out of the cup.
“Water?” Red asked hesitantly.
“Water! Yes! Just that, Mr. Howell.” Kline took a sip and continued, “Slowly, enough of our small watery friends hooked up with enough dust to form enormous comets. Then they traveled through the universe for a few billion years through the unforgiving vacuum of space, until eventually, they found their way to our tiny blue marble.” Kline stared for a moment at his cup of water in wonder.
“These water molecules traveled the Universe, seeing it as God intended, all the while completely unknowing that their fate was to smash into a newly born planet, helping it to wash clean, and of course, enable the most precious of all things — life — to spring up on what had been, up till only a few millions years ago, a hellhole of molten rock and lava.”
Red stood there, confused as to what the man in front of him was talking about. Kline was lost in reflection as he stared at the cup. Red cleared his throat and finally spoke up.
“That’s poetic, but what does that have to do with drilling into the mesa?” Red asked gingerly, hoping it wouldn’t spark a violent reaction from the man.
Kline looked up from the cup and sighed.
“Americans…always interested in the instant payoff. There really is no respect for the art of conversation anymore,” Kline sniffed. “I suppose that’s what reality TV will do to a nation.” He swirled the water in his cup, staring at it as he continued.
“The point, Mr. Howell, is that all things in this universe have a destiny. This water’s destiny was to travel hundreds of thousands of light years, last billions of years, all to exist for this very moment. To be here today, for me to drink and satiate my thirst. In a few hours, I’ll expel it through sweat or urine, and it’ll continue on its journey, completely unaware of the purpose it served to my life.
“You, Mr. Howell, are exactly like these water molecules. The only reason you’ve survived this long was because you had a destiny to fulfill, to help me complete this task. Once it is complete, you’ll go on, completely unaware of the purpose your life served for my universe.”
Red’s face began to go white. He was beginning to understand. His life, and the lives of his workers, many of whom were friends, none of them meant anything to this psychopath.
“Aha, so you do see,” Kline smiled.
Red didn’t even see him move. One moment, Kline was a dozen feet away, refilling the beat-up metal cup, and then, suddenly, Kline was next to him his hand racing for the fat foreman’s throat. Holding him under the jaw, Kline hoisted the pudgy man above his head, staring dangerously at Red’s squished face, which had changed from its normal cherry complexion into something more resembling freshly fallen snow. Kline brought Red’s face forward, his mouth against his captive’s sweaty ear.
“Some people think the glass is half-empty,” Kline whispered into his ear, “And some people call it half-full.”
Red stood there, terrified, unable to move. The pain was intense. The world was growing dark. A halo of blackness spread around the sides of his vision.
His thoughts turned to the woman he had loved, the one who had betrayed their affair to her husband, hoping that her confession would save their marriage and thus, her access to his money. Red began to cry, the tears streaming down his fat face. To go through life unloved was the only true unforgivable sin, and here he was, about to lose the chance to live that dream. Thirty years later, Red Howell stood in a cave at the mercy of a madman, and completely removed from the life he had once wanted. Now, mourning that life he never had a chance to live, Red began to cry.
He was helpless in the hands of the freakishly strong billionaire. The powerful arms were like steel cables hoisting his 300 pounds with no more effort than tossing a rag doll in the air. Kline’s raspy English accent became his world.
“And then there are people like me.” Kline enjoyed the fat man’s gasps; he could feel every drop of his victim’s life slipping away between his hands. The knowledge of that excited him. “There are people like me that come along, pour out your drink, and smash the empty glass over your head, leaving you to bleed to death.”
Red kicked, his feet grasping at the edge of the cave, looking to prop himself up.
Kline smiled dropping the foreman to the ground. Dusting himself off, Kline looked down at the fat man reduced to tears with no pity in his eyes. Kline sniffed his hand, still covered in the fat man’s sweat. It reeked of fear, fear of death. He inhaled the rare aroma, slowly and deeply, then smirked triumphantly at the fallen foreman.
“I think you might be one of the glass-half-empty kind of folks.”
Red didn’t care what happened next. He wanted to be out, and done, home with someone special.
“I’m sorry,” Red bawled, “I’ll do whatever you want, we’ll make it work, but please, you have to give me a little more time.”
“Time you’ll have, Mr. Howell.” Kline’s voice was surprisingly kind. “I’m a reasonable man, and I’m not here to risk everything, so if you can get me to my specified coordinates within the next 36 hours, then you shall live to see another birthday.” Kline turned and began walking back towards his trailer, across from the entrance of the mine, calling back over his shoulder. “Remember Mr. Howell, 36 hours. Tick tock.”
The other workers quickly lowered their eyes as Kline strode away. Many of them had stopped to watch the surreal scene unfold out of the corner of their eye. The workers in the tunnel nervously turned back to their tasks of cleaning their equipment, hurriedly attempting to look busy as they replaced parts and topped off fluids. Some were alarmed at the violence, but money was a powerful motivator for their loyalty, and whatever Red had done to anger Kline was none of their concern.
Two of the workers approached Red after Kline walked out of sight. Before they could even pretend to help, Red threw out his hands in frustration, waving the two of them off. He didn’t need their pity. With that deadline in front of them, they were going to need more than that. Red rubbed his raw and bruised throat, wondering if he would ever leave Joshua Tree alive.
“You heard him,” Red yelled angrily, gasping for air at the same time. “Get back to work!”
Red wheezed and fell to one knee. Then he did something he hadn’t done in a long time, and began to pray for deliverance.
Kline entered the trailer his company had brought in for him to use. One part office, one part home, one part nerve center, Kline was able to run his entire empire from just this one command station. The attachment on the roof of his trailer allowed for even speedier travel if it was needed. A specially designed helicopter was used to move it quickly if there was a need for a quick getaway. Kline had never used the option yet, but a billionaire such as himself liked having more than one option for everything in his life.
As Kline approached his office, a young man stood hunched over, clutching a paper envelope tightly. The kid wasn’t more than eighteen or nineteen years old, Kline guessed, narrowing his eyes at the intruder. Hiring the local yokels had been Tate’s idea, and it wasn�
�t a bad one necessarily; it was just that many of his new recruits lacked the proper decorum in his presence.
He approached the young man, quickly growling as he did so, “What is it?”
The young man swallowed nervously. Removing the toothpick from his mouth, he flicked it away as he held out the envelope in his other hand wordlessly. Kline grabbed the package, quickly tearing it open. Inside was a small memory card, with a short note from Geoffrey Tate. Ignoring the note, Kline retrieved his PDA from his belt as he eyed the young man suspiciously.
“Where’d you get this?” Kline asked, as he inserted the memory chip.
“Mr. Tate told me to bring it back here for you, and that was it. I promise, I did what I was told.”
Kline nodded absently, as the young man withdrew another toothpick from his pocket, sliding it into his mouth. Kline frowned at the complete lack of respect the kid showed him, but teaching the young man a lesson could wait for another time.
Pressing play on his PDA, he began watching the video. It didn’t take more than thirty seconds for him to open his cell phone and dial a number.
“Get the chopper warmed up, and find Mr. Tate immediately; I need to speak with him.”
Chapter Nineteen
Sienna Hutton had been the manager of La Rivera apartments for well over seven years now. Her job was simple: collect the rent each month, and keep the books and tenants in order. In exchange, the Armenian businessman who lived in Arizona allowed her to stay at one of the units completely rent free. The job was the definition of easy living. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the place where actual rocket scientists went to work, was just down the road, and La Rivera Apartments was an ideal location for many of them.
With the complex full of local scientists, it was a rare thing for Sienna to need to chase down a late rent payment. They all made good money, and generally stayed out of trouble. If one of the checks did end up missing one month, lack of money generally wasn’t the issue. Typically, it was an engineer who had buried himself too deep into his research and had simply forgotten the day of the month. It might have been cheaper for the Armenian businessman to have the tenants simply mail him their rent checks, but Sienna’s presence reassured the owner that his investment was safe. On her end, she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Free rent for minimal work wasn’t easy to come by in the City of Angels, and she wasn’t going to let anyone or anything screw her situation up.
So it was with some annoyance that she found her customarily safe world rudely interrupted one night by the gate to her complex crashing open. At first her subconscious, still deep in REM sleep, had insisted it was part of her dream. But the shriek of protesting steel, bending and scraping against the concrete wall that lay directly against her interior bedroom wall, finally awoke her to reality.
Her eyes barely opened as they attempted to focus on the alarm clock across the room. It was 3:30 in the morning. Whoever had crashed into the gate was probably drunk or high on something, and Sienna wasn’t going to let them get away with destroying the Armenian’s apartment complex. Springing into action, she resolved to find out who the culprits were and make sure they paid for any damage. If she were going to catch them, she knew, she would have to move quickly.
Sienna shuffled over to the chair in her room where she had tossed her robe earlier after her nightly shower. Her hair was thick and curly and a bitch to dry, but the last thing she wanted was to catch a cold in the pursuit of the mysterious late-night vandals. Tossing on the thick pink robe, she tied it closed over her flannel pajamas and set out in pursuit of the culprit.
The door to her apartment opened as she peered outside in the dark night. The moon was low in the sky, unable to provide her much light. The apartment complex had a street lamp over the parking lot, but it had burned out long ago.
Sienna made her way down the sidewalk and tripped on some unevenly poured concrete in the shadows. She swore gently to herself as she made a mental note to call her boss and get him to spend some money on some overdue upkeep.
She turned the corner to her building and surveyed the damage to the gate in front of her. It was as she feared; the gate was broken wide open, barely hanging onto its busted hinges. She shook her head.
“Drunken idiots,” Sienna muttered to herself in the dark. She stepped closer to the ripped mass of steel bars and looked for any sign of the vandals. There wasn’t much left behind besides some dark marks where the tires had squealed in an attempt to gain traction as it took on the heavy gate.
Sienna yawned and looked around the small complex. She was tired, it was cold, and there was no sign of anyone. She tugged her robe closer around her shoulders and walked around the corner to the complex’s courtyard. What she ought to do was go inside and call the police, she thought to herself, but she decided taking one look around couldn’t hurt anything. She felt in her pockets for her cell phone and mace. She was ready.
After walking a hundred yards or so down the courtyard, she made it to the corner and peered around. It was then that she spotted four men standing outside one of her tenants’ units. She squinted, trying to get a better look at the unit’s number. Sienna closed her eyes and imagined the master map that hung on a wall in her office. Counting with her fingers in the air, she finally settled on what number apartment they were standing in front of. Realizing who it was, she snorted in disgust; of course, it was him.
Scott Ermy had been a nice enough tenant, always on time with the rent. The worst Sienna had to deal with was occasionally having to remind him when quiet hours began, and to turn down his television or music.
But if these marauding visitors that had torn down her gate were friends of his, Scott Ermy would be put on the quick path to eviction. A smile began to spread across her chubby face, despite the confrontation yet to come. She did love this part of her job. Yelling at men was second nature to a woman who raised five brothers.
She cleared her throat bracing herself and stormed over to the men in the Suburban, puffing her chest up, adopting her bitchiest attitude.
“Excuse me, just what the hell exactly do you think you’re…” she trailed off as she got closer to the three men in form fitting black jumpsuits. Whoever these men were, they were not just coming back from the bars.
“Who are you?” A bald man coming from nowhere surprised her by getting out of the passenger side of the Suburban. Whereas the three other men in their form-fitting jumpsuits and masks had been strange, this man, even without a mask covering his identity, scared Sienna. His pale blue eyes bore a hole directly into Sienna’s soul, and suddenly, she felt incredibly cold.
Losing her nerve, she started nervously, “I’m Sienna Hutton, and I manage…I manage this complex…”
The man said nothing, just staring at her with his pale watery blue eyes. She cleared her throat and raised her head back up. Her brother used to use the quiet intimidation tactic on her; she wouldn’t let him get away with it.
Finding her voice and confidence, she started again. “I’m Sienna Hutton. I manage this complex, and you gentlemen have destroyed my gate.” She stuck her chin out defiantly. “I hope you’re ready to pay for it. I’ve already called the police, and they are on their way.”
The bald man shook his head, chuckling.
“No you haven’t.” Geoffrey replied to the robed young woman in front of him. “We’ve had the entire area jammed for the past…” Geoffrey paused as one of the masked men held up a complicated-looking electronic device with a timer running on the front. “…four minutes, seventeen seconds.”
Sienna’s courage, which had been quickly retreating each second she faced the men in front of her, now found itself in freefall.
“There’s no way anyone could have made a call in or out of this complex, or within 300 feet, for that matter.”
Geoffrey watched the woman for her reaction, examining her closely. Sienna felt as though she was under a microscope in a lab, certain those pale blue watery eyes were somehow look
ing directly through her robe and pajamas.
“What is it you said you do here?” Geoffrey asked quietly.
“I…” Sienna decided right then that she would no longer stammer or cry in front of these men, no matter what happened. “I manage the complex.”
“Which means what, exactly?” Geoffrey asked, those eyes staring directly into Sienna’s.
“I collect the rent, find tenants, do general day-to-day upkeep.” In her head, Sienna began to make a list of the things she would do if she got out of this alive. “I’m just here to keep the place running shipshape, you know?” she finished, laughing nervously.
Geoffrey didn’t respond, but kept his head cocked, looking at her as if she were some new inscrutable insect he had found in the wilds of the rainforest.
“If you manage this place, then I assume you know the tenants fairly well?”
“Who are you?” Sienna deflected the man’s question, hoping to knock him off balance. “You don’t look like cops.”
Geoffrey smiled, “I’m hardly a cop, my dear. But I promise if you tell me something trivial, you’re going to be just fine.” Geoffrey placed his hand on her shoulder as if to reassure her. Instead, it had the opposite effect. His hand was cold, white like a fish’s belly, and sent shivers down her spine.
“Who are you looking for?” Sienna had already decided that her life was worth much more than anyone else’s she knew. “I’d be more than happy to look up anything you need.”
Geoffrey smiled gently at her. “Atta girl, now that’s what I like to hear.” He pointed towards Scott’s apartment. “I’m looking for a Scott Ermy. What can you tell me about him? Who are his friends? When was he last here?” His questions were rapid fire, too quick for her to follow at first.
“Scott?” Sienna snorted derisively. “There’s not much to tell.”
She didn’t know how he moved that quickly, but somehow, Geoffrey crossed the space between them, bringing his face inches away from Sienna’s. Her eyes grew wide. He put his mouth against Sienna’s ear as a knife appeared at her throat.