No Good Deed

by Victor Gischler

  “To the end, then.”

  27

  Bryant held the external drive in his hands, looking at it with wonder. It was the only place on the entire planet the new program existed in its complete form.

  And Bryant held it.

  Not that the program couldn’t be reproduced. It would be foolish to think Bryant could walk out his front door and be crushed in the street by a moving van or something, the external drive irrevocably damaged and the program lost to eternity. The corporation was not about to let a decade of research and development go up in smoke though sheer ineptitude.

  It had been Middleton who’d insisted that the major components of the program be stored separately, different officers in the company holding passwords to access those components. Should some calamity necessitate a reassembly of the software, the entire board would need to be convened for all components to be accessed. Bryant wasn’t surprised, really. Middleton was one of the most paranoid men he’d ever met. It would be easy for him to imagine any and all of his employees from vice president on down to the lowliest college intern stealing the information and selling out to a competitor.

  Which, Bryant realized, was exactly what he could do now. The information in the drive he held was literally worth millions of dollars.

  He glanced over his shoulders at the tech crew. They would spend the next few hours scrubbing all the computers at his station, making sure no trace of the software remained. And although they didn’t say it, they would also make sure Bryant hadn’t hidden a copy of the software in some file or saved it to the cloud. They’d already examined his smartphone and personal laptop.

  He glanced down at the drive in his hands again. He could do it. He really could. Just walk right out with it.

  A knock on the door.

  He opened it. Two of the corporate security guards. Blue blazers with the corporate logos over the pockets. Muscles bulged under the jackets. Bryant knew they were armed. These weren’t mall cops. They were pros. Not thugs like Cavanaugh and his goons, but formidable in their own button-down way.

  “Hello, Mr. Bryant,” one of them said. “We’re here to escort you to Sonoma. We have a limousine outside.”

  Bryant raised an eyebrow. “Oh? I was just going to drive myself.”

  “There are those who might take the drive from you,” the guard said. “We wouldn’t want you hurt if that happened. We’re here for your safety.”

  Bryant nodded along with the man’s words, thinking, Yeah, and to keep me from getting lost along the way. Middleton doesn’t trust me any more than he trusts anyone else.

  In a way, it was why Bryant had been picked. He had unique qualifications that made him the perfect liaison between Middleton and Cavanaugh. Or, to broaden things, the liaison between Middleton’s legitimate business ventures and the seedy shortcuts he sometimes took to accomplish things expediently. Not only did Bryant possess the technical know-how Middleton found useful, but Middleton had Bryant over a barrel.

  About eighteen months ago, Middleton’s people had caught Bryant embezzling. By no means was Bryant a Goody Two-shoes, but he’d certainly never set out to become an embezzler. But there were the gambling debts, and he kept getting deeper and deeper into the hole, and, well, one thing led to another.

  It was actually a pretty good deal. Middleton paid him an obscene amount of money, and because he held the embezzlement over Bryant’s head, there was a weird trust there that wouldn’t exist if Bryant had simply been another honest citizen.

  However, that trust did not extend to letting Bryant walk out of the building unguarded with the corporation’s greatest achievement.

  At least Bryant could ride in a limo.

  “We need to hit a drive-through on the way,” he told the guards. “I’m starving.”

  * * *

  Middleton sat on the edge of the indoor pool and watched Meredith swim. He admired her athleticism. Something he lacked. And she didn’t just float around. There was nothing recreational about it. She’d done ten laps, had good form. Middleton was content to watch. She made a lithe and graceful shape, cutting through the water in a sleek, black one-piece.

  Middleton sat with his khakis rolled up to his knees, bare feet on the first step in the shallow end.

  Meredith made the turn at the other end of the pool, kicked off from the wall, and glided underwater an impressive distance before surfacing, kicking hard, arms rotating in and out of the water, head coming up every few lengths for a breath.

  She reached the wall near Middleton and hoisted herself up, dried her hands on a towel. She picked up her smartphone, scrolled.

  “Bryant is on his way,” Meredith said. “He’s with the security detail.”

  “Good,” Middleton said. “I’ll feel better when it’s done.”

  In fact, Middleton felt better already.

  His initial embarrassment at the botched sex with Meredith had evaporated. He’d slept like a baby. She’d held him all night. Meredith was everything Aaron Middleton needed and desired. The news of Cavanaugh’s failure to handle his formal marital situation had rattled him badly. It was the most egregious of loose ends.

  But Meredith was the cure for any malady. This was not the time to despair. It was a time to rejoice. Emma would be taken care of, and then he could launch his new life. With Meredith by his side. The life he deserved.

  “Let me be up there with you when he installs it,” Meredith said. “I’ve heard so much about this software. I’d like finally to see it in action.”

  He began to tell her that of course that would be fine.

  But Middleton stopped himself. He wasn’t even sure why. An instinct or a superstition. Was there still some kind of distrust there, a last enclave of vulnerability within him that he was protecting? More likely some childish selfishness. He wanted to play with his new toy all on his own, nobody looking over his shoulder.

  “Let me get the kinks out,” Middleton said. “Then I’ll put on a show for you.”

  The slightest hesitation, perhaps Middleton had even imagined it. Then she grinned. “You’re the boss.”

  “Did you tell the board I wanted a meeting?”

  “First of the month,” Meredith said. “I don’t think you can Skype this one. My advice is to put on a tie and go down there.”

  “Do you think they’ll go for it?” Middleton had asked her this question at least a dozen times. He thought his idea to work on a next-gen version of the software a good one. That way, the corporation would always be one step ahead. Never mind that the plan also allowed Middleton to keep the program to himself for the time being.

  “Above my pay grade.” She grinned. “Ten more laps.”

  She launched off the wall, backstroking toward the far end.

  Middleton thought about what he would say to the board. He was sure he could convince them. Yes, short-term profits would take a hit. Stockholders would kick. But he could sell them on the long-term potential—although he wasn’t particularly fond of the word sell. He didn’t consider himself a salesman, some cheap huckster. Middleton had a passion for this project and for the corporation. Conveying this passion to the board would win the day.

  They’d see it his way. They had to. No more wishy-washy worry about it.

  And if not, he already knew ways to convince people who didn’t want to be convinced.

  28

  The old truck clattered across the Nevada desert. US 50 took them through the little towns, and at last, they hit Interstate 80 at Fernley and took it through Reno and across the state line into California.

  The sun went down, but neither of them suggested making camp. The honeymoon was over. They felt a pressing need to get on with it now. Mostly it was Emma, but Francis could feel the urgency radiating off her, and it infected him. Stops were infrequent and quick, a gas fill-up, an unappetizing service-station egg salad sandwich, in and out of the restroom.

  They passed through Sacramento, and when they made their final stop just outside of Vallejo
, Emma took over driving.

  “Easier than your having to follow my directions,” she said.

  Fine with Francis.

  They hit Berkeley just after 11:00 P.M., and Emma exited the interstate. She drove past the campus, looking at it with nostalgia.

  “Man, it seems like a long time ago.” She leaned over the wheel, looking up at the buildings through the windshield. “I can’t even tell you what it was like to come here, a girl like me from Podunk, USA. It was crazy and wonderful, like the world was showing me what it could be for the first time.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  “I miss things about it,” she said. “I miss feeling like everything was new.”

  She turned down the main drag, passing coffee shops and bookstores and the occasional pub. She almost missed the turn down the side street she was looking for.

  “Been a while,” she said.

  A block later, she parked on the street in front of a place called Atomic Doughnuts. The entire interior of the place was visible through huge glass windows. It was brightly lit. Booths and a counter and all the décor meant to look retro like from the 1950s.

  “Come on,” she said. “This place will change your life.”

  They got out of the truck, and Francis glanced into the bed. “What about that?”

  Emma followed his gaze to the footlocker full of guns. “Yeah. Probably should lock that up.”

  They put the footlocker into the front seat and locked the doors. Emma stuffed the keys into the front pocket of her jeans.

  They walked into the doughnut shop. College kids sat at various tables, hunched over textbooks, nursing cups of coffee.

  “I like sitting at the counter,” Emma said. “I always did when I used to come in here.”

  “Fine with me.”

  They took two stools, and a guy came to take their order. He had a full, perfectly trimmed beard, gold hoops in each ear, curly brown hair under a watch cap. He looked directly at Francis.

  “I don’t know what to get,” Francis said.

  The bearded guy didn’t look like he had a lot of patience with this.

  Emma leaned in, took over. “He’ll have coffee and a raspberry filled.” She looked at Francis. “Trust me.”

  “And you?” Beardo asked her.

  “I’ll have a raspberry too,” she said. “But also a cream filled.”

  “Right.”

  “And a chocolate with sprinkles and a blueberry.”

  “Will that do it?”

  “And a double fudge.”

  Beardo hesitated. “We good?”

  “And coffee.”

  Beardo nodded and left to fetch the order.

  Francis looked at her, raised an eyebrow. “Hungry?”

  “I’m making up for a lot of lost time.”

  Beardo brought the doughnuts and set them on the counter. He returned a second later with two cups of coffee.

  Emma took half the raspberry in one bite. She moaned, eyes rolling back in her head. “Oh my God, I’ve been waiting for that for so long.” She finished the doughnut in two more bites, then went after the blueberry.

  Francis looked down at the doughnut and coffee on the counter in front of him.

  Emma noticed he wasn’t eating. “Problem?”

  “Egg salad.”

  “I told you not to eat a gas station sandwich.”

  Francis rubbed his stomach, stifled an acrid burp. “I feel gross.”

  Emma twisted on her stool, looked back through the big glass window. “Try Jerry’s across the street. Get some antacid or something.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  Francis slipped off the stool and left the doughnut shop.

  Jerry’s was a narrow storefront wedged between a florist and an aromatherapy salon. Magazines, soft drinks, snacks, cigarettes, batteries, aspirin, all the world’s bright and varied sundries. The bored oldster behind the counter looked up from his copy of Road & Track long enough to sell Francis a bottle of water and a single pack of Alka-Seltzer. He took his purchases outside, stood in the doorway of the store, and crumbled the tablets into the bottle.

  He watched them fizz, then guzzled the water until the bottle was empty. A long, searing belch pushed up and out of him. He felt better.

  He watched Emma through the doughnut shop’s big window. She chomped into the last of her doughnuts. Even from across the street, the raw glee on her face was clear. He hated to ruin her moment, but time was up. They needed to talk about what she intended to do and why. Emma had a score to settle with her husband. Depending on what she told him, Francis would try to help, or he’d try to talk her out of it.

  But no matter what, he wasn’t walking away.

  Two men in dark suits entered the doughnut shop.

  Francis thought nothing of it until they approached Emma. One of them gestured toward the door. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the gesture looked like Come with us, please. It all unfolded in the big window like a show on a huge TV screen with the sound on Mute.

  Emma started to stand, face open and cooperative, like she was more than willing to go along with them. Her little fist suddenly came up hard into one of their guts. He doubled over, and she shoved the other one aside, dodged away as he grabbed for her. She leaped up on a stool, jumped to the counter. Everyone in the place was watching now as she ran along the counter, knocking off cups and plates, the guys in the suits following and still trying to grab her.

  Francis’s hand went to his front pocket. Emma had the truck keys.

  Shit.

  He had to go to her. Francis took two steps into the street and was brought up short by the sound of slamming car doors. His head snapped around to look.

  A black sedan parked on his side of the street four car lengths down. Two men in similar dark suits came toward Francis.

  “Sir,” one of them said. “Can we have a word, please?”

  Francis turned slowly as if he hadn’t heard them and went back into the sundries store.

  “Is there a back door?” he asked the oldster.

  “It’s just for deliveries.”

  Francis headed down the back hallway past a restroom and a bunch of storage boxes.

  “Hey, idiot,” the old guy called after him. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  Francis walked faster.

  He emerged from the back door into a dark, narrow alley. Trash cans and locked back doors on the wall across the way. A ten-foot-high chain-link fence blocked one way, so Francis turned the other way and jogged.

  The two suits exploded out the back door right behind him.

  Francis broke into a run.

  His head spun. What was happening to Emma? He needed to help her, but he needed to escape first.

  He erupted from the alley, not breaking stride as he sprinted across the street. The blare of a horn, and a little compact slammed on its brakes, tires squealing, the front bumper missing Francis’s leg by three inches. He paused in the wash of headlights to look back. The two guys were still coming fast.

  The driver stuck his head out the window, screaming insults, but Francis was already running again. There was some kind of club ahead of him, and Francis entered.

  It was crowded, college-age people. The interior was dark, and it took a second for Francis’s eyes to adjust. Everyone wore black, hair falling down in front of people’s eyes, black lipstick, piercings, and tattoos. A goth club. If Francis had been hoping to blend in, he could forget it.

  He hunched down, trying to make himself small, and waded into the crowd. When he glanced back, he saw the two suits standing in the doorway, scanning the crowd. One of them brought his wrist up to his mouth and muttered something. Francis noticed the wires hanging from their ears.

  Francis kept low and found the hallway back to the restrooms. There were no other doors or exits. He entered the men’s room and shut the door behind him, slapping the cheap bolt lock into place. It wasn’t much of a restroom. A single toilet and a sink. It didn’t matter. His
eyes went to the little window.

  The very little window.

  He was relieved when it opened easily. He had to stand on the toilet to look out. The space between the building he was in and the next wasn’t wide enough to legitimately call it an alley. He leaned out and looked both ways, saw the blur of headlights at the far end of the narrow space. Good. He could get back to the street. Or at least some street. Once he’d ditched these guys, he’d bend his mind toward how he could possibly help Emma.

  A banging on the restroom door sent his heart into his throat. He ignored it and braced his hands on the windowsill, making ready to hoist himself up. The banging on the door became more insistent.

  Francis failed the first attempt to hoist himself, foot almost slipping on the toilet seat. He caught himself.

  The banging on the door was so loud now it rattled the hinges. He thought maybe they were kicking it. They were definitely coming through at any moment.

  He hoisted himself again, made it, and wriggled through the small space. It wasn’t easy. He had to put one arm through at a time. He wasn’t huge by any means, but his shoulders were just too wide to fit.

  This time the banging was accompanied by a sharp crack. The door wouldn’t last much longer.

  When Francis wriggled down to his hips, he got stuck, the top of his jeans catching. Francis heard the door smashed inward, hinges clanging on the cement floor. Men shouting.

  He panicked, tried to push himself through with a big heave, his belly and lower back scraping. Hands grabbed his ankles. He twisted and kicked, his heel connecting with something solid. A grunt and the hands let go.

  It was enough to dislodge him and knock him through, and for a long second, he floated in the air, facing upward at the dark, narrow space between buildings. Falling backward was a strange sensation. An endless plummet that felt like it would go on for—

  He hit hard, the air slammed out of him. His legs pointed straight up the side of the wall. There wasn’t enough room in the cramped space for him to spread out. His mouth worked for air.