Matt fought back the misting that came from that thought, “So not only was Pablo Manuel trying to kill me, but the ‘They’ I’ve been speaking of must have tried, too. Either that, or maybe one last sheep follower, time will tell.” He finally broke his unfocused outlook and gazed down to Robert and his hulking bodyguard and winked.
Matt re-addressed the crowd, “This is the beauty of what Robert is bringing to life in the game. American Pride is a real game with real prizes, but it’s also a free market place governed by a counsel of eight. Working off our principle of ‘They always kill the good guys,’ we set up a counsel of eight, knowing it is much harder to kill eight people than it is one, much like the Hydra.
“Currently, there are only six at the counsel table, but that’s by design. We decided to add real incentive and as part of the Grand Prize, we’re going to give away at least one of those two remaining seats to a winner in the game. This game will be a virtual world, except that in this world, it is American made products only. If your character walks into a store to buy something, it can only be sold there if it was made in the USA.
“I hold no grudge against Robert; he was just trying to motivate a man he thought was afraid in Tom Holsinger. He had no clue it was me and that’s why when presented with the opportunity to make my dream a reality, I had to turn Robert down. By that time, he had already given Scott Bailey the release with my name, and as he didn’t know that my alias was Tom Holsinger, he assumed he was just prodding a reluctant man.
“I turned down the job then because I couldn’t afford the notoriety; but before I leave all you people to go be with my wife and son, I need to ask Robert Leme if that job offer still stands.”
Matt looked down at Robert and he said, “Yes,” which Matt repeated loudly. The crowd cheered and he asked Robert to come up and say a word.
* * *
Robert Leme had been avoiding this moment his whole life. He never thought he would get a turn in this world because in his mind he was such a dislikable loser. Even after his success with Top of the Heap, he still felt like a loser. A lifetime of ridicule will do that to even the strongest of spirits. Robert felt embarrassed, though. Matt had just handled the fact that someone probably tried to kill him with great grace and bravery, yet he himself was too scared to even walk up to the podium.
Robert watched as several police cars sped through the parking garage up to where the person was alleged to have seen the shot. That person was still up there, but on the other side of the structure now, away from the van. Robert didn’t have Matt’s kind of bravery, but he did have something to say, as his idea had a time and that time was now. All he had to do was garner more nerve than he’d ever had in his entire life.
Frozen, eyes all on him, he suddenly felt two giant hands on his back, gently pushing him toward Matt and the microphone. Robert mused that Melvin was like a mother bird finally telling her fledgling to go out and fly. He reluctantly made his way up to Matt, who briefly embraced him as a greeting, not the customary handshake.
Trying not to focus on the thousand faces staring at him, Robert started with, “Matt is right, but what he doesn’t know is I have a much grander idea now. Sometimes inspirational things spin off other ideas and I’m not ashamed to admit that Matt’s idea spawned one that won’t go away in my head.” He looked at Matt, “I believe we can let Matt go to his family now and we can go to the park and re-set up this talk; then I will tell you all about it.”
The crowd applauded as crowds do, but right when Robert got control back and was going to speak on, a shriek erupted over the crowd, sounding crazed and frenzied, “MURDERER!”
A woman was on the roof of the building to his left. When he put his glasses on, Robert had good eyesight and what he saw was very disturbing. She was splattered in a red substance that he supposed was blood and Robert thought she looked like Sissy Spacek in Carrie right after the bucket of blood was poured on her.
She yelled again, “You murdered my brother, you’re no fucking good guy, you’re a killer! You’re nothing more than a no good killer!” Then she was gone. She disappeared back onto the roof. Robert looked at Matt, who looked more than concerned; he looked downright mortified at the accusation.
Robert tried to turn it around and addressed the crowd as if he was blowing that off to madness, “Looks like someone did a few too many mushrooms today, and unless the President of the United States is wrong, then Matt would have to argue that horrible accusation with her.”
As it turned out, the distraction gave Robert a reprieve from the anxiety he was feeling and he was better able to articulate his thoughts now that he remembered Matt was his friend and he was here to not only support him, but to protect him. The latter reason ignited in him indignation and that was one thing in this world that brought the ire out in Robert Leme.
With a purpose he spoke now, “Matt’s idea for American Pride was great, there’s no doubt about it, but it was also the beginning of me realizing my own true calling. By creating the game counsel the way we have, no one person will have control, so stopping us by removing one of us will not work. Stopping all eight of us would, of course, but that would be taking the mask off of the people who would wish to stop us, so you won’t see it happen that way—but make no mistake, the battle-lines just got drawn.
“Matt’s idea has brought me to my calling and I have realized how to make American Pride the most pivotal program ever written, at least for the survival of this country anyway. After paying off all the designers and production people, I am going to take all my profits for this game and . . .”
Right then the glass entrance doors to the building on Robert’s left opened and the shrieking started once again. It was the girl from the roof and she was wailing, “You’re no hero, Matt Hurst, you’re no hero.” She was labored, though, Robert could see, as there was something wrong with her gait. That wasn’t the only thing. There was something else about her that seemed familiar. And what was the purpose of her covering herself in blood like that?
* * *
Malcolm watched as the woman he’d saved made her way toward Matt. He’d been watching the cops check out the van that he’d left locked when the shrieking starting. He had easily slipped out the driver’s door after the shot and escaped unnoticed. It was an unfortunate development that he had to abandon his vehicle, but he still had his sidearm and his comrade on the other roof had surely put two and two together by now. So he probably had help in watching Matt while he dealt with the matter at hand.
After her tirade from the roof, he made his way over toward the building she was in. When she breached the entrance doors, he was quickly able to ascertain she wasn’t armed. It was a crazed scene as his shot had obviously hit some bone that resisted. He believed his shot hit the temple and the residual fallout was not pretty to look at.
Suddenly his previous target was moving toward the girl. He had been tracking a hulk that had been bullying his way through the crowd to get to the front, with a small nerdy guy in tow. He definitely had caught Malcolm’s interest until he got right near the front, only to let the nerd step inside. He was a bodyguard. Now that same hulking bodyguard was heading straight for her. She wasn’t looking good, obviously hindered by some physical ailment that prevented normal movement and the exertion of her roof experience and her tirade apparently left her drained.
Malcolm was watching the hulk advance and the girl wobble at the same time, both at the edges of his left and right peripheral vision. He relaxed his grip on his pistol and started advancing toward the two, trying to anticipate what the hulk would do to her once he closed the gap.
* * *
Robert was stunned, as was everyone else in the plaza. He remembered something from his childhood that he wished he could have made go away a million times in his life, but it never would leave his subconscious. He only had one pet as a child, Hugo the rabbit. Hugo was a gray Netherland Dwarf and he was Robert’s pride and joy, so full of life. In the summer, once the sun was dow
n and things cooled off a little, Hugo would start his routine. He would zip around the apartment, from one room to the next at full speed. Robert would be watching TV and finally Hugo would spring himself onto his lap, climb his chest and lick the salt off his nose with his rough little tongue.
One night, after Robert returned him to his large steel cage, Hugo decided to bite the wire and he got his teeth stuck in the wire cage. The next five minutes of his life were the most terrifying he could ever remember. The rabbit screamed. It was a scream that he would never forget. He had no clue rabbits were capable of making any sound other than a grunting noise Robert observed while Hugo was rutting in springtime. Hugo was screaming this banshee wail that until now, Robert had never heard before. Now he’d heard it again. It was a scared and vulnerable wail.
Once she came out the front entrance, he got a good look at her and his blood ran cold. It was his dream girl from the freeway. He quickly whispered into Melvin’s ear and he didn’t have to say it twice. He gave Melvin an objective and he was taking on the task without hesitation, much to the anger of the displaced crowd as he covered the distance to completing his goal.
* * *
Matt was watching this insanity play out and albeit at any other time in his life, you couldn’t have pried him away from there with a crowbar, right now, at this moment in time, all he wanted to do was leave. Robert’s hulking friend was blazing a path toward his accuser. What new madness is this going to turn out to be? What new piece of information is now going to spiral my life further into the abyss?
His accuser was staggering like a prizefighter who had taken a solid punch and was one jab away from going down. Robert’s assumed bodyguard was plowing a path toward her and it was a good thing because she appeared to have passed out. Just as she was falling forward, the giant deftly caught her and cradled her like a small child in his mother’s clutch. Matt saw her lift her head and speak into the man’s ear.
Matt assumed the entire nation was watching as the massive man walked the bloodied and crazed girl toward the makeshift podium. For some reason, Moses and the parting of the Red Sea popped into his head. You could literally hear only background noise—the people silent as the girl spoke into the giant’s ear. He in turn looked at Matt and was apparently going to speak for her.
“She says you murdered her brother, Homeland Security Agent, Joe Raley.”
Matt was stunned now that he understood what this was about. He was trying to find some words when she spoke into the hulk’s ear once more. God, she was a bloody mess and then he saw something on her shirt he never wanted to see again, something that brought him back to the most terrifying day of his life, the day all this was set into motion when he had picked the same substance out of his Vera’s hair. The substance was brain matter.
Robert’s bodyguard listened to her and spoke for her once again directly to Matt, “You’re no hero, you are a murderer and I’ve been chasing you since the day you killed my brother. Your friends in Ecuador nearly killed me just for mentioning your name. No decent person has friends like that.”
Matt remembered Mauricio telling him that his daughter Cecilia chased off a female reporter that was hunting him down. Of course, he didn’t ask Mauricio for that kind of help, his daughter and he had acted on their own free will. He knew Mauricio to be ruthless, but decent. Then he remembered the day the man unloaded his Colt .45 into two men that tried to kidnap his daughter and understood that she probably spoke the truth.
Matt replied, “I’m so sorry about your brother. I’ve replayed his death in my head over and over again. I was undercover and they were undercover. I was wrestling with his partner for control of his gun, as I had tackled him trying to intervene in what I thought was the attempted kidnapping of my shoplift suspect. When I looked up at your brother during the scuffle, he had the girl in a chokehold and was trying to shoot me in the head. I was never more terrified in my life and in a surge of strength I raised his partner’s gun and squeezed his hand. I did this thinking I was saving my life. That’s the only reason I would ever take a life—to save my life or someone else’s.
“As for my friends in Ecuador, none of you would be standing here today if it weren’t for a man I met who made the impossible happen for me, a man whose daughter I saved from vicious kidnappers, and under his code, is forever in my debt. So if you came across that man, in their country and you were looking for me, you are very lucky to be alive, for sure.
“None of these situations were in my control and the only way your brother could be here today would be if I just let him, an unknown person to me, kill me without a fight. From my point of view, I was battling two perpetrators that were going to kidnap a woman and there was no talking going on, only a struggle for my life. Miss, I don’t like talking to people I don’t know, so can I please have your name?”
She whispered to her mouthpiece once more and he spoke her name, “Lauren Betton.”
“Thank you, Lauren, and I am not trying to be insensitive, but you have to understand, your brother’s life is not the only one that ended that day, and I’ve investigated every one of them. That is what I formerly did for a living before that day—I investigated things. I have read all the information about the case a hundred times. It is a fact that if your brother and his partner would have called in for back-up or simply identified themselves, this whole thing would never have happened—including my life and reputation being stripped from me.”
The silence was palpable. No one dared speak because they might miss a second of what her next words were, but they didn’t come. She was crying into Robert’s bodyguard’s chest and wouldn’t pause. After a minute, some talking started, but everyone was still intent on waiting this out. To Matt’s amazement, the hulk barely looked like he was holding anything. He once had to endure such a situation in which he held Vera for ten hours. Matt wondered how the giant would look after that long, probably the same as he did. Then she whispered into his ear for a long time. Before he spoke, she reiterated what she had said so he got it.
He spoke, “She says that if what you say is true, then you won’t mind being a completely open book and letting her do your story—she is a Journalist. But be warned, she intends to do the piece with every intent of exposing you.”
“No problem,” was Matt’s reply.
Before Matt could speak anymore though, Robert stepped back into the spotlight, literally pushing his friend back, and Matt intuitively understood that this was a purposeful move to allow him to extricate himself from the podium and the scene.
Robert tenderly informed her, “Lauren, I’m going to take it a step further. I’m going to make you part of the counsel for American Pride. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and we need a watchdog. Some diligent person, such as yourself, to make sure we keep an honest path with open books. If you take the job, it’s yours for life and no one will tell you what you can and cannot write. I know Matt, I can’t tell you how, but I know him like we lived in another life together. He does not lie. If that’s what he said happened, then that is what happened and it’s time we all moved on. Even you must admit that the record does not lie, and it's full of mistakes made by the Department of Homeland Security.
She buried her head in Melvin’s chest as Robert continued, “We are going to do some wonderful things and you are going to bear witness, if you’ll take the job. My plan is simple; that’s the most important part about all this, simplicity. Will you join us?”
For the first time, she lifted her head and looked at both of them. Matt could see she was beautiful under all the madness. Ignoring Robert was between them, their eyes locked. Her eyes seem to be saying, “Do you swear, because if you are lying, the punishment is death.” His eyes met that expectation with a pleaded, “Yes, I swear.” She looked back at Robert and said, “Yes.”
“Great, now Melvin, please get her into the hospital and let us all do as the hospital requested and leave for the park. One last thing though, I was interrupted mid-sentence and I wou
ld like to finish the thought. Matt opened up my path and for that I will be forever grateful. I had a vision recently of how this is going to take off, and take off it will. I’m going to donate all the money I make from this to start manufacturing in the U.S. Not just once, but over and over again. We’re going to have towns that have been devastated by a manufacturing plant leaving register with us. We will put a matrix of skilled labor together, then as a group we will target a company that has moved its manufacturing outside of he United States, build a better product than they currently have, and knock them out of the lead, one company at a time.
“Once a target has been set, we will open a plant and their wares will be for sale in American Pride. Anyone selling there will have all the free advertising they want inside the game and any subsidiaries of Robert Leme, Inc. Once the plant is making a profit and the employee/ owners have taken care of themselves, the future profit can go into their expansion, but controlled by them so they can reinvest in new product lines and equipment.
“We are going to focus on doing things the old-fashioned way and not replacing people with innovation. People need to work and that is one of the big focuses of the group. Just because we can make a machine that can replace ten men doesn’t mean we should.”
Matt decided that this was his chance to get away. Robert had the crowd and he was very proud of his friend. He suspected that his bodyguard was a big part of his strength. The giant was walking the girl to the ER amidst a throng of reporters following. With this many leads, one had to choose, and about eight reporters decided Lauren and Melvin were the story.
Matt went to step off to the left and follow them even though he wasn’t going into the ER. Some of the nearest spectators started it and before Matt could stop it, the crowd was asking for an ovation of sort. Although they’d just met him, they were expecting a goodbye apparently.
Without Wrath (Harbinger of Change Book 3) Page 31