Beautiful Disaster

by C. J.

  The VIP doors, for visitors such as the board members, high fashion models, and friends of Lexi who could not be bothered to go through the employee entrance, had security cameras and a key card entry, but no guards. Both Kevin and Danny had made VIP access key cards for themselves ages ago for those much needed and well-deserved breaks in the VIP outdoor lounge area. It featured a bar and BBQ area and, more importantly during those extended breaks, extremely comfy lounge chairs and sofas. The area also had an exit to the parking lot reserved for the higher-ups, Lexi's CEO's, etc., and also had security cameras but no guards to invade the personal space of Lexi, the executive officers or their guests.

  It was perfect for Kevin and Danny and their alter egos, Lucas Collins, head of advertising, and Giovanni Orio, male supermodel, respectively to as their exit. So they sprinted out of the VIP lounge area, and ran for their cars on the opposite end of the building in the riff-raff lot, as they called it, throwing the test results, ingredients, and formula in Danny's trunk. They then headed back to the VIP entrance as their alter egos, Lucas and Giovanni.

  “Hey, why are we going back in?” asked Danny mid-stride.

  “Because we haven’t left yet that’s why. We have to go back in to leave. Otherwise, it will look suspicious later.”

  “We haven’t left yet? Then where are we right now, in building limbo?”

  Kevin stopped and grabbed Danny by the arms. “Did Giovanni go to your head again and empty it?”

  “Huh?” Ohhh, I see. We haven’t left. Lucas and Giovanni have left, but we are still in there,” Danny said, figuring things out. “I wonder what we, who haven’t left yet, are doing. I hope I’m eating because I could go for a huge steak right about now.”

  “God, you are such a fucking idiot. Let’s hurry up and get back in so we can leave properly.”

  “Wait a second. If we go back in again as us, then Lucas and Giovanni will be trapped in there, but if they aren’t actually there to be found, someone will start looking closely at the key cards entries.”

  "Well, maybe you aren't such a goof, after all, Danny, I thought you were channeling Giovanni too hard and got stuck in character. You are right. We are going to have to use the emergency exit as a first time entrance. Why didn't you think of that in the first place?"

  “I got confused about where and who we were.”

  In the past, they had used the dock doors as an escape route for extended lunches and breaks when the VIP entrance and lounge area was clogged with annoying VIPs.

  The docks had the usual sally port type doors and a second entrance for smaller packages carried in by delivery drivers. This entrance was a regular side door, which was manned during work hours but only locked after hours.

  Shortly after being hired, Danny and Kevin had given themselves an after-hours grand tour of the facility and made good use of their time. They made a master key to every door in the plant and made numerous key cards of real and fictitious people. They only intended to use these keys during goof off time and looking for unoccupied offices in which to escape from Laddie. Their forward thinking initiative paid off, for they now walked through the dock’s service door and headed back to their lab, intent on making sure they had collected everything pertaining to their formula.

  CHAPTER SIX

  SUZANNE HAD ALREADY exited her Land Rover and placed her bag of goodies outside the window of Lucas Collins’ office at Lexi Corp. She knew she could use it since it was being remodeled. Still dressed in her usual HR girly clothes she passed by the security guards Mitchell and Roger with no problem. As she smiled and gave a little wave to them, she figured she might as well eliminate some of the deadwood behind the security desk on her way out to as a precautionary measure. Best get rid of any witnesses to her odd arrival time at Lexi Corp.

  Mitchell and Roger were known company-wide as Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum due to their nearly identical personalities, body type and matching double digit IQ’s. Talking to either one or both guards felt like talking to a pair of inquisitive spaniels that had just completed a trick and were now awaiting a treat. Mitchell and Roger had shaved heads, were long distance runners and loved to tell anyone and everyone in pronounced detail about their training schedules and calorie intake down to the latest energy bar they had just consumed. They were also obsessed with firearms and frequently traded or bought new weapons. This made for extremely quick moving security lines at Lexi Corp. as no one wanted to stick around for their never-ending chit-chat.

  The majority of Lexi personnel, including even the most senior, had to resort to slyly check Mitchell and Roger’s name tapes to tell them apart. They sort of blended together into one’s mind and then thankfully disappeared altogether shortly after you encountered them. Staying with you mentally about as long as a reaction to a burst of pepper. A short sneeze and they were forgotten.

  Suzanne was trying to locate Danny and Kevin, but every time she looked at her smartphone to view the camera feed it stayed the same; the morons were nowhere to be found. This bothered her considerably, but she didn’t have time to figure out where Dumb and Dumber were right now. She just needed their results.

  Suzanne entered Lucas Collins’s office, which was not only being remodeled, but useful for many reasons. It was in an out of the way corner of the building and didn’t have a lot of foot traffic. From time to time, Suzanne would slip in and use Lucas’s computer to download information from time to time. As head of advertising, Collins was never in his office, instead spending his days out, schmoozing potential clients. Despite spending maybe five hours a week in it, he was having the office remodeled.

  “No wonder companies are going broke. They waste money on things like this and perks for executives instead spending it on the people that do actual work, or on better security. Idiots.”

  Suzanne grumbled and grabbed her bag of explosives (Composition 4 commonly known as C4) and, weapons, and headed for the lower level to print out the results from the NMR. Just as she was exiting the elevator by the break room, Kevin and Danny exited the NMR lab and headed down the hallway toward the VIP exit.

  Suzanne used Conner’s ID to gain access to the lab where Danny and Kevin worked. She dropped off her bag in the lab and entered the NMR room. Bypassing the accesses codes to the washing machine, she hit “print” for the last several jobs that day. She was rewarded with self-testing and calibrating results from the previous 12 hours. She stared at the results for several seconds, then slowly crumpled the printout in her hand and let it fall to the ground.

  “Fucking bastards. They couldn’t be that smart to cover their tracks.”

  “Bastards” echoed and re-echoed in the washing machine’s chamber followed by the sound of dripping. Suzanne looked for the source of the dripping sound and discovered she had driven her nails deep into her palm. Blood ran down her palm, and onto the test results that had fallen on the floor. She looked at the blood trickling onto the floor, and the half-moon cuts in her palms, snorted, giggled, and started chanting, “C-4, C-4, give me a C give me a four and what do you have? You have ceeee fooour...”

  She re-entered the lab, stripped off her girly clothes and armored up. She put on her bulletproof vest, BDUs, holstered her Glock 21 .45 caliber with silencer, slipped her baby Glock .380 into her boot, and started planting the C4 while softly chanting to herself.

  The dynamic duo were now on their way back to the lab.

  Suzanne’s chanting had lost its effect of calming her down, and all pretense of poise and serenity during what should have been the highlight of her assignment vanished. She began tearing open locked desks and drawers, not caring about making this look like an accidental lab explosion. She was pissed. “Damned the consequences. I’ll take the entire fucking building down,” she muttered to herself while tossing files and laptops out of cabinets. “There must be notes, emails, encrypted files, something, damn it!”

  There wasn’t, so Suzanne started to review the video footage on her iPad of Danny and Kevin making the formu
la. She had tried to reconstruct the formula’s ingredients in the lab and its contents from the video footage and thought she had most of the elements. Most of them were in different colored vials and jars, and were easy to find. But she had no idea of the amounts. She just stared at the video of Danny and Kevin tossing in ingredients in what appeared to be a random amount and sequence. She found all the jars except for the small vial Kensington had with the orange and black markings.

  Orange and black? Those marking don’t make any sense. What the fuck are they up to. Was this a decoy formula in case someone was watching?”

  Suzanne muttered to herself as she tried to recreate the formula. She would pause and rewind and pause the video, again and again, all the time grumbling, “I will kill them, I will kill them.” Pointing to Danny or Kevin on the monitor, she’d add, “You are dead.”

  After replicating the formula or at least coming as close as what she could ascertain from the video, Suzanne put a sample into a vial. She was readying to slip it into the washing machine to analyze it when she heard a horribly familiar voice.

  “Hey, Suzy, I didn’t know you knew chemistry? Excellent brownies you made the other day” chirped Danny to Suzanne’s back.

  “You! It’s one of you motherfucking idiots!” Suzanne shouted as she whirled around and fired off a round in the direction of Danny’s voice.

  Unfortunately for Suzanne, Kevin entered the lab just before Suzanne fired and tripped over her bag. With arms flailing, he crashed into a wheeled stool, sending it rolling into Suzanne, causing her shot to go wild and her to go even wilder.

  “Motherfuckers!” she screamed into Kevin’s face as she scrambled to get to her feet.

  Trying to help Suzanne to her feet while dusting himself off at the same time, Kevin managed only to push Suzanne to the ground again. As she fell, she dropped her gun and it slid across the floor. Kevin noticed, the gun traveling across the floor, realized a shot had just been fired and that Suzanne had been responsible for that shot.

  Danny was frozen to the spot, not from being shot at but from the shock at having heard the happy homemaker scream, “Motherfucker!” “I said your brownies were excellent,” he said softly.

  “Run, you idiot!” yelled Kevin, trying to grab Danny’s arm and propel him into some sort of motion. But Danny was still mesmerized by “motherfucker” coming from Suzanne’s mouth. Despite his efforts, Kevin only managed to trip over that damn bag again. “Damn it!” he shouted, crashing to the ground again just as another round passed over his head.

  Suzanne had grabbed the second gun out of her ankle holster and fired at where Kevin’s head had been a millisecond before he crashed to the floor. She quickly adjusted her aim and shot again in the Kevin’s direction, but he’d been busy scuttling along the floor and trying to get to his feet.

  “Danny, a little help!”

  Danny, who’d been watching the action as though it was happening on TV, remained completely immobilized.

  Kevin had seen his friend in crisis before and knew he needed a little motivation, which meant, a smack in the head. While Kevin hid behind a lab counter as bullets continued to fly his way, he decided to motivate Danny who was behind a pillar and for now safely out of Suzanne's line of fire. Kevin grabbed some nearby items and hurled them toward Danny. A beaker of what Kevin hoped was water or something non-toxic struck Danny squarely in the head. As Danny started to come alive, he ran toward Kevin but slipped in a broken vial of moisturizing cream Kevin had just thrown as a motivating missile, and landed in a heap on the floor. Slowing getting up, Danny attempted to regain his balance but given his shoes were still slimy with moisturizer, he tap danced wildly in place for several seconds before grabbing madly at the lab counter. While clutching at it, he swept a microscope onto Suzanne’s hand and fell back onto the floor. Suzanne, who’d been balancing with one hand and firing with the other, ended up shooting into the ceiling and swearing.

  “Oh, crap!” screeched Danny. “That’s my favorite microscope.”

  As usual, Danny had lost perspective of the larger picture and attempted to go back and retrieve his favorite microscope while trying to process why Suzanne was so angry at him for complimenting her brownies. “Oh, God! They weren’t your brownies. They were someone else’s!” cried Danny as he popped up behind a lab counter Meerkat-like. “And they weren’t homemade they were from a mix, and you are pissed because no one should ever confuse a mix from your home-made brownies. I am so very sorry, Suzanne.”

  Suzanne was so stunned by this incredible outburst of inanity that she froze, which gave Kevin time to smack Danny in the face as hard as possible, and then drag him out of the room toward the hallway and VIP elevators.

  “What the hell did you do that for? I was trying to apologize,” Danny muttered

  “For someone who is a near genius in your field you can be a complete ass sometimes. Come on, run! We have to alert the Tweedles.”

  “So Suzanne wasn’t mad about the brownie comment?”

  “No, I don’t think she cares one way or the other about your opinion on her baking or anything else. Hurry up. I’m pretty sure she’s a professional at what she does.”

  “Right, that’s what I was thinking, I’m up to speed now, and I just got rattled by the gunfire. That’s all. So, she’s a professional cosmetician?”

  “Sure, all the best cosmetician’s carry a full arsenal with them at all times. No don’t take the elevator it will take too long. We’ll take the stairs. I think I hear her coming,” panted Kevin.

  “Oh my God I forgot how far down we were. I’ll never make it,” wheezed Danny.

  “Jesus, Danny we are only down one flight,” gasped Kevin as he grabbed hold of the railing at the top of the landing. Unfortunately, his forward momentum slammed him into the wall face first. “We’re almost at the front doors. Start screaming for the Tweedles.”

  Kevin and Danny had made it to the lobby by the VIP elevators. But winded from the sprint down the hall and up the stairs, they could only utter short, static words.

  “Crazy, gun, crazy lady, gun, help, help.”

  Danny didn’t help clarify matters by shouting “crazy cosmetician!”

  The information desk near the front lobby doors was supposed to be manned by either Mitchell or Roger or one of the other floating security guards. A security desk behind the scanners near the elevators was also manned during working hours, and two hours before and after working hours for early birds and stragglers. This desk was adjacent to the office in which the video surveillance system was kept. At the time of Danny and Kevin’s race down the hallway, Mitchell and Roger were engrossed in Sku Yu’s newest takeout menu at the security desk. A menu such as this would usually occupy them for several hours, and they were now happily engrossed in this latest offering with all new color photos.

  When Kevin and Danny’s shouting came into range, Mitchell heard “crazy gun,” thought it was a new item on the menu he had somehow missed, and was furiously looking for it. Roger was slightly quicker and turned toward the sound of the shouting.

  Suzanne had chosen to run toward the break room exit and, being in much better shape, arrived in the lobby several seconds ahead of Danny and Kevin. She had positioned herself behind the Tweedles’ guard desk furthest away from the security office. Suzanne knew she could use it for cover, take out the idiots, then gain access to the security office and erase all her movements in the building. She didn’t even really think about the Tweedles as being a problem, but rather as a couple of potted plants to move out of the way as she exited the building.

  The potted plants were behind the security desk in-between the main grouping of elevators and the body scanning and x-ray machines. They were at the far end of their workstation closest to the security office while Suzanne was at the opposite end. Roger and Mitchell had not noticed Suzanne’s arrival. They barely registered Kevin and Danny’s noisy entrance.

  Roger now turned and saw two sweaty men running toward the security desk
shouting something about “guns.” He nudged Mitchell. “Hey Mitch, Danny wants to ask you about your new Taurus.”

  “Really? It’s so cool, Danny,” replied Mitchell whose eyes never left the takeout menu. “It’s a .45 caliber model 24/7 G2 in blue finish.” As Mitchell recited this, he took the gun, out of his holster to show to Danny.

  Suzanne hadn’t been paying any attention to Mitchell and Roger’s conversation. She concentrated on Danny and Kevin’s movements until she saw Mitchell take his weapon out of his holster. Then purely out of reflex, she swiveled toward Mitchell, taking her eyes off her initial targets.

  Mitchell and Roger saw Suzanne’s movement and greeted her warmly since she had been food bribing them for years.

  “Hey Suzanne, want anything from Sku Yu’s?” Roger held the takeout menu with two fingers, waggling it back and forth at Suzanne. “They took over Tasty Wang’s and have doubled their selection.”

  In response, Suzanne fired two rounds each into both Roger and Mitchell’s chests.

  “Morons,” she muttered, and then crouched down and crab-walked to the front of the desk, concealing herself from Danny and Kevin.

  Roger looked at the takeout menu and noticed two holes that hadn’t been there a few seconds ago. He turned toward Mitchell who had an equally surprised look on his face. They stood perfectly still for a millisecond, then fell toward each other, cracking heads as they collided, and then crumpling to the floor in an ungracious heap.

  “Hmm, I would’ve thought there would have been more of an echo when those two melons collided,” Suzanne muttered to herself. “Oh well, back to business. Two down, two to go.”

  Danny and Kevin saw the shooting of the Tweedles, screamed, tried to apply the brakes and change direction all at the same time. Danny grabbed Kevin’s arm and attempted to pull him back toward the elevators, while Kevin tried to pull Danny toward the security office. They only succeed in twirling each other around dosey doe style.