by S A Gardner
At least, I tried. Hard. Still—resorting to Matt’s brand of destructive justice, or even Dad’s terminal methods, was so very tempting, overwhelmingly so at times…
Nah. I had a better idea. At least for my current prey.
I fished inside my handbag and smiled. I did every time I felt the ingenious layout.
Though I never expected compensation for what I did, I’d unexpectedly gotten mind-bending rewards when I’d saved the life of the Magnificent Fisk.
The most underrated magician in history, who I actually thought was a wizard for real, Fisk was now an indispensable affiliate. But though he’d upgraded our arsenal with his unique touches, his biggest effect had been on me. Not only because he considered me his savior, but because he thought I was the one most equipped to handle his “gift.” He’d imparted a measure of his methods on me, adding magic to my own medical and black ops mixed bag.
Feeling through the magician/doctor bag he’d constructed for me, I recognized my drugs by touch.
So…what would drive my point home to that worm? Something that would give him a horrific trip, would leave him with chronic jitters, but wouldn’t leave lasting physical damage? At least, nothing too serious.
Oh, I knew just the thing. A hit of atropine.
Considering he was in his thirties, and from the health records I’d hacked as robust as an alligator, 250—no, make that 500 mg should do it.
I’d overpower him only long enough to shoot him with it, before walking out. He’d plunge into the hell of anticholinergic poisoning almost immediately.
His mouth would dry to ashes, his throat would fill with broken glass, his vision would distort, his every muscle fiber would become live wires, his heart would flail like a butchered pigeon inside his chest and he’d all but spontaneously combust. He would writhe on the verge of what feels like an agonizing death, but never take the plunge.
All that while his mind would treat him to a horror show of all it contained of fears and filth. The excruciating delirium would last for hours. It would feel like years.
By the time he realized he wouldn’t die, he would have gotten a horrific dress rehearsal he’d remember every waking moment of his parasitic life. Then I’d give him a call. I’d tell him he’d cough up my money, with interest, and clean up his act, or I wouldn’t be so lenient next time.
If he was so stupid as not to obey at that stage, he’d be worthless to keep as a future card. I’d turn him over to Aram, our affiliate genius hacker. It was him who’d found me everything about this vermin. Aram, as he always did with lost causes and irredeemable monsters, would then hack him inside and out, strip him of the means to buy himself a latte. Then I’d throw him to the hyenas. Or to The Man. Whichever was worse for him then.
The taxi turned into his street and my mind turned with it.
I was good at dodging the real issues, wasn’t I?
Leaving my swindling supplier scared shitless for life was a cause unto itself. Leaving a message for his species was another. But one fact remained. I’d had more to do with this than he did.
My first reaction of saddling myself with all the blame had been the one moment of true honesty I’d had all day.
It had been me who’d been too impatient to get the angio, too eager to put it to use. Whatever my justifications, I had ignored basic precautions. Sure, I’d ended up saving the day, but I’d been the reason it could have ended in catastrophe in the first place.
There was no escaping another fact. This had gone beyond my usual meticulously calculated gambles. I recognized the touch of was my recklessness demon. She was rattling her chains, clawing at the walls of her prison.
I couldn’t let the pressure to do good, to get things done, drive me into letting her loose. Again. The one time she’d fully manifested, I’d achieved an impossible goal. But the price had been unspeakable. Since then, I’d always felt her writhing inside me, trying to get out, to take me over.
I had to make sure she never did again.
The cab stopped in front of the supplier’s condominium tower where he lived on the fortieth floor. All of it. I had all I needed to get in and out of his fortified ten-million-dollar penthouse.
Getting out of the cab, I scanned the row of extravagant cars lined in the off-street private parking lot. The silver Bugatti Veyron was his. From Matt’s and Fadel’s tutoring, I knew my vehicles well. This one had a price tag of two mil. Defrauding the sick and desperate was a very lucrative business.
My lips tightened under layers of ruby lipstick. That piece of shit had everything I’d do to him coming. And since I’d put an end to the damage he spread, I would be following the Hippocratic oath. To the letter. Really. “I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure” had always been my favorite part of the oath.
A man leaving the building held the intercom-operated door open for me, licking me up and down with his gaze. A fake-lashed flutter rewarded him for saving me the effort of executing the first step in my penetration plan. I watched him form the impression I’d meant to create today. Lush. Slow. Available.
The intention to chat me up settled in his eyes. Before he translated it into action, I enacted the breathless in-a-hurry-and-wish-I-wasn’t routine as I brushed past him into the ultra-modern foyer. I cast a furtive glance backward to make sure he’d let it and me go. I found him sweeping idle lust down my body before he sauntered off to one of the obscenely expensive cars. Phew. Predictability irons out the day again.
The moment the door closed behind me, my cell phone rang.
Only someone who knew this number could reach me. And since it said undisclosed number this meant—
Dad.
At last. At last.
Five months. That was how long I’d been going out of my mind waiting for his call. I’d been riding a nauseating pendulum of soaring hope and plummeting letdown every time my phone rang. Because I’d look down and find a number I recognized. When he wouldn’t call me from one.
But he was calling now. Dad.
My mission would have to wait. I couldn’t talk here. Had to have privacy. Air. Couldn’t breathe—tears welling…
I sent up a mental promise to my supplier as I burst back out onto the street. Enjoy your vacation and my money, maggot. When I come calling next, you’ll pay for them with a special trip to hell.
I groped for the phone inside my bag as I spilled across the traffic and into the public park on the other side of the road, the slanting afternoon sun in my eyes.
The memorized system inside my bag felt like a maze. Numbness replaced knowledge in my fingers. And the phone kept ringing. Each ring was another jolt of desperation, shooting my coordination to hell.
Oh, God, he’ll hang up. Won’t be able to get his hands on another phone for God only knows how long.
Then he did. The ringing stopped and my heart with it.
I stumbled toward a bench, slumped down on it as my fingers encountered everything in their hidden compartments. Wallet, vials, syringes, steel wires, chains, drug darts, gun and lipstick. The phone was the last thing I found.
I snatched it out, quaking.
Call back. Call back, please.
I had no breath left to even whimper when he finally did. Missed him too much. Needed his voice, the illusion of his nearness. The only things to fill the abyss his absence had dug into my soul.
I sat there pressing the phone into my ear, struggling with my ragged breathing. Couldn’t let him hear my distress. It was the last thing he needed.
Oh, Dad…say something.
“Hello?”
The deep, cultured voice penetrated my brain.
Paralyzing anticipation drained away, liquefying disappointment flooding in its wake. I slumped back on the bench, my whirling head clunking on the wrought-iron back.
Not Dad. Not Dad.
Then who?
Suddenly, another image gashed me. Jake?
A shudder jerked through me. Lord. Where did that cra
zy idea come from, anyway?
Jake was long lost. Long dead.
Then the voice slammed into my memory again. “Have I reached the number of Dr. Calista St. James?”
I almost threw the phone away as if it was a burning coal.
My name. My full, real name with Dr. attached to it.
I hadn’t heard it in four years. I hadn’t been a doctor or Calista St. James for as long. I’d never thought I’d hear it again. Never thought it would hit me that hard to hear it.
Air clogged in my chest. Breathe, dammit.
Then I did, and was in danger of hyperventilating.
The crushing disappointment had been enough on its own. But hearing someone asking for Calista St. James on—who was I today?—Hannah Simmons’s cell phone, that justified freaking out.
My cover was blown.
Three
No, your cover isn’t blown.
The staid voice of reason sighed. I hated that voice. Made me feel so stupid.
Sure, it was part of me, but still. Before I my heart could ram my ribcage on its next beat, said voice amended its verdict.
Actually it is, but it’s not the end of the world. At least, hopefully not. Since it’s him.
Him. No wonder his voice had reminded me of Jake’s. Modulated, cerebral, elegant. British. And once it had the benefit of a full sentence, instantly recognized.
Sir Howard Ashton. The man who’d changed my life. Then had stood by and let others tear it apart.
Tangled emotions skewered through me, egging me on to end the call, extract the chip, gnaw it to pieces and spit it in the nearest trashcan.
“Calista, are you there?”
I debated my plan for one more second, then cooed that syrupy answer. The content turned out way different from “wrong number.”
“Why, Sir Ashton, I can honestly say I’m definitely no longer there and mean it. Calista St. James no longer exists. Thanks to you and your allies of pen-pushing, balls-atrophied, sanctimonious assholes.”
Silence expanded, tautened. I winced. Then an alien sound filled the extra clear connection.
Laughter. Peal after peal of it.
So this was what his laughter sounded like. As if set to tune and tempo and as rich as he was. I’d never heard it, not once in the six years I’d served under him. It hadn’t once occurred to me he knew how to laugh. So, did he find me so funny that he’d just learned how?
My temperature shot up. “I so beg your pardon. If you’re laughing, you can’t be who I thought you were—a Midas-rich backstabbing bastard who plays philanthropist on weekdays and God on weekends. His no doubt surgically maintained face would crack and crumble if he as much as smiled.”
Choking sounds carried to me.
“Have you aspirated some of your own venom? Good.” May he choke for real.
He didn’t, brought himself under wheezing control. Shame. “Dear Lord, Calista. It has been unendurably dull without you.”
“What can I say? I’m the motherfucking light of life.” I wasn’t one for foul language, used it only with those who understood nothing else. I had no taste for it, found it too base and generic to be effective in verbal warfare. But he hated it more. It gave his aristocratic sensibilities seizures. Sounded like a plan. “Too fucking bad you haven’t died of boredom, Sir Ashton.”
Another surprised bark escaped him. I could just see him dabbing tears of mirth from his steel blue eyes with a monogrammed handkerchief.
“Ah—it’s so good to talk to you again, Calista. Although I note a marked sharpening to your temper. And an appalling deterioration of your language content.”
The indulgence in his voice—how dared he? After what he’d done?
Outrage numbed my lips and fingers. “Listen, Sir Ashton. Only my father comments on my goddamn fucking language. If you’ve gone senile, let me refresh the fuck out of your waning memory—you’re nothing like that to me.”
The microwaves transmitted his dimming mood. It wasn’t enough. I needed it extinguished. Needed this terminated. Then I’d have to find a way to wipe it out. From my memory.
“I deeply apologize, Calista.” Boy, had he got haughty penitence down to an art. “However delighted I was at being exposed to your panache again, I shouldn’t have laughed. You have every right to your acrimony, in the past and now.”
Oh, no. He wasn’t strumming my gullible strings. Not again. That he was trying to made me even angrier. “How fucking generous of you to grant me that.”
His sharp inhalation carried a new message now. Enough.
When he spoke, his voice remained, smooth, suave, belying the whiplash of his words. “I value you beyond measure Calista, and it was a diverting jolt, hearing vulgarities spilling from your previously refined lips, but if you continue using that tone and language, I will terminate this call and you will never hear from me again.”
The childish urge to screech fuckfuckfuck youyoumotherfuckingbastard until he carried out his ultimatum was overpowering.
More so was my need to know why he was calling me. But what really had defiance backlashing in my throat was his disappointment. My face tingled with it as if with a dozen reprimanding slaps. Damn him.
No, damn me. Stupid, soft, susceptible. That his opinion still mattered, that he still did…
So—still as effective a taskmaster as ever, huh? Without a harsh word, he’d always had the most sullen of rebels scampering with tails between their legs to win his golden glance of approval.
But why should I feel bratty for nurturing my grudges, for flaying him with them? He was the guilty one here. The one who’d said I’d filled the void his daughter had left behind, making me take solace in his fatherly substitution. The one who’d had me entrusting myself to his molding, my life to his guidance. Then he’d done nothing while those bastards had done all they could to destroy it.
That it hadn’t been destroyed, that I hadn’t been, had been no thanks to him.
I inhaled a bile-laden breath. “Fine. No vulgarities, as you put it. On to “refined” bashing. So—to what do I owe the acute aggravation of this call?”
Another silence-soaked moment, then he sighed. “I knew a personal overture would be met by your deserved rancor. That has been why I haven’t directly contacted you all these years, even though I never stopped desiring such contact.”
I exhaled my rising bitterness and frustration. “Would you mind skipping this sickening, pseudo-sentimental prologue?”
“Though there is nothing feigned in what I said, as you wish. I only want you to know that was why I haven’t been in touch, but that I’ve been keeping my eyes on you, have been closely following your new—career….”
I was so focused on every inflection of his voice, I only noticed the hesitation before he said career, and it only zapped me with resentment. Then the implications hit me and alarm again detonated.
Sir Ashton didn’t deal in hyperbole. If he said he’d been watching me closely, he had been. So I knew his reach was impressive, and I wasn’t in all-out freaking mode because it was him. But that he’d had me under a microscope while I’d been oblivious of it, was still disturbing. Scary.
Knowing it could be done at all made it a possibility someone else might be able to bypass our so-called impenetrable safety measures.
Great. Just what I needed. Now I had one more burden to deal with. Finding out how he’d penetrated our barriers, so I’d guard against further breaches. Not that I expected him to volunteer his methods. I’d have to find them out on my own. Later.
For now, I struggled to gather my scattered wits, muttered, “Delighted to discover you’ve been spying on me.”
“I haven’t been spying on you.” His voice rose a notch. As if my accusation offended him. “I followed your…pursuits to ascertain your safety, to offer whatever help I can….”
That was another sucker punch. I groped for air for moments. Then an alien-to-my-ears rasp escaped my lips. “You’ve been…helping me?”
“Th
is is not an opportune time to go into particulars.”
“I beg your pardon…” Dammit. Breathe. “…but this time is the definition of opportune.”
“I thought you wanted me to get to the purpose of this call.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you’ve reached it.”
“My actions pertaining to you during the past four years have no bearing on why I’m contacting you today.”
That man was as effective as ever. Convoluted and slippery and a hell of an exhausting negotiator. But he wasn’t wearing me out. Now he’d revealed he hadn’t only been idly monitoring me, I had to know the extent of his interference.
“Here’s an ultimatum of my own, Sir Ashton. If you don’t enlighten me about the particulars of your involvement in my life and work those past years, I will end this call, and you can resume your voyeuristic meddling to your non-existent heart’s content.”
Hell. I should end this call anyway. Before I began to sound any more like him.
His exhalation was long and resigned. “Very well. I’ve been following your every step since you walked out of Global Crisis Alliance headquarters…”
“Since you threw me out, you mean?”
“I didn’t throw you out, Calista.”
“Holy mother of history rewriting…”
I bit my tongue. I had to stop. If I let him drag me into the realm of “didn’t, did, too” I’d be taking his bait. I’d be steering us away from the vital facts I needed, to the pointlessness of perspective, and the futility of blame.
But his patient, false indulgence was smearing my vision red, loosening my already precarious control. Who knew my wounds were still open. Open? Seemed they were festering.
“You stood by as they threw me out,” I gritted. “Same thing.”
A new heat entered his composed tones. “Not at all. You made it impossible for me to stop your punishment when you confessed to the crimes.”