by N M Tatum
Parker touched Reggie’s arm, bringing him back. “Am I right?”
Reggie was fairly certain he wasn’t right, but he was also sure Parker wasn’t the kind of person you could tell he was wrong without having to suffer through the subsequent pouting.
“Totally,” Reggie said. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to hit the bathroom.”
He may not have wanted to participate in this at the beginning, but he had to admit there was a certain thrill to this undercover thing. He felt like a secret agent.
He strutted away from Parker and Dan and pressed his finger to his ear, activating his comm. “Three drunk suits at the bar. They were investors in Jasob’s station. Lost everything when it went up. Might be worth checking out.”
“I’ve got eyes on them,” Cody said. “I’m on it.”
Cody thought he would’ve liked this more, playing undercover operative. He hadn’t anticipated the anxiety. What if he used the wrong name? What if he forgot his cover story? What if someone found out who he really was? What was Craig’s favorite food? Did he have any allergies?
There was so much to keep straight, and he hadn’t had time to make flashcards.
He sauntered up to the bar, silently deciding that Craig liked to saunter rather than stroll or mosey. He was about to order a beer when he decided that Craig was not the beer type.
“Whiskey,” he told the bartender. Two decisions in, and Cody felt like Craig was beginning to take shape. He cast a glance at the three suits. “And another round for them,” he added. “Looks like they could use it.”
With that, Cody had another realization. Craig was cool as hell. Smooth, well-liked, didn’t give a shit about you or your opinions. He did what he wanted and damn the consequences. Fuck flashcards and food allergies. That stuff was for nerds.
The bartender set Cody’s drink down in front of him. He sipped and didn’t curl his lip at the taste. Craig loved whiskey. He loved the burn in his throat. Squelching the urge to vomit was a test of will, and Craig’s will was ironclad.
The suits nodded in appreciation to Cody when they received their round.
He didn’t acknowledge them. He didn’t give a shit. He gave no shits.
The suits moved closer to him, their stink preceding them. They had apparently bathed in vodka before Cody arrived.
“Thanks, boy,” the oldest suit said. His voice wobbled like a turkey’s. As did his neck.
“Call me ‘boy’ again, and I’ll break your nose.”
Holy shit. Craig was a badass. Maybe a little homicidal… Cody couldn’t tell yet.
The three suits froze in shock. Then they burst out laughing.
Old Turkey Neck slapped Cody on the shoulder. “You’re a crazy shit. I like that.”
Cody joined in the laughter, sensing an opportunity to break into their little club. “Well, I’d have to be, wouldn’t I?”
“Why’s that?” Turkey Neck asked through a belch.
Cody flashed his nametag. “To work for them. Thought I was taking a step forward in my career. Turns out I was taking a step off a cliff.” He slugged back his whiskey and slammed the glass on the bar like so many grizzled, sad sacks had done before him.
Turkey Neck leaned in close, squinting through the double vision to read Cody’s nametag. He let out a bellow once he was able to. “Jasob. Incompetent shitbags. Cost me a goddamn fortune. Hope they all rot in hell.” He spat on the floor. “Not you, of course.” He patted Cody on the shoulder. “You’re a crazy shit. I like that.”
Cody ordered another drink. “Now I’m stuck at Jasob with all signs pointing to them going belly-up. Who’s going to take me on then?”
Another of the suits, a middle-aged man with receding hair and yellow teeth, leaned heavily on the bar. “Someone will. You’re young. Life ahead of you.” His voice cracked. “Not like me. Wife left after I lost it all. She couldn’t stand to be with a failure. Could’ve been the prostitutes, too. Maybe the drugs. But goddamn Jasob!”
Cody took a sip of his drink. He peered at the suits over the rim of his glass. “Any idea what happened to that station? Public reports are pretty vague. And no one in the office will dare speak of it.”
The men looked at each other, exchanging silent curses and an entirely unspoken conversation.
“That bad, huh?” Cody said. “Must be some serious negligence if they’re hell-bent on keeping it under wraps. I imagine if word got out that it was their own damn fault, their stock price would plummet even more. If that’s possible.”
Turkey Neck downed the rest of his drink. He belched and ordered another. “Well, can’t blame it entirely on Jasob, I suppose.”
“No?” Cody tried to hide the excitement in his voice. “Who else can you blame?”
Turkey Neck looked around, as though worried someone might be listening. “Not that I’m letting Jasob off the hook—whatever happened, they’re the ones who took my money and pissed it away. But, the way I hear it, the destruction of that station may have been caused by external forces.”
“You mean, like, an asteroid?”
“I mean a competitor.”
“Sabotage?” Cody said, trying to keep his voice steady.
Turkey Neck shrugged, making his jowls jiggle. “That’s the rumor.”
Yellow Teeth seemed more eager to speak about it. “More than a rumor. I know the head of Shipping and Receiving who was at that station. Told me they got some tainted cargo. Guy’s here somewhere. Bruce Malloy.”
Cody slammed the last of his drink. He walked away without saying anything because that’s what Craig does. He doesn’t give a shit.
“You guys catch that?” Cody said over comms. “Bruce Malloy. Jasob Shipping and Receiving guy.”
“I’m looking at him,” Joel said. “Let’s see if he likes dogs.”
Joel had been making the rounds without much luck. People were wary of Peppy. Understandable, Joel told himself. Peppy wasn’t actually a dog. He could pass, but if you didn’t know him, he could put you off. Joel was reading the room, and the room said, “Keep your alien dog away from me.” It was disheartening. Joel’s high at looking fabulous in his new suit began to fade.
But Bruce Malloy might be just the way to reverse that. This was how Josh Cook got his groove back.
Malloy was on the balcony, a small space off the main conference center that looked out over the rest of the station. It was removed from the bustle of the crowd, which Peppy appreciated. Malloy tensed when he saw Joel and Peppy approach, but he maintained a polite façade.
Joel leaned against the railing and took in the view. He waited. In silence. The hardest thing he’d ever had to do. But he felt Malloy’s eyes on him and knew he didn’t need to speak.
After a few moments of quiet, Malloy said, “That an emotional support animal or something?”
Joel pretended to be caught off guard. “Excuse me? Oh, no, this is a work product. I was supposed to do a demonstration, but there was a scheduling error. Brought him all this way for nothing.”
“Demonstration about what?”
Joel squatted next to Peppy and fed him a piece of crab cake. “This guy right here is the next generation in detection. He can sniff out pretty much anything. Illicit substances. Explosive material. Bacterial and chemical agents. Any kind of tainted cargo.”
Malloy’s ears perked at that. “Any kind?”
“Absolutely. He’s got a nose that is unrivaled by any known mechanical system. He’s gone up against the most sophisticated scanners on the market and beaten them every time.” Joel stood and scratched Peppy under the chin. “We even hired some white smugglers to see if they could beat us. This guy here still came out on top.”
Malloy folded his arms across his chest and studied Peppy as though he were a machine, trying to determine which parts made him work. “Better than any known scanners? Even the Montcalm system?”
Joel recognized the name. That was the system used in the storehouse. It was probably what Jasob used in all of their faci
lities, including the station they’d lost.
“He beat Montcalm ten out of ten times.”
Malloy sucked in a breath and shook his head. “Of course. Something better would come along now. After. Now that it doesn’t matter.”
“I’m afraid I don’t catch your meaning, friend.”
“It’s just, I ran a station not long ago. We could have used something like your friend here.”
Joel shook his head like it was a shame. “I’ve tried to fast track the project, but I’m just an intern, so they don’t really listen to me. Did your scanners fail?”
Malloy’s face turned dark, like he’d slipped back to that day. “They were tricked. The shipping containers and crates were shielded with something. It blocked the scanners from getting an accurate reading of the contents.”
“Smugglers? They often try to route illicit cargo through legitimate shipping channels. Launder it, if you will.” Binging the last two seasons of that procedural cop drama were really paying off for Joel right now. “Hope it didn’t cause too many problems for you.”
Malloy grunted. Then he laughed to himself, like he suddenly got the joke someone played on him. “It caused a few.”
To Joel’s dismay, Malloy was a stoic sort. Getting him to talk was like pulling porcupine quills out of a dog’s face. Joel decided to just go for it.
“Wait,” he looked at Malloy’s nametag like he’d just seen it for the first time. “You’re a Jasob employee? You didn’t…you don’t mean…the space station?”
Malloy’s face twisted up in a sad smile. “That I do. Surprised they’ve kept me around. Though I suspect it’s more out of a desire to avoid the paperwork. Company’s going under anyway.”
Joel looked around, acting like he was making sure no one was listening. “Seems to me that wasn’t the work of smugglers. All of their merchandise would have been destroyed. Not much sense in that.”
Tension straightened Malloy’s body. There might have been a time when he would have put his duty to Jasob above anything else. Joel got the sense that he was a company man, not one to let sensitive information slip. But he was a man on the edge now. He was embarrassed by the loss of the station. Bitter, maybe. About to lose everything, and there were probably people out there who blamed him for the loss of the station.
“No, not much sense at all,” Malloy said. “That’s the official company stance, but I don’t believe it was smugglers. I believe whatever monsters were in those crates were sent to us deliberately. The loss of the station wasn’t an unfortunate accident. It was the goal.”
Joel took a slow breath, a silent reminder to himself to move cautiously and step lightly. He had Malloy talking. Don’t rush in and scare him off. “Monsters?”
Malloy’s eyes turned glassy. “That’s right. I was one of the last to evacuate. I saw them. No other way to describe them. They busted out of those crates and infested the station. We tried to clean it up, even hired a crew of exterminators to see if they could contain it, but it was too far gone, I guess.”
Joel’s face burned hot. He felt odd listening to himself being described by this man who had lost it all. He felt guilty for not being able to save the station, for not ever giving the loss of the station much of a second thought.
“Why would anyone want to do that?” Joel asked, knowing the answer.
Malloy looked at Joel like he was a naïve kid. “You really are just an intern. Why would someone want to destroy a commercial powerhouse like Jasob’s new station? Why do you think?”
“You think it was a competitor?”
“I know it was. And I know which one.” Malloy squeezed the balcony railing until his knuckles went white. “Our biggest competitor, the most ruthless. Layton.”
Joel’s heart leapt into his throat. He reminded himself again to take it slow, play it cool. “How do you know that?”
“I saw the shipping manifests. I know where the cargo came from. I should have known what it was before the crates got popped.”
“How could you have known?” Joel’s gut tugged with guilt again.
“The note.” Malloy’s voice was darkened by an ominous tone. “It was attached to one of the crates. She probably never thought anyone would see it… Or, at least, no one would live to talk about it.” He squeezed the railing tighter, until his knuckles popped. “`With love’ it said. Signed `PS.’ I thought it meant postscript at first, like there was more to the note. Wasn’t until later that I realized the letters were initials. Patty Suzz.”
Silence hung in the air a minute, until Joel couldn’t stand it any longer. He excused himself.
“She signed the delivery,” Joel said through the comms when he was far enough away. “The psychopath left a note, all but admitting she was responsible.” He walked back through the busy conference center, a path opening up for him as he moved. “What’s our next move? Malloy’s account isn’t enough to damn Suzz or Layton.”
“We find some people who know Suzz,” Cody said. “Maybe they can point us toward something more concrete. Sam? You’ve been quiet. You find anything?”
Sam stood frozen at the edge of the room, looking in at the bustling crowd like she was an animal in a zoo looking out through the bars of her cage. She’d ventured in once. It had been a tumultuous sea of bodies and small talk. Inane chitchat pelted her like hailstones, numbing her to the pain of obtuse social rules, overwhelming her senses. In the confusion, she’d felt herself reaching for her sword. She shuddered to think what would have happened had it been strapped to her back. She’d shoved her way out of the raging waters and climbed back to the relative safety of the outside wall.
But, even there, the predators of the deep found her. A young man, probably somewhere in his early twenties, was approaching her. He wore the smile of a man who never expected to be told no.
“Working on it,” Sam whispered into her comm before the man arrived.
He sidled up next to her, moving with confidence and swagger. “Hi.”
Sam immediately wanted to punch him. One word, and she knew she hated him. But she couldn’t hit him. Worse, she couldn’t tell him to fuck off, or even ignore him. She needed to engage.
“Hello,” she replied. Step one: success. Step two: work on tone. She cleared her throat. She wasn’t Sam. She was Sally. What would a Sally do? She smiled. “Sorry, I don’t really like these things. My boss made me come.”
The man returned the smile. Rather, he never stopped smiling. He probably assumed her brusque response was some sort of misunderstanding. Surely, she had no idea how privileged she was to speak to him.
“Totally. I despise these conferences. But I have to come. I am the boss.”
Fucking shit.
It was worse than she thought. He held a position of power. His sense of entitlement would be more than she anticipated.
“I’m Adam,” he said, extending his hand. “CEO of Expansive Industries. Big Pharma magazine called us `the upstarts needed to revitalize the industry.’ No big deal, really.”
Sam took his hand. A rush of instinct hit her. She was suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to crush his hand, to feel his bones snap, and relish his scream.
Instead, she said, “Nice to meet you.”
She awarded herself one gold star. She would receive another if in five minutes she had not slit Adam’s throat.
Adam nodded toward the bar. “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.”
He continued to speak as they walked, though, through the roar of voices, she could not understand him. He ordered her a gin. What a douche. Then he continued to talk about himself.
“People kept telling me not to strike out on my own. That it was a risk. But that’s what I do.” He leaned in close to her, his voice dropping an octave. “I take risks.”
Sam’s arm twitched. She caught it just before it shot forward into Adam’s neck.
She calmed her raging muscles, and, in the clarity that followed, something Adam said rang out. “Strike out on your own? Then I take
it you worked for another company until recently?”
The glimmer in Adam’s eyes diminished slightly. “Yeah, I did. But that’s the past. I’m all about the future. And living in the present. Would you like to live in the present with me?” The glimmer returned like a solar flare.
“Obviously, I live in the present,” Sam said. “How could I live in another time? Unless you’ve developed some kind of temporal distortion technology at your new upstart company?”
Adam was taken aback. He couldn’t seem to tell whether Sam was fucking with him or not.
She was.
But as much as she enjoyed toying with him, she needed information. She knew that he would be more likely to give her something useful if she stroked his ever so fragile ego.
“What company did you work for before boldly striking out on your own? They must have been sad to lose you.” There. Ego stroked.
“You’re damn straight they were. Layton hasn’t been the same since I left.”
That thing lit in Sam, that fuse that burns down to the eventual explosion that blows the case wide open. “Layton. Really?”
Adam ordered two whiskeys from the bartender. He winked at the woman as he paid. As soon as he looked away, the bartender locked eyes with Sam and gestured like she was going to puke.
“That’s right,” Adam said. “I was COO. That’s Chief Operating Officer,” he clarified. “Youngest COO Layton ever had. And the best. I made that place great. I was hailed as an innovator, a forward thinker. But some people didn’t appreciate that. They could only look backward.”
“I imagine that was frustrating,” Sam said. “For a trailblazer to be held back like that.” Sam impressed herself with her ability to spew nonsense without choking on it.
Adam nodded and smiled like he had just found the only other person in the galaxy who got it. “It was. It was real hard. Because when you try to introduce innovation to a place that’s stuck in the past, it’s like running into a brick wall over and over again. You go nowhere and just end up with a headache.”
