by Shanon Hunt
“No, thank you.” He pulled out his wallet and presented a badge that read ICE Counter Terrorist Unit, complete with an image of himself under a different identity. It was in fact a real badge, not that the host would’ve known the difference. He’d procured it while investigating a US Customs Port of Entry, suspected of being a thoroughfare for drug traffickers. One smokin’-hot tip had led him to a whistleblower, and he’d been given a full ICE uniform, badge included, to help expose a massive bribery scam. “I’m hoping you might have some information about some people who frequent this restaurant.”
The host’s confident smile disappeared. “Oh, uh, maybe I should get my manager.”
“Thank you very much.”
Nick flipped his wallet closed and looked around the restaurant.
The host returned in a matter of seconds with his boss, a short, stout man wearing a three-piece suit. “Can I help you, sir?”
He flipped his wallet open again and allowed the manager to inspect his badge while he unlocked his phone and opened Jordan’s photo of the man and woman recruiters. “I’m looking for information about a couple of customers.”
The manager pulled a pair of reading glasses from his vest pocket. The curious host leaned over his shoulder to study the picture.
“Have they been in here recently?” Nick asked.
“Yes, yes, I have seen them sometimes.” He spoke with a thick accent Nick was certain was exaggerated for effect. “But I do not know who they are. They come, they have delicious lunch, they go.” He shrugged and removed his glasses.
“Do they pay with a credit card?” Nick narrowed his eyes, hoping to project a slight distrust in the manager’s response—to light a fire under his ass, as Uncle Jay would say.
“We take only cash.” He gestured with both arms toward the door, where Nick could only assume hung a sign that made that clear.
“What about these two?” He zoomed in on the two men Jordan had also pointed out.
The manager pulled on his glasses again and peered. “Yes, also regular customers.”
“How regular? Once a week? More?”
The man shook his head and shrugged again. Useless.
Nick turned to the host, who had the expression of a kid with the right answer for the teacher. Pick me, pick me! “What about you? Do you recognize them?”
The host glanced at his boss and waited for a nod. “I didn’t recognize the first couple. But the two men, they come pretty often. I’m pretty sure they work at the Wilshire Grand.”
“And how do you know that?”
“They asked me once if I wanted to meet them at the Sky Bar after my shift. It’s this super-nice bar at the top of the building, but it’s exclusive to the building tenants, so it’s sort of an honor to get an invite. It was a while ago.”
“Was the invitation social, or something else?”
“At first I thought it was, um, social. I was going to go, but then they started asking weird questions, like about my happiness. I got the feeling they might be religious, so I flaked out. So”—he lowered his voice—“are they like terrorists or something?”
Nick kept a neutral expression. “I appreciate your time. Thank you.”
He stepped outside before they could ask him for a business card and headed down the street toward the Wilshire Grand with a little more optimism. The Wilshire Grand was one of the largest and most iconic skyscrapers in the city. At one time, every tourist paused in front of its imposing, earthquake-proof glass walls. But today the sidewalks were empty except for the tenant employees, who pushed through the revolving doors on their way to the office without looking up.
Nick surveyed the security desk from the sidewalk. There appeared to be no ID scanner. Incoming employees merely flashed their badges to the lackadaisical security guard as they pushed through the turnstile and kept moving to the elevator bank.
He entered the building and sauntered over to the wall directory. His first impulse was to look for EGNX or something like it, but the seasoned professional in him knew it wouldn’t be so easy. And go figure—no EGNX. Most of the listings appeared to be law firms and consultant agencies. He surreptitiously took a photo of the entire directory. He’d have to look up each one.
He browsed the directory one more time before approaching the scowling black security guard. He glanced at the man’s badge and offered a hand. “Ernie. It’s my first day today. I don’t have a badge yet.”
Ernie ignored his outstretched hand. “Name and ID.”
“Victor Beaumont.” He handed over Victor’s driver’s license.
Ernie’s eyes darted between Nick’s face and the driver’s license for several moments and returned to his computer screen. Nick leaned over the desk to steal a glance.
“You’re not in the directory.” Ernie shifted the screen out of view and frowned.
“Probably because it’s my first day.”
“Which firm?”
“McMillian and Sons.”
“Don’t see you.” He leaned back in his chair, exhaling a long breath that reeked of halitosis. The conversation was over.
Nick threw his arms out to the side. “What the fuck? Is this a racist thing? What, you don’t like white guys?” He swerved around to yell at an innocent bystander. “Yo, you believe this guy? He doesn’t like white guys! What’s that about, huh? What’s that?”
Nick would’ve bet a fifty that Ernie would wave him in to avoid a scene, but Ernie didn’t blink an eye. Nick couldn’t help admiring the guy.
He glowered and opened the camera on his phone. “What’s your name and badge number? I’m going to have you reported.”
Ernie held up his badge with icy dispassion, and Nick snapped a photo. He grinned. Abder would have one printed for him by this afternoon.
He stepped into the lobby and texted the image to Abder, then held the phone to his ear. “Yeah, hi. This is Victor Beaumont, new staffer. Yeah, I’m trying to get into the building but—what’s that? Are you kidding? Ah, okay. Yeah, see you next week then. Sorry about that. I thought it was today.”
He shrugged a sorry to Ernie and left the building.
***
It was after twelve when Nick strolled into the Union Bagel Shop and plucked a warm raisin bagel from the rack in the back of the store. He met the team downstairs in what Jordan preferred to call the frat room. I never got to join a fraternity. I was too young. So this is my very, very sad frat house. Jenna and Jordan sat around the coffee table in front of paper plates piled with chicken wings and tater tots.
Abder jumped up and promptly steered Nick over to a blank wall. “Stand against it and don’t smile.” He took several pictures and left, grumbling about how Nick would look more Wilshire quality if he got a decent haircut.
Nick plunked the loaded shopping bag he was carrying onto the floor next to the sofa. “I have a lead on two of the recruiters. What I really need now is a research assistant.”
Jenna leaned back from her plate, holding up sticky fingers. “I’m on it. What do you need?”
Nick waved his phone with the Wilshire directory of tenants. “Find the bad guys.”
“Ooh, a mystery!” She licked her fingers and finished off by using most of a stack of paper napkins and took his phone with her out of the room.
Abder appeared not a minute later with Nick’s finished Wilshire Grand badge. “Hope you didn’t piss the guard off too bad, because he’ll remember you, and this isn’t high quality.” He bent down and poked at the boxes in Nick’s shopping bag. “Yo, what’s all this?”
“Fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of surveillance devices.”
“This shit is dope. And I thought I was a geek.” Abder held up a box the size of a pack of cigarettes. “What’s this one do?”
“It’s a signal amplifier. Listen, I’ll do a full show and tell later, but right now I need you to log on to your computer so we can set up the GSM devices.”
“You got it.” Abder scooted toward the door, rubbing his hands to
gether. “This is so cool. We’re like spies. You must be one hell of an investigative reporter.”
Nick felt his face flush, not from anger but more from a sense of self-loathing. “Let me be clear. This is not investigative journalism. This is surveillance abuse, and it’s illegal. It is not cool. It’s criminal.”
Abder and Jordan raised an eyebrow at each other.
“The people on the other side of this are operating above the law, unconstrained,” Nick continued. “But you and me? We could be arrested or killed in a second. So let’s not get a James Bond complex that makes us believe we’re the heroes who’ll come out unscathed at the end of the movie.”
Abder sobered. “Yeah. Sorry, man.”
Stay frosty Oscar Mike—another Uncle Jay-ism. Stay cool on the move. Jay was a stickler about not getting too cocksure. Nick had never been truly ashamed of his crooked past, and maybe that was because he’d idolized his uncle. And Abder wasn’t entirely incorrect that a lot of the skills Uncle Jay had taught him, like hustling and pickpocketing, did in fact contribute to his investigative reporting success, especially undercover.
But exposing bad guys was risky business. If you wanted to find the sewer rats, sometimes you had to crawl around the sewers—but if you didn’t keep your wits about you, the sewers would swallow you right up.
Jenna strutted into the room beaming. “Next time, give me something with some challenge.”
Nick fought to repress a grin. He was warming up to the duchess of doom.
28
October 2022, Mexico
“What’s with your appetite lately?” James asked as he finished his avocado toast.
Layla sat across from him at the table. She hadn’t touched her toast; what used to be her favorite snack now repulsed her, that weirdly creamy texture smeared on dry cardboard. Yuck.
“I’m just not hungry. I’ll eat it in an hour.” It was a lie, as most verbal exchanges with James had become.
It was afternoon on Monday, and James still hadn’t left for his office. He barely left her side all day yesterday, inquiring what she was doing on her computer and insisting on going with her when she went out for a walk. What if something happens with the baby? Or what if you fall? It was laughably transparent, but he hadn’t so much as hinted about her field trip to the carrier facility. Maybe Dr. De Luca hadn’t mentioned it after all.
Or maybe James knew all about it and simply didn’t want to admit he’d been lying.
“What are you up to this afternoon?” he prattled. “Bonbons and Nancy Drew?”
She wasn’t ready to confront him, not until she dug up everything he thought he’d buried. Not until she found out what was being kept secret in salvage, why carriers were sent there for failing a psychosocial test.
“Mmm.” Layla pulled out her phone and swiped into her calendar. “I have some intake profiles to review from Mia. She’s struggling out there on the front line. I’m not sure I trust her judgment.” Another lie. Mia had an excellent eye for Colony material. But Mia’s recent suggestion that the intake process should involve a wider multiphase evaluation was an insult to the work Layla had put into the current process. What audacity.
It was obvious that James wouldn’t leave if she didn’t push him out the door, and she was starting to feel the early signs of a headache.
“Obviously, all this bedrest time could have been much more useful if I had access to the internet. Instead of sitting here watching Mia flounder around trying to figure what’s going on with some of these recruits, I could research their backgrounds, learn something about their communities, or even find better recruits.”
James stiffened.
“Oh, but my work isn’t important enough to you. So I’ll just sit here and revisit each and every intake profile, manually. Thanks. I love spending the last days of my pregnancy doing grunt work.”
She glared at him for a minute, scooped up her laptop, and stalked into the bedroom.
James despised arguments. In his world away from her, they didn’t exist. No one ever argued with the boss. But in their relationship, he was undeniably conflict averse. He’d either give in or put space between them. And this was one long-standing issue he wouldn’t back down from.
She barely opened her email when she heard the front door click shut. She peeked out the window and watched James crawl into the backseat of the executive town car. Mission accomplished. She grabbed her phone and dialed. “Coast is clear.”
Harmony arrived in minutes. Layla met her at the door, seized the brown paper bag, and hurried to the kitchen. The pounding in her head was threatening a full-blown migraine, and she couldn’t afford to sleep the afternoon away.
She groped for a fork and knife, then tossed them aside and picked up the pork chop with her hands like a barbarian. She bit into it, closing her eyes, savoring the first bite. It wasn’t the taste that she relished; it was the texture. The sinewy feel of animal connective tissue, and the way her teeth tore through the muscle fibers. She couldn’t help envisioning the carcass just after slaughter, freshly skinned and hanging from the butcher’s hook.
She took another bite.
She could feel Harmony’s stare burning into her. She didn’t need to open her eyes to know the girl would be backed up against the door, trembling. Yesterday, she cowered in one corner of the living room while Layla inhaled her third cheeseburger of the morning. It’s just pregnancy hormones, Layla had mumbled with a full mouth as she tossed the bun into the trash can.
She kept her eyes closed as she took another bite. She imagined the butcher wielding a large buck knife, peeling back the skin, exposing the red flesh she now gleefully chewed. So delicious. Warmth washed over her, and her headache dissolved.
She finally felt satiated enough to open her eyes and offer some comfort to her delivery girl. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to seem ungrateful. It’s just a wild craving. I can’t explain it.”
“Um, it’s okay,” Harmony whimpered.
Layla sucked the bone, chewing the end like a dog. She knew it was uncouth, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Do you need me to bring you another?”
She wanted to say yes—two more, even—but she resisted. She’d put on another three pounds over the last week.
“Um, okay, well … um. Do you want me to stay and do some work around the house?” It was a polite offer, but her tone was begging to be set free.
And anyway, Layla had a big day ahead. Salvage was a long walk from her cabin, and once she arrived, she’d have to figure out a way to get inside. And once inside … well, then what? Would Isaac be there? What would she say to him?
“You don’t have to stay.” She rinsed her hands under the kitchen sink and shook off the extra droplets. “But you have to promise to keep these deliveries just between the two of us.” She winked.
“Okay. Well, text me if you need anything, and I’ll come right away.” She was out the door before Layla could say goodbye.
Layla pulled on her running shoes, tied her hair into a low ponytail, and rushed out the door.
***
“Isaac.” Layla moved out from beneath the security camera as the door opened.
“Uh, hi. I got your text.” Isaac pulled the door closed behind himself before approaching her. He shoved his hands into his lab coat pocket and hunched his shoulders. “What are you doing here?”
She pretended to look hurt. “Aw, is that how you greet an old friend?” He’d see right through her ingratiating charm, but he’d shrug it off. Isaac couldn’t hold a grudge.
True to form, he offered a lopsided grin and squeezed her shoulder. “How’s the pregnancy? You surviving?”
“I can’t wait to see the day when I no longer waddle.”
He chuckled and asked again. “What brings you all the way out here?”
She rolled her eyes. “Mia sent me over to do a walk-through. I’m conducting an analysis of the carrier program, and she suggested I ask you to give me a tour. I understand this i
s where the displaced carriers finish out their pregnancy?” Shit, she hadn’t meant to sound so unsure. “Anyway, she thought it’d be good for me to check it out.”
His eyebrows drew together. “Mia? She told you to come here?”
“This is salvage, right? Your new gig? Congratulations, by the way. It’s a great opportunity for you. GS-5, that’s really something.” She was babbling, and she clamped her jaw down to stop.
He nodded slowly, but it turned into a head shake. “I … don’t think so. Mia would never refer to this program as salvage. She despises that word.”
She locked up, searching for a way out. “Okay, yeah… You’re right. But Isaac, please—I need to see it. James and Mia have been lying to me all this time about my pregnancy. I just want to know what’s going on. Please.”
He turned toward the building.
She grabbed his arm. “Look, I know I was a bitch to you in recruiting, and I don’t deserve your friendship. But I’ve given my life to this Colony. I’ve carried two fetuses to full term, and through it all, they’ve hidden the truth from me.”
He was looking down at her as if she were a fly on his sleeve.
“Now I know, and I have to understand what’s been going on. I want to see what’s so important that I had to be shielded from it.”
He glanced again at her fingers clutching his arm. “You should talk to James.”
“You know as well as I do that he won’t be honest with me. Isaac… You know it.”
She could see him battling his better judgment, and she wished she could let him off the hook, but there was no way she was going to walk away. If he didn’t let her in, she was prepared to snatch his badge from his coat and force her way inside.
He relented. “Okay. I’ll take you inside, but I need to explain something first. It’ll help you understand what you see.”
He led her to a bench and helped her down. “Do you remember our training class? The trainees who were called for purification with us? We met that first day in the garden, the old garden.”
