Spiderstalk

by D. Nathan Hilliard

  Antonio shifted position and stared at his niece, chewing thoughtfully on his cigar. Only his years of familiarity with her allowed him to see the slight tightness in her smooth features.

  “You are really upset with me, aren’t you.”

  For reply, she flipped the little switch next to the display case…illuminating the large spider mounted within. It stretched almost eighteen inches across, artfully posed in the same stance it regularly assumed in life.

  “This thing nearly killed you, Uncle. Had I been there I would have anticipated the danger and you could have easily avoided it.”

  “True,” he studied the young woman intently, “but it didn’t, and now it’s the trophy that’s the envy of all the young bucks.”

  “Yes,” she responded drily, “I remember how you found a reason to have almost every single one of them up to your office on one pretext or another afterward. I’m surprised you didn’t just have the thing attached to your jacket so you could walk around the building with it on your back.”

  “I never thought of that,” he laughed aloud. “I can picture Cesar’s face now! I wonder if duct tape would work?”

  She didn’t reply, but merely stared in at the large arachnid without any expression on her face. Only the tension of her stance told him how upset she really must be.

  “Okay, Olivia. Out with it.”

  She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.

  “Olivia.”

  “Uncle,” Olivia rounded on him, her voice calm but measured in a way he knew meant she was exercising tight restraint, “I am your assistant, and therefore your second. The right to accompany you on this mission, insane as it is, is mine. Furthermore…”

  “You’re right.”

  “…my relationship to you cannot be a consideration in this ma…what?”

  “I said you’re right. You usually are.”

  A moment of silence fell over the room as she regarded him with open suspicion. Antonio shifted the cigar in his teeth, then leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head.

  “So,” she deadpanned, “you’re saying…”

  “I’m saying you may come along…under certain conditions.”

  “Conditions?”

  “Conditions. First, you are primarily rear echelon…when we venture forth into the field, you will remain behind if I so order without complaint.”

  “My job…”

  “Sub-chieftain or not, your job is my assistant. Assistants follow orders.”

  Olivia gave the most imperceptible of sighs.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Second, there will be no more offers to help Mr. Sellars escape, nor any other attempts to undermine my plans. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He studied her face, looking for any sign of surprise about his knowledge of her actions in the basement. She showed none whatsoever.

  “Very well, then. I’ll be glad to have your skills and analysis available to me on this venture, but I’m not going to pretend to be happy about putting you at risk like this. The only reason I’m allowing it is because I’m almost dead certain you would disobey my order to stay, and follow us up there anyway.”

  Olivia said nothing, showing no reaction to the charge…thus confirming Antonio’s hunch for him. She walked back over to his desk, laid her tablet down, and folded her arms across her chest. He knew she was probably pleased about getting her way, but also angry to discover he had managed to spy on her.

  “At least this way,” he continued, “I can know where you are and have a chance of taking your security into consideration when we’re up there. Cesar’s right, you know…whether you like it or not, you have a lot of contributions to make to the People, and taking risks with yourself is very irresponsible.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Regardless, the situation is what it is, so I expect you to spend the next ten days reviewing all the data at your disposal and making preparations for this trip. Since Mr. Sellars is being isolated up here, you will also be in charge of seeing he is prepared and in shape for this as well. He is already going to be liability enough, without still being hampered by his latest injuries.”

  “Yes, sir.” She turned and headed for the door.

  “And Olivia…”

  “Sir?”

  “Understand this…I will not allow Mr. Sellars’ liabilities to become a threat to you. So if I have to leave him behind, or throw him to the wolves to ensure your safety, I will do so without hesitation. I’m telling you this because I want to be sure you comprehend the entire effect your presence will have on this mission. Do you?”

  Olivia paused at the door, her face an unreadable mask.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then that will be all.”

  Antonio watched her close the door behind her.

  With a sigh, he opened a drawer and pulled out a large silver lighter. It has been a long day. He lit his cigar then leaned back and regarded the display case across the room.

  “I need to get out of this office and back out into the field again,” he muttered at the trophy. “I’m starting to get a little too much like you.” He shook his head and settled back into the chair with his cigar. Savoring the rich smoke, he noticed Olivia must have accidentally left her computer tablet on his desk.

  “Careless, girl,” he chuckled, reaching across the desk and pulling the device toward him. He took a glance at the display and almost dropped his cigar.

  One side of the screen was taken up by a video feed from his personal network of surveillance cameras he had hidden throughout the building. It showed the basement hallway where he had watched Olivia offer Adam Sellars a chance to escape. The other side simply featured a note that read, “It’s not nice to spy on your niece, nor advantageous if she is aware of it.”

  “You little minx!” he breathed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  VISITATIONS

  “Thank you, Cristobal. Just leave them there on the foot of the bed and I’ll put them up.”

  The young man laid the clothes where instructed and left without a word. He hadn’t spoken a single word in the past three days, and Adam had come to understand he was mute. This left him without a single source of human conversation, especially since his laptop couldn’t get a signal for Internet access. Despite the fact his accommodations had improved, he still found himself in the same role he woke up to three days earlier.

  As a prisoner.

  But Adam had to admit this prison offered a lot more comforts than a basement bathroom. It was a plush lair of real wood paneling and crystal light fixtures…featuring a big screen TV, hot tub, wet bar, and nearly every other amenity one would expect in an executive suite. About the only thing he didn’t have was the ability to control the self tinting windows so he could see outside. This reinforced the impression created in the elevator that he now resided high up in a tall building.

  With little to do but read or watch TV, he had spent the first two days alternating between both. Cristobal always dropped a morning paper off with his breakfast, so Adam at least had some idea what went on in the world outside.

  The gunfight outside his last residence had garnered a headline in the local section of the paper but, absent any casualties, and with the police being close mouthed about everything, it was already being portrayed as a dust-up between rival gangs. Today’s paper didn’t even mention the incident.

  Adam shook his head, wondering if Ellen was raising hell at some precinct somewhere. She had been the only one who knew he had been living there.

  He tossed the paper on the bed and turned on his laptop and the big screen TV. The large screen flared to life, bringing up the image of David, Karen, and Tucker riding in their car. Adam kept this image as his background now. It helped keep him focused.

  Blown up this big, the picture had a fuzzy quality to it, due to being the product of a cell phone.

  While waiting for the word processor to fire up, Adam rose to get some coffee. He had t
o admit even the caffeine came in a whole new level of quality in this place. The little cellophane bags had no brand name on them, but the blend inside produced the best coffee he had ever sampled.

  “Only the best for Mr. Antonio,” he muttered, pouring himself another cup. Taking a sip of the exotic brew, he headed back toward his laptop when a knock sounded on his door.

  “Come in!” Adam paused, adjusting his balance on his cane…and only then becoming aware he wore only his skivvies and bathrobe.

  Naturally, it was Olivia.

  Turning his back, he desperately hunted for a free hand between his cane and his coffee in order to snug up the belt on his robe. Failing that, he headed back toward the kitchen while calling back to her over his shoulder.

  “Sorry! I thought it was Cristobal. Care for some coffee?”

  “No, thank you, Mr. Sellars.” She surveyed the room and paused to examine the photo on the TV. “I’m here to check your bandages. It should have been done earlier, but I have been extraordinarily busy. I apologize for the lapse.”

  “No problem.” He set down his coffee in the kitchen, adjusted his robe, then returned to find her still staring at the TV screen with obvious curiosity. “The antibiotics you guys have been giving me seem to have kept it from getting infected, and the pain hasn’t been bad. I think the wounds from the shotgun hurt worse at this stage.”

  “That is good to know.”

  “Of course, the down side is I’m becoming something of a connoisseur of gunshot wounds. I think I need a new hobby.”

  “Indeed.” She left the TV and made a few cursory taps on her ever present computer tablet before setting it on the table and motioning him toward a chair, “Have a seat and drop your robe, please. I’ll try not to take up too much of your time.”

  Adam did as instructed, uncomfortably aware of her proximity.

  What the hell is wrong with me? I’m nervous as a high school nerd sitting next to the head cheerleader. Get it together, Adam. You’ve been with a lot of women before…just maybe not with any quite this smart, good looking, inaccessible, mysterious…

  “Maybe you should try chess.”

  “Err…huh?” Adam started out of his reverie.

  “Chess, Mr. Sellars. You were discussing alternative hobbies to getting shot.” She carefully slid a pair of small surgical scissors under the bandages and started removing them. “I thought chess might qualify.”

  “Oh, right,” he recovered. “I played some in college…never on a competitive level or anything like that…but I was pretty good. You?”

  “Occasionally,” she focused on her cutting, “but I usually play the computer. It helps me relax.”

  “Are you good?” He had a feeling she would be.

  “I like to think so. Lean forward a second,” Olivia ordered as she cut the bandages around his shoulder. “I noticed you chose that photo as your background. Were you and your nephew close?”

  Adam mentally shook himself at her sudden change of topic.

  “Yeah, David named him after me. Tucker is my middle name, and I’m his godfather. I used to take him out to the park, or somewhere to eat, every Sunday so David and Karen could have a little time to themselves.”

  “That was considerate of you.”

  “I enjoyed it,” he recalled. “I used to play a little college football, and Tucker kind of hero worshiped me over that. He wanted to play when he grew up, so I would take him to the park and throw a football with him. I was going to start taking him to a flag football league this year. Tucker is a great kid.” He winced a little as she pulled the bandages free.

  “You are quite an uncle.”

  “Well, I’m not nominating myself for sainthood. I actually do enjoy the little guy, so it’s not some great sacrifice on my part.” Adam gazed at the picture of his brother’s family on the TV. “You know, back before the man attacked me at the pool, I had started getting used to the idea they were probably dead. Now that I know he may still be alive, it drives me crazy worrying about what danger he might be in.”

  Olivia glanced over at the TV then back at him.

  “Mr. Sellars, I know this doesn’t help much, but if he is still alive and under the care of our enemies, then he is safe. If they chose to take him, then they felt they had no reason to do him harm. As long as we act judiciously and don’t give them any other reason, he will remain safe with them.”

  “By ‘other reason’ you mean things like hiring a private detective and waving Tucker’s picture all around the area.”

  Olivia frowned as she examined his stitches.

  “Yes, I would say that is a good example of what to avoid in the future.”

  “As crazy as it sounds,” he mused, “I’m glad they chose to come after me, instead of just killing him.”

  “I suppose that was ‘fortunate,’” Olivia muttered. “Well, your stitches are all holding and your wound is healing on schedule. I’m going to go ahead and leave the bandage off. You can shower with it like this if you want, but I recommend not getting it too wet. If you continue to progress at the same rate, I think you will be up for travel in a week.”

  “And then it’s off to meet the nice people who have been shooting at me?”

  “Having second thoughts?” Olivia put away her scissors and picked up her tablet again.

  “No.” He pulled the bathrobe back up over his shoulders. “I confess this idea scares me to death, but I’m more worried about leaving Tucker with those people. That crazy woman with the big gun doesn’t seem the real kid-friendly type. Come to think of it, neither does an old woman who sews her eyes shut.”

  “I doubt either are in charge of child rearing. More than likely, Tucker was placed with one of their families.”

  “They have families?”

  Olivia stood and tucked her tablet under her arm.

  “I’m afraid we’re wandering into ‘need to know’ territory again, Mr. Sellars. I imagine that must be frustrating but I assure you it’s for the best.”

  “It’s what I agreed to when I signed on for this,” Adam shrugged. “Just like Antonio’s single minded approach to protecting all of your interests, my one and only goal is to free Tucker and build some kind of life afterward. Whoever you people are, you are helping me in that goal and I intend to accommodate you any way I can, even if it means remaining willfully ignorant of anything you don’t want me to know.”

  “You’re not even curious?” She tilted her head and regarded him with puzzled interest. Adam realized right then he would pay real money to have her look at him like that more often.

  Holy crap, Adam. You’re falling for what might very well be some evil mastermind’s henchwoman…and who may be reading your thoughts this very moment.

  “Of course I’m curious,” he admitted. “I look at all the pieces to this puzzle in every way I can, and I think about it all the time. I’m not going to lie…you guys are mind readers, after all.”

  “Not all of us, Mr. Sellars.”

  “No?”

  “We’re straying close to ‘need to know’ again,” she warned, “but to answer your unspoken concern, I happen to be deathly allergic to veneno. So you don’t have to worry that I’m eavesdropping on your private thoughts. On the other hand, I will not make the same guarantee about anybody else in this building. As Antonio has already told you, veneno only affects a rare percentage of the population at large…although a much higher percentage of the population among us here.”

  “Oh,” he answered, then a memory from the gunfight three days earlier surfaced, “But if that’s the case, then what were you injecting yourself with right before you went after the car back at the condo?”

  She considered for a moment before answering.

  “Since you have seen it used, and already know about veneno, I see no harm in telling you. It is a cocktail of drugs that acts as a psi-blocker.”

  “A psi-blocker?”

  “It blocks your mind from being read, at the occasional price of a rather
fearsome headache later, and it has its limitations. I had no desire for our enemies down the street to know who I was, and since I’m not usually in the field, they hadn’t encountered me before. That made me the logical candidate to retrieve the car since they wouldn’t recognize me and see any reason to stop me. The blocker kept them from reading me or my intentions, if any were actually close enough to attempt it.”

  “And it keeps you from being shot through walls.”

  “It has that advantage as well.”

  “Well, it’s nice to know they aren’t all powerful, and can be thwarted. This makes Miss Crazy Lady with a Gun seem a lot more mortal.”

  “Don’t underestimate her, Mr. Sellars,” Olivia cautioned in a somber tone. “Don’t underestimate any of them…but especially her or Grandma Lilah. Had the squad of policemen protecting you had psi-blockers, the fight may very well have ended the same way. To call her formidable would be an enormous understatement.”

  “She’s that scary?” Adam goggled. “How is that possible?”

  “We’re back to “need to know” again,” she sighed. “You will simply have to take my word for it…at least for now.”

  “Okay, I guess I’ll trust you then,” he answered with a helpless shrug. “I haven’t seen any sign you’ve lied to me yet. With luck, she won’t be the one I’ll be talking to when we have this meeting.”

  The silence that fell between them was interrupted by a beep from her computer tablet. Pulling it out from under her arm, her fingers flew across its surface and she frowned at the results.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Sellars,” Olivia turned and marched for the door. “It appears I’m needed elsewhere. I will be back tomorrow and will check on the progress of your wound. If you need anything, including something for the pain, don’t hesitate to ask Cristobal. Remember, your job is to heal.”

  “Bring a chessboard,” he called as she stepped out the door, surprising himself. “Who knows, since you aren’t reading my mind I might actually win a game or two.”