by Kim Oh
He took one hand away from his shirt and peeled back a corner of the bandage. Underneath was the pinkish line of a recent surgical incision, healed the way he’d said. The faint little dots of the stitches that held it together were just visible on either side.
“That’s where the trigger is?” I pointed to Simon’s bare stomach. “Somebody cut him open and stuck it in there?” I shook my head in amazement. “I hope you had a real doctor do it. And it wasn’t just something you did with your Boy Scout knife.”
“Don’t worry.” Simon rolled his shirt back down over the scar. “Dalby pretty much gets the best there is. Why not – he can pay for it.”
“So this is part of the contest? That you had to have this trigger implanted in you?”
“That’s the deal.”
The things people will do for money – though I knew we were talking about a lot of money. Enough to float whatever crazy business idea it was that they had cooked up. They wouldn’t have been talking to somebody like Dalby, if it’d been otherwise.
“So that’s the trigger for the Beta team. I suppose the Alphas have one just like it – right?”
“Yep.” Another nod from Jerry. “Stinson’s got it.”
“Same deal? An implant?”
“Those are the conditions. Of the contest. If we want to be in on it, we have to do it the way Dalby wants.”
“Couldn’t he have just handed the receiver to you? So you could just carry it around. Why put it under somebody’s skin?”
“Simple,” said Jerry. “I mean simple, if you think the way Dalby does. Before he does his venture capitalist thing and hands out the money, he wants to know which team, the Alphas or the Betas, have more of what’s required to bring our big ideas into reality. Guts, or drive, or sheer craziness – whatever you want to call it. So getting the receiver device up close enough to the package you’re carrying, so that it gets the trigger signal, is something the teams have to do on their own. We’ve got to have our own skin in the game – that’s what Dalby told us. If we just had the receiver device in our hands, floating around loose, we could just hire somebody to track you down before you could make your delivery. Somebody who does that sort of thing – you know, somebody a little more . . . umm . . . action-oriented than us.”
Which would’ve been just about anybody in the world, judging from the look of these guys. They were probably kick-ass coders and tech whizzes, but their thumb muscles were the most developed ones in their bodies, from all those video-game marathons they were undoubtedly into. No wonder I’d been able to cream them all when we’d been on the freeway. Most girls could’ve.
“We still could’ve done that.” Simon sounded like he was nursing a grievance about his fellow Betas’ plans. “I told you guys that you wouldn’t be able to pull it off. You’re just lucky you all didn’t killed. I mean, look at her.” He nodded toward me. “Look at that freakin’ gun she’s got.”
“Yeah, but . . .” Jerry shrugged. “Where were we going to get some kind of action dude, anyway? Off Craigslist? So, we thought . . . all things considered . . . we had a chance.”
“No.” I could look right through his skull, and the others’, and read his mind. “What you really thought was that because it was a female carrying the package, then you had a chance. What a bunch of sexist b.s.” I held the .357 up. “You know, I’ve blown away guys, just for not respecting me.”
Eyes wide, they both shrank back against the van’s metal walls.
“I’m just jerking you around.” I put the gun back down in my lap. “I really don’t care what you think. I never care what anybody thinks – long as I get paid.”
They relaxed. But not much.
“But about your big plan, for getting to the package I’m carrying. If the whole idea is to get the trigger, that your buddy Simon there has got planted next to his stomach, next to the proximity sensor – why wasn’t he there on the freeway with you and the rest of your guys? Team Beta, or whatever you call yourselves.”
“Kind of a strategic decision.” Jerry had recovered himself, at least enough to talk. “We had to figure what would be best, given . . . umm . . . certain factors, let’s say. Whether it’d be better to bring the receiver there on the freeway – I mean Simon – and get him right next to the package to get the trigger signal – or get the package away from you and bring it to someplace where he’d be waiting for it.”
“I was at a motel,” said Simon. “Just hanging out.” He smiled. “While the other guys did all the work.”
“So much for that genius plan.” I peered closer at Jerry. “What ‘certain factors’ are you talking about?”
“Well . . .” He shifted where he sat, looking uncomfortable. “Stinson, mainly. That kinda impacted our thinking.”
“Yeah –” Simon spoke up. “That guy’s crazy. Seriously deranged.”
“True that.” Jerry nodded. “He’s got a real reputation in the tech community – on the West Coast, at least. Even when he was a kid, he was a whack job. He pulled a knife on somebody one time, at a LAN party.”
“That’s a –”
“I know what a LAN party is,” I said. “My brother used to go to them, once in a while.” I mulled over what I’d just heard. “Okay, I got it – he’s crazy. I can believe it. From what I saw of him on the freeway, he looked like some kind of bulked-up steroid case.”
“Steroids aren’t the half of it,” said Jerry. “Yeah, he does all that body building stuff, but there are other things he’s into that are even weirder. That’s why he went all lone wolf, about coming after you – and the package. Stinson really is kind of an action guy. When Dalby set up the contest, Stinson totally dug on it. It was everything he’d ever wanted to do. And there’s the big money involved.”
“So this Stinson guy – he’s got some big idea as well. Some tech thing. What is it?”
“Does it matter? Even if I could explain it to you, what difference does it make? Stinson wants to get it to fly, and he needs venture capital to do that. A lot of it – and Dalby is the only person who’s crazy enough to give him a shot. As long as Stinson wins the contest, that is.”
If nothing else, talking to these Beta guys had cleared up one mystery. Now I knew why Stinson, when I’d been caught with him in his private hospital room, had yanked the backpack away from me and done that weird business of pressing it to his side, like he’d been trying to alleviate the first symptoms of an attack of appendicitis. He’d actually been trying to trigger the receiver device that’d been implanted there, just like the one that Simon, here in the phony paramedics van, had just displayed on his own bare abdomen – or the bandage pad covering up the incision. At least until Stinson realized he’d gotten the wrong bag, and my spare clothes and toiletries weren’t going to be triggering anything.
“So that’s the game, huh? I mean, the contest.” I looked over at Jerry and his colleague Simon. “Whoever got the package off me first and stuck it up close enough to their trigger implant – that team wins. Either the Alphas, which is basically Stinson, or you guys, the Betas. I’ve got that right?”
“You got it.” Jerry pointed his thumb toward Simon’s stomach. “That thing’s got a pretty powerful transmitter built into it. Soon as it’s set off, then it sends out a confirmation signal. Dalby has a custom app for it on his phone – it lights up, and he knows who won, us or Stinson.”
“And the game’s over. And one of the teams gets the money – the financing, the start-up capital, whatever you want to call it. For your big idea.”
“Pretty simple, huh? I mean, once it’s explained.”
“No, it’s not.” I stared back at him in amazement. “This is just about the stupidest, overly complicated notion I’ve ever heard. Plus, that whole bit with snagging the backpack with your drone and sending it flying down the freeway – Stinson was ready to run me over, right into the cement.”
“In retrospect,” mused Simon, “the drone was a little overly elaborate –”
“A little?”
“But our reasoning was fundamentally sound. We figured that if we could get the package away from you, then we still had to get it out of there as soon as possible, or Stinson would’ve taken it away from us. If we’d just thrown the package into the back of the van, or into another vehicle, and tried to get away with it, he would’ve been able to run us down. No question about it.”
“And that’s not just because of those fancy, hopped-up muscle cars he drives.” Jerry shook his head. “That dude could run us down on a bicycle.”
“Yeah,” I said, “he probably could.”
“So that’s what we were going for. And it almost worked.”
I didn’t figure on wasting time by reminding these guys that the reason their big plan hadn’t worked was because they had seriously underestimated their target – namely me. Then again, from their looks, about the biggest chance any of them had of getting a date actually would’ve been by slapping an anesthetic gas mask over some girl’s face. Of course, when she came to, she would’ve kicked their asses pretty much the way I already had, so just as well they’d already learned that it was an uncool thing to do.
“But it didn’t,” I said. “And I take it that’s why you’re so hot to talk to me now.”
“Well, yeah.” Jerry spread his hands apart. “You’re a reasonable person –”
Not sure where he got that from.
“And we’re reasonable people. So we should be able to work something out.”
“Other than gassing me and then trying to steal the package I was paid to deliver? Look – however reasonable you think I am, I was that way before you tried the funny stuff. So maybe you should’ve tried the reasonable stuff first and saved us all a lot of trouble.”
“You see?” Simon glanced over at Jerry. “This is what I’m talking about. It’s not just the gun – it’s a whole attitude thing with her.”
“Just shut up, okay?” Jerry turned back toward me. “Ignore him, okay?”
I shrugged. “Not the first time somebody’s commented on my attitude.”
“Like I said. Let’s work something out here.”
“I’m listening.”
“We think,” said Jerry, “that we’ve found a loophole. In the rules –”
“Rules? What rules?”
“The contest. The way Dalby set it up. Contests have rules, right? So you have to play the game the way the rules are given.”
“If you say so.” I laid the .357 in my lap again. “I kinda got the impression, from both you guys and Stinson, that the rules were pretty much anything goes.”
“Nope.” He gave an emphatic shake of his head. “There are two big no-no’s. Two things that Dalby told us we definitely could not do.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And they were . . . ?”
“First one was no guns. We couldn’t take a shot at you. I mean, like a gunshot.”
That cleared up another small mystery for me. In my experience, when a person really wants something, the first thing they do is get gunned up. The world I come from, people do most of their negotiating while squinting over their gunsights at each other. Maybe not these Beta guys, but I couldn’t imagine Stinson would’ve had much of a problem with drilling me through the head, just to get the right backpack from me. I wouldn’t have been any more dead than if I had landed under the wheels of one of those Challengers he drove.
“Dalby’s got a thing against guns?” I just wanted to know.
“I don’t think so,” said Jerry. “Probably he just thought it would make the contest more interesting. So we would have to be more creative, about what we came up with.”
“So . . . what were the other rules? Besides no guns.”
“No money,” said Jerry.
“Pardon me?”
“No money.” Simon smiled when he repeated the two words. “In other words, we couldn’t just buy the package off you. We had to, like, find a way to get it from you. And not just make a deal with you for it.”
“Okay . . .” I nodded. “Fair enough. Hey, it’s Dalby’s contest – he can set it up however he wants. But –” I tapped a fingernail on the gun’s crosshatched grip. “You’re trying to make a deal with me now. What happens when Dalby finds out? Aren’t you out of the contest then? For breaking the rules?”
“I told you.” Jerry’s voice took on that insufferably patient tone that people get when they think they’re smarter than you. “We found a loophole. At least we think we have. So we’re not going to offer you money.”
“What the hell else do you think I’d be interested in?”
“A job.”
That took the air out of the van – at least, for me it did. Jerry and Simon seemed pleased at the suggestion having been made.
“Um – I’ve got a job, remember? You know, the one that Dalby hired me to do.” I tugged one of the backpack straps so it rose higher on my shoulder. “Deliver this. In San Francisco. And, as a matter of fact, that’s what I should be doing right now. Instead of sitting in the back of a phony paramedics van, wasting time, listening to your weird ideas.”
“Yeah . . . about that.” One side of Jerry’s face twisted, as though he were trying to sort out the right words. “When you think about it – you kinda got screwed. By Dalby. I mean, the job he told you he was hiring you for, that’s not actually what you’ve been doing. Delivering that package –” He pointed to the backpack behind me. “That’s what you thought you were doing – but you weren’t, not really. That was just an excuse, for the contest to go on.”
“Well.” Now I was really getting annoyed. “When somebody hires me to do something, I generally just go ahead and do it. No matter what it takes. What other people do isn’t my business.”
“That’s exactly what we want to change.” Simon leaned forward, gazing straight into my eyes. “We do want it to be your business. That’s why we’re offering you the job. Of chief financial officer.”
ELEVEN
Whoa.
It’d been a while since I’d heard those words. A long while.
Being a CFO – that was something from somebody else’s life. That was what another girl had wanted. A girl who had been me. Then a lot of things had happened, and some of them had been things that I had made happen. Like my old boss McIntyre – the one who’d promised to make me the CFO of his company . . . and then he didn’t.
Like I said – things happen. That was what he’d found out, all right.
And now these guys were going to find out the same.
“Funny you should say something like that.” I lifted the .357 from my lap, settling its grip in my hand. I leaned forward, pointing the gun straight between Jerry’s eyes. “I mean – C . . . F . . . O.” With each of those three letters, I tightened my finger around the trigger. “In fact – it’s hilarious.”
“Hold on – wait a minute.” Jerry’s eyes went wide enough that I could see the .357’s muzzle reflected in his pupils. He scooted away as far as he could go, bringing himself against the back of the driver’s seat. “Somebody offers you a job – I mean, a really nice executive position – this isn’t the way you should react. Normal people don’t react like that.”
“Normal . . .” The gun didn’t waver in my hand. “That’s been a while for me.”
“Maybe you don’t understand.” Simon looked equally panicked. “We’re talking an initial salary in the mid-six figures. With automatic escalator clauses. And stock options – you know those are good. Don’t you?”
I gave him a half-lidded gaze. “They can be. But the salary would be enough, thanks.”
“Then . . .” Jerry pointed a trembling finger at the gun directed at him. “Why . . .”
“Because what I don’t get is how you’d know to offer me a CFO position. Because that kinda means something to me.”
“It’s what you always wanted.” The tone of Simon’s voice turned hopeful. “Isn’t it?”
“At one time, it was.” I shifted the .357 toward him. “But how
do you know that?”
“Well . . . how else?” A nervous shrug. “We did our research. About you.”
If there was one thing I didn’t like, it was people knowing stuff about me.
“We managed to hack into Dalby’s email.” Jerry didn’t wait for me to ask. “Some of it, at least. His communications people have got some major security protocols in place – all kinds of layered encryption. But that’s what you’d expect with somebody in his position, right? But he had one account that he was running on his own, outside of his corporate streams. We couldn’t get into it from his end, but we were able to trace back to the person he had been going back-and-forth with. And it turned out to be the resource he was using to set up the contest.”
