Decision Made

by Michael Anderle

  The response was a set scowl.

  “Well?” she asked. “Are you?”

  “What? Do you want me to say it so you can laugh at me?” Esak demanded. “Go find your amusement somewhere else.”

  His words were anything but welcoming, but she could not help but feel the sadness beneath them.

  “I didn’t come here to laugh at you,” she said quietly. “Not even a little, Esak.”

  He looked suspiciously at her for a long moment. “Then why?”

  “We both believe we belong in different worlds,” Taigan said. “But the thing is, I don’t have my family here. I’m the one who can tell you how it feels to run away and leave everything familiar behind.”

  Esak frowned. “Where are you from?”

  “A world so different you couldn’t imagine it.” She shook her head. “There is no magic at all, for one thing.”

  “Really?” He sat and frowned at her. “Then how did you get here?”

  “It’s a good question.” She shrugged. “And I don’t have all the answers. I only know that this isn’t where I’m supposed to be—where we’re supposed to be.” She looked at Jamie. “That’s my brother. He was able to follow me here.”

  “How do you know it’s not the same world?” Esak argued. “The world is a big place, you could be far away.”

  Taigan smiled. “How would you know if it had worked if you used the key?”

  He considered this. “I…don’t know.”

  She shrugged.

  “My parents didn’t send you here to have that conversation, though,” he said.

  “No, you’re right.” She shrugged. “So…I don’t know how long the sorcerer had you captive, but the village was attacked by elves.”

  “Elves?” he demanded. His incredulity was plain, but as she explained the situation, it became clear that the elves’ behavior had been escalating for some time. His face grew darker and darker with anger. “Bastards,” he swore when she was done. “I wish you’d killed all of them.”

  She sat and watched him pace and occasionally reach out to steady himself on the stacks of merchandise.

  “It probably won’t stop anytime soon,” she said, testing a theory. “They could use you.”

  Esak shot her a look that was pure venom.

  “What? What did I say?”

  “I can’t believe they sent you to find me without telling you how useless I am.” He sounded mutinous. “I’m not a good heir for my father. I can’t read or write, I can’t hold a sword, I can’t do magic. I have no talents.”

  “Bullshit,” Taigan said before she could stop herself.

  He stopped and stared at her with his mouth hanging open. “Uh…”

  “Yeah, you heard me,” she told him. “You’re making pathetic excuses. Do you think we’re simply naturally good at things? You have to work at it sometimes.”

  “It’s easy for you to say!” he retorted. “When I stare at a page, the letters move all around. Do they do that for you?”

  Oh. Taigan looked at Jamie.

  “No,” she said, “but our sister has that.”

  “She—she does?” Esak looked like he wanted to storm off in a huff but couldn’t bear to do so before learning more about this. “Did she ever learn to read?”

  “Yep. She’s at university now,” she said. “Studying…I don’t remember. She changed it, didn’t she? It was going to be history, and then…”

  “Geology,” Jamie supplied. “Something about water and silt deposits and…I’ll be honest, I can’t follow it at all.”

  “Your parents sent her to university?” Esak looked impressed. “Why are you traveling without any servants if you’re that rich?”

  “Remember, it’s a different world.” Taigan shrugged. “Look, I…I shouldn’t have been rude but I think maybe you’re being too hard on yourself. Most people have to work hard at most things. I’m sure there’s something you’re good at.”

  “I’m not so bad at trade,” he said finally. “I used to be able to tell my father what the prices should be after listening at the market. But I couldn’t write them down or keep books, so…” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t fit here, that’s what’s important.”

  She said nothing.

  “Why are you here?” he pressed.

  “Your parents sent us to tell you that they love you,” she said. “They’re afraid for you. And they’re afraid they’ll never see you again.”

  “They probably won’t,” he said bluntly.

  She was taken aback by the carelessness. “They won’t?” she asked dangerously.

  “Whoa, there.” Jamie patted her arm. “Deep breaths. You remember the night you said you planned to run away from home?”

  “Yeah, one night!”

  “Hush.” He gave her a hard look. “Esak…what do you think this other world will be like?”

  “I don’t know but I don’t fit here!”

  He held his hands out in a placating gesture. “I get it. Honestly, I do. It makes sense and it’s a brave thing to do. You don’t want to keep doing what’s not working. But I have to say, I think most worlds work the same way. There’s so much to do—design buildings or machines, learn magic, be an actor, be a…I don’t know, hostage negotiator. They probably don’t have those here. My point is, the world is full of things. You can’t possibly have tried them all.”

  Esak said nothing. He stared sullenly at the floor. Finally, he said, “I’m not coming back.”

  “I know.” Taigan sounded rueful. “I know you aren’t. Which means we’re coming with you.”

  “What?” the two young men said at the same time.

  “We need to go to the Rylkor Mountains, too,” she said. “That’s part of why your father asked us to look out for you. Maybe you won’t go back, but we owe your parents a lot and I’ll keep making sure that if you ever want to go back, you’re alive to do it.”

  Esak said nothing. He swallowed. “What if…after we get there, I don’t want to go back?”

  “Then we can’t make you.” She shrugged. “If we drag you back, kicking and screaming, you’ll only run away again. If we tie you up in a dungeon somewhere, that’s no life for anyone. If you go back, it has to be your choice.”

  “You’ll keep trying to persuade me, won’t you?” He looked suspiciously at her.

  “Yeah, we will.”

  “Well, fuck off, then.” Esak folded his arms. “Go back home.”

  “You forgot we’re also going to the Rylkor Mountains,” Taigan pointed out.

  “So find another caravan.”

  “Nope, we’re gonna stick with you. You can try to get away from us, but we’re very stubborn and I can do magic.” She bared her teeth at him. “And, exactly like we can’t make you go home, you can’t make us leave. So get used to us.”

  He muttered a curse under his breath and climbed onto the roof. From what she could hear, he plopped down in the center to sulk.

  “Was that, uh…” Jamie cleared his throat. “Was that wise, do you think? Antagonizing him like that?”

  “I didn’t antagonize him. He made it a fight.” Taigan shrugged. “And I think it’s going well. He knows his problems with reading aren’t impossible to fix. He’s seen us catch up to him twice so he knows we can do it. And it has to be a while before we get to the Rylkor Mountains so we can work on him a little.”

  Jamie fixed her with a disbelieving frown. “Yeah, and he hates us.”

  “For now.” She held her hands up. “What are we gonna do, am I right?”

  “Be nicer?”

  “Nope. He’s heard all the nice, polite arguments. I won’t suck up to him. He won’t trust us unless we play straight with him. The moment we start trying to manipulate him, he’ll be out of here, trust me.” She blew a breath out. “And then we’ll have to chase him down in a rainstorm again and fight more sorcerers and it’s simply too much.”

  Her brother leaned forward to whisper. “And what if he gets to the k
ey first?”

  “He won’t,” she whispered in return. “That’s our end play. If nothing else works, we take the key. He can’t go to another world if the key doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “That’s—oof.”

  “You work with what you have.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I don’t know about you, but I barely slept last night with all that snoring. I’m going to take a nap. Wake me for dinner.”

  She rolled her cloak into a makeshift pillow, tipped over, and went to sleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  Someone of Anna Price’s net worth could be expected to go to the best restaurants in New York and she did exactly that. She stepped out of her cab, still reviewing something on a pad of paper, and entered Rud, a new steakhouse.

  Gary followed.

  A nice suit jacket over a sweater was enough to get him a place at the bar, from where he could easily see most of the dining room.

  After all, the rich came to places like this to be seen. He sipped his coffee and waited.

  The woman who came to meet his target must have been wealthy. Only a rich person would walk into a restaurant like Rud dressed in ripped jeans, a blazer with the sleeves rolled up, and a waffle-knit shirt beneath. She wore work boots too. He gaped in surprise and took a few discreet pictures with a pen camera.

  The woman and Price chatted over dinner. They pored over the papers in her folder while they waited for their meal, then seemed to brainstorm and eat at the same time. There was no way to hear what they were saying but they were clearly working on a project together.

  It was toward the end of the meal that he saw the exchange of information. Price leaned forward slightly and murmured something. One hand slid across the table and the other woman reached out casually to take whatever it was. Whether a chip or a flash drive, it disappeared into her jacket.

  Gary’s eyes narrowed with satisfaction. He’d been raised hunting and he was accustomed to flushing out prey. The CEO had made a good show of not being intimidated or worried this morning, but she would be racing now to find things and hide them.

  And, depending on what she had handed over, he might have every ounce of leverage over her the government could want. After all, with even one tiny bit of information that was considered government-related, she’d have no choice but to turn over her pet project.

  If she didn’t, they’d use her breach of protocol to drive Diatek into the ground.

  He transferred his gaze to the other woman. Hispanic, he thought. Her brown hair was drawn into a ponytail and she either wore no makeup or very little. He would be interested to see where she went after this.

  She stood, behaving as if she were only going to the bathroom, but he was one step ahead. He had seen her look out at the sidewalk and wait for a moment with numerous cabs present. He left a twenty-dollar bill on the counter, followed her discreetly, and cut ahead through another door to get to his bike. When her cab pulled out into traffic, he immediately followed.

  As it turned out, she didn’t live very far away. Gary wove through the traffic, narrowly avoiding being knocked onto the pavement several times, and pulled up outside the woman’s building. Wasting no time, he retrieved his duffel bag and headed into the building with her. He changed as he went and had already slipped into a grimy windbreaker.

  He didn’t have to do any particular sleuthing, thankfully. Both her name and her destination were made apparent almost immediately.

  “Good evening, Ms. Garcia,” the doorman told her.

  “Good evening, Bernard.” She smiled as she went into the elevator—one with the floor numbers over the door.

  Gary hurried after her, then turned to the doorman.

  “Sorry, did you say that was Ms. Garcia?” Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the numbers climbing. “The super called me in to look at her flooring. She wants it redone.” He pulled out a several-times-folded wad of papers made to look like work orders. “I have it here somewhere…” The elevator had stopped on Floor 15. “15A?”

  The doorman snorted. “Nope.”

  “Fine, I’ll go ask him.” He started toward the basement, where the supers tended to have their offices.

  “Do you want me to call up to her?” the man asked.

  A split-second decision was all it took. “Could you? That’d be great.”

  The attendant gave him a suspicious look but since he showed his face and took away the element of surprise, he came across as far less dangerous. The man punched a few numbers into the phone at the desk and waited.

  “Hello, ma’am. Yes, Bernard. There’s a man here who says he’s come about the flooring in your apartment.” A pause. “Oh? Okay, then.” He looked at Gary. “She says to come up. Apartment 156.”

  “Thanks.” Gary hurried to the elevator. He was aware that the doorman was probably watching on the security cameras, so he made a show of retrieving his phone and scrolling aimlessly. When the elevator dinged, he stepped out and looked around. The numbers ascended to the right.

  156 was a corner apartment. He knocked on the door and waited.

  When the woman opened the door, she looked bemused. “Yes, hello. I think you may have the wrong apartment.”

  “It’s about some of the piping,” he said apologetically. “Your upstairs neighbor mentioned that their bathroom tile wasn’t looking good at the edges and they want me to check yours, too.”

  “Really?” She frowned a little. “Well, of course, I suppose. Can I get you any water?”

  “I wouldn’t say no to a beer,” Gary joked. He shook his head. “No beer. It’s only a bad joke.”

  “Hey, if you fix my plumbing, I’ll give you as many beers as you want.” She pointed down a small hallway. “The bathroom is there.”

  “Great. I’ll start there and may have to look around the living area as well if I see damage.” He took his shoes off carefully and padded down the hallways.

  As soon as he faced away from her, he allowed himself a smile. He was in.

  In the living room, Amber opened a beer for herself, sat on the couch, and grinned in the direction of the “repairman.”

  When the team had first discussed what to do about Prima, Price had made several predictions to them—the main one being that the Department of Defense would shortly appear to determine what was going on. If they could eminent domain Prima, they would.

  Which meant the PIVOT team could not afford to let them know she existed. That meant laying a very convincing false trail.

  Starting with a fake apartment to bug. Accordingly, Amber spent the next few weeks in an apartment Diatek had rented. She had enough money now, after PIVOT’s acquisition, to afford a very nice apartment but this one was miles better than hers with floor to ceiling windows, marble countertops, sleek furniture, and art that made no sense to her.

  Also, the fridge was stocked with her favorite beer. It seemed that when you paid ten thousand dollars per month for an apartment, stocking it with beer was not considered extravagant.

  She could hear the man moving around in the bathroom. Did he honestly intend to put a listening device there or had that merely been his pretext? She sipped the beer and considered the possibilities. Surely he didn’t think she would discuss groundbreaking technological advancements in the shower.

  On the off-chance that he had put one in there, though, she decided to get a track of the loudest, most rancid-sounding farts she could find. She plugged headphones in and scrolled through a selection on her phone, laughing at some of the more outlandish ones.

  Not long after she’d settled on one, he poked his head into the living room. She had heard him sneak into the bedroom as well and assumed his plan was to put them everywhere. When she looked at him, she tried to project the correct amount of worry.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said apologetically. “Would you mind if I looked in the corners here as well as the kitchen?”

  “It’d be a shame for you to come all the way here and not be able to
check for water damage where you need to,” Amber said. “Seriously, look wherever. I don’t want to deal with reflooring everything.”

  “Thanks. I promise I’ll be out of your hair soon.”

  “No worries.” She took a sip of her beer.

  Her amusement grew as she listened to him opening cabinets and crawling around baseboards. It was almost time for part two of her plan.

  “Can I use the bathroom yet?” she asked anxiously.

  “Oh, of course.” He was practically salivating at the idea of some alone time in her living room.

  “Great!” She disappeared into the bathroom and heard him fairly sprint to the living room to check her router.

  When she emerged again, he was putting his shoes on at the door.

  “I saw a little moisture,” he said. “Not much and not enough that I’d normally worry, but with the problem upstairs… Anyway, I put some moisture detectors in places that would be problematic. I’ll come to pick them up in a couple of weeks or if my equipment gives me an alert.”

  Amber fought the urge to congratulate him on coming up with such a good lie. Instead, she smiled and fished a few dollars out of her pocket as a tip.

  “Well, thanks for coming by,” she said earnestly.

  “Of course.” He smiled at her and disappeared with a wave.

  She meandered back to the living room and switched her phone to cellular data.

  He just left, she texted Jacob.

  Sweet. Should I come over?

  You can if you want but I think there’s a listening device in the bedroom, so…

  I don’t think I’m into that. PDA-free night?

  Sounds good. See you in a while.

  Amber leaned back on the couch and grinned. The first phase of the plan was going beautifully.

  In her office, Anna Price narrowed her eyes at the computer screen and considered their chosen deception. “Are you sure this will work?” she asked.