“I read through a little of it.” Lashay returned to her scanner and prepared the next document, her practiced hands moving without her breaking eye contact with Mira. “It's pretty embarrassing. Like a big pat on the back. He talks about the family business, too. One of the early chapters. I thought it might be useful, or at least interesting.”
“Lashay, it's both. Thank you so much.”
“Wait till you see chapter six.”
Mira scanned the table of contents.
7
Mira
“What the fuck...” Mira said under her breath.
“Exactly. WTF. I had the same reaction.”
“So fucking bizarre...” Mira closed the book and gave her friend a wide-eyed stare. “How'd you find this?”
“I just did exactly what I tell everyone else to do, when they're looking for something in here.” Lashay pressed the "scan" button and the machine hummed to life. “I typed in his name in the search bar.”
Mira sighed as she plopped the book down at her table. “I already met with DARC Ops.”
Lashay looked up from the screen.
“With Jackson.” Mira couldn’t keep the frown off her face. “He thinks I'm nuts.”
“You are nuts. So what?”
“So then he won't touch this with a ten foot pole.”
“Is that what he said?”
“No.” Mira swiveled around in her chair. “He said he'd look into it.”
“Then he'll look into it. That's good. Wasn't that the point of going there?”
“Yeah, but...” Mira trailed off. She could feel herself getting a little too... girly?
“But what?”
“I wanted him to believe me.”
Lashay laughed. “From what I've heard, he's too smart for that.”
“What have you heard?”
“That he's smart enough to be suspicious of you. He probably thinks you're some kind of agent. From the government or otherwise. He can be difficult to, um... get close to.”
“Oh. Do you know that from experience?”
“No,” said Lashay. She looked a little annoyed. “What do you mean?”
“I dunno. So what else do you know about him?”
“Hold up. Did you just ask if I tried to get with him?”
Mira laughed nervously. “Maybe?”
“Hell no. It's a little hard to hit on someone you've never met,” she grinned. “But I probably would if I could, that man in a tux, and that was just the photo. Did you?”
Mira could feel her face reddening. Did she flirt with Jackson?
“Damn, girl. You hit on him.”
Mira laughed. “No, no...”
“You hit on him bad.”
“No. No way. I was too nervous for that.”
“Right.” Lashay pushed some buttons on the scanner.
“So what else do you know about him? I mean, his business. Let's stay on topic here.”
“Just stuff through Matthias. He practically worshiped Jackson when we were dating. I thought it was cute at first, like a younger and older brother thing. But then it just seemed kinda annoying.” She switched out another poster. “He's rich. A billionaire. Used to be a Navy SEAL but something went wrong with his ear.”
“His ear?”
“And he has all these big clients. He's even worked for foreign governments. Mercenary hacking. And, uh... What else... Oh, he's... you know... He's really hot.” Lashay took a quick peek at Mira, and then went back to calibrating the scanner. “But that's only from seeing his photos. Was he as good-looking in real life?”
Hell yeah, he was.
“Totally,” Mira said.
Totally...
“Okay.” Lashay sounded disappointed. “I knew it. So did he offer you a price?”
A price? The thought never occurred to her. Mira knew he wouldn’t work for free, but... She suddenly felt like an idiot.
“I'm guessing no?” Lashay said.
“We didn’t talk money,” Mira said casually, as if the topic was unimportant.
“That's good.”
Was it? The last thing Mira could handle was a budgetary surprise.
“Well, keep hitting on him,” Lashay said. “He might do it pro bono.”
Mira liked the idea. She liked any sentence about Jackson that contained the words pro and bone.
Lashay burst into laughter. “You should see the look on your face. He might even do you pro bono.”
“For God's sake, Lashay!” Mira pretended to be offended but it was the best idea she'd heard all year. It had been a long time between drinks.
Lashay was still laughing. “Come on, don't even act.”
“Shh... You come on. We're in the Library of Congress...”
“So what?” Lashay smirked and then shook her head slowly from side to side. “You don't know how it is, Mira. You don't know us librarians. We get freaky up in here.”
Mira wanted to laugh more. But when she'd absent-mindedly glanced at the book laying in front of her, and read the Senator's name on its spine, a familiar tightness returned in her chest. As did the knowledge that her return to work was long overdue. She then thought of the horrific photo of Langhorne posing over a dead water-buffalo. Had that poor creature been added to the current collection "decorating" his office? A part of her didn’t ever want to return there to find out.
* * *
“Can I see you in my office for a minute?” were the exact words she'd been dreading to hear since her return from lunch. But that was how Langhorne's phone call had ended.
When she entered his office, Mira made a conscious effort to keep her eyes off the walls. But was his face any nicer to look at? He had the pinkish hue of a pig, or someone who had ingested way too much pork, bourbon, cigarette smoke, and enriched white four.
“Mira, I'm concerned that you came back to work too early.”
Her sentiments exactly. Although it was still a little unsettling to agree with him on something.
“You're sick,” he said. “I know that. I can tell just by looking at your face. It's like you're just not there. Your work also says that. It screams it to me. How many jobs have you done today?”
“Uh... Two?”
“Two? It's well past lunch, Mira.”
She made a pained expression and nodded. Yes, yes, she knew how shitty it was. She definitely knew that.
“Which ones?” he asked, frowning. He put his hand in a bowl of paperclips, his fingers stirring and clinking them around mindlessly.
“Uh... Johnson-Tilly-Harriman... And the UNESCO...”
“No. That won't do.”
“I know,” she said. “I'm sorry. I think you're right about coming back too early.”
“Hell yes, I'm right. Mira, if you need some time, take it. How many sick days do you have built up?”
“Not many.”
“Well, I'm sorry, but you'd be more productive if you stayed home and recuperated. What is it, by the way? If you don't mind me asking... Is it stress?”
“Stress, yes.” Her brain was suddenly flooded with the image of a wooden crate being filled with machine guns. “But I'm also fighting a flu, I think.”
His eyes widened. “Mira, get that flu outta here.” He drew his hand from the paperclips.
“I know, I'm trying.”
“I mean out of this office. I can't have you spread that around.”
“It's at the tail end, sir.”
“Yeah, I can imagine.”
“I mean the flu. I'm almost over it.”
“Well, good.” Senator Langhorne sighed, brushed some donuts crumbs off his suit, and stood up with the soft groan of a geriatric. “You need to take better care of yourself, Mira. You're way too valuable to let yourself run ragged like this. Eat something. You're so thin.” He started strolling around the room, still brushing a few crumbs off his rotund body. “Something healthy. Go get yourself some matzo ball soup or something. And sleep for God's sake.”
Just nod. Just keep no
dding until it goes away.
“I'll give you more days if you need them,” the senator said as he positioned himself in front of a mirror. “And when is your vacation?”
“I haven’t set it yet. But I'm thinking sometime in the next few weeks?” Mira could see his sun-hardened face cracking a smile in the mirror. “What's so funny?” she asked.
“You don't want to take it tomorrow instead?”
“Not really.”
“Well, be sure to schedule it,” he said to the mirror. “Maybe talk with Chuckie about it.”
Mira turned away to save herself the view of the Senator picking food from his teeth. The window was a better alternative. It offered hope.
“Oh, I forgot to ask about your event last week.”
What event?
Oh fuck... He was asking about her cancer charity, Swanson's Hope.
“How'd it go?” The senator returned to his chair. “Sorry I had to miss your speech. Chuck tells me it was very moving.”
Through the emotional chaos of the last two days, Mira had forgotten her duties as the director of a cancer fund named after her mother, Hope Swanson.
He smiled at her. “I might have some good news for Swanson's Hope.”
Mira felt the urge to purge. Maybe she really did have the flu?
“I had a lucky week in the stock market,” he chuckled. “Very, very lucky.”
She saw the crates again. Crates upon crates...
“You wouldn’t mind if I stuck some of it in Hope's fund, would you?”
She tried to force a smile and then panicked when it didn’t work, her face twitching under the strain. “I don't know what to say,” she finally garbled before thanking him in a strange cackle of a laugh. It was either laugh, or her head would explode.
“You're welcome, Mira. It's a great cause.” His hand was back in the paperclips. “So that's one less thing for you to worry about, huh? You running around fundraising?” he chuckled repugnantly. “Now you go take care of yourself.”
8
Mira
She closed her eyes and saw the blue waves of Ipanema, how they'd reach shore and billow smoothly over the white sand, its frothiness lapping at the athletic, well-bronzed ankles of shirtless Brazilian footballers. From a beach chair she’d watched them and their scantly-bikini’d girlfriends running away from the tide to scatter around on towels like strewn playing cards. She saw tourists reaching for cameras and pointing them idly at the large frigate bird hanging in place in the wind, while other birds, like gulls, flopped unnoticed around the surf. There was a warm breeze of sea salt and sunscreen and different languages all talking about the same thing. Cans of beer were passed around liberally, spliffs of marijuana not so liberally. As evening approached, she watched the thinning of crowds, the wrangling of children, the ending of games. She'd count the distant lights, one by one, as they appeared along a steep mountain village perched over the far end of the beach. And above that, she counted the first hints of stars while the Rio sunset reddened into darkness.
She had wanted that. To revisit the tranquility of her Ipanema paradise. And she tried so hard to picture it perfectly, the clear blue perfection of her first day on the beach. But just as she was on the verge of the most blissful, empty calm, just as her foot dropped from the chair and was about to sink toe-deep in the sand, everything fell apart. Her moonlit beach and the busy neon of Rio de Janeiro faded to black. For a few seconds she could hear the ghostly remnants of ocean wash and samba music before it slowly and cruelly transformed into the dull murmur of office work, the whispering and coughing and typing, the forlorn sighs of a chorus of clock-watchers. And then came the death knell, Chuck's nasally voice.
“Hey, you.” The voice came closer. “I heard the good news. Congratulations.” It was perilously close. She opened her eyes to find Senator Langhorne's personal assistant leaning against her cubicle doorway like a bored jockey.
“Doing some meditating?” he asked.
“Uh, yeah.” Her mouth didn’t seem to work correctly. She was thick-tongued and tired. “I think I was sleeping, actually.”
“Bad girl. Not the first time I caught you napping.” He smiled and looked across her bare desk, carefully examining her lack of work. “But you better look alive. Abram just walked in.” Abram was another office manager she'd been trying to avoid.
“It's okay,” she said with a shrug. “I'm on my way out.”
“What? Why?”
“I'm sick. On sick leave, actually.”
He gave her a sad little puppy face.
“Yeah, I just came in to grab some files for homework.”
“Well that's too bad,” he said with an emphatic frown. “I'd never guess it by looking at you. I was just about to compliment you, actually, on how you're--”
“No!” she cried, unwilling to bear even the slightest greasy compliment from Chuck. It was her day off for God's sake.
“Oh,” he said, confused and startled. He had instinctively drawn his hands from his pockets.
“I mean... don't. Please. ” She laughed under her breath but it felt rushed and manic. She could almost see Chuck recoiling, his back foot slinking out of her cubicle. A wounded male preparing for flight. “Thanks,” she said with an apologetic smile. “Sorry.”
“I was just gonna say I like your blazer.” He sounded defeated.
Sure, it was a nice blazer. But what does that have to do with her health? She could have freaking Ebola and the thing would still look fine.
“Anyway, uh...” Chuck was looking at his shoes, maybe pretending to inspect some stray scuff mark. “So yeah, the senator and I were about to head out for that Peace Corps thing, but he wanted me to swing by to set something up with you.” It was a typical Chuck move, to present a little excuse for his "swing by" when things weren’t going so well. “You know, for his big donation?”
Oh, right, that thing Mira was trying so hard to push out of her mind.
“He wants to us to rig up a PR event,” said Chuck, finally ending his shoe investigation. “A little media event for Swanson's Hope.”
Before Mira could say anything, she yawned like a nervous dog. It was better that way. Better to suck in some much needed air than to say something stupid.
“You know how the senator is,” said Chuck, rolling his eyes.
“Yes... Yes, I certainly do.”
“Will that be okay?”
No. Fuck no.
“Yes, yes, of course. It's a big donation.” Or so she's heard. She hadn’t even asked how much blood money the old man would be to coughing up for her mother's cause.
“Great,” said Chuck. “And even if you're not feeling better by then, you won't have to do much. It's really just a little show for the news cameras. You know?”
Mira nodded.
“Mainly for him. But it'll be good publicity for Swanson's Hope. Might even get a little slice of prime-time. And he'll also have his own film crew there.”
“Film crew?”
“They're making a documentary about his work, his foreign aid and philanthropy and all that. It's on his own dime, of course.”
Mira thought of a specific book she'd left at her apartment, how it laid opened and turned over on her kitchen table. She thought of the fresh crease she'd put into its spine...
“So we're thinking about staging it in the press room downstairs. And, again, it won't be a big deal. He'll just make a quick speech. You can talk too, if you want. And then he might hand you one of those giant checks. You know, like those cardboard checks?” He smiled. “Pretty cheesy, huh?”
She thought of the real beast of the safari, the coldest-blooded killer. The White Devil. How many more "triumphant gambles" would he get away with?
“Mira? What's up?” Chuck was sometimes terrifyingly empathic. “Are you worried about it or something?”
“No, no, I'm just trying to think of my schedule...”
“You don't have to pick a date right this second. I just wanted to give you head
s up.”
Mira stared at her empty desk as if she'd been translating some invisible document, a strategy guide for escaping the shittiest of situations. She had to make a play. “Okay. Well, thanks, Chuck. I'll definitely work on a time slot.” Mira finally looked up at him. “And, could you please thank the senator again? He's been very good to Swanson's Hope. And this latest donation...” She smiled and shook her head in mock disbelief.
“Yeah, I know. It's incredible.”
“That's just it. It's just incredible... And I'm so excited to tell the rest of the team about it.” Sensing that it was time to throw the puppy a chew-toy, Mira worked to achieve an adequate smile, and then asked, “Will you be there?”
He immediately pounced on the toy, pawing and sniffing at it like some neglected shelter-dog. “Yeah. Yeah, if you want.” He sunk his teeth into it, ravaging her little gift while his tail wagged in pure glee. “Yeah, yeah, of course. Sure.”
“I'd like that,” she said softly.
“You want me to do anything? Can I, uh... Can I do anything?”
“No, I just want you to be there. If it's convenient.” The way Chuck smiled told her how convenient it was to spend any and all time with her. “Maybe you could write my speech? I dunno...”
“Yeah, sure. Whatever you need.” Her sentry suddenly sprang to life, triumphantly pushing off from her cubicle wall on which he'd been leaning the whole time.
But his moment of glory was short-lived. A booming voice shot across the office floor. “Hey, Chuckie.”
Mira watched Chuck's hard jolt of a reaction, his head bobbing out from her cubicle like a freshly-sprung Jack-in-the-box.
“The hell you doin'?”
“You told me to schedule out the PR thing,” said Chuck, sounding a little too excited. “So I'm scheduling out the PR thing.”
“For a half hour?” The Senator walked up to Mira's cubicle and knocked on the glass partition. He smiled in at her. “How you doin', darling? Okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah, just grabbing some things.”
“Good.” He turned back to Chuck. “Ready for Peace Corps?”
Dark Secret (DARC Ops Book 1) Page 6
