James placed his nose against textured wallpaper and held both his hands out to the left side of his body, below his shoulders.
“Not like that, idiot.” The man roughly placed James’s hands high above his head. “Keep them there!” He thoroughly frisked James and searched his cart. In Chinese, he announced down the hall that an idiot food server was coming. James didn’t mind being referred to as an idiot, but the way the man added “new guy” at the end of his announcement put James on edge.
Down the hall, he found Jessica lounging at the far side of an expansive main room, admiring a view she didn’t have from her own suite. She turned at the commotion.
“You ordered this?” Fan Kong asked of her.
“Yes. In hope we would have something to celebrate with, should we come to a deal.”
“You were instructed to come alone. Were you not?” Fan spat in anger.
“The kid has half a brain. We may as well be alone,” she said.
“You know him?” Fan asked. The other courier took a position behind James.
“He’s been delivering my meals. What of it?”
Fan made a gesture to his man near James. With lightning speed, he planted a fist deep into James’s stomach. James buckled to the ground, unable to speak or breathe.
“What are you doing?” Jessica screamed. “He’s only a dumb kid!”
“We shall see,” said Fan.
James covered his face as the man continued to pummel his back and kick at his legs. Thank you, Al, he thought; the painkiller dulled the worst of the strikes. He just hoped Jessica could keep herself together, for both their sakes. She didn’t have the same magic of modern chemistry to help her cope. Guilt and blame were painted on her face.
“Search him,” said Fan as James wiped his bloodied nose.
Hands dove into his pockets and ripped his shoes away. He panicked when they tore off his shirt. Dawn’s letter, with her lock of hair, was buttoned securely in the pocket. James tried to reach for the shirt, but had his hand slapped away. He wasn’t faking his anguish when they discovered the letter. Jessica looked to be on the verge of tears.
“What is it?” asked Fan.
“I can’t read it. It looks like it was written by someone more stupid than him.”
“Let me see,” demanded Fan.
James made short sobbing noises as he tried to regain his breath.
“Your girlfriend, perhaps?” Fan asked, studying the letter.
James nodded vigorously.
Fan marched to the balcony and slid open the glass doors. Stepping through, he locked eyes with James—and slowly crumpled his most treasured possession. Then he dropped it over the edge.
James wailed in grief. “Noooo, James’s friend give that!” He lowered his blotchy face to the carpet and coughed against the blood running down the back of his throat. “James’s friend,” he said again mournfully, and closed his eyes. The act was fake, but the tears that wet his face were entirely real.
“Fan?” the man who assaulted James asked. “Look at these scars.”
James knew what the man was referring to. The thick looping scars crisscrossing his back.
Fan walked over. “Ah, allow me to demonstrate,” he said. He unplugged a heavy marble lamp and ripped the cord from it. He doubled over the cord and began whipping James.
James flinched and cried out under each blow. But the painkiller was doing its job, and his screams were an act. But his pain at the loss of Dawn’s letter was real. They could inflict no pain greater than that. Let him swing, James thought. Do your worst. My dad hit harder than that.
“There. See?” Fan said to his subordinate. James supposed he would soon have new scars to match his old ones.
“How did you know?” the other man asked.
“I have three children of my own,” Fan said proudly. He stuffed a dollar bill into James’s hand. “Now leave the cart and go. Next time we give better tip.”
CHAPTER 65
Breathe, Jessica told herself. Now was not the moment to show concern. She knew it was all her fault, but now was not the time to battle guilt, either. She wanted to run after James to apologize, to make sure he was all right.
Get ahold of yourself, Jessica. You still have a job to do. James is safe, and he gave you a golden opportunity to secure your credibility. Use it!
“If you think making a special needs kid cry is going to impress me, you are sadly mistaken. I thought men of your stature were above such pettiness,” she said.
Fan forced a toothy smile. “You enjoyed embarrassing me at the baccarat table. I saw that you had a liking for the boy. Consider us now even. Do not become indebted to me again. I exact swift payment.”
Petty, insecure twit, Jessica thought. He did this because he needed to save face. How many wars had been fought for the same reason? Fulfilling the requirements of Jack’s mission were going to be easy with pathetic men like these in charge. Today, the carrot, tomorrow, the stick!
“Business then,” Jessica said. “By now, you already know that I sold technical specifications to create stable fusion to a private buyer for three billion dollars.”
Fan interrupted. “And one hundred million in casino credit. We know. My government is also prepared to offer the same—if you can prove it works.”
“That’s a very capitalistic offer, and I’m sure your government would like that deal. However, I prefer a more communistic approach. From each according to their ability to pay, to each according to their need for power. That is the essence of your government’s political philosophy, is it not?”
Fan stood dangerously still. Jessica detected his tension winding ever tighter. He would be a terrible poker player.
Feeling more confident, she began to wander about the room. “Since you represent, by proxy, the government with the largest population in the world, it’s only fair that I ask one hundred billion dollars for my information. The technology works. I’ve seen it. I can replicate it.”
“Such greed from someone who extols communism.”
“A girl’s got to make a living.”
“Sebastian offered to sell us his secret for far less. I hear his is the greater energy source in this deal?” Fan countered.
Jessica tossed her hand to the side as if swatting away an offending fly. “I have no doubt he could take you to the artifact’s location. But it’s unproven technology. Potentially dangerous. Who knows how long it will take you to reverse engineer it?”
“Artifact?” Fan asked, his interest obviously piqued.
“He didn’t tell you?” Jessica gave a smug chuckle. “The coward. He’s probably afraid you won’t believe him. It’s not of this earth, gentlemen. Alien technology. Unknown energy source. My fusion is tried, tested, reliable, and safe.”
“You are sure of this?” asked Fan.
“Fusion? Of course,” said Jessica.
“No. The artifact is alien?”
“Absolutely. The files I read stated they don’t even know what it’s made of yet. And they’re afraid to store it anywhere near the continental United States. I don’t blame them. Who would want to be near something that could potentially blow up the planet?”
Fan looked thoughtful. This pleased Jessica. This one’s all yours, Sebastian. May you choke on it!
“I can see you need a while to think,” she said. “How about we meet again in twenty-four hours?”
Jessica bowed and took a step to leave. When Fan’s courier grabbed her arm, she slapped him across the face before he could react. “It’s now 125 billion,” she snapped. “Keep your dog on a leash!”
Red-faced, the courier reached into his jacket. Jessica quickly stepped into his personal space. She had him at a height disadvantage by several inches. “How much is your honor worth, little man?” she growled.
“Enough!” Fan said. “Please accept my apologies,” he bowed slightly, “for my associate’s indiscretion. I assure you, he will be dealt with appropriately. Six o’clock tomorrow evening the
n?”
Jessica nodded curtly and left unhindered to the elevator. She hoped she had given enough carrot. She had definitely given more stick than she’d planned.
CHAPTER 66
Blood gushed from James’s nose as he rode down the elevator. He tried to stanch the flow with his shredded shirt. Red streamers soaked and stained the fabric.
James checked his back in the elevator mirrors. He’d definitely been subjected to much worse in the past. And he felt comfortably numb to the worst of his injuries.
A security camera monitored the elevator, so he still couldn’t afford to let his guard down. He kept an ongoing babble about blood and mean men while impatiently rocking back and forth.
Shirtless and shoeless, he stumbled into the kitchen with a blood-soaked bundle of cloth clutched over his heart. Blood from both nostrils dribbled over his lips, down his chin and neck, and smeared across his chest.
“James bleeding!” he announced to the kitchen with teary eyes.
Timmy’s face paled, and he swooned on rubbery knees. “Boss!” he yelled. “Aw, James, those bastards really did a number on you.” He helped James to a chair. “Boss!”
Al scurried from his office. “Jeez, Timmy, I’m right—” He stopped. “Timmy, get the med kit. James, come to my office. We’ll get you fixed up, okay?”
“Why dey so bean to Jabes?” he asked as Al tilted his head back to wipe blood off his face. The flow began to pool in his swollen nasal cavity and trickle down his throat.
“Try not to swallow too much, James. You’ll get sick. Spit in this trash can,” Al said.
“Oday.”
Timmy observed with concern over Al’s shoulder. “You should tell someone, boss. This time they’ve gone too far!”
“It won’t do any good, Timmy. The hotel is not about to do anything to upset its best customer. It’s the dragon’s initiation thing for new people. You went through it yourself.”
Timmy’s face soured at the injustice of it all. “They only punched me in the stomach. They didn’t bloody me up and near whip me to death!”
James breathed heavily through his mouth and spit out dark gelatinous clots every so often.
“Timmy, hand me the antiseptic spray and a couple of the rolled gauze bandages,” Al directed. “James, your twelve hours are over today. You go home and rest. We’ll see you bright and early in the morning. And don’t worry about the uniform. They’ll give you a fresh one tomorrow. Get another pair of shoes before you leave, too. If they give you any trouble, tell them to talk to me.”
“You’re making him come back tomorrow?” Timmy asked, aghast.
“He’s a probationary employee, Timmy. If he doesn’t show up, he’ll lose his job.”
“’S’not right,” Timmy muttered, and walked away.
James felt a pang of guilt for having made a new friend under false pretenses.
Al finished dressing James’s wounds without another word between them. The only communication that took place was a reassuring pat to James’s shoulder from Al, and a discreet wink from James. Mission accomplished. All in a day’s work.
Back in his old asylum clothes, James limped his way out of the casino. His pockets held a miniature tin of tablets that Al had given him for pain, and a crumpled, bloody, one-dollar bill. He looked forward to getting rid of the bill.
To James’s surprise, the cocktail waitress still waited at her station. She should have been gone by now. It would be in her nature, James thought, to wait around for him to leave so she could collect his tips. After what he’d been through, he wasn’t in the mood to play stupid. But his knowledge of the bigger picture kept him focused. That, and his slinky.
Still, although he had to keep up appearances on the outside, in his mind he was free to think and speak without filters. And when the waitress eyed him expectantly, he thought: That’s right, bitch. I have your bloody tip!
James dropped the bill, still sticky with blood, by her hands on the workstation. The red matched her nails. “James has bad day,” he said. “James sorrys.” Not! He hung his head lest he crack a smile.
Disgusted, she picked up the bill with a cocktail napkin and deposited it in the trash. As greedy as she was, he was surprised she threw it away. “Unacceptable,” she said. “After such a promising start, this is how you finish the day?” She shook her head at him, showing not an ounce of concern for his fresh bruises. “You’re going to have to do better than that if you want to keep your job.”
“James tries harders,” he said.
“You damn well better.” She plucked a flimsy plastic bag from a box next to a row of drink condiments. “You like cherries?” she asked.
James nodded.
She placed two long-stemmed cherries into the bag and dropped them into a brown paper sack she pulled from a lower shelf. She folded the top of the sack over and handed it to him. “Here’s two cherries for the work you did today. Do good, and you get more cherries.”
“Okays. James like cherries!” James thought the blood boiling inside him might erupt through his pores.
“Now don’t open that until you get home. I mean it,” she warned.
“Yeses,” James said fearfully. She certainly enjoyed being a mean “it.” He wouldn’t put it past her to follow him to the Box to make sure he did as he was told.
As he turned to leave, she yelled at his back, “Remember, tomorrow dawns a new day!”
Her words hit him like a pitchfork skewering his soul. That vile, nasty witch had cast an evil curse upon him with that reminder of his loss. He brooded all the way back to the Box.
***
Linda let him in. “James, what happened to your face?”
“Bad days. James tired.” He kept trudging to his dorm.
Tina bolted from the couch and gave him a hug. “James! Come see! Come see! Come see!” She tugged at his hand to take him to the quad.
“What see?” he asked.
She pointed at Teeka’s rose. The bud had opened during his absence, and in the waning light, he detected a vibrant red emerging. A beautiful flower patiently waiting to bloom.
James hunched to examine it. “Pretty,” he said.
Tina touched his face lightly. “Oooooh,” she cooed. “What happened?”
“James trip. Fall downs.” He shrugged. She didn’t need to know anything more than that. As he had once protected Mykl, he would now protect her. Her spirit deserved a chance to bloom as well. He had a plan.
Tina adopted an attitude far too serious for her size. She pointed at him sharply. “You need to be more careful! You should go to bed right now!” She stared up at him with hands on her hips.
If it weren’t for the sting seeping through the fading dose of painkiller, he would have laughed at her preposterous posturing. “Yes, Teenas,” he said. “James go sleepytimes.” She had drawn a smile out of him that he was hard pressed to suppress.
As soon as James had closed the door to his room, he gulped down two of Al’s tablets. He sat on his bunk and stared at the paper sack in his lap, torn by competing desires: on the one hand, he wanted to throw it away; on the other hand, he actually liked cherries. The cherries won.
He opened the sack and reached for the bag inside. But he felt something else in the sack. An envelope. The small kind used for distributing tips. Could she be returning a share of his earnings? Unlikely—and if she was, he was certain it wasn’t very much.
He opened the envelope, and a thunderbolt of guilt hit him squarely in the chest.
The envelope contained a crumpled letter and a lock of hair.
He held it to his heart. Tears stung his eyes. He lay back on the bunk and instantly regretted doing so. Rolling to his side, he reread Dawn’s letter. Her lock of hair still smelled of jasmine.
He secured them both back into the envelope. It was obvious now that he didn’t hold a monopoly on deception. Only one possibility explained this miracle: the cocktail waitress was an agent. If Jack’s people were able to build an underground c
ity of diamond, then they certainly possessed the technology to track objects thrown from a balcony one hundred stories high. And she had retrieved this particular object.
Her position probably allowed her to track the goings-on of the entire casino, like Al did with the hotel. Her name fit her so well. She came off as thorny and painful to be near, but James knew now that in reality, she must contain a beauty she rarely showed.
Even in pain, James steeled his resolve to do his part to help bring about a world where such beauty need never be hidden. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to use her name before. Now he would never forget it. Ever.
CHAPTER 67
Somewhere west of DC. That was all the president could be sure of regarding his location. A pair of military men in battle fatigues had shepherded him and a couple of trusted Secret Service agents to a rarely used northwest tunnel leading away from the West Wing. They had emerged unseen from a Civil War soldier’s tomb at Oak Hill Cemetery. A sporty private helicopter had met them not one hundred feet away and taken them to a light prop plane on an abandoned airstrip overgrown with weeds. After several hours, that plane had bounced to a landing on a bumpy meadow, where two men in combat fatigues—twins, oddly enough—emerged from vehicles camouflaged to match the natural surroundings. It took another three hours of travel on bumpy, monotonous, neck-jarring roads before the president was finally able to stretch his legs on solid ground, and a half-hour hike through dense trees to a hunting cabin.
Now the president rubbed his neck as he surveyed the layers of dirt and decomposing leaves gradually composting the building from the ground up. But to his surprise, they didn’t enter the cabin. Instead, they led him around the back to a detached root cellar dug into a hill. A pair of moles scurried away when the door was opened.
The cellar’s stale air smelled of wet, rotting leaves. There was no hint of human presence. One of the men in uniform held a featureless black device the size of his fist up to an empty shelf on the back wall. Whirring and grinding noises issued from some hidden mechanical device on the other side, then both military men planted their feet and shoved hard to get the wall to swing back.
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