No Living Soul

by Julie Moffett

  He strode over to me, leaning down so his nose almost touched mine. “Don’t push me.”

  Elvis nudged me, warning me to stop talking. But I was mad. Couldn’t I go anywhere these days without being accosted by some nutcase with a weapon?

  “I wasn’t being pushy. The question was genuine. I’m not very good at reading between the lines.”

  He gave me a long, hard stare, then circled around the swivel chairs. It sounded like he stopped in front of Elvis.

  “It’s pretty simple. Hand over the package from your father and I cut you both free. No one gets hurt.”

  Elvis’s father?

  That couldn’t be right. Elvis and Xavier had been estranged from their father for ages. They never talked about him, not even to me.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Elvis said. But the way he said it made me wonder.

  “I know he mailed you a package,” the intruder said. “You already started the experiment, didn’t you?”

  Experiment? I tried to twist in my seat so I could see what was going on, but it only made the chair move.

  The guy stuck out his foot to keep the chair from rolling. “Do that again and I’ll shoot you on principle,” he snapped.

  When Elvis didn’t respond, his voice grew rough. “So, your answer means we do it the hard way. Starting with her. On the count of three.”

  He walked back into view and stood in front of me. I swallowed hard.

  “I’ll pop her in the kneecap first,” he said. “There’s sufficient pain and usually a lot of screaming, but she shouldn’t die or bleed out right away. That gives me plenty of time to shoot her other kneecap, followed by random other body parts, just in case you don’t think I’m serious.”

  “Hey!” I said as indignantly as I could muster, given that my heart was galloping like a group of geeks rushing the minifridge for the last Mountain Dew.

  “Leave her out of this,” Elvis shouted. “She doesn’t know anything.”

  He raised the gun, pointing it at my knee. “One.”

  I brushed my fingers against Elvis’s, then started to recite Fermat’s Theorem in my head.

  Let N be the set of natural numbers such as 1, 2, 3...let Z be the set of integers 0, +1, +2...

  “Stop,” Elvis said to the man, desperation creeping into his voice. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with. You won’t understand.”

  “Two.”

  I looked at my knees, which were shaking, and then back at the guy with the gun. “Don’t I get a say in this?”

  “You know where the package is?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then both of you had better understand I don’t care what I have to do to get it. This is your last chance. Give me the package or she loses her knees. Your choice.”

  “Okay, okay!” Elvis said in a rush. “You can have it. If you’ll let me loose, I’ll retrieve it. But I guarantee you’ll have a hard time figuring it out.”

  “Not my problem. Not my job.”

  “Package? Your father? Elvis, what’s going on?” I tried unsuccessfully to twist around again and our chairs scooted a bit across the floor. The guy stuck out a foot to stop us and glared at me.

  “Do you ever follow directions?” he asked.

  I shrugged the best I could, considering my arms were duct-taped behind my back. “You heard from your father? Really?”

  “Really. If he’ll let me loose, I’ll get him what he wants.”

  To my everlasting relief, the guy lowered the gun from my kneecap. “How about you tell me where the package is instead?”

  Before Elvis could respond, the doorbell rang.

  Frowning, he looked between us. “Expecting someone?”

  “Not me,” I offered. “Then again, I don’t live here.”

  He approached the door, gun out, then peered through the peephole. “Pizza?” He looked at Elvis. “You ordered a pizza?”

  “I was hungry,” Elvis said. “Just pay him and he’ll go away.”

  The doorbell rang again.

  “Sod off,” he shouted through the door. “We don’t want the pizza anymore.”

  “Oh, man, don’t do this,” the pizza guy yelled. “Cut me a break. You’ll be the third customer today to stiff me. My boss will fire me.”

  “Not my problem,” the intruder said. “Get lost.”

  “You better open up.” Pizza guy pounded on the door. “I’m going call the cops if you don’t. You’re interfering with my livelihood.”

  The guy stiffened at the word cops. “Fine,” he said between gritted teeth. “How much?”

  “Twelve bucks, plus a tip for me. Three extra bucks should cover it.”

  The guy pulled out his wallet and extracted some bills. “You can forget about your bloody tip.” He opened the door a crack, pushing the bills out. “Leave the pizza on the porch and I’ll—”

  He didn’t finish his sentence as a gun slid through the crack, pressing against his forehead. At that same moment a side window in the living room shattered and someone with a hood and dressed all in black rolled in and came to a crouch, gun out.

  “Drop your weapon nice and easy,” the man from the living room said. “One chance only.”

  The intruder stepped back, dropping the gun as several guys muscled in through the front door, pressing him against the wall and cuffing him. I recognized them as the two FBI agents on Slash’s protection detail. That meant the guy who had come through the window was...

  Slash!

  My boyfriend turned toward me, pulling off the hood as shards of glass slid off his jacket and onto the floor. He strode to my side, taking a knife from his boot and slicing the duct tape around mine and Elvis’s wrists. “Are you hurt, cara?”

  “No, thank goodness.” I stood, rubbing my wrists and wincing at the tender spots rubbed raw from the tape.

  “How about you, Elvis?” he asked.

  “I’m good, too. Thanks, man.”

  Slash looked around. “Where’s Xavier?”

  “At Basia’s place,” Elvis said. “Thankfully he missed this little party.”

  “Yeah, lucky him.” I touched Slash’s arm. “How did you know what was going on?”

  “Would you believe I’m mysteriously in tune with you?”

  “Sometimes I wonder. But the real answer is...?”

  He smiled and kissed me on the cheek. “The real answer is Elvis invited me here, too. I got your text and arrived just in time to see this guy push his way into Elvis’s house behind you. I alerted my tail and we quickly parked and reconnoitered. When I saw he had a gun, Shavis here alerted the authorities.” He jerked his head toward one of the FBI agents. “We weren’t going to act until the police arrived, but from what I could see from the window, things were going down fast. We devised a plan to use the pizza box from Shavis’s car to distract the gunman at the front door while I came at him from another angle. Sorry about the window, Elvis.”

  “No problem, dude. It was totally worth it. Thanks so much.”

  I looked at Elvis. “How did you know about the pizza thing? You didn’t order a pizza.”

  “No, I didn’t. But Slash motioned to me through the window. Well, I wasn’t sure it was Slash at the time, but statistically the odds were high since I’d invited him over, too. I wasn’t sure how much he knew of what was going on in the house, but I went with it because the situation was getting dire.”

  “That’s no kidding. He was going to shoot my kneecap.”

  “Yep. That totally qualifies as dire.” Elvis blew out a breath. “It was close. Too close.”

  Slash pulled me into a one-armed hug just as two policemen entered the house. One of the FBI agents filled them in on the events before one of them led the intruder out in cuffs. The
other policeman took brief statements from Elvis and me and left.

  Once they were gone, Slash walked over to me. “So, what did the guy with the gun want?”

  I glanced at Elvis, waiting for him to answer, but he wandered over to a small side table and stared at some plants that had been arranged inside a mini greenhouse with special lamps. I hadn’t noticed the plants there before and it kind of surprised me because while Elvis was a genius at the keyboard, his gardening skills were on par with mine. Which meant we both had black, not green, thumbs.

  I turned my attention back to Slash. “I don’t know who he was, but he wanted a package Elvis’s father had sent him.”

  Slash raised an eyebrow. “Elvis’s father?”

  I lowered my voice. “Yes.” I couldn’t say more because at this point I didn’t really know anything else. I wasn’t even sure if it were true. Maybe Elvis had said it just to keep me from being shot.

  Finally, Elvis turned around. “The guy was right. My father sent me a package. Come here, both of you. That’s why I asked you over. I want to show you something.”

  Chapter Three

  We joined Elvis at the mini greenhouse. For a moment we stood side-by-side, staring at the plants through the small greenhouse structure. I counted four plants, all looking green, robust and totally ordinary. Although given my miniscule experience with plants, they could be something extraordinary and I wouldn’t have a clue.

  After a moment of silence, I spoke. “Okay, Elvis, what the heck is going on? Why am I looking at plants?”

  “It’s kind of a long story.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him to spill when the doorbell rang. Slash slipped his hand beneath his jacket and approached the door warily.

  “Maybe the police forgot something,” I said.

  Slash peered out the peephole. “No. It’s a female in her twenties, shoulder-length ginger hair. She’s carrying a lot of books.”

  Elvis spoke up. “Let her in, Slash. She’s invited to the party, too.”

  Slash stepped back and opened the door. He stayed concealed in the shadows, his hand beneath his jacket. The young woman bounded in, her gaze instantly falling on me.

  “Lexi Carmichael?” Her eyes widened. “Oh. My. God. I can’t even.”

  “Can’t even what?” I frowned. “Do I know you?”

  I studied her face but came up blank. I was sure I hadn’t met her before. The rare combination of red hair, lots of freckles and bright blue eyes ensured she was someone I would have remembered. Especially since red hair and blue eyes are a significant statistical anomaly, with less than one percent of the world’s population having that combination.

  “No, of course you wouldn’t know me.” Her cheeks flushed. It was especially pronounced on her pale skin. “I’m just not prepared for this meeting. Not that this is a meeting. It’s a chance encounter. Totally unexpected. Well, not that unexpected seeing as how you’re good friends with Elvis. But I didn’t know you’d be here, as in right now. He didn’t tell me. All of which leads to the fact I can’t believe I’m finally meeting you in person and I don’t know what to say.”

  She seemed to be talking a lot for someone who didn’t know what to say. I glanced at Elvis for help, but he’d gone back to staring at the plants.

  I searched for a response. “Apparently you have me at a disadvantage. You are...?”

  “Gwen Sinclair.” The young woman fumbled with her books, trying to shift them to one arm so she could shake hands with me, nearly dropping the lot. I grabbed one just as it slid out of her grasp.

  She took it from me gratefully and then thrust out a hand, which I shook. “I’m sorry, Lexi. It’s just...well, I saw you on television when you were on that reality show. Then you were trapped in the high school with my kid sister. Elvis told me about how you rescued him from terrorists in Somalia and then, OMG, the plane crash. I heard firsthand how you saved the microchip. My God, now I’m babbling. I’m a big fan. Not in a psycho-stalker kind of way because that would be too creepy. Just in a regular fangirl kind of way.” The flush deepened. “I’m Elvis’s microbiologist.”

  It took me several seconds to digest all that before I asked, “Elvis has a microbiologist?”

  Slash closed the door behind her with a thump. Gwen whirled around, letting out a high-pitched screech and spilling her books across the floor. “Oh my goodness. You nearly scared me to death. You were so quiet I didn’t even know you were there.”

  I bent to help her retrieve the books. “Gwen, that’s Slash.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “Slash? OMG. I’m meeting Slash in person? I wondered if he even existed.”

  Slash lifted an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.

  I rolled my eyes at him from across the room. “Slash, meet Elvis’s...microbiologist.”

  Gwen seemed to come to her senses and knelt down next to me, trying frantically to gather the rest of the books and scattered papers. “I’m also his biochemist. Well, not his biochemist. Just a biochemist. I’m helping him out with this situation.”

  “What situation?” I tried to keep the exasperation out of my voice. As I straightened, holding an armful of her books, I glanced at the titles. Pathological Diseases, Epidemic Modeling and Structural Biochemistry.

  Elvis finally spoke. “Gwen is helping me with an experiment. That’s why I asked you guys over.”

  “You guys are totally going to freak out,” Gwen said. “Wow. I get to freak out Lexi Carmichael and Slash. How cool is that?”

  Honestly, I was already freaked out. Elvis was my best friend. I usually knew everything going on with him. But for some reason, he hadn’t told me his father had contacted him or that he’d started a mysterious experiment. But apparently, he’d shared all of these highly personal things with Gwen, a woman I’d never heard Elvis mention once in all the time I’d known him.

  In turn, that made me wonder if Elvis’s girlfriend, Bonnie, knew about Gwen, the experiment, and the recent contact from his father. I understood Elvis could tell his secrets to whomever he chose, but the fact that he had shared these sensitive matters with Gwen and not me, and possibly not even his girlfriend, seemed somehow significant.

  I frowned, putting my hands on my hips and looking sternly at Elvis. “Okay. Spill already.”

  He had the decency to look a bit chagrined. “Let’s all sit down first, okay?” He waved to the couch.

  We headed that way when Gwen noticed the broken window. “Elvis, what happened to your window?”

  “It’s a long story,” Elvis replied. “I’ll fill you in later. Let’s tell them what we discovered first, okay?”

  Gwen nodded, then walked carefully around the glass on the floor.

  After setting Gwen’s books on an empty space on one corner of the coffee table, I sat down. Slash sat next to me on the couch, while Gwen and Elvis settled in two adjacent armchairs facing us.

  “Gwen is a colleague from ComQuest,” Elvis started, leaning forward and resting his hands on his knees. “She helped Xavier and me design the microfluid used in the development of the chip we recently deployed for manufacturing in Indonesia. The same one you helped deliver, Lexi.”

  I studied Gwen. “You’re a microbiologist at ComQuest?”

  “Yes. It’s been really nice working with Elvis. I’ve always wanted to meet you, too, Lexi. I’ve heard so much about you. And now I finally have. Yay.” She gave a little squeal. “Except I wasn’t prepared to meet you today, although I should have been because I know you often hang out here with Elvis and his brother. God, I’m babbling again, so you probably think I’m a total dork. It’s cool being a part of your fandom, but it’s a lot more nerve-racking to meet you in person.”

  I blinked. “My...what?”

  “Didn’t you tell her?” Gwen frowned at Elvis.

  Elvis looke
d at me, suddenly nervous. “Ah, it may have slipped my mind.”

  “You have an online following, Lexi,” Gwen explained. “A fan forum and group. It started out small—mostly kids from the high school you saved, but we now have two hundred and eleven members, including six foreigners. The network is putting out reruns from that reality television series you were on, so people have been joining your fandom left and right lately. Two members are from Canada, two from Australia, one from South Africa and one from Japan. The rest are American. It’s pretty cool. We call ourselves the Lexicons.”

  I stared at her speechless and more than a little appalled.

  Gwen fidgeted, apparently not expecting my reaction. “Well, anyway, that fandom stuff really isn’t a part of this conversation and, apparently, it’s totally awkward. So let’s leave it behind.”

  “Forever,” I suggested.

  She smiled brightly. “Sure.”

  I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat. Holy cow. I had no desire to be the object of anyone’s fandom. Ever.

  Better to get things back on track. “So, Gwen, how does your work at ComQuest fit in with Elvis, those plants, and the secret experiment?”

  “Well, that’s the thing,” Elvis said. “Just over a month ago I got this package from my father—”

  “A month?” I interrupted.

  His cheeks turned red. “Well, yeah. I, ah, didn’t tell anyone at first because it was such a shock.”

  That’s no kidding. I didn’t know what exactly had happened with their father, but I did know their mother lived in a nearby health care facility with some kind of dementia. She and I got along great.

  He avoided my stare, probably because he felt guilty. “Anyway, I needed help with the microbiology aspect, so I asked Gwen. She helped me figure out what my dad’s package was all about.” He gave Gwen a shy smile and she smiled back.

  What the heck was going on? Was Gwen now fangirling on Elvis or was this something else? And was he liking it?

  Elvis dared a quick glance at me and cleared his throat. Slash seemed to sense my tension, because he put a hand on my arm. I took a breath and told myself to take it easy. Talking about his father was obviously a difficult thing for Elvis and I needed to help, not hinder him, as he got through this.