by Michael Todd
The rest of the board members exchanged looks and a few private conversations before the man who had spoken before stood.
“Well, the official vote on the contract will be held tomorrow, but I think I can save us all some time and mark it down as a pass for renewing the contract for another year?”
One by one, each of the board members gave their assent.
Courtney nodded and leaned back in her seat.
“That said, we still need to show our shareholders that we’ve trimmed the fat due to our last quarter’s poor numbers,” the man continued. “And with Dr. Monroe’s project left in the clear, we still need to find a section where we can safely cut on costs and not affect our profit margin for the next quarter.”
She nodded and let him waffle on. While she understood the concept of budget cuts and ‘trimming the fat,’ as the man had stated, it was completely out of her realm of expertise. She had essentially only come to this meeting to make sure that her father’s research wasn’t shut down. After that, she really didn’t know enough about anything to be able to make any kind of worthwhile impact.
That was what Robinson was there for, she thought with a smile.
“So,” Courtney said as they finally adjourned the meeting for lunch, “high school quarterback?”
Robinson looked up from his papers. “What was that?”
“You look like you would have been your high school’s quarterback,” she said with a smile.
“The school I went to didn’t have a football team, unfortunately,” he said. “I ended up taking part in a lot of other sports, though, and even picked up a couple of Olympic sports. Wrestling, boxing, judo, the works. Even though my parents made sure that I stayed away from a career in sports to get a couple of degrees in business, I still continue to practice. It’s a good way to stay in shape and blow off some steam.”
“No offense,” she said and regarded him with a speculative look as they headed back to her office, “but you don’t look like you did much boxing. I’ve met a couple of boxers along the way, and they all had tell-tale marks. Usually lots of scar tissue on the cheekbones and eyebrows, broken noses, and sometimes even the cauliflower ear…thing.”
“Oh, right.” Robinson chuckled. “Yeah, my strength always lay in weaving with great skill and enthusiasm to keep from taking too many blows. Plus, I got out of the competitive side of it before too much damage could be done. Which, between you and me, is probably why my mother was the one who insisted that I not take up sports as a way to make a living.”
“Your mother sounds like a smart woman.” Courtney noted a ring on his wedding finger and shook her head with mock regret. “Well, I guess that all the pretty ones are taken. How long have you been married?”
“Oh!” He grinned as he glanced down at the silver band on his finger. “Yeah, we’ve been married for three years now. We actually celebrated our anniversary a couple of weeks ago. You know, the third year is crystal, so I got him a nice little crystal tiara as a joke.”
“Him?”
“Yes. I hope that won’t be a problem. I remember how my parents reacted to the news. Mom was a little more supportive, but my dad is very conservative, even in this day and age. He actually refused to attend the wedding.”
“Of course it’s not an issue.” She waved a hand dismissively. “Like you said, in this day and age, who people marry is entirely their business. So far, you’ve shown yourself to be a competent and professional assistant, even for someone like me.”
“Well, in your defense, you are rather competent for an absentee boss,” he said and his laugh was slightly teasing. “How about you, though? I can’t imagine that you had much time for dating during your time out there in the Zoo, but is there anyone special in your life?”
“Well, I made some friends out there,” Courtney said noncommittally.
“I know there’s a lot more to that,” Robinson said as they reached the elevators, “but I also know that it would be unprofessional of me to pry. Since you seem to think that I’m a great professional, I wouldn’t want to step all over that first impression of yours.”
“Well, as I recall, my first impression was you calling me a bitch over the phone,” she said with a grin. “So you’ve already climbed upward from that.”
“I’m…so, so sorry about that, by the way,” he said and looked away. A quick glance at him confirmed noticeable traces of red visible in his cheeks.
“Don’t worry about it.” She laughed. “I’ve been called a lot worse to my face.”
“Still, though—”
“All is forgiven, don’t you worry.” They stepped into the elevator and there was a short and somewhat awkward silence she felt she needed to break. “Regarding your unasked question…well, there’s a guy. He’s sharp, a scientist, so a little like me, but…well, he’s young and enthusiastic and passionate about everything. He takes risks. He’s…odd too, but sometimes, that makes him even more interesting.”
“It seems more like you have a crush on this guy,” Robinson said. “Did you ever tell him how you feel?”
“Well, yeah, and we even slept together from time to time,” Courtney admitted. “But…there was another woman involved too, which made things more complicated than I would have liked.”
“Oh…interesting.” Her companion raised his eyebrows. “Who is she?”
“Well, technically, I guess I’m the other woman,” she clarified. “But that’s a whole other story for a whole other time. Now, there was something that you wanted to run over with me during lunch?”
“Right,” he said briskly and returned his attention to the files he carried. “They will cover your meeting with the IRS this afternoon, so you might want to have a look at what was actually agreed on. Now, the board members won’t be very happy that you opened up on the expense accounts, but once you explain that they were used inappropriately by people who have already been fired, I think they’ll agree that it’s best that we don’t handle this investigation internally. We don’t want it to seem like we’re keeping anything under wraps when it comes time to open our books for that audit that you mentioned.”
“Right.” Courtney nodded. “And I assume that those words will have to come from me instead of you when I tell the board about it, right? So how do I thank you for doing all this work for me again?”
“Well, you will pick the lunch tab up out of your own pocket,” he said lightly. “And I’m having the lobster.”
“Fair enough.” She chuckled but paused as her phone buzzed in her pocket. “You go on ahead and bring the car around. I’ll be right with you.”
Robinson nodded and made his way toward the revolving doors of the building as she retrieved the phone. The call came from a blocked number, and while Courtney wanted to avoid any unknowns, she needed to step up in her position there, which meant no more dodging calls.
“Dr. Monroe speaking,” she said into the speaker.
“Remember me, Doctor?” a very familiar voice said through the phone.
“Covington,” she said, and a small smile teased at her lips. “How could I forget? Is there any chance that you got my message?”
“Your message was received, Doctor,” the woman responded waspishly. “I see your cow head, and I’ll raise you the skull of a friend. There’s nowhere on this planet I can’t reach.”
The call cut off quickly and Courtney looked at the phone, her head tilted in thought as her mind raced. The number was still blocked, which told her that it came from a pre-paid phone—more commonly referred to as a burner phone—which allowed the woman to call her without leaving a trail of evidence that led back to her. It was probably an older phone, too, and lacked any kind of GPS tracking that would allow her to identify where the call came from.
There really wasn’t any point in reporting the call, she decided as her car pulled up in front of the building. It wasn’t as if what she’d done was any kind of legal, and considering the fact that the police still had her on their radar ov
er how she’d handled her home invasion, she didn’t want to give them any more ammunition to use against her.
That said, it didn’t mean that she didn’t have any other resources she could fall back on. She could contact the lawyer who had helped her out with the police the first time. And it wasn’t like she didn’t have friends of her own.
As she moved out of the building, she dialed in a long number that she’d committed to memory—one that had helped her manage herself in these tough times over the past couple of months.
It went directly to the voicemail machine.
“Do your thing when you hear the beep,” said the recorded voice of one Salinger Jacobs. She smiled for a moment before the tone sounded.
“Hey, Sal, it’s Courtney,” she said in an unintentionally soft voice. “I hope things are going well with you guys. I’ve…I’ve missed you and Madigan, and even Gutierrez a little. I wanted to let you know that I’ve landed myself in a little trouble during my time here—the kind that might unfortunately rebound onto you guys. I’m trying to handle it on my end, but you might want to keep an eye out for trouble. Extra trouble, that is. Anyway, I have to go, so…call me later?”
She ended the call as she made her way to the car and avoided Robinson’s eye as she slid in beside him.
“Who was that?” he asked, tilting his head.
“I needed to contact some of my business partners back in the Zoo,” she said and forced a smile. “I helped to start a company called Heavy Metal back there and I still have some responsibilities.”
“Heavy Metal?” he asked as they started driving away.
“I think it needs to be said that while I helped to start the company, the name happened before I actually joined them,” Courtney explained.
“I wasn’t judging,” Robinson said with a shrug. “I think it’s clever. I’ve seen some of the armor that they use out there on those videos that they put on ZooTube, and…well, you know, Heavy Metal makes sense.”
She tilted her head in confusion. “Hold on. ZooTube?”
“Oh. Remind me to show you some of the stuff they have up there when we’re finished looking over the paperwork,” he said and grinned. “It’ll blow your mind.”
“I bet you’re wrong,” she murmured, her gaze turned toward the tinted windows.
Chapter Five
Sal looked at his phone and drew in a deep, slow breath. He’d played the message a couple of times, mainly because the first time had been blocked out by his elation at hearing Courtney’s voice again. She’d said that she was in some kind of trouble, so he had to pay her the respect of treating that trouble with as much attention as he could muster. That, in turn, meant that he had to get over his overreaction from hearing from her after a month of radio silence before calling her back.
She had said that he was the one who was supposed to call back, right? He thought she had, but there couldn’t be any harm in double-checking in case.
He listened to her message again and made sure, this time, that she wanted him to call her before he dialed her number and waited as the tone took a while to connect. They were on the other side of the planet, after all, and not everything was instant these days, as much as people wanted it to be.
“Hello, this is Dr. Monroe’s phone, how can I help you?” said a man’s voice on the other side.
“Hi. I’d like to speak with Dr. Monroe, please,” Sal replied and tried not to show his surprise that a man had answered Courtney’s phone. “It’s about a message that she left me about an hour ago.”
“And who might I say is calling?”
The guy who’s pissed off by your questions. “Salinger Jacobs, returning an earlier call.”
“Who is it?” Sal heard her voice in the background.
“Someone called Salinger Jacobs,” the man said. Sal winced as a scuffle sounded on the other end, followed by a few muttered curses before the noise stopped for a second. He wondered if the line had gone dead.
“Hey, Sal,” Courtney said and sounded a little breathless. “How’s it going there? Any new monsters that I’m missing out on?”
“You don’t know the half of it,” he said blithely. “Who was that on your phone?”
“Oh, right, that’s Allen Robinson.” She laughed. Sal knew he was the last person in the world who had any right to feel jealous, but he couldn’t help a tiny little twinge.
“New boyfriend?” he asked curiously but tried to make it sound casual.
“Hell no,” she said and chuckled. “He’s an assistant my company saddled me with so that I didn’t have to show up for work every day.”
“That sounds like fun,” he replied, still determined to sound light-hearted.
“And he’s gay,” she added, “so nothing like that happening around here.”
“Right.” He felt considerably more relieved.
Get your shit together. This isn’t high school. There’s no need to create drama right now.
“Anyway,” Sal said and broke the awkward silence that ensued. “Sorry, the conversation went a little off-track there.”
“No problem. How are Madigan and Amanda?”
“They’re doing pretty well,” Sal replied. “We’re all settled at the compound now. And we have a new member to the group too. Anja, an IT expert from Russia, has helped us investigate a couple of leads regarding what some other people are doing around here.”
“Oh, interesting,” Courtney said and frowned a little as Robinson returned his attention to the paperwork that they would discuss in the afternoon. “I’d ask you to go into more detail, but that could take a while and it has to be pretty late for you. Besides, we do have some things we need to discuss.”
She laid out what had happened to her since he and Madigan had gone back but carefully avoided the topic of a cow’s head. He might be a little odd, as she’d said, but she doubted that he would see it in the same light as she had. It wasn’t like it was important, anyway. She had needed to send a message, and by the looks of things, the message had been well received.
“That sounds like a tough couple of weeks,” he said once she brought her tale to an end. “How much do you know about running a company like that? I mean, I’m running a company too, but that’s barely comparable, right?”
“You have no idea,” she agreed feelingly. “That’s why the members of the board put Robinson on me—to make sure I don’t fuck any of their money-making schemes up.”
“Well, it sounds like you’re in some good hands.”
“I like to think so,” Courtney replied. “But…again, back to the topic at hand. Covington—or Billionaire Bitch as I’ve taken to calling her in my head—said something that might be seen as a threat to you guys. I’m not sure what to make of it, or her, but you and Madigan are the only real friends I have left anymore. I wanted to give you a heads-up in case she has the kind of pull to cause you trouble there in the Zoo.”
Sal drew in a deep breath. “We’ve made our own share of frenemies around here, but I’ll make sure that we’re doubly careful. You should do the same. Have you thought about maybe getting some security for your house or something?”
“I’m working on that,” she lied. “My dad made the house a fortress, so I’m already damn well protected.”
“Good. You be careful. And if you need help, call and Heavy Metal will come running.”
She laughed. “Thanks, Sal. It’s good to know that I still have you guys watching my back.”
“Always,” he replied. “I need to go. Call me if anything comes up.”
“Promise. It was nice talking to you again, Sal. I might call you even if nothing comes up.”
“You do that. Good night, Courtney. Be safe.”
“You too,” she replied, and they both took a second before hanging up. Sal didn’t want to become a walking cliché and tell her to hang up first, but the impulse had been there. He shook his head, pushed up from his bed, and wandered out of his room. It was late, but he wouldn’t be able to sleep ye
t. He paused to get some cold coffee from the kitchen before he shuffled into the living room, where Madigan worked on her laptop.
“Our little friend keeps changing the wi-fi password,” she muttered at him when he sat down beside her. “Seriously, I know there are security issues, but how in the hell can the wi-fi password be a problem? We’ll know if they come in close enough to use it anyway, and by that time, we’ll use guns and armor, not firewalls. Oh, maybe a literal wall of fire?”
“Put it in the suggestion box,” Sal said with a straight face.
“We have a suggestion box?” She raised her eyebrows.
“Not yet, but suggest it and I might put one up,” he retorted with a cheeky grin. “Anyway, I had a chat with Courtney. It looks like she’s about as good at making friends over there as we are here and said that we could perhaps expect some extra trouble to come our way over the next couple of weeks.”
“They’ll have to get in line,” Madigan grumbled. “Did you tell her about how unsuccessful our attempts were to find someone to fill her shoes? And the body count of specialists that we’ve put up in her absence?”
“I didn’t want it to seem like I tried to guilt her into coming back, so no,” he replied and took a deep breath.
They looked up as Amanda and Anja both entered the kitchen area. They seemed to be in good spirits, with the armorer teaching her companion how to curse in Spanish and the other girl teaching her how to do the same in Russian. Sal waved them over to join him and Madigan.
“What’s up, boss?” Amanda asked and grinned cheerfully as she dropped onto the beanbag. Anja chose one of the vacant couches and sat with her feet tucked under her legs as she looked at him.
“Nothing much,” he replied. “We had news of some new enemies coming at us from all sides and wanted to make sure that we’ve not left anywhere exposed. Anja, how’s it going with the cybersecurity? Do you need anything else?”
She looked almost surprised at having her name called. “No, not really. I have all the hardware I need. I’ve sent the people who tried to find us on a merry chase around the world, so it should be a while before I need to update the VPNs. There are a couple of different parties following the trail, so I’ve used the opportunity to backtrack them and find out who they are and what they’re doing. It’s slow going, but this way, I won’t get caught while snooping around.”
