From Prey to Precious

A Little About Rachel

Brian’s POV:

I fix Vincent with a level stare as I wait for him to continue.  But all he does is sit there with that maniacal grin on his face.  I begin to tap my fingers against my knee in impatience as I wait for Vincent to start talking.

Vincent chuckles a little as he sits back in his chair and places his folded hands in his lap. “Everything huh?  Well I know you think I’m omnipotent, but even I don’t know everything.”

I give an exasperated sigh and glare at Vincent across the desk.  “Vincent, I’m serious. You might not know everything, but right now you definitely know more than me.  Let’s start with something easy, how about the name of the person who did the work on my bike?”

Vincent shrugs a little as he reaches to the corner of the desk and grabs another cigarette out of his pack. “Alright. Her name is Rachel Langston.”

I nod slightly cataloging the information away.  I’ll have to give Darci the name and see what she can dig up on her.

He takes another drag off of the cigarette and then carelessly flicks the ashes onto the floor.  “So is that all you wanted to know? Just her name?” Vincent asks as he raises an eyebrow and gives me another one of those infuriating smirks of his.

I give a small grunt as I lean forward and pinch the bridge of my nose as I mentally count to ten.  I know that he’s doing this on purpose.  I know that he’s doing it just to get a rise out of me.  But it doesn’t help at the moment.

“Ok,” I sigh, “fine.  Where did you find her? Someone with talent like that couldn’t have just wandered in from off the street,” I say as I throw my hands up in the air in frustration.

Vincent gives me another chuckle before he answers. “Actually, that’s exactly what happened.  Rachel literally just walked in off the street about… 5 maybe 6 years ago now.  No experience just needed a job. So, I let her work the counter.  But I kept catching her in the back of the garage watching the mechanics and taking notes.  One time, one of the boys had been taking a class at the local community college and he left his textbook on motorcycle engines at the garage. I caught Rachel going through it, making notes, and occasionally looking at the motorcycles that we had in the garage. I figured she’d get bored after a week or so, but I was wrong.  If anything, her obsession with motorcycles actually got worse.  About a month after the book incident, I caught her actually trying to repair one of the bikes in the garage. When I reprimanded her about it, do you know what she told me?”

“What?” I ask, not really seeing the point in this little diatribe.

Vincent leaned forward slightly and in a conspiratorial whisper, “She said, ‘I figured it would be better to ask forgiveness, than permission’.  Now does that sound familiar to you at all?”

I give a small chuckle and reply sarcastically, “No, not at all.”

My elder lets out a small chuckle before flicking more ash onto the floor. “Yeah, just like you,” he says softly as his eyes begin to lose focus as he thinks back on days gone by. “It was shortly after that I realized just how bad of a situation, she was in.  She was on the run from an abusive relationship, poor thing was black and blue with bruises.  She wasn’t eating much, she was all skin and bones and to top it off, she didn’t have anywhere to stay and I found out she’d been using a slim jim to break into the cars on the lot, waiting for repair so she wouldn’t have to sleep outside.

“Even then I could see her potential.  But I knew that unless something changed, I’d come in one night to find her missing or dead.  So, I made a few calls and got her set up with a cheap apartment, made sure she had a few hot meals a few times a week. All anonymous of course.  She’s stubborn and refuses to take any type of charity. 

“I thought about making her one of my human servant’s but,” Vincent shrugs as he looks back up at me, “I honestly hate keeping human servants. Animals are much easier to deal with. But anyway, eventually I started letting her stay after her shifts and pick the mechanic’s brains. Every single one would report back to me and tell me how bright she was and how quickly she caught on to things. So when I found out that she didn’t have any wheels, I asked her if she’d be interested in restoring one of the junked bikes we kept around for spare parts.  I told her that if she was able to fully restore it, I’d let her work in the garage proper. Needless to say, she’s been one of my best employees ever since.”

Vincent crushes out his forgotten cigarette in the ashtray on his desk before he leans forward, putting his hands flat on the table and fixing me with a look just shy of murderous. “That is until someone decided to poach her and she started working at Black Widow behind my back!”

I immediately sit up, ramrod straight and I don’t feign the look of surprise on my face. “What are you talking about? I’ve never seen her at Black Widow! I think I would know if I had a female mechanic on my payroll.”

I then pull out my cell phone and open the application I use to sign off on paychecks.  I then realize that I’ve been paying someone by the name of “R. Langston” for the last couple of months. My frown deepens as I look back through the payroll and I see how much she’s been bringing into the shop. But I can’t understand how I could have this woman working at my shop for months and have never seen her. My frown deepens as I pull open the application Darci uses for scheduling and I begin to realize that either by coincidence or design, Rachel’s only been scheduled to work day shift or on the nights she’s worked at Black Widow, it has been nights when I’m not at the shop.

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence though.  I’m sure that once Darci figured out Rachel was also working at Vinnie’s that she just tried to coordinate schedules so that Rachel could get the most hours at both shops.

But, just in case that’s not the case, I think I’ll drop Rachel a message and ask her to come into the office on one of her nights off.

I put my phone away and look back up at Vincent, my eyebrows still drawn together as I mentally determine which night I’m going to ask her to meet me at the garage.

“Thank you, Vincent, I appreciate the information. But I do have a couple of additional questions if you don’t mind.”

“Sure. Ask away,” he says lightly as he leans back in his chair and laces his fingers behind his head.

“Where did she come up with the design ideas for my bike? I mean, I’ve never talked to her and there’s only so much information you can find about me online.”

Vincent half closes his eyes as a smile forms on his lips, “The design ideas were all her. But she did come to me to try and get a little direction and inspiration. She wanted to know what kind of person you were, what things were important to you, that kind of thing and the color pallet of course is a representation of your shop. I would have thought that much was obvious.”

I nod my head slightly, “And what precisely did you tell her about me.”

He cracks open an eye to look at me as he continues to smile, almost to himself, “Nothing more or less than the truth. I told her I’ve known you a very long time. That you are descended from a long and noble Viking line and that family is more important to you than anything.”

“I see,” I respond pensively. Vincent generally doesn’t choose to be good at subterfuge, but you don’t get to be as old as he is without being good at it when necessary.

I then give Vincent a smirk of my own before getting up off of the stool. I take a step forward and extend my hand towards Vincent across the desk. Once we grasp forearms, I flash a predatory smile over at him over our clasped arms.

“Seeing as she’s already an employee of mine, I guess I don’t have to worry about breaking my word to you about poaching,” I say with a dark chuckle as I release his arm and saunter towards the door.

As I open the door and take a step through, I look back over my shoulder at Vincent with a smug expression. His face was absolutely priceless! At least it was right up until the stapler he launched at me bashed me in the face.