Chapter 8
593 Words
8
My guts seem to drop out of me.
There’s only one reason for Rob to use that phrase with me right now.
He’s the opposition.
Rob been in the business longer than I’ve been alive. He’s not as brainy as I am, but I’m smart enough to concede that experience plus a pretty good brain will outperform a less experienced superstar brain. He’s not as good with his hands as he used to be, but he knows loyal hands to hire.
And he stays bought.
I won’t say we’re friends. We get along well, and we’ve gone out to celebrate with him after a few really successful gigs. And by celebrate, I mean he spent a week in the expensive part of Rio with me (and Deke), blowing a few thousand of a “performed beyond expectation” bonus.
But if a contract brought us into opposition, we’d stay in opposition until the contract ended. Which probably means ending one of us.
He’d made a courtesy call.
If he knew it was me, he probably knew I was alone. He was giving me the chance to quit with the Catwoman routine, get myself out of the way before he and his posse launched me out a window.
He’d be really unhappy about it afterwards. Probably have a drink in my honor next week and every New Year’s.
But he wouldn’t hesitate.
No gloating.
No apologies.
Rob respects me way too much to hesitate.
Even for half a second.
The stale crawlspace suddenly feels even hotter and more cramped. My pulse throbs in my temples, and a headache billows at the top of my head. The gas mask over my mouth and nose seem tighter, the space around my mouth less humid.
No need for me to answer that message.
He already knows the answer.
Rob’s got a contract. That contract doesn’t include “let Beaks rob the place.”
The message didn’t mean Rob had been given my name. He could have figured it out from evidence. I hadn’t left many clues, of course, but absence of evidence is a kind of evidence. That little open-door detector might have had a camera, or he could have put one nearby. He might have gotten a real good look at my face when I bent down to check out the tear-snip sensor, green and black camouflage stripes over my olive skin and all. Plus a better look at my oversized rear when I turned to flee.
Yes, I want the Butterfly Star research data. I want to give it to the world.
But do I really want to go up against Rob “You’ll Never Know You’re Dead” Fender?
Feet tromp below me.
I freeze.
They pass through the wall I’m balanced on. There must be a door right in front of me. There’s a thud. A clank. Someone swears under his breath. Three quick beeps, then a click. A man says “Device sixteen. Meeting room four prepped,” not loudly, but not like he’s afraid of being overheard.
The feet tromp back through the wall, pass my feet, and recede.
I wait for them to disappear, then lie belly-down on the filthy aluminum strut so I can use my right hand to tug at a fiberglass ceiling panel below.
The goggles transform this meeting room into shades of green, but I can still make out the oval meeting table of polished mahogany, and the glass-fronted wet bar and the eighty-inch video screen behind the head chair.
If all eighteen of the executive chairs had held executives, I would have been perfectly happy to see the brutal, ugly device plopped on the table. Seeing as we were down a bunch of bosses and plus one me, the blocks of explosive and the detonator didn’t thrill me.
- Writer
