Silenced Read online

  It had since dried up.

  I came around to stand close to her, to face her so that she knew she wasn't intimidating me. I was taller by about three inches and weighed more than her for sure, which somehow didn’t make me feel all that great.

  The doors to my private office slid back in a hush. Jane came in, cautiously. She stood inside the entranceway. She opened her mouth to say something, but quickly closed it.

  Smart girl.

  Mayor Christensen ran her hand through her light brown Afro, ruining its puffiness.

  "Miss Lewis, I have come all this way through the territory. The regulators are no closer to solving this than they were four weeks ago! Time is ticking away, and my, my baby is out there somewhere. These are dangerous times, as you well know. Help me find her, please."

  Suddenly, she was the sweet, southern girl from Memphis, twang and all—the distressed parent, not the bullying politician.

  This one was quite the actress.

  I shrugged. "As a rule, I don't investigate cases where the regulators have already been called in."

  My friend Daniel Tom, a regulator and the only one competent on the D.C. staff would kill me for meddling in his case without his permission. I’m sure the Memphis regs felt the same way.

  She stared at me, aghast. "As a rule? This is my daughter, Miss Lewis, surely…"

  "Yeah, a rule. You should know about those. They're kind of like regulations…back in the day those were called laws. When you are self-employed you can make up rules for your business. That's one of mine."

  I did not dance to the beat of anyone's drummer, but my own, especially not that of some big shot politician. She could bring all the muscle she wanted, but I wasn't budging unless I wanted to.

  Call me stubborn. Call me cautious. Just don’t call me dead. I didn’t like the way this whole thing was unfolding.

  "I will double your usual retainer," she said as she looked around the office. "It seems you can use it."

  Jane winced, but still didn't speak.

  "No," I said, struggling to keep my displeasure from going nuclear. "I just explained it to you. I don’t do regulator ruined cases."

  "Miss Lewis-"

  "No."

  My voice was louder than I wanted. Could it be that she just didn't get it? I wasn't taking her on as a client. Was it because she was a mayor and no one in the Memphis quadrant ever refused her, so that no was a word she didn’t understand?

  Or could it be that she was so desperate to find her daughter, no was unthinkable?

  I wasn’t quite sure yet, but I did know one thing…I didn’t like the ambush and it had put me in a bad mood.

  Mayor Christensen stiffened as if slapped.

  Jane finally spoke. "Cyb…"

  I waved her off. My ire boiled beneath my somewhat awkward grin. I didn't take to people barging into my office with a trio of paid thugs to flex on me. If you truly wanted my help, there were better ways to ask than to come armed. Yeah, I had a reputation. And sure, she required protection, who didn’t in this age? Still, the entire affair could’ve been handled differently. Way different.

  "Excuse me, Mayor Christensen. Jane. I have work to do."

  What work? I had no idea, but I wanted them both out of my office and fast before I lost total control. I hunkered down at my desk and turned on my computer. I played around with the mouse, gliding my fingers across the metallic square as if I had something important to read or type up.

  I didn't look up as the doors opened and closed after them.

  I remained at my desk for a few more hours, trying in vain to balance my incredible shrinking checkbook. The register flickered in scarlet angry protest on my monitor like a neon sign on the brink of permanently going dismal. No matter how I figured it, the result was the same.

  I was broke.

  My screen buzzed and in bright pink letters, the word “call” appeared. The buzzing continued twice more. The corresponding ding, ding, ding were the only sounds in the office and lobby where the sound could also be heard from Jane’s computer.

  “Jane!” I yelled through the partially open door to the outer office where Jane’s desk was located.

  Since Marsha’s death some two years ago, I hadn’t found a new receptionist I trusted enough to pay to fill in the vacant spot. The string of temporary employees from the temp agency across town took one look at the office and fled in fear. A few couldn’t take the hazard that came with the job. After a client shot at his wife inside the lobby, the temp agency refused to send anyone else.

  I teased Jane about hiring a young, handsome stud. The office could use some sprucing up... nothing like youthful beauty to add spark to office parties.

  She preferred someone of the other gender.

  No answer from the lobby…just the thick swell of complete silence.

  I clicked off the banking program and got up slowly, my pug in my fist and my heart doing its thump-one, thump-two routine. My pug was a laser gun with a small barrel and a short robust cylinder. The power might not have been there to catapult someone, but it still tore through bone and muscle with disastrous effect.

  I gently slid out of my office and into the outer lobby area. Marsha’s desk lay empty, deserted. With the gun held closely to my face, I crouched down and glanced over to Jane’s desk.

  It too was empty.

  Where did she go?

  The lobby doors were still ajar and hastily closed. Someone (or someones) had come into the office. I could feel another’s presence like a hair on your face. You could feel it, but it took you several attempts to actually put your hand on it. The scent of some male cologne hung heavily in the warm forced-heat air. Outside snow drifted down to the landscape without pause in huge wet flakes.

  Nothing moved.

  “Come out! Now! Whoever you are! I am armed!” I yelled. My heart sped up its thump-one, thump-two routine. Adrenaline seeped into my body forcing everything to become crisp and sharp in focus. I took in a deep breath and released it slowly, trying to settle down.

  Didn’t want to shoot the maintenance person.

  Jumping the gun, excuse the pun, and shooting some harmless civilian would not be a good thing right now. The D.C. Regulators would be all over the place…swarming like angry bees.

  Ugh.

  “I-I’m sorry,” came a whimper from an elderly, rather portly man who stepped out from behind our coffee machine’s alcove. He wore a red and blue plaid (I kid you not) suit, including a vest. In his hands, a matching red hat that contained wool covered earflaps. The alcove behind the machine held supplies for coffee, some rather expensive chocolates imported from the Northern Territories, and basic medical supplies.

  “Who are you and why the hell are you in my office?” I demanded as I pointed the pug at his chest. “Now!”

  He jumped and fumbled for words. His dense glasses seemed to be too heavy for his round face and his hairline was in the back section of his head. Wisps of white hair circled his dome of exposed scalp like a halo. His moustache dipped down on both sides of his rather thin lips in a fall of hairy whiteness.

  “Oh, I-I am Mr. Schmuckler and I represent, well, I guess it wouldn’t be prudent to speak of them here, but then I have come all this way…”

  He rambled on to himself like this for the better part of a minute, and several times he yanked on the bushy moustache as if for emphasis to some point he’d made against himself.

  “Mr. Uh- Schmuckler, did you say?” I asked after a sharp clearing of my throat. “I have a gun pointed at your heart. Don’t know what territory you come from, but here in the district things are done different about breaking and entering.”

  Technically, he hadn’t broken into the office, nor had he stolen anything that I could see. The threat sounded good, and I was already weary of entertaining people.

  His beady eyes rose in surprise and he glanced at the gun (okay I know it’s small, but it is still effective) as if he’d never seen it before and then back at my face. He
coughed nervously, his eyes back on the floor.

  “May we discuss this in private?” he asked, his voice shaky, his hat making a complete circle rotation in his nervous hands. His long fingers ideally brushed against the wool-covered earflaps.

  “Look around. This is private. Tell me now what this is about or I will shoot you.”

  This guy had used all the honey in my system. After Christensen’s visit, the only thing I really wanted was to go home, have a beer, and a shower…in that order too.

  He fumbled around with his hat, whispering to himself, heatedly.

  “How about I give you to three, and then I start shooting?” I said, shoving iron into my words. “One.”

  “I am here to discuss…" he said quickly. His head shot up and he stared at the pug. Already beads of sweat dotted his freckled forehead.

  “Two.”

  “…the…group…oh, fine, Trey Ohornon!” he spat. He breathed a sigh of relief and wiped his face with a handkerchief.

  A handkerchief!

  Who still used a handkerchief in this day and age?

  “Trey?” I said and lowered the gun to the general area of his midsection.

  Trey Ohornon was a hatchling, a genetically engineered human. He was perfect in every single way except he did not have much of a sense of humor. Not many of the hatchlings did. It seemed the engineers had screwed that up, but then again, do you know any funny engineers?

  “Sit! Now!”

  I gestured to the two visitors’ chairs in front of Marsha’s desk with the pug. “How long have you been hiding out in my office?”

  Just then the office doors slid back and Jane came in carrying a rectangular plastic box and a bottled drink. Wet patches of melted snowflakes dotted her coat and she stopped abruptly when her eyes landed on Mr. Schmuckler. She shot me a glance.

  I shrugged.

  “Who are you?” she asked, her eyes narrowed and back on Schmuckler.

  Jane wasn’t one for mincing words. No doubt she saw the pug in my hand and knew that this guy wasn’t forthcoming.

  Or perhaps she ate something bad and was just in a terrible mood.

  “This is Mr. Schmuckler. Where the heck have you been?” I asked her, a little miffed that she’d leave the office without telling me.

  She placed down her drink and lunch on her desk. Careful and slow, as if thinking of a significant answer to present itself.

  “I told you that I had a lunch date at one. It’s in your calendar. You acknowledged it and I told you before I left today.”

  “You did?” I frowned at her. My calendar automatically voiced the appointment when the time came. With the reward money and several other hot cases after the incident with the Change, I purchased new items including new doors, new computers and new software. I also updated the telemonitor system.

  “Yeah, I did,” she said, a little irritated herself. “What do you want Mr. Schmuckler?”

  Mr. Schmuckler, who sank into one of the visitors’ chairs, glanced up at her startled. “I am here to speak with Ms. Lewis.”

  “You can speak to the both of us,” I said. “Or neither. You choose.”

  Aside from the pay out of the Change case, I also came away with Trey’s heart. He had mine for a while. Unfortunately for him, happily-ever-afters and me don't usually gel for too long. It’s like leaving ice cream out in the sun. Within minutes, it starts to melt and run off into the sidewalk cracks leaving a sticky sweet residue that’s hard to wipe off.

  Trey’s presence still coated much of my heart, my thoughts, and my libidio with sticky resistence.

  Mr. Schmuckler searched my face and then he said, “I am here on behalf of the Territory Alliance. Trey Ohornon has been released from our employ some three months prior. It recently came to our attention that Mr. Ohornon may have been kidnapped. He has been missing for several days.”

  I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. All of the air left my lungs and a tight stitch took up residence in my chest. Nausea swirled around in my stomach and threatened to zip up my throat. I swallowed hard forcing the acidy mix back into its proper place

  Missing.

  “He’s missing?”

  I forced myself to concentrate on the issue, and not on the knot of emotion in gut. My mouth went dry like I was chewing cotton balls. I had not seen Trey since my birthday, Christmas Day, when our relationship crashed and burned like a faulty transport trip

  That parting wedged a stony place between us. Doesn’t most break ups? I shoved the memory of our own fiery end out of my mind, but to this day, months later, the separation still hurt.

  It hurt like hell.

  “I am afraid, Ms. Lewis, that during his tenure with us, he made many enemies—as most of the agents do,” Mr. Schmuckler smiled, revealing tiny, nearly child-like teeth. “Employment hazard, you can say.”

  Why Mr. Schmuckler thought this was something to smile about bothered me. I didn’t like this guy and his personality was shoving his likeability meter well below zero.

  “She told you we haven’t seen him,” Jane said from the spot by her desk.

  She opened the bottle and sipped the bluish fluid inside. Her eyes however were on Mr. Schmuckler. Her posture might have fooled him into believing she wasn’t paying attention to him because she leaned back against her desk. Even while still drinking her bottled drink, Jane could kill him with the very bottle from which she drank.

  It was glass, and Jane had a way with glass that gleaned muscle from bone with such fluidity and grace, Mr. Schmuckler would die with a grin on his face.

  Mr. Schmuckler shrugged. “I am not here to take a statement, but rather to ask your help in finding him.”

  “Why?” Jane and I asked in unison.

  Embarrassed at the jinx, Jane sat down at her desk, and took out her lunch, boiled eggs on rye it smelled like, as if her contribution to this was over. She didn’t like hatchlings anyway.

  Schmuckler smiled broaden, --a close secretive smile…like he knew something I should know, or worse, something he didn’t want me to know.

  “Namely because you know people we do not. People of questionable occupations,” he said stiffly. “Secondly, those people will talk to you and not say, someone like myself. His eyes scanned the floor with sudden interest. “Finally, because Trey was your lover.”

  “Why is the T.A. interested in finding an ex-agent who you released from employ?”

  I let the comment about Trey being my lover go and routed the conversation back to the topic at hand. The T.A. knew many things and most of it violated civil rights on numerous levels especially when it came to morality and ethics.

  Not that there was anyone who could monitor the Territory Alliance’s behavior. The other quadrants, fragmented into sections like a gigantic puzzle, had a grueling time taking care of the violence, violations, and civilian strife staining the lives of their own politicians and people.

  “That is classified,” he said back stonily and this time he looked me in the eyes. The “aw-shucks” act vanished into the air like fading smoke rings.

  And dammit if he didn’t want me to jump through them.

  “Fine. Then the answer is no,” I said solidly, giving him a one-shoulder shrug. “I don’t work for the T.A. and I’m not doing their job for them. You want Trey, you go find him.”

  Even as I refused, my stomach balled into a knot in protest. I didn’t like him being missing. Schumuckler’s act left a bad taste in my mouth. Trey’s disappearance was foul.

  Mr. Schmuckler rose from his seat. Before he came to a full standing position, Jane had her gun out and pointed at him. Startled (or pretending to be) he blinked repeatedly as he stepped back to the office’s doors, still facing Jane’s gun. His lips pressed together in a line of irritation. The T.A. wasn’t used to people telling them no or pulling guns on them.

  Was it me or was I suddenly bombarded by authority figures needing my help, but failing to understand the word no?

  Why these types of things ca
me in clusters must be one of Murphy’s less popular laws.

  “Do not come back here,” Jane said, for she had enough of him apparently. “No means no.”

  “Good day then Ms. Lewis.” There was a flash of something on his face, the real Schmuckler peeking through. It contorted his features into another face, one filled with something like disappointment or pity. He left.

  As soon as the doors quietly closed, Jane turned to me and asked, "“What the hell was that all about?”

  She slipped her gun into its hiding place as smoothly as it appeared. With a swift shake of her dreadlocks, she freed them from their band and whistled through her teeth.

  “A nutter for damn sure.”

  “I have no idea, but I can’t get involved. I don’t like being brought in like the third string quarterback in the Super Bowl, I said, putting my weapon back into its shoulder hostler.

  She gave me a funny look before turning back to her computer, having only read about Super Bowls in electronic books. I bet Mr. Schmuckler managed to reduce her appetite, like he did mine. Her meal grew colder by the minute, but she could always nuke it in our microwave if, or when, her appetite returned.

  I felt drained. The after effects of an adrenaline rush made me feel like I’d just run across the territories in a distance marathon. I went back into my office. I plopped down into my comfy office chair and stared at the telemonitor.

  Trey is missing. Where and why would you disappear, Trey? Where have you gone?

  The message window box on my screen didn’t flicker or blink, but its very presence meant that someone had left a message. I’d forgotten the call in all the ruckus of Mr. Schmuckler’s arrival.

  Before I could click the message box, Jane stalked into my private office.

  "Aunt Belle…" she said, her pitch higher than I'd like, her hands in fists and her lips a rigid line of fury. “She asked you, and…”

  "Whoa, Jane.”