part0011

“ S o, who is this woman?” Jeremiah asked and stretched as most of the speeches came to an end, which opened the opportunity for her to finally make one of her own. It wasn’t so much a meeting, he realized, as an introduction. She looked like she would take up a position of some authority over the men and women present, and while they didn’t seem too happy about it, they appeared more than willing to let her have her say before they joined forces to depose her.

“Her name is Dr. Courtney Monroe,” Anja explained. “I’ve actually met her. She’s nice. A little intense, but nice. Anyway, she spent almost two years going in and out of the Zoo and was one of the first people to actually work inside the jungle. It made her…something of a legend.”

“A doctor, huh?” He leaned in closer as she gathered her papers. Despite all appearances, she did look a little nervous at this point. It was perhaps a hint of glossophobia in her past that had been dealt with but still left a mark on her that itched every time she was called upon to speak in front of a large group of people. “Tell me something, Anja, have you ever been in the Zoo?”

There was a pause on the line as Monroe started her speech and addressed and thanked the various members of the board for their time.

“I went into that fucking jungle once,” Anja finally said and a tense, uncomfortable tone entered her voice. “I didn’t much care for the place. How about you?”’

“I’ve never been, I’m afraid,” he said. “Although ‘didn’t much care for it’ does seem to be the consensus among the people who went in there. Those that I met, anyway. But that raises a fascinating question. If the Zoo is such a terrifying place to be, what would drive someone without any prior combat experience—I’m assuming, anyway—to keep going in there for almost two years? Because if it’s a death wish, I have to say that didn’t work for her.”

“I don’t know, honestly,” Anja said, and her chuckle sounded mirthless. “I’ve actually met a couple of people who are of a similar mind. I mean, they don’t really enjoy going in there, but when they get back, they always look…refreshed. You know, the way that a person looks when they’ve returned from the gym?”

“Huh.” He grunted. It was a common feeling—an adrenaline high was what his shrinks told him it was, one that made everything else feel like it was grey and lifeless by comparison. He knew that it was something screwed up in his brain, and while it was a common side effect of being crazy enough to charge into a war zone willingly, it was still interesting. In the back of his mind, he’d always assumed that there would be some kind of line that he would feel hesitant to cross. Now, though, he knew about a place that was even more dangerous than anywhere he’d ever gone before. A part of him wanted to at least try it out to see if it was as bad as everyone made it out to be.

That had to be something wrong with the wiring in his brain. He was aware that the human brain was more complex than that, but still.

“Thank you all so much for your warm welcome,” Monroe said and let her gaze travel over the board members. “I could not imagine this company being run without the minds that brought it all together, and you should know that I fully intend to respect your decisions in the company so far. Honoring the spirit that built the house, as it were.”

Oh, God, this wouldn’t go well. There would be changes, and all she did was rub the fact that she now held the power to change the company in their faces. With the kind of mindset that was required to be in this business—the kind of ego that these people had to have—they definitely wouldn’t take it lying down.

The question remained as to whether she did any of this on purpose or not.

“However, the embarrassments that Pegasus has suffered over the involvement in a variety of…unsavory ventures both inside the Zoo and out have left us open to outside attack,” Monroe continued and leaned forward on the table in front of her. The more he watched her, the more he decided that everything she did was rehearsed and very, very deliberate.

What the hell was she doing? Was she trying to poke a hornet’s nest?

“For precisely that reason, I’ve found that we need someone of experience on this board,” she stated. “Someone who’s overseen Pegasus holdings in and near the Zoo for the past few months and knows a thing or two about what we’ll deal with in the following months of government investigation and audits. Please join me to welcome the new CEO of Pegasus’ holdings in the continental US, James Anderson, a former colonel with the United States Marine Corps.”

The shock of what she had said was enough to make the obligatory clapping broken and disjointed. Jeremiah watched as the corporate coyotes, amidst looks of shock and anger, jostled one another into a pack. He studied them with narrowed eyes. A few men rose from their seats, their papers in hand as if they had a whole horde of questions that they wanted to ask before Anderson was given his moment to speak. Some of them talked over each other. The audio coverage from the camera feeds made it difficult to make out even one voice, but so many climbing all over each other like Amazonian fire ants meant that all he could hear amounted to white noise.

But he didn’t need to hear what they said. Their lips all seemed to converge on the word outrage enough to let him know that they were upset about bringing someone new and comparatively unknown into the fold, and in such a lofty position too.

No, what he was more interested in were the people who didn’t have all kinds of outrage to express. Those who were taken by surprise by this move weren’t the people he had been brought in to deal with. His mind was on those who had anticipated it and had already planned their next moves—five or six steps at a time. They were the ones who had the planning capacity to overthrow, for lack of a better term, someone who had forced herself into a ruling position on their board.

At the moment, there was only one man on his mind. He sat at the far end of the table and tapped on his phone despite the noise and ruckus around him. The executive was tall and lean and sported what could easily be described as the most expensive suit in the room, as well as the slickest portrayal of a silver fox that Jeremiah had ever seen. He wore a pair of glasses and seemed to have no interest in what happened around him whatsoever.

“Who’s that guy?” he asked and pointed at the screen.

“I…can’t see who you’re pointing at, Jer,” Anja pointed out.

“The guy with silver hair and an expensive suit sitting there with not a care in the world,” he replied and tapped insistently at the screen in front of him.

“Oh, that’s Evan Carlson, MBA out of Harvard. His father actually founded Pegasus back in 1941,” Anja said. “Huh, look at that,” she murmured. “Evan was actually the CEO in charge of operations in the continental US until three weeks ago, when he resigned the position and left it vacant. I assume for Anderson to fill?”

“Does that smell like a trap to you?” he asked.

“I…yes?” she replied.

“Well, yes, it is a trap. He intentionally left a vacuum for Monroe to fill, which tells me that there’s something tied to that position that he wants Anderson to take the fall for,” he continued. “Do you think you can get a bead on what he’s typing on his phone? Who he’s talking to and why he’s doing it during a power shift in his company?”

Anja went silent for a few moments and Savage assumed that she was typing away at her computer, hacking or…whatever it was that people like her did.

“Hey, Jer, I don’t think I’ll be able to break his encryption in time,” she said when she finally came back online. “There’s some serious coding involved. Like, military-grade shit. I can intercept what he sends to break later, but that’s basically it. If you were able to clone his phone, though, I would have all the time in the world to handle it with no pressure from any security systems.”

“Okay,” Savage said. “How would you go about cloning his phone?”

“I need you to get that little piece of tech in your ear within fifteen meters of him,” Anja explained. “With the signal that his phone gives off, I should be able to get my hands on a cloneable signal.”

“Right,” he said and nodded. “And how would we go about that, again?”

“Well, you need to get in close to him. How else do you think, genius?” She sounded exasperated.

“Honestly, I wondered if you would have been able to mail him the earpiece in a similar way to how you got it to me,” he said with a shrug before he pushed himself from his chair and made his way toward the door.

“Come on, Jer, I had Anderson help me with that,” she protested as he stepped out of the security room. All the lights went out behind him as he set off toward the elevators. The meeting was happening five floors up. If he could get there and not make anyone suspicious, getting within fifteen meters of the man would be a cakewalk.

“Hey, Jer?” Anja pinged his earpiece softly as he reached the elevators.

“What?” he muttered from the side of his mouth as others waited for the elevator alongside him.

“There’s a small hiccup in the plan, but you should probably know that Carlson has exited the meeting prematurely,” Anja said. “People were shocked, some were offended, and a couple needed smelling salts, but the fact remains that your target is on his way up to the fucking roof.”

“Shit.” His familiarization with the building’s plans told him that the elevators only took people up to the eighteenth floor. There was a private elevator that pushed all the way up to the nineteenth, which was the penthouse, and stairs led from there up to the roof. Those stairs weren’t accessible from any of the floors between the fifteenth and the eighteenth, as those levels had separate fire escape options.

“Fuck,” he muttered softly and moved away from the elevators. “I’ll have to have to climb ten fucking stories of building, won’t I?”

“Considering that our friend has access to the private elevator, you might want to make that climb a sprint,” she suggested. “You don’t know how long he’ll be up there, and you certainly don’t want him to know that someone is tailing him. Right?”

“Correct,” Jeremiah said. He’d already slipped into the stairwell and proceeded to ascend at a sprint. As good as his therapy had been, he doubted that there was much his doctor could have done to prepare him for something like this. Even if he had been at the peak of physical health, he would have found rushing up ten flights of stairs an exhausting prospect.

And there he was, at less than his peak of physical health, sprinting up the stairs. He would be lucky if he didn’t pass out at the top once his body had time to settle.

He gripped the railings to help him after the first three flights, and after the fifth, he realized that his speed had greatly decreased. He had barely reached the eighteenth floor when Anja pinged his comm again.

“If you to tell me that there is more bad news waiting for me up there,” he panted, “I will hunt you down in whatever fucking hole you’re hiding in and kill you myself.”

“Well, you might want to hold off on that,” she replied and clearly didn’t believe that he would follow through on his threat. “Four men are standing guard at the top of that staircase. They don’t look armed, but they do look bulky, and they have radios on them.”

“Shit,” Savage hissed through clenched teeth. “Is there any way I can get to our target without engaging them?”

“That’s a negative,” she replied. “He’s on the other side of the building, so unless you feel that we have the time to break into the penthouse office, I don’t think so.”

“Goddamnit,” he said, probably too loudly, but he couldn’t hear any reaction from above him.

He pulled his jacket off, hung it on the railing halfway up to the nineteenth floor, and yanked his tie off. He was about to hang it as well since it felt like it was soaked in sweat, but he quickly thought better of it and wound the pale red tie around his right fist.

“Is that a plan that I see hatching in that brain of yours, Jer?” Anja asked.

“I think so.” He smiled despite the uncomfortable burning in his muscles. “I merely have to pray to whatever gods might listen that it’s a good plan, or all this bullshit will be blown right to hell.”

The tie bound around his hand gave him a little padding, and he kept the long, skinny end gripped in his left hand as he resumed his ascent of the last of the steps. He no longer rushed. At this point, if they heard him, the jig would be up, and they were all royally fucked. He had one chance to get this right.

Well, it was a good thing that they had brought in a savage, right?

“Will you still kill me for telling you the bad news?” she asked as he reached the nineteenth floor. He could hear conversation from the level above him.

He didn’t think he could deliver on that promise. For one thing, he still had no idea where she was in the world. She could have been hiding out in the middle of the Amazon or all the way back in Russia, for all he knew. Considering that he had a job to do there, he doubted that he would be able to deliver on his promise of impending violence.

“Well, wait a second, and it might all be a moot point anyway,” he whispered as he tried to make out the precise positions of the four men who stood in front of the door. “I’m about to attack four well-trained goons who have the height advantage and possible weapons, while the only weapon that I have is…” He looked at his hands. “A butt-fucking ugly tie.”