Robbery is so easy to say and yet so difficult to do. We sat there on the sofa, committed to crime and clueless as to its execution. Our silence grew, and I realized just how little I understood.
“How?” I asked, breaking the building dread.
Pamela stood and walked over to concessions. She turned around and leaned against the counter, looking at me as her long legs slid from under her red dress.
“There’s got to be a way.” Her eyes held a faraway look.
“How big is it? Forge?”
“Not very, maybe a yard long and half that deep and high.”
“So it can be carried by one person,” I said more to myself than to her as I turned the problem over. “Assuming it’s not heavy.”
“Not for you,” she smiled, paying me a masculine compliment. “I couldn’t manage it for long.”
“How heavy?”
Shrugging she said, “Twenty, twenty-five pounds.”
“Mm, I’m not going to sprint a long way with that, but it’s not impossible. Does he ever move it around, out in the open?” An idea blossomed. “Or in a car? If you know he’s going to take it somewhere, you could program the car—”
“It never leaves him. He’s paranoid about it.” She stopped and looked at me with hard cold eyes. “Always.”
That plan dashed, I tried to think of another. “You’ve got to tell—”
She waved a hand in my direction, silencing me as she hurried back to the sofa, beaming with joy.
“I think I have an idea!”
Taking my hands, she knelt down, resting on her knees, while providing a distracting view of her décolletage.
“It only works with both of us,” she said.
Quickly, she laid out the basics of her plan. Eddie always met new black-market customers in person. Even with Forge he feared colonial security and meeting in person allowed Forge a facial scan for undercover agents. He didn’t trust a lot of people and lived alone in a ‘pre-commissioned’ suite of apartments. If I posed as a new customer, someone introduced by Pamela, Eddie would insist on meeting me. Once there we’d rob him of Forge and after our escape out an exit he kept ready for emergencies we’d use it to cover our tracks.
“I’m not clear,” I said as she stepped me through the plot. “How are we going to rob him? From what you said there’s no way even the two of us can overpower him enough to tie up.”
“Forge can print pistols.”
I let go of her hand. Fanatical about growing the human population, Nocturnia had only one crime punishable by death – murder. Simply having the means for murder, and any lethal gun met those criteria, resulted in exile and slow starvation.
“It’s the only way,” she pleaded. “You’re right. Eddie’s big enough, strong enough, and violent enough to tear us apart with his bare hands. If we don’t have something lethal we might as well give up now.”
She stood and stepped back from me, tears rolling down her face.
“If we can’t do this –” sobs mangled her words but finally she got them out, “– I might as well leave now.”
Pamela turned but before she moved two steps I was up and holding her in my arms.
“Okay,” I said. “Just to control him and make him do as we say.”
Leaning her head down, she kissed my forearms and whispered, “Of course. That’s all we need.”
We moved back to the sofa and completed pledging ourselves to this dangerous venture.
* * *
We stayed in each other’s arms, silent within our thoughts for more than 15 minutes, the weight of the commitment a foreboding presence.
Breaking the spell, I said, “You can’t go back. You have to stay here.”
She pulled my arms tight around her chest. Soft and warm, her figure comforted me in the suddenly chilly air.
“I can’t do that.”
“I don’t see how you have a choice. If you go back and he thinks you’re going to betray him—”
“If he thinks that then I’m already dead, but if I don’t go back he’ll know it for sure and Forge will find me and find us.”
She pulled away, stood, and began pacing in front of the sofa.
“There’s no hiding.”
“You said he didn’t know about me.”
“And he doesn’t.” She stopped and knelt down next to me, her clean sensual scent sweeping over me. “But if I stay here he will find out.”
“I don’t see how.”
She waved at the lobby’s security cameras. “He can see through every one of those.”
A cold terror crept through me, slow and steady like an approaching killer. Pamela must have seen my reaction.
“Not right now. I’ve got Forge faking me elsewhere, ’cause I know Eddie checks up. But I can’t keep that up without Forge, and we can’t steal it if I stay here.”
I stood and stared down at her. “Stealing it does no good if you’re dead.”
“I’m not going to get killed.” She touched her swollen black eye. “He’s punished me and if I’m a good girl and make him happy….”
The idea of Pamela, sweet loving Pamela, fawning over this thug like a slave enraged me. My fists clenched and I wanted to beat him then and there. She stepped over to me, took one fist in her hands and kissed my clenched fingers.
“I love you for this,” she said, looking at the fist, and then she turned her deep blue eyes to me. “We have to be smart. He’s not, but he is sly and vicious.”
“So don’t go to him,” I wailed, knowing the futility even as the words escaped my lips. She had to, if we were to have any chance at all, but terror overwhelmed my rationality.
“It won’t be for long, my love.”
She pulled me close and kissed me, at first soft and tender, but our passion possessed us and we fell to the couch in a mad intense embrace. We didn’t stay there long. Dropping clothes like snowflakes, we moved to my bed.
Much later, with the morning hours rapidly moving toward dawn, I let her leave, and every moment of her absence I’d live in fear.
* * *
The day passed slowly. I kept one monitor open to a colonial news-stream, frightened that at any moment I’d see news of an unidentified corpse. Things like that dominated the streams and Sunday gossip for weeks. Nothing appeared but throughout the day my distracted imagination envisioned the worst.
Brandon made polite conversation but I don’t remember any details. With each hour and each new secret a distance expanded between us. I didn’t care. I didn’t care that Seiko hadn’t called. The only thing that mattered was Pamela. If we made it out of this, if we stole Forge and escaped Eddie, there’d only be her in my life. With her and Forge I would fear and need nothing. Every film would be open to me, no Admin busybody like Jones could threaten us, and with Pamela there would be no screaming, crying, and messy children.
I realized while I cared for Seiko, and I truly didn’t want to hurt her, I didn’t love her and perhaps I never had. I’d have to break the engagement and find some way, maybe with Pamela’s help, to make everything clean and spotless in my record, and maybe even find the right man for Seiko. After all, if Forge led Pamela to me surely it could find someone for Seiko.
Evening arrived without word. The crowd showed up for the performance and my frayed nerves were ready to break. Brandon had left in the late afternoon and I paced the office alone. Pamela didn’t call, she didn’t appear in the crowd, and with every passing moment I became more certain that Eddie had killed her. The crowd finished filing into the auditorium and still no call, no appearance. I looked at my notes for the pre-show presentation but the words lost all meaning, appearing to be merely a jumble of letters and punctuation. Pamela – she was my only thought, my only concern, my life.
“Mr. Kessler?” Maria’s voice sounded loud in my office. “It’s time for the show.”
I leaned against the office window, my forehead pressed firm against the hard cool glass. She called again, this time with more concern, a trace of fear shadowing her tone.
“Mr. Kessler? Are you there?”
Who cares?
“Mr. Kessler?”
I opened my eyes and saw her staring up at the mirrored window.
“I’m here, Maria,” I answered. Even to me my voice sounded tired, lifeless.
“It’s time—”
“I know. Come up here, please.”
I watched her pause, say something to Patrick, and then she vanished into the stairwell. Just a few moments later she buzzed at my door. I unlocked it and she walked in.
As she crossed the room her eyes darted here and there, a trace of unease crossing her face.
“You have your slate?”
“Yes, sir.”
She pulled it from her bag as evidence.
“Good.” I picked mine up from the desk. The face was blank, nothing from Pamela. I transferred my notes to Maria’s slate.
“You’re giving the talk tonight.”
The color fled from her face and I thought she might faint.
“Me?” Her voice came out as a tiny squeak.
“You can do it.” I fell into my big chair, nothing in my collapse an act. “I’m not well. Better you than no one.”
“I can’t…I’ve never…I don’t….”
“You’ve heard me do it a hundred times.”
“But—”
“I need you to do this, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
She took her slate and left. I activated the monitor, intending to observe her presentation, but then I switched it back off. Maria would do fine and nothing down there mattered anyway. Sitting in my chair, I fretted as the film ran its course. I canceled the Q-and-A. Even with my notes that sort of thing would have been beyond Maria, and frankly I had already asked too much of her. She and Patrick oversaw closing up while I waited for some call, some sign.
As I sat alone in the empty theater, the building suddenly seemed cavernous. I wandered from room to room, upstairs and downstairs, with terror tinting my thoughts. I was in the auditorium when my slate’s alarm shattered the silence.
Pamela’s face, taut with concern, appeared in the device. Without preamble she said, “It has to be tonight.”