Runaway. Part 5

Peet sipped some coffee. "I told Kevin about the takeover."

"You make it sound like a coup d'etat. Maybe these new people will be better to work for than LJ is."

"That's presuming I'll be working for them. I've only been here a few months. I'll be the first to go."

"This isn't a union shop, Peet. They'll keep their best performers."

"If they keep any of us."

Jan was surprised at how pessimistic Peet was. "I bet Kevin told you not to worry," Jan said.

"He did. He always says it will be okay, as if saying so makes it true."

"But things are always okay for you guys. Let's see what happens before we get in the soup line."

David Collins walked into the break room, carrying his Chicago Bears mug. He also looked haggard.

"Long night with Vivian?" Jan teased him.

"Shut it, Roberts."

"You may be interested to know that Don Detmer told us about the sale of the company and that he heard the news from you. I'm thinking your t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es are in peril if Vivian finds out you blabbed her secret."

Collins topped off his coffee. "I wouldn't worry about mine, Roberts. They have more bra.s.s than yours ever will. I'd worry about our jobs, though. The new owners have just arrived."

"What?" Peet asked.

"A group just went into the main conference room. Big Junior's even sitting in. They're about to close the deal." Collins started to walk out the door. "It's really not much of a secret now, is it?"

Jan and Peet went back to their desks.

"This is f.u.c.king unbelievable," Peet said. "You'd think they'd talk to us before parading the new owners through the office. That's really disrespectful."

"Maybe now you know what I mean about LJ. He's a joke."

She saw that Peet was genuinely upset. "You stay put. I'll go on a reconnaissance mission. It will look stupid if we both go."

Jan crossed to the other side of the office and stood by Vivian's desk. The conference room was filled with people in suits, all of them taking laptops and files out of their briefcases. Junior Begala sat at the head of the table with LJ and their lawyer, while at the other end sat a larger contingent, presumably representing the buyers. Jan's eyes locked on one of them, a beautiful woman with long dark hair, shot through with a startling streak of white. She looked to be Jan's age, and there the similarities ended. This woman was elegant, beautifully dressed, and composed. Confident. Jan couldn't look away, even when the woman lifted her head and looked her up and down, a slight smile turning up one side of her mouth. Then she turned back to her computer screen and Jan felt heat rush through her body. She was completely turned on.

"Who's that woman?" Jan asked Vivian.

"That's Catherine Engstrom. She's the VP of something or other of CGS. Kind of a barracuda."

No s.h.i.+t, thought Jan. She continued to look into the conference room, but Catherine didn't look at her again. She'd never had a reaction like that to a woman. There would normally be a lot more direct stimuli occurring before Jan had this sort of physical response. Interesting, but potentially disastrous.

"They're supposed to let everyone know about the sale as soon as they close. I think they're sending out an e-mail," Vivian said. "Because they're cla.s.sy like that."

Jan went back to her desk and found Peet sitting in her chair, staring straight ahead.

"Collins is right. The buyers are here. There's a bunch of suits in the conference room. Vivian said they're sending an e-mail to let us know what was happening."

Peet stayed quiet. Jan couldn't think of what to say to make her feel better, so she sat quietly with her. She looked up at the sound of heels clacking toward them on the tiled hallway outside the break room. Catherine Engstrom stopped and stood at the door to the room, not far from Peet and Jan, and looked at them with a question on her face.

"Can I help you?" Peet asked.

"I'm looking for some tea, actually," she said, British accented, bright. "I was directed here." It didn't surprise Jan that Catherine's voice crossed over her body like the low notes of a cello. She felt the vibration that it left. She sat there speechless.

"Let me show you." Peet got up and headed toward the break room while Catherine looked at Jan. When Jan got up the nerve to meet her eyes, it was every bit as bad as it had been on the other side of the office. Catherine broke the eye contact and followed Peet into the break room. They emerged a few minutes later, each with a mug.

"And this is my partner, Jan Roberts," Peet said. "She's been with the company a long time, our top investigator. Jan, this is Catherine Engstrom."

Catherine's handshake was warm and firm and extremely businesslike.

"You're here to buy the company, aren't you?" Peet asked.

Catherine laughed. "It's so true that Americans are direct. It's startling, I must say, but a wonderful time saver."

"Is that a yes?" Jan asked. She kept her eyes on Catherine's forehead, not trusting her powers of speech if she looked into her eyes. Ridiculous.

"Yes, it is. Though I wish the word hadn't leaked out before we had a chance to properly announce it to the employees."

"What happens next?" Peet asked.

"Nothing that you'll notice. We'll a.s.sess for a while, finding ways we can improve things for you here. It will be some time before you see any changes."

Jan felt Peet stiffen beside her.

"Does that include layoffs?" Peet said.

Catherine touched Peet on the shoulder. Lucky Peet.

"We hope to avoid those altogether. And certainly we don't want to let our best people go. From what the Begalas have said, you have nothing to worry about."

Jan wasn't sure she was being included in that rea.s.surance, but she couldn't open her mouth again to ask.

"I'd better get back to that meeting. It was so nice to meet you both." Catherine walked away, moving through the s.p.a.ce as if she'd always owned it.

"Feel better?" Jan asked.

"Yeah, I do." Peet sat back down. "Sounds like we're in good shape."

Jan watched Catherine walk down the hall. She wasn't sure she was in good shape at all.

Maddy fought to keep her eyes open. She and David had arrived at his house at four in the morning, his overheating truck turning their five-hour trip into ten. He seemed to want to talk the whole time. She just wanted to sleep. She'd spent her first nights away from her family sleeping in the Honda, parked on a street two suburbs away from Winnetka. Another night in a vehicle was too much.

She shouldn't have been surprised at what a talker David was. He monopolized their video chats, unaware that Maddy was continuing her own work while he went on and on. He would detail his vision for their new society, as he grandly called it, while she programmed the intranet site they would use to coordinate the move to Idaho and stay in touch with his contacts in Michigan. He placed a high premium on secure communications, though she couldn't see who would be interested in their group. She didn't mind all of David's talk because she agreed with what he said. She just thought people in general talked too much.

When they reached David's town, Maggie stared out the window at the stretches of abandoned homes and businesses. She'd driven through some pretty depressing parts of Chicago, but nothing quite so dead and beyond resurrection as this. The For Sale signs on the houses were as weathered as the houses themselves. She felt her spirits flag. Maybe she was just tired.

David pulled into the gravel driveway of a rundown ranch house, jumped out of the truck, and grabbed Maddy's bags from the back. He seemed to have limitless energy.

"We're having a planning meeting in a few hours," he said. "You should get some sleep."

Maddy was staring at the house. She'd never seen anything like it in Winnetka. It looked abandoned, dead. She wondered if he was squatting. "How long have you lived here?" she asked.

"I was raised in this house. It was my grandparents' place, but they both died a few years ago. The mortgage is paid off, but at this point, you couldn't give it away."

He led her into the dark house and straight down to the bas.e.m.e.nt. As she walked behind him through the living room, she thought it smelled like an old person's place. She used to visit some elderly shut-ins with her grandmother, and she'd get scolded when she scrunched up her face at the smell. Apparently, David hadn't done much to the place since his people died.

He showed her to a dark corner of the bas.e.m.e.nt, her "quarters," and pointed out the sink, shower, and toilet, all open to the rest of the room. The musty smell was strong. She worried that the mattress thrown on the floor would be damp.

"Sleep well, my sister," David said, clapping her on the shoulder. "I'm so glad you're here."

"Well, thanks."

"I'm serious. You are my ideological soul mate. No one else understands what we're really trying to do. I'm thinking of having you write something up, a manifesto of sorts, because you've got the ability to sum things up brilliantly."

"I write code, David, not words."

He smiled at her. "We're all going to be mult.i.tasking. Going beyond our comfort level in so many ways. But we can talk about all that when we're better rested."

Maddy fell on the mattress fully clothed and slept deeply.

She woke in the morning to hear David calling for her to come upstairs. She used the toilet, worried he'd come down to get her and see her with her pants down. When she got upstairs, she found a group huddled with him around the kitchen table, all of them staring at her as she entered. These were the people she'd be living with, she thought, and found it less rea.s.suring than the look of the mattress downstairs. She felt like the newest house member in a reality show, forced to live with people with wildly different backgrounds from hers.

"Good morning," David said, sounding cheery and hopped up, hopefully just on caffeine. "Grab a cup and join us. I'll introduce you."

Maddy slipped into a folding chair next to David. The table was meant to seat four, but now there were seven squashed together and Maddy felt claustrophobic. She drank her coffee and took quick glances around. She hadn't seen much of anything when they arrived in the middle of the night. She hadn't seen that the walls of the kitchen were pink, that the floor seemed to have every other tile missing. The window over the sink was largely obscured by swaths of duct tape holding the gla.s.s together.

"We're having this special meeting so I can introduce you all to Maddy and we can get on to the next stage of our planning. Maddy and I had a hard night's travel, and though I might normally ask you to go easy on a sleep-deprived newbie, she's twice as smart as all of us put together so I know she can take care of herself."

There were two women in the group, both about the same age as David. The one sitting next to her was stocky and pierced at eyebrow, nose, and lip. She looked tough as h.e.l.l.

"What the f.u.c.k, David. This girl looks twelve years old."

"I'm not twelve," Maddy said matter-of-factly. "I'm eighteen."

"Right. And I'm Lady Gaga," the tough one said.

One of the men snorted. He was skinny and had big veins popping out all over his arms. His sky blue s.h.i.+rt said "Warren" over the s.h.i.+rt pocket. "Well, you ain't no lady, Kristi."

Kristi reached over and whacked him on the arm, but they were all laughing. Maddy resented the closeness of the others, but desperately wanted to be accepted. As always, she felt clueless as to how to go about making friends.

"Listen, I know I look young. But I'm old enough. And I know a s.h.i.+tload about computers," Maddy said.

"Why do we need computers? We're going to be in the middle of f.u.c.king Idaho. Do you think they're going to have Wi-Fi or something?" This came from another of the guys, dressed in camouflage. His head was shaved and she could see a jagged scar running along his skull. It was red and angry looking.

"Ed, I know you're concentrating on all the hunting and fis.h.i.+ng we're going to be able to do out there, but you've got to remember that we'll need security and communication capabilities. Smoke signals and guard duty just aren't going to cut it," David said.

"I guess. It just seems everything is getting real complicated. We're twice as big now as when we first started talking about this."

David looked satisfied at that. "Yes, we are. And that's a good thing. Everyone at this table is bringing something uniquesome skill or ability that contributes to the life of the camp. Maddy here is bringing some awesome computer skills."

The room was quiet. Kristi got up and brought the coffee pot over and poured for everyone. She looked Maddy in the eye and gestured to her with the pot. Maddy lifted her cup for a refill.

"I'm Kristi," she said. "And the only thing I do with computers is play games."

She sat back down and looked happy to have cleared that up.

David reached around and pulled an envelope out of his rear pocket. "Here's what else Maddy's bringing to the table."

He took out the $20,000 check and placed it carefully on the table.

"This puts us over the top for our down payment so we can go ahead and purchase the land. It's all going to happen for real." A big smile crossed his bony face. "Do any of you have a problem with Maddy joining us?"

All eyes were on the check and all mouths stayed shut.

"All right, then!" David shouted, slapping the top of the check with a loud whap. "Let's get ready for Idaho!"

Maddy looked around as the others erupted in whoops and high fives. The other woman in the room, a pretty blonde, launched herself into David's arms and gave him a big kiss. Then she turned to Maddy and stuck out her hand.

"I'm Diane," she said. "And we're really happy you're going with us."

Maddy stood as the others came up to shake or give her a hug. Kristi b.u.mped her fist against Maddy's and grinned. The last of the group, a handsome boy named Tom, pumped her hand.

"I know some about programming. Maybe we can talk about what you'll be working on."

She saw David give her an encouraging look. "Sure," she said. "I'd love to work with you."

There was a first time for everything, they say.

The school princ.i.p.al, Mr. MacBride, was a six-foot-five beanpole. His Adam's apple stuck out like a chicken wing. Jan and Peet looked up at him standing in his office.

"Of course, I want to do what I can," he said. "I'm afraid I don't know Maddy at all, which some people take to mean she simply hasn't gotten into trouble. But, really, by junior year I usually know students for one reason or anothergrades, clubs they're in, athletics, something. But I actually couldn't have picked Maddy out."

"It's a huge school," Jan said. "I'm not sure what you're saying necessarily means anything."

"True," MacBride said. "But we do know she's not really involved in any activities. I've looked at her record. Her grades are average, mostly Bs and Cs, but all As in math. Teacher comments tend to run along the line of 'not performing to potential,' and 'very quiet student.'"

"That jibes with what we've heard," Peet said. "Can we get a copy of that record? The parents will authorize it if you need to get permission."

Jan and Peet each took an office to interview teachers and students who knew Maddy. Jan was in the vice princ.i.p.al's office, staring at a family photo on the desk when she heard a soft knock at the open door.

"I'm Natalie Towne, Maddy's social sciences teacher."