Monsters - Matt Rogers (icecream ebook reader TXT) 📗

maybe, I knew subconsciously. That the promises Heidi was making to the media didn’t line up with the product we had, all its flaws and failures. But she was a master manipulator. She still is. There would always be a brilliant excuse, a pivot into something else. “Oh, don’t pay attention to the interviews, Mary. It’s standard procedure for a company offering a minimum viable product. Now, tell me about the imbalance analysis issue.” Stuff like that. Suddenly I’d be talking about the troubleshooting woes, and the interviews would be forgotten. It was like that all the time. She kept me so busy I thought I might implode, and that didn’t give me a whole lot of time to worry about what Heidi was telling people about the company.’

‘But you said subconsciously—’

‘That probably makes me a bad person. There’s no way I can sit here and say I couldn’t have figured out the extent of it. But our brains…they do funny things to keep us sane. I should know. It’s what my company is trying to help with…well, what I thought they were helping with…’

‘You said it’s not a sham.’

‘What Heidi’s telling the public are absolute lies. The product is good, but it’s not what she’s promising. She’s hoping she can fix everything before we go to market.’

‘Can she? Can you?’

‘Not a chance.’

‘There has to come a point when she realises that.’

‘Doubt it,’ Mary said. ‘You haven’t met her.’

‘Did you ever think she seemed capable of…this?’ Alexis asked.

Mary shrugged. ‘She’s clearly capable of it, isn’t she? She’s done it.’

‘I’m wondering if it’s her doing. Or if someone’s pulling her strings.’

Mary masked a laugh. ‘Then you definitely haven’t met her.’

‘Enlighten me.’

‘Heidi Waters has never let anyone pull a single string in her life. Everything she’s doing is calculated and deliberate. I’m sure there’s an endgame, like you said. A point of no return, a point where she realises it’s unsalvageable. I don’t even want to think about what she might do when she gets there. She swindled her way into hundreds of millions of dollars, right at her fingertips. She—’

‘Isn’t it the company’s money?’

‘You don’t understand the control she has. She can get anyone to do what she wants. I don’t know how she does it, but it’s gotten her here, and now I doubt she ever gave a shit about positively impacting people’s lives. So she’s been a witch from the beginning, and now she’s a witch worth nine figures. There’s a hell of a lot you can do with a billion dollars.’

Alexis smiled. ‘There’s a hell of a lot you can do with a gun.’

‘You don’t have one.’

‘I will tomorrow.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘You mentioned you’re getting followed.’

‘Like I said, there was a guy at the café this morning. Eastern European. Scared the shit out of me. I’m not sure if he’s got friends.’

Alexis nodded. ‘He’ll have a gun.’

A long silence.

Mary thought about asking how Alexis intended to make the transfer of ownership, but thought better of it. She was already reeling from everything that had happened the last couple of days. If this mystery woman was offering to help, so be it. Mary didn’t need to know the gritty details. She was as far from a fighter as you could get, and she decided to voice it. ‘I’m not like you. I can’t stomach this. I can’t thank you enough for helping me, but don’t blame me if I cower under the blankets tomorrow while you’re doing your thing.’

Alexis shook her head. ‘You should stay here, yes. But, for future reference, you can stomach anything you choose to. Trust me.’

‘That’s not a choice I can make.’

‘You’d be surprised. I told you where I came from. That was all I was. I wasn’t special. My partner pushed me to places I didn’t think it was possible to go, but I made the choice to follow him. At the time it only felt like a small step. And now I’m someone who can interfere with situations like this.’

She paused, letting Mary digest the words.

Alexis said, ‘Who we are is always our choice.’

22

King and Slater touched down at eight a.m. after an uneventful overnight red-eye.

They’d each managed a few hours sleep, so compared to past ops they were practically rejuvenated.

First stop after they put boots on ground and rented a car: the Fillmore District.

The historical stretch of inner-city San Francisco was once the epicentre for jazz, but redevelopment for myriad reasons (most of them controversial) had turned it into a complicated and diverse zone. Parts of it were re-emerging with ample live music and performances, and other parts weren’t. Between the Fill and the nearby Tenderloin, crime and poverty weren’t exactly hard to stumble across.

Alonzo had fed Slater an address on Golden Gate Avenue, a pair of L-shaped tenement housing complexes that the affluent one-percenters from Silicon Valley would cross the street to avoid. King drove the rental car through bumper-to-bumper traffic for nearly forty minutes before they finally completed the journey from the airport. He slotted into an empty parking space across the street from the huge buildings and peered up at them through the windshield. There had to be hundreds of apartments between them.

The Golden State hadn’t lived up to its nickname, not even in summertime. It was hot, humid, and overcast — the worst of both worlds. It would soon rain. The mugginess stifled them.

King said, ‘And we’re supposed to find this guy how?’

‘We’re not,’ Slater said, busy with his phone.

Slater zoomed in on a very recent satellite image Alonzo had acquired using covert government technology. The black-ops community wasn’t aware he still had access to most of the software he’d pioneered in the first place. He’d yet to be shut out from a number of back doors.

Crisper than Google Maps, the satellite feed revealed the colour and shape of each car parked along Golden Gate Avenue. Alonzo had used a program to digitally circle a single vehicle: by the looks of it, a white four-wheel-drive.