Show Me (Thomas Prescott 4) by Nick Pirog (best ereader for textbooks .TXT) 📗

hour drive from Tarrin. It resembled a college campus, and not just because of the twenty activists picketing on the sidewalk in front of the Lunhill Corporation sign. They were all ages and races. They held signs and chanted.

I read a few of the placard signs as I drove past.

Protect the Land.

Protect our Farmers.

Stand against Lunhill.

No One Should Own a Patent on Mother Nature.

I am not an Experiment.

Quit Trying to Get in my Genes.

Lunhill = Evil Seed of Corporate Greed.

Geez Louise.

These guys really were hated.

I drove down a long expanse of road until I came to a sprawling building of glass and sharp angles. There were over a hundred cars in the parking lot, but I expected more considering Lunhill employed close to twenty thousand people. But then again, the company had offices all over the world.

A minute later, I pushed through the glass doors and into a wide atrium. I wasn’t surprised to see two security guards manning a metal detector. One was older and graying. The other, young with a wispy blond goatee.

They scrutinized me as I approached, my handsome mug not being one of the hundred they saw on a daily basis.

“Hey, fellas,” I said.

“You need an ID badge,” Wispy Goatee said, “or a visitor’s badge.”

“How about this badge?” I quipped.

It’s funny how people react when they realize you work for the FBI. Or had worked for the FBI. Or had stolen the badge of someone who worked for the FBI.

Both men’s backs straightened.

I handed Old Gray the badge, hoping he wouldn’t look too hard at the picture—I was a decent looking guy, but Todd Gregory had been pretty to a fault—and notice that although Gregory and I had similar hair and eyes, it wasn’t me in the picture.

After a moment, he said, “Go right on through, Agent Gregory.”

I walked through the metal detector, the light blinking green, and the guard handed back the badge.

Easy peasy.

Technically, I just committed a federal crime and possibly an even bigger ethical one. I impersonated an FBI agent. A dead one. One who would most likely be alive had a severely pissed off serial killer not been exacting his revenge against me three years earlier.

Sorry, Turd.

Anyhow, I had no doubt the security guards made a call alerting someone to my presence and I wasn’t shocked when a striking woman stepped off the elevator and headed in my direction.

She was clad in a pencil skirt and a flowing white top. An executive. She reached out her hand and said, “Welcome, Mr. Gregory. I’m Allison Daniels, head of PR.”

We shook.

“What brings you to Lunhill Corp?” she asked.

That was a good question. I didn’t want to play my hand too early so I went with, “I was in the area and just hoping for a tour.”

She scoffed, though she attempted to hide it as a cough, and said, “We don’t really do tours here.”

“Great, then I’ll be your first.”

She reached out, grabbed my elbow and attempted to turn me back toward the entrance. “I think maybe you are confusing us with the St. Louis Science museum.”

As I may have mentioned previously, I don’t like having my arm grabbed.

I shook off her hand and said the two words that not only make people’s butts pucker, but are the skeleton key to 99.9 percent of the world. “Actually ma’am, this is a matter of national security.”

If I was already in deep, I was now in the Mariana Trench.

Allison rose two inches in her heels. “Are we in danger?”

“There’s no immediate threat, but there have been some rumblings. I was sent out here to get a better lay of the land and see up close what’s happening behind these walls.”

“Oh, well, I guess I can get someone to show you around.”

“That would be great.”

She told me to sit tight, then headed back up the elevator.

I twiddled my thumbs for two minutes, then the elevators opened and a young man stepped out. He had glasses, a white shirt that was half untucked, and a half-eaten sandwich in his hand.

“Hi, I’m Brian,” Brian the twenty-five-year-old virgin said, his mouth half-full of egg salad.

“Hi, Brian.”

“I, um, guess, I’m like supposed to show you around or something.”

I was curious if Allison had told Brian that I worked for the FBI, but it appeared he was under the impression I was merely your average Joe.

I forced a smile.

He took another bite of sandwich and said, “So, um, like what do you want to see?”

I was overcome with a fatherly instinct to admonish him for talking with his mouth full, to tell him to tuck his shirt in, and maybe spank him.

“How long have you worked here?” I asked.

“Like, um, three days.”

I glanced around until I found one of the many security cameras on the walls and glared into it for whoever was watching.

Then I turned back to Brian and said, “Lead on.”

I followed Brian into the elevator. He hit the button for the third floor. Then he asked, “So, what exactly do you want to know?” He finished his sandwich, but there was a big piece of yolk on the side of his mouth.

I scratched at the side of my mouth. Once, twice, three times. Brian didn’t react.

I said, “You have egg on your face.”

He forced a laugh, then wiped it away.

The elevator stopped, and I followed him into a gray-tiled corridor. I still hadn’t answered his question and I said, “I really just want to know the basics about what goes on here.”

“Do you know much about the company?”

“Just what I’ve read.”

“So you pretty much think Lunhill is the evil face of corporate greed and that we are silently trying to kill everyone on the planet.”

“Pretty much.”

“Well, we’ll see if I can change your mind a little.”

“Challenge accepted.”

He pointed down the corridor and said, “Down there is where most of the science takes place.”

“Is that what you do?”

He shook his head. “I work in sales.”

Of course he did.

I said, “For the past three days.”

He flashed a toothy grin.

I asked,