ORDER
Regina sat in her office. Her leather chair turned toward the panoramic window. The view before her was clouded in morning fog, and she could see only as far as the next building. She wondered if she should go grocery shopping or just order take-out from a restaurant. Italian? Chinese? I haven’t had Chinese in a while. Steve didn’t care for Chinese food. Too many vegetables.
Before she could hit the speaker phone to call reception to ask for a Chinese restaurant recommendation, her phone rang. Steve.
She smiled and picked up, readying a flirtatious greeting. But her partner wasn’t in the mood.
“He finally did it; your bastard ass nephew is being tracked by God knows who.” His pressed, angry voice echoed through the speaker phone.
“What?”
He exhaled. “Mark slept all the way to St. Louis thanks to the drugs I gave him. Ian and his men had to carry him into the motel room.” He sighed. “We frisked him and the car. We found a burner phone.” Regina frowned. That’s what we do, use burner tech. But Steve wasn’t finished.
“He’s been using this burner phone for years. He never discarded it. There are messages on it from Duane, pretty damning ones, too. Ian immediately started erasing the data when he got an app notification telling him that he couldn’t delete it because he wasn’t the originating phone.” Regina braced herself. She knew what he would say next.
“Had he used the company phone, the trace would have been immediately noticed. Zee would have gotten a flag notification. But he didn’t.” Steve screamed.
She ran her hands through her hair and sighed. “No, that's impossible. He keeps his phone with him at all times. He even takes it to the bathroom. Especially since last year when he found the tracer program I had put on his phone. Trust me, Ian made a mistake.”
Regina thought for a moment. “Is there any way to revert the trace? Find out who did this?”
Steve laughed, a cynical, hard laugh. “And then what? Kill them? Bribe them? Have you lost your mind? We can’t just keep littering the place with accidents.”
Steve sighed. “Give the order or I’m walking away.” He demanded.
Regina stemmed her hands on the desk, leaning toward the phone. “Order? What order?” She hyperventilated. These conversations are reserved for snitches, employees that wouldn’t follow rules, or merchandise that has become too difficult. And in this context, merchandise meant subjects, humans trafficked across country lines, to be sold, to be used. And the term ‘order’ meant one thing only; termination, for whatever reason; the permanent kind.
Never had she thought these terms would be applied to her own flesh and blood.
“Lay a hand on him and I’ll come after you.” She hissed, pulled the phone off her desk and threw it against the wall.
No comments:
Post a Comment