J. Jance - Fatal Error

For a time their company had occupied office space in a building on one street and in two adjacent sections in one of the nearby buildings that had been designated for light industry. One space, equipped with rolling garage-type doors, had been used primarily for shipping and receiving. In the other, and at great expense in tenant improvements, Rutherford had constructed a clean room, which they planned on using as an assembly facility.

When it was clear Rutherford was going down the drain, the landlord had been lucky enough to find someone who was willing to take over the office part of their lease. Because the property manager wanted to maintain a minimum level of occupancy, he had offered Mark and Mina a huge break on the lease for warehouse space. In other words, Mark was glad they still had a place to store their stock of illegal UAVs, even though he sometimes worried about how Mina was managing to pay the rent, even with the steep discount.

Mark used a clicker to let himself into the shipping/receiving bay, then he used a connecting door between the two to gain access to the assembly area. After turning off the alarm and switching on the lights, he set to work.

The UAVs were stored in the cage-a locked interior chain-link structure that had been been constructed in the assembly area. Originally it had been intended to hold their inventory of needed parts. Now there was no assembly operation and no need for parts either.

One by one he removed the UAVs from the cage and deposited them on the remaining assembly tables. Installation of the programming upgrade took approximately fifteen minutes per drone. Once each one was finished, Mark loaded it into a specially designed cardboard shipping box. After cushioning the UAV with a collection of air-filled plastic bags, he then closed the box, taped it shut, and slapped on a suitable collection of labels. If anyone asked, these were model airplanes. Large model airplanes. Specially ordered model airplanes, manufactured in China and shipped to dealers in the United States.

As each box was loaded, closed, taped, and labeled, Mark carried them back to the cage and stacked them one on top of another. There was no particular hurry. The timetable Mina had given him said that she would return to the cabin sometime on Sunday and that they would deliver the finished UAVs to Enrique on Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, Mark and Mina would be new people. Armed with new names and matching IDs, they would head off into their new lives.

Mark was excited by the prospect. He was ready for new faces and new places. He was still hurt and disappointed by the number of people he had thought of as friends who had simply turned their backs on Mark and Mina once they fell on hard times. Mark was ready to be someone else entirely. He wanted to go live on a tropical island somewhere with no worries except maybe what kind of fish to catch for dinner. He had tried running the show with Rutherford, and that hadn’t worked out very well for either of them. Now Mark was content to step back and let Mina do the running.

That wasn’t to say he wasn’t grateful, because he was. It was Mina’s wheeling and dealing that had made this deal possible. Mark’s part of the bargain was to be the on-site tech guy and have the UAVs properly reprogrammed, packed up, and ready for delivery. Ten hours later, right around midnight, Mark stacked the last box in the cage. After locking the door behind him, he put his tools away, turned off the lights, and set the alarm.

Leaving the warehouse, Mark decided he would reward a job well done by having some fun before leaving for home. Retracing his route back through the office park and back out onto Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, he pulled into the familiar parking lot of the Demon Sports Bar. When he had worked in the neighborhood, Mark had been a regular here. When he walked into the place just prior to last call, he was shocked by how much it had changed.

In the time Mark had been away, the Demon had apparently undergone a remarkable transformation. There was a redesigned menu. Flat-screen TVs had replaced the old rear-projection models. Settling onto a barstool, Mark looked around in search of a familiar face, but a whole new crop of female bartenders and cocktail waitresses had replaced the ones he had known previously.

“What’ll you have?” the bartender asked. She was red-haired, good-looking, and maybe five years younger than Mina, which made her much younger than Mark.

“A draft beer and a burger,” he said with a wink, “with maybe a little salsa on the side.”

She gave him a look that said she got the message. “Coming right up,” she said.

So there’s been some turnover since I was here last, Mark thought as he sipped that first beer. No problem. If you’re a good enough tipper, it’s easy to win friends and influence people.

Sedona, Arizona

When Ali let herself into the house well after four on Friday afternoon, the aroma of baking scones reminded her that this was Friday, and Sister Anselm was expected around five for what Leland liked to call his Cornish cream tea.

“I forgot,” she said.

“No worries,” Leland said. “Sister Anselm called a little while ago and said she was running late too.”

Realizing that a nap was out of the question, Ali hustled out of her Sugarloaf Cafe duds and took a quick shower. Then she settled down on the love seat to let her hair air dry for a few minutes. Within seconds, Samantha appeared at Ali’s feet and then scrambled up on the love seat next to her.

Sam had arrived in Ali’s life in what was supposedly a temporary fostering situation with no official papers of origin. Ali hadn’t particularly liked cats in the beginning, but Sam had grown on her. Their temporary situation had now stretched into years. Sam’s vet estimated her to be somewhere in her early teens, which meant she was verging on feline elderly. Her sixteen-pound body could no longer deliver the graceful leaps that had once carried her to the top of the running clothes dryer, her favorite snoozing perch during the day.

Leland Brooks’s concession to Sam’s diminished mobility was a kitchen step stool he placed next to the dryer, an aid which she deigned to use on occasion, but only when no one was looking. Ali had done her bit to solve Sam’s mobility difficulties by placing a set of pet steps next to the bed in her bedroom. That way Sam could make it on and off her favorite spot on the bed without having to suffer the indignity of being lifted up and down.

With Sam purring contentedly at her side, Ali checked her e-mail. There were more than a dozen lined up and waiting, but she chose to open only four.

The first one came from her mother:

Your father is acting like a kid. He bounces out of bed at the crack of dawn and doesn’t go to sleep until all hours. I can’t believe he’s the same man I’ve been married to for all these years.

I think he’s sad that today is our last full day on the ship. So am I, but I’m like an old dray horse, and I’m ready to get back in harness. See you tomorrow. There’s a chance we may be able to switch our reservation to an earlier flight.

Next up was an e-mail from someone named Robert Dahlgood with a subject line that said, “Velma Trimble.”

Years earlier when Ali had retreated to Sedona in the aftermath of the end of her marriage and the loss of her job, she had started a blog called cutlooseblog.com. Velma Trimble had been one of her blog’s most ardent fans. During the dark time Ali had been dealing with Paul Grayson’s death, Velma had taken a cab from her home in Laguna Beach and had come all the way across Los Angeles to Ali’s hotel in Westwood in hopes of offering her assistance.

As a result of that selfless action despite the age difference between them, Ali and Velma had become good friends in a way that was not unlike Ali’s friendship with Sister Anselm. When Velma had been diagnosed with breast cancer at age eighty-eight, her son had opposed her seeking treatment. Ali had encouraged it, and the treatment had worked. In the intervening years, Velma had managed to take a round-the-world first-class private jet tour with another new friend, Maddy Watkins.