Max Collins - After the Dark

The figure in the bed wasn’t much bigger than Max had been when she’d fled Manticore. Stepping forward, she could see that the pruney lump was a very old gent with no hair, no teeth, and tiny black dots for eyes. Though the man’s eyes were open, he seemed to see nothing, but his short, straight nose sniffed past the oxygen tube in his nostrils, as if he could smell her.

As she realized what she was seeing, Max felt the bottom drop out of her stomach and a chill sweep over her.

From behind her an icy male voice intoned, “Say hello to Lyman Cale, why don’t you?”

Max whirled to face a handsome blond man of about six feet and 180 pounds; he wore a black blazer over a white shirt with no tie, though his gray trousers had a disturbingly crisp crease for this time of night.

“Max... Guevera, isn’t it?” he asked. His voice was a baritone that somehow managed to be both smooth and husky.

“Do I know you?” she asked, placing her hands on her hips, raising her chin, sending out confident body language that didn’t truly reflect her current state of mind.

Even in the half-light provided by the television screen, the thirtyish man had piercing blue eyes — icy eyes; his pretty-boy looks were slightly undercut by a pug, piggish nose. His thin lips created a straight line that turned up maybe a tenth of an inch at each corner in what was, technically at least, a smile.

“We’ve not met,” he admitted. “But I recognize you.”

“From the TV,” she said flatly.

“Yes... and I make it a business to know who’s a friend of the Cale family, and who isn’t.”

“Then you know I’m a friend.”

“A friend of Logan Cale’s.”

“Yes.”

That assertion drew a leering appraisal, and the smile broadened into something uglier. “Logan always had an eye for the ladies.”

“I am so flattered,” she said dryly. “You know who I am. Be a good host — who the hell are you?”

He raised a scolding finger. “Be a good guest... I’m an old family friend — Franklin Bostock. Logan and I went to private school together, as boys. Ask him about me, sometime. I’d be amused to see if he recalls me fondly or not.”

“I’ll do that. Why is a family friend in Lyman Cale’s bedroom at this hour?”

“A better question might be, why is a friend of Logan Cale’s in Lyman Cale’s bedroom at this hour?... My position right now is as Mr. Cale’s private secretary.”

Max gestured to the array of machines — one to help the patient breathe, a monitor that showed a stable heartbeat, reasonable blood pressure, and a barely perceptible nudge in the line that indicated brain activity. “What’s wrong with Mr. Cale?”

Bostock made a clicking sound and shook his head. “I’m afraid Mr. Cale’s had a series of debilitating strokes.”

She frowned, wondering how Cale could have degenerated to this degree in so short a time. “Recently?”

“Fairly recently. He’s been in a vegetative state for most of the last year and a half.”

Eyes narrowing, she shook her head. “That’s impossible. I just saw a video of him addressing Congress, what? Barely two months ago?”

The private secretary’s smile returned, showing her another shade of self-satisfaction. “Video technology has come quite a long way, hasn’t it? Feed some actual footage into CGI generating programs, and a person can live forever.”

Max stepped near the bed, looked at the small pitiful form there, barely discernible as a human being. Quickly, she did the math on this situation, and strode over to Bostock, standing just a foot from him.

“Mr. Bostock, I came for Logan’s uncle’s help. But it looks like it’s your help I need.”

He bowed his head slightly. “As one family friend to another, I assure you I’ll do what I can to be of assistance... Shall we go to my office?”

She followed Bostock out of the bedroom, leaving the frail old comatose figure to his unknowing privacy, and down the stairs to what must have been Lyman Cale’s book-lined study until his private secretary had moved in and arrayed the massive mahogany desk with computer equipment. She was shown to a dark dimpled leather couch, and Bostock pulled a heavy chair around and sat, ready to listen attentively.

It took her less than five minutes to lay out the whole story for him. When she was finished, Bostock made that clicking sound again.

“I see,” he sighed, shaking his head. “Obviously you believe Mr. Cale could put up that ransom.”

She nodded slowly. “It would be a big help. It will probably be the thing that saves Logan’s life, and I promise my first priority after recovering Mr. Cale’s nephew will be to get that money back for you.”

“From what I understand about your abilities,” he said, “I believe you could return the ransom.”

“Then...?”

“I only wish we could provide it.”

She gestured to the lavish surroundings. “Why can’t you, Mr. Bostock?”

He arched an eyebrow, shrugged. “For the simple reason that we don’t have the money. Or at least I can’t access it.”

She sat forward, almost climbing onto the man. “What’s the problem here, Mr. Bostock? Surely you know that Logan is your employer’s favorite nephew... and this is a family matter, an urgent, life-or-death—”

“Ms. Guevera — please. Your indignation is misplaced. Please keep in mind, I would have every right to call the police and have you taken out of here, bodily — for breaking and entering?”

Max did not back down. “What’s going on in this house, Bostock? What the hell are you up to?”

“Nothing nefarious, I assure you. There is no money to access.”

She pointed a finger ceilingward. “He may be in a coma, but Lyman Cale is wealthy as sin.”

“He’s sick as sin, too, Ms. Guevera. And his money is tied up in a conservatorship overseen by the trust department of the First National Bank of Seattle. The attorney in charge of the estate’s fund would never agree to provide that ransom... and even if he did, I’m fairly certain the estate’s full worth is well below your ransom figure of four million, at this point.”

“But this mansion...”

“The mansion would find a fair price, even in today’s market, yes. But do you really think a trust officer would allow this house to be quickly sold, or loaned against, to meet a kidnapper’s demands?”

“Where’s the money gone?”

“Being in a coma is an expensive hobby, Ms. Guevera — drugs, the nurses, the machines, the doctors, well... you get the drift.”

“Dying costs as much as living.”

His smile grew tight. “In Mr. Cale’s case, much more.”

Max could see that this guy was smooth and he was convincing, but bottom line? Bostock was nothing but a damned bureaucrat, and she could see that he wasn’t going to try to help her. Her radar was tingling — she felt something was amiss here, and Bostock himself might well be behind it.

But she had no time to follow the trail of that instinct, not with the clock on Logan’s life ticking...

And there was no talking to Lyman Cale. The uncle who would instantly have helped his beloved nephew had so many IVs and tubes running into him, no telling whether he was alive or dead...

A knock at the study door secured a “Come!” from Bostock, and two goons stepped in, both reacting to Max’s black-clad presence with a lurch that Bostock froze with a raised hand.

“She’s my guest,” he told them.

These were the blond- and the brown-haired guards in TAC fatigues, the two who’d looked like pros. Closer up, they might have been twins; it was as if they’d been spawned from the same test tube, much like Max and her sibs. Both had Cro-Magnon foreheads, deep-set blue eyes, and tiny, nearly lipless mouths. What neither of them had was anything resembling a neck, their skulls seeming to simply swivel atop their shoulders, their attention on her even as they listened to Bostock.