In the darkness, Ron reached out and found her. His hand closed gently on her long neck, and he turned and lifted himself to a kneeling position, leaned toward her, and found her lips. Their mouths met warmly, softly. It was as he had hoped. The smell of her, the taste of her, the feel of her was good. His breath came quicker; his heart beat a little faster. They remained that way for a few seconds, soft lips caressing and tasting one another there in the darkness. Finally, their mouths parted. Ron edged back a bit, feeling an erection.
“That was nice,” Ron told her.
“Yes,” Kate said. And then, “You enjoyed it?”
“Very much,” he admitted.
“You trust me?” she asked.
“What do you mean? Trust you concerning what?”
“Let me put it to you another way,” she said. “We’ve both been zapped in the noggin and tossed here in what serves as the lockup, right?”
“Yes.”
“So we’re both pretty much in the same boat.”
Ron nodded, remembered that there was no way for Kate to see the movement, then said, “Yes. We’re both stuck here. We were both sapped on the skull. As far as your former friends are concerned, I guess I trust you as well as I would anyone. What are you getting at?”
“Well.” She paused. “I know you’re not going to want to hear this.”
“Hear what?”
“I think Mary is in with the studio. I think she had something to do with Dodd getting aced.”
Ron’s breath caught in his chest. And although he wanted to, he found he couldn’t so much as swallow.
William Tatum looked up from the papers on his desk to see a true horror enter his office. The building was quiet, and not a sound filtered into the room from the hallway outside: not so much as a whisper. Of course the figure standing in the doorway had shocked everyone and everything into complete silence. His presence was not unlike God’s, Tatum often thought. Michael Irons closed the door behind him and looked down on the seated figure of a suddenly very small and very insignificant Bill Tatum.
Tatum wondered what Irons had said to keep his secretary from announcing his visitation. He wondered if he’d said nothing at all. He could see, in his mind’s eye, the perfectly manicured index finger coming up to those rosy, almost cherubic lips, just the suggestion of a mischievous smile painted on. Hush, little Miss. I’m here to suuuuuuuuurPRISE your boss. And she had remained obediently still, like a good little scared rabbit.
The chairman stood easily inside the doorway, saying nothing. Calmly, he reached into his coat and withdrew a silver tube from which he produced a cigar. He lit it with a gold lighter produced from another pocket, tilting his head as he did so, peering down at Tatum. He puffed, obviously enjoying each inhalation. A strong and pleasant odor was soon wafting throughout the room, despite the fact that a truly superlative circulation system drew out and replaced the air in the building every few minutes. Cigar smoke seemed to make a nearly straight line toward the ceiling, where it vanished invisibly. With the cigar champed firmly in those shark-like teeth, Irons replaced the gleaming lighter.
“You look a bit stunned to see me. Surely you can’t say my visit is completely unexpected.” Irons was not smiling, was not frowning; he seemed neither pleased nor angry.
Tatum shuddered, visibly. “I thought that you would call me in,” he said.
Irons removed the cigar and waved it with a great, exaggerated flourish worthy of any stage. His bio, which every employee was required to read, said that he’d been an actor as a youth, and had abandoned that career by his twenty-fourth year, when he’d worked his way into surer, more lucrative work in the film industry. “You thought that I’d call you in.” He blew out a puff of smoke. “That’s really amusing, Tatum. Truly it is.”
The security chief sat motionlessly, afraid to move, afraid to stand, afraid to comment. He merely sat and breathed, and waited.
“I thought you were a professional. I thought that you knew how to get the job done, my friend.” His face remained a stony, unreadable mask.
“The men I chose for the job were a poor choice. I admit it. I won’t even try to lay the blame elsewhere. It was my fault,” he admitted. And, really, it was his fault.
“Well, I’m happy to hear you claim that.” Irons moved toward the desk, toward the