Blast From The Past 3 (6 page)

“Lighten up,” Tommy laughed.

I knew I must have looked like I was about to faint when he said that.

“Is that your idea of a joke?” I asked. “It really wasn’t that funny.”

“Sorry,” Tommy said. “Guess I’ve got a kind of dark sense of humor… Anyway, you wanna actually get something to eat, or you wanna sit here and talk about the rest of my dating history?”

The night was still young, I was hungry, and I still craved whatever other information I could get, toward whatever ends, and for whatever reason, so I agreed to get a table with Tommy, and we had the dinner we’d planned on having. I made it a point to never take my eyes off of my glass, or his, for too long, and also made it a point not to drink too much anyway—and, while I was making those points, Tommy was making his own, and they had nothing to do with Gretchen.

He treated dinner very much like the social event it was probably supposed to be treated like, and spent a great deal of time talking about different things, from the recent changes in weather to the variety of beers on Burger Bistro’s taps. At one point, I felt something vibrating in my pocket, and I remembered that I’d placed phone-2 there, so as to have it on me but not confuse it with my other one in front of Tommy.

I knew it had to be J.R. or Julie trying to get a hold of me, and, whichever one it was, they’d have to try again later. Even though I wasn’t entirely sure about the conclusions I’d reached about Tommy, I still didn’t want to leave my glass unattended near him, and I didn’t want to reach back out to either of my friends, lest they’d discover what I was up to.

When the waitress came ‘round one last time, Tommy tried to convince me to stick around for another drink, but I was done with it all by that point. It was well after seven, and I hadn’t gotten any new information in hours. And, all told, if anything, I’d only made things more confusing for myself. I just wanted to go home and think things over. Really, I was starting to wonder if everything I’d done had been worthless.

I declined Tommy’s extended invitation and politely thanked him when he picked up the bill. We hugged and parted ways, each headed off home, alone, in separate directions. I still didn’t know what to think of things. I knew Tommy was no good, but I wasn’t sure if he was involved with things at rEcore, and I was pretty certain Gretchen wasn’t… So, who else could have done this to me? How? And…why?

I’d made my way back to the over-priced parking lot where I’d parked my car, and, just as I was about to reach for my keys, I heard my name and turned to see Tommy standing a few aisles away. The wind was blowing against him, and his hands were in his pockets.

“Wait, Trish,” he said, gesturing for me to stop. “I have to tell you something.”

Tommy ran across the lot and stopped beside me, shielding me from the cold night air.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I wasn’t joking,” he answered, point blank.

“Huh?” I asked, looking at him curiously.

“Back in the restaurant,” he replied with a grin. “When I quoted those spy movies… Now that I’ve told you everything, I’m gonna have to kill you.”

“That still isn’t funny,” I fired back as I turned to walk away.

“It wasn’t supposed to be,” Tommy said in a roaring whisper. The next thing I knew, I felt one of his hands wrap around my waist, while the other went around my neck… then nothing.

“Where the fuck am I?” I asked.

This time, when I woke up from my imposed stupor, I didn’t have the luxury of being in a bed or a bedroom. From the looks of my surroundings, I was in a basement or garage somewhere, and, in the distance, I could hear heavy metal music.

“Where the fuck am I?” I shouted, trying to raise my voice over what sounded like Axl Rose’s wailing. There was a nasty taste in my mouth, and my lips still tingled with numbness. I tried to lean forward, but realized that I couldn’t. My hands were tied to the back piece of the wooden chair in which I was sitting. If I’d watched more action/adventure movies, I might have known how to throw my body around and knock the chair to the floor, thereby releasing me from my tether… But, alas, I was never a big fan of action/adventure movies.

I looked around, desperately trying to better evaluate my surroundings and situation. Wherever I was, I knew I’d never been there before. The few people I knew in Pittsburgh lived in apartment buildings, no houses—and the room I was in was obviously part of a house.

My head was pounding pretty badly, and the music really wasn’t helping. Nor was the scent of marijuana that was wafting my way. I focused on the direction from which the smoke was coming—and there was Tommy. He was standing there, smoking a joint, watching me as I came to my senses.

“Welcome back, Trish,” he said, pinching the joint between his lips. “And I do mean that… Welcome back,
Trish
. Believe me, I’d like to still call you Patty, but I can’t—not anymore. If you were still Patty, we wouldn’t be in this mess. The shit hit the fan because you couldn’t just let it be; you threw it. Patty would have never done something like that.”

By now, Tommy was walking toward me, and my eyes were continually readjusting and refocusing on his moving image.

“Patty would have been the perfect fall guy,” he said, pulling up another chair and sitting in front of me. “I never expected you to have changed so much.”

“Me?” I asked as Tommy’s face became clearer in my mind. I wanted to laugh but didn’t have the energy.

Tommy sat and stared at me for a moment, with an unwholesome smile on his face. “You have two choices here, Trish,” he went on. “You can tell me who else knows about me, or you can suffer a very unfortunate accident. I said I’d kill you, and I will, if I have to…but no one’s saying I have to. If you cooperate, you could still walk out of this alive.”

“You couldn’t kill anyone, Tommy,” I said, trying to lunge forward toward him. I wanted to insult him but, at the same time, talk common sense into him, but neither was working, given my condition.

“Maybe I could, maybe I couldn’t,” Tommy said, with a chuckle. He was obviously amused by my response, as well as by my response to his restraints. “But I’m not the only one in on this—and, if my partner wants you dead, you’re dead… So, like I said, it’s in your best interest to cooperate.”

In that instant, there was only one question on my mind.

“Who?” I asked.

Tommy turned and looked at something on a distant wall. My vision was still fucked up, and I couldn’t quite make out what he was looking at, but it was round and familiar, like a clock. He paced back and forth for a moment, laughing a little, and he relit his joint and took a few more drags.

“I tried to tell you earlier,” he said after what seemed like forever. “In Burger Bistro, when I asked you if you wanted to hear about the rest of my dating history.”

I heard a noise from above me—the sound of a closing door, followed by footsteps.

“After what happened at that rEcore party,” Tommy went on, “I tried everything I could to get back together with Gretchen. But I guess that was the final straw, and she wanted nothing to do with me.”

The sound of the footsteps was growing louder. Then they stopped, and I heard a door open.

“Really, I tried everything I could,” Tommy repeated. “I even showed up at rEcore and demanded to see her… But, unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get past security.”

As I heard footsteps descending the nearby staircase, I shook my head from side to side. I knew exactly whose face I expected to see round the corner…only it wasn’t her face I saw first. It was her tits.

“Hey, baby,” Stephanie said, walking over to Tommy. When she got to his side, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. It was one of those kisses that was both disgusting, yet, under the right circumstances, incredibly hot. Their tongues lapped at each other outside of their mouths in a way that was very, very vulgar.

“She doesn’t need to know our entire back story, you know,” Stephanie said, finally pulling away from their unnerving kiss.

“She doesn’t need to know,” Tommy repeated. “But I
want
to tell her. She thinks she’s so smart. I want her to see everything she overlooked…and maybe if I tell her what she wants to know, she’ll tell us what we want to know. It’s only fair, isn’t it?”

“Okay, whatever, Tommy,” Stephanie said. “But let me cut the chase and get to the point for you.” Stephanie turned her attention to me, taking the seat Tommy had occupied earlier.

“I wouldn’t let him up to see Gretchen,” she explained. “I’d been given specific instructions that he wasn’t to be let in, and he was trying to explain to me why they were bullshit. He tried to get in the next day, too, but I wouldn’t let him… After that, we ended up talking, then fucking, then dating.

“Tommy got offered some money to do some hacking and innovation harvesting, but he couldn’t do it at his firm…so I suggested that he do it at rEcore. My brother worked there, you know.”

Tommy came over and rubbed his hands over Stephanie’s shoulders, pressing his body against hers. “Let me tell the rest?” he whimpered.

“Go ahead,” she sighed.

“All it took was a couple roofies to get Evan to spill everything I needed to know to access rEcore’s system using his credentials,” Tommy said, picking up the story as if he’d rehearsed it. “And after I was in, I was in for good… I was able to gain higher level access and eventually tapped into Gretchen’s accounts.

“But then Gretchen caught wind of things. She saw some strange activity in Evan’s logs and fired him, which threw a huge wrench in our plans. I still had the access I needed, but I didn’t have a middle-man fall guy lined up for my big finds.”

Stephanie rolled her eyes a little. She seemed a little tired of this story. I, however, was intrigued and couldn’t help but want to hear more.

“When I saw your HR file come across Gretchen’s e-desk a few months ago, a little lightbulb went off in my head,” Tommy went on. “If you’re wondering how you landed such a great job, you can thank me, in part, for it. I fucked with some of the other candidates’ résumés and communications to make you look like the obvious hire—and, once you were hired, I just had to wait for the perfect moment.

“That moment came when your stupid reporter friend used your tablet. Since I had access to Gretchen’s account, I had access to yours—and, when I saw who was using your equipment, it was like a dream come true for me. I hadn’t envisioned a media leak being part of my mining, but, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was a blessing. It would help muddy any path that led to me…I thought.”

As I listened to Tommy speak, I heard some flaws in his logic, but I was more disturbed by his behavior and the excited way he was recounted his nefarious activities. I couldn’t say for sure, since my vision was so still blurry, but I was pretty sure he had a huge boner while telling his tale.

“When I set things up to fall with the music app,” Tommy continued, “you were supposed to take the wrap for it. I couldn’t predict how anyone would act for sure, but I was pretty confident that the higher-ups at rEcore wouldn’t do
very
much about it, for fear of exposing more of their tech secrets, and pretty much expected you to sit back and take the blame, then run away with your tail between your legs… That’s what the Patty I knew would’ve done.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Stephanie interrupted. “But that was Patty, and this is Trish… Whatever.” She sounded even more tired with
this
part of Tommy’s story.

“Whatever,” Tommy echoed, “but it’s true.”

Tommy walked away from Stephanie, over to a workbench a few feet away. He picked up an object and started examining it.

“So, you’ve got tons of calls and texts from Julie Benson,” he noted. “But who’s this ‘Unknown’ number on here? Who else knows about your investigation—who else is involved?”

I realized, then, that Tommy was examining my cell phone—phone-1. I wriggled around in my seat a little and brought the tips of my fingers to my ass. I could still feel phone-2 in my pocket, and I wondered, in all his maneuvers (from kidnapping me to tying me up), how Tommy hadn’t found it.

I wriggled around a bit more, hoping for the unlikely. How many times have
you
been in a situation where you “ass-dialed” someone? You know, where your phone is in your pocket or purse, and you inadvertently hit some buttons and end up calling someone. I prayed, in that moment, for an accident like that to happen.

While I was wriggling, Tommy was still looking at my cell phone—but, unfortunately, Stephanie was looking at
me
. My movements were a little strange, given the situation, and they’d attracted her attention.

“Why the hell are you fidgeting around like that?” Stephanie asked, jumping up from her chair and rushing at me. The next thing I knew, her hands were all over my body, groping my chest, my legs, and, then, my ass.

“For Christ’s sake, Tommy,” Stephanie yelped when she cupped my right buttock. “You didn’t even give her a pat down, or check her pockets? She’s got another phone back here!”

With that, I felt phone-2 being pulled from my pocket, then felt a hard thump on the back of my head, followed by blackness and silence.