Killfile (8 page)

That gets a big laugh. Then he shifts the Mossberg into ready-to-fire position, the stock braced against his body, aiming it at them. The laughter dies to nervous chuckles.

“No,” Preston says. “I'm going to hunt you for sport.”

Silence. He lets it stretch for a moment, then busts out laughing.

The OmniVore employees begin laughing too, even though they're not entirely sure why.

“In fact, you're all going to hunt. Each other. Every one of you gets a fine weapon just like this one. Every one of you will get twenty rounds. And then you'll all be released out there, onto the grounds, and the last man standing will be the winner. Hunt and be hunted. The most dangerous game. The toughest, the smartest, and the strongest will survive.”

One of the techs in the crowd tentatively raises his hand. “Like paintball?”

“Paintball?” Scorn oozes from Preston. “Paintball is for pussies. Go to Google—hell, go to Facebook—if you want to play games. You might as well be playing Candy Crush or Angry Birds. We deal in real threats and real results. Every day, out there, when we are facing the unknown scumbags who attack our clients, when we engage with our competitors and enemies in the market, we are not playing games. We don't do trust exercises at OmniVore. We don't do drum circles
or sharing time or Pictionary. We are free-range capitalists. We use real guns.”

There's a long moment of uncomfortable silence. Preston breaks it with another huge, mocking laugh.

“Oh relax, you guys. Human Resources would have a shit fit if I gave you live ammo. This gun is loaded with beanbag rounds. Totally nonlethal.”

That same guy in the front row—clearly a favored employee, to be so close to the boss—speaks up. “Don't the cops use those?”

Preston looks at him blankly. “Yeah. What's your point?”

The guy looks around for support and chuckles. “Well,” he says, “won't that—won't it hurt?”

Preston shrugs. “You tell me.”

Then he shoots him.

The sound is huge, a thunderclap echoing off the walls and ceiling. The employee goes down with a sudden cry of anguish. Some of the OmniVores scream. A couple even dive for cover.

For a moment, nobody moves. There's a murmur through the crowd. Panic and fear and disbelief, straining against one another.

They realize, one after another, that the howling noise is the guy who was shot. He's wailing in pain. But he's still alive.

Preston gestures, and a couple of guys from security haul the guy to his feet. Tears are streaming down his face. He's bent in half, but they keep him upright.

Preston lifts the guy's shirt. There's a pattern of fat red welts all over his torso, standing out vividly against the flabby white skin. But no blood.

“Yeah, that sure looks like it hurts,” Preston says. “Better try not to get shot.”

He pulls the guy into a bear hug, and the crowd starts laughing and cheering. Preston shoves him away, and the guards take him over to a medic with an EMT's kit. The shooting victim is helped from the room by the musclemen and the medic. He looks like he's aged twenty years, shuffling his feet along the floor as if he's on thin ice.

Nobody's really paying attention to him now, though. Their focus is back on Preston.

“Of course, I wouldn't expect any of you to take a risk without a reward,” he says. “That's the whole point of what we do. So the last man standing, when all the smoke has cleared, he gets one hundred thousand dollars. Not in equity. Not in options. I'm talking one hundred K,
cash,
to whoever wins.”

He lets that sink in for a beat. Then he smiles.

“Who's ready to start shooting?”

The crowd lets out an animalistic roar. I feel the consensus wash over them like a wave. This is all part of the game, they decide. Only a loser would complain about the rules.

“Weapons and gear are out front,” Preston tells the others. “You get a fifteen-minute start, and then it's every man for himself.”

The OmniVores knock back their drinks and stampede for the exit. Preston wades into the crowd, gives high fives and fist bumps to his chosen favorites. He takes the key chain out again.

I step back to where Kelsey is waiting, drink in hand, close to the wall. The OmniVore crew streams past us toward the door. The tide of bodies is bringing Preston slowly in our direction.

His eyes lock on to Kelsey and there's a spike of lust as he recognizes her.

“Kelsey,” he says happily, voice booming, walking past two other guys to get to her. “So glad you could make it.”

She offers her hand, he takes it and pulls her closer, going for a kiss and hug. She manages to deflect both with a turn that's almost like a Krav Maga move.

“Eli,” she says. “Thanks for the invite. I know Everett really appreciates it.”

“Well, I'd hoped I would get to see him in person.” His voice is still way too loud. He looks at me. “You must be the new errand boy, then.”

With that, he turns to me and steps just to the edge of my personal space. It's a frat-boy/Business 101 intimidation tactic, and it's all I can do not to laugh.

Now that Preston is close enough, I realize why he's been shouting since he entered. It wasn't just to reach us in the back. He has foam plugs stuffed in his ears, the same kind they hand out on gun ranges to protect your hearing. He was ready to shoot someone before he even stepped into the room.

He puts out his hand. “Eli Preston,” he says.

“John Smith,” I say, and take it.

He hits the key chain and smiles. “Fuckyou! Gotohell!”

Then I see it. In his memory: A dingy closet of a store in a mall, almost always empty, every surface covered in thick dust, cheap crap on the shelves that no one ever bought. The looming, sullen figure of his grandfather, who rarely smiled. The other kids who didn't have to work for their money, who came into the store and mocked him. The computer in the back office, a lifeline to a whole other world.

Looks like Preston knows a thing or two about being excluded. And resentment.

He hits the button again. “Gotohell! Gotohell!” His bodyguards are at his shoulder the whole time, watching me, making sure I don't get too angry at the joke.

Up close, I notice something off about them. I expected a couple
of bored former cops, hanging around to satisfy Preston's ego. Private security is usually nothing more than a status symbol, another way for rich people to keep score. Despite some of the Occupy Wall Street rhetoric, bullet wounds are an occupational hazard for a dealer working a corner, not executives moving credit default swaps.

But Preston's guys are the real thing. They've got a profile I recognize: cold, constant awareness, ready to hurt someone without hesitation or remorse. They're so fresh from the wars that they still have the faint echoes of gunfire in their heads.

Preston didn't hire them from any rent-a-cop shop. They're PMCs—private military contractors, the kind I used to see babysitting Halliburton execs in the Green Zone. Professional killers, wearing company polo shirts.

They regard me with a little wariness. I don't cast the same shadow as the rest of the people here. But they don't have my gift. They don't see me as anything more than an anomaly. If they did, they wouldn't let me get this close to their boss.

I figure this must be the latest thing in personal protection, and another way for Preston to show off: if Sloan hires ex-military like Keith and David, Preston hires former Navy SEALs.

Fortunately for them, I've got no intention of hurting him yet. Like I told Kelsey, this meeting is all recon, a chance to get a look at the opposition and evaluate. Nothing serious is going to happen here.

So I smile and shake his hand like a normal person and let my talent pick his brain.

He's not as smart as Sloan, but still much higher up the IQ scale than I can climb. I catch a couple of coding problems he's fussing over in the back of his head, and it's like an alien language.

But he's easier to read than Sloan. He has none of Sloan's calm or patience. Preston is all jagged edges and wandering attention. His
mind is like a strobe, illuminating one thing for an instant, then flickering to the next.

For the first time, I start to think what Sloan asked might actually be possible. I never doubted I'd be able to get the algorithm back, at least in software form. But wiping out a memory is, as I said, something I've done only once, and not exactly with surgical precision.

Looking into Preston's head, however, gives me some hope. He's got almost no inner resources, aside from his intellect. He's obsessive, which is not the same as disciplined, and he's easily distracted. Given a little time, I can probably grab whatever I need from him.

“So you two know each other?” I say, nodding at Kelsey.

He grins hugely. “Oh yeah. We overlapped when I was at Sloan, didn't we?” He puts more saliva than I thought possible into the word “overlap.”

Kelsey's smile turns into a mask.

“We didn't work together,” she tells me. “Eli left the company a couple of months after I started.”

Preston's barely paying attention to me, spending most of his mental energy picturing Kelsey naked. But it's pretty clear they didn't sleep together, no matter how much Preston wishes it were true. I remind myself that it shouldn't matter to me.

“I was hoping we could talk about you doing some work for Mr. Sloan again,” I say. “He's been watching your progress, and he thinks you might be able to help him. He'd like to hire OmniVore to root out a few old, buried secrets.”

I get a small charge of triumph from Preston, but no guilt or anxiety.

“Well, we're pretty busy. I don't know if we have the room to take on any new clients right now.” He turns to Kelsey. “This is all hush-hush, but you know we're prepping for our IPO. It's not too late for you to come over, get in on the ground floor.”

“I like my job, Eli,” Kelsey says.

“Working for the old man? Come on. That place is a retirement home.”

“I don't think Mr. Sloan will let you steal her,” I say.

“She's about the only valuable thing Sloan has,” Preston says, then remembers I'm supposed to work for Sloan too. “No offense.”

“No fear,” I say. “But given how much you took away from your time with him, I think you'd want to hear his offer now. He helped make you what you are today, after all.”

There's a prickle of self-righteousness at that. Preston's ego throws up automatic defenses to any suggestion that his success isn't his alone. But again, there's no guilt. I'm tossing plenty of key words that should trigger some kind of response:
buried secrets, steal, fear, took away from him
. And I'm getting nothing. If he did steal from Sloan, he's got it covered well, or he managed to justify it to himself long ago.

He teeters on the edge of a decision, and then his curiosity pushes him over the brink. “Sure,” he says. “I can't promise to give a shit, but I'll listen to your pitch.”

“That's all I ask,” I say. “When?”

“Let's get it over with. The lodge has an office I'm using. Give me a few minutes to get this party started, and then we can talk, cool?”

He turns back to Kelsey without waiting for my response. “What about you, Kelsey? You going to help your boy here? I'd rather listen to anything coming out of your mouth. Or at least watch it while it moves.”

For a second, I think she's going to lose it and punch him. I can feel the impulse run down toward her fist. I wouldn't blame her.

Then she surprises us both by saying, “Actually, I thought I'd go shoot a few of your nerds.”

That wipes the grin right off Preston's face. “Seriously? You want in on this?”

Her smile is something sharp now. “What, your boys can't handle a girl on the field? Are you scared of me, Eli?”

He laughs. “Hey, knock yourself out. You want to try for the cash, you got it. I guess Sloan's not paying you that well these days. Be careful out there.” He looks at me as if he's won some kind of point. “Office. Twenty minutes,” he tells me, and then his bodyguards escort him away.

Kelsey finishes her drink and sets the glass down carefully on a nearby table made from the foot of an elephant. She turns to go as well.

I stand in her way. “This is a bad idea,” I tell her. “I've had people shoot at me before. Trust me, the novelty wears off pretty fast.”

“I can handle myself,” she says. “Why shouldn't I take a shot—yes, I know, terrible pun—at a hundred thousand dollars?”

“Because it's idiotic. You could get badly hurt. Take one of those rounds in the face and you might not get back up.”

She smiles brightly. “That's assuming they get me before I get them.”

I can see she's completely serious, completely unafraid. And the more I argue with her, the deeper she's going to dig.

I step back. “Do what you want,” I say. “I'll be here when I'm done with Preston.”

“Try not to melt his brain before I get back,” she says.

“I told you. Nothing's going to happen.”

She walks away, and I watch her go.

All right. Let her have her version of fun. She'll be fine. And besides, protecting her is not part of my job.

I
KNOW WHY
Preston wanted time before he met me. He needs to run me through his databases. He'd be an idiot if he didn't.

I felt one of his goons snap a picture of me with his phone earlier. It's the same tingle I get when someone looks at me through a gunsight. I could have spoiled it easily, but I want him to have my photo.

With Kelsey's help, I've already got a full cover ID. My fake credit report lists me as an employee of Sloan's firm, and I've got a fake address with a fake mortgage. My fake credit-card numbers lead to a full purchase history—copied and pasted from another guy's account—so that even if Preston uses his data-mining software, he'll find a complete record. I checked it out on Kelsey's laptop on the plane. Apparently I spend a lot of money on dog food.