***
My heart was pounding. Pounding so hard I thought it was going to jump right out of my chest.
The brick wall behind me dug into my back and shoulders. The pain felt good. Real. Realer than anything around me had felt in a lifetime.
My hands balled up into fists. My nails digging into my palms. More pain. More reality.
Reality was pain.
Reality was hurt.
Reality was revenge.
I stood in the dark alley, still as a statue. I was waiting, waiting for my nemesis to make a move.
To make a mistake.
I took a few shallow breaths, trying to calm my heart, but it kept galloping along. It refused to relax.
After endlessly waiting, Meredith appeared, stepping out of a doorway. She wore all black, making it almost impossible to see her well.
I took a tiny step forward, my foot barely scraping the concrete beneath me. She turned her head and looked right at me. My small noise had given me away.
Meredith pulled out a gun, black and deadly, and shot at me. I ducked around the corner, her bullets missing me.
Her shots stopped and I heard footsteps running, but I stayed put. It could be a trap, a horrible, horrible trap.
The footfalls became distant. Soon, I couldn’t hear them at all. I peeked around the corner and saw nobody.
I felt relief and panic. I needed to know where she was hiding the treasure! I ran the only direction she could have gone, disregarding my own safety.
Men, demons, and hell beasts came out of the woodwork, following me slowly like zombies, and mummies. The huge hell dogs were being held back by their deformed masters, but I knew they were salivating, imagining sinking their teeth into my body as they’d dream of sinking them into a nice, juicy stake.
Now, I not only had lost my target, but I was being followed by evil. If only I could fly away from the danger.
At this thought, my feet left the ground and I floated. Every second that passed, I flew higher and higher into the air. Soon I was out of the beasts’ arm range. And then their sight.
They disappeared, vanishing as the fog.
I flew over homes and high rises, going up and down every alley and road with such unrelenting speed that all below me began to blur together. But the harder I searched the city, the less likely it seemed I would find her. She’d disappeared, vanished. How could that be?
Furtive movement caught my eye. As an eagle zeros in on her prey, I zeroed in on Meredith. She was at the door to a warehouse, looking over her shoulder. The door opened and she left my line of sight.
That didn’t bother me, for now I knew where she was. I swooped down, wishing I could go through walls.
The closer to the warehouse, the more I wished. Tingling went through my body and I was transparent.
I wanted to laugh at my good fortune. Whatever I wanted, I could do. I didn’t even flinch when I flew through the walls of the warehouse, for I knew my will was stronger than any wall could ever be.
I’d just passed through the wall when something came down on top of me. I began to flail in the dark, trying and failing to get out from underneath whatever had attacked me.
I sunk to the ground, for the net, the spider’s web of cruelty, was as heavy as a hundred stones. I was flat on my front, the oppressive weight of the stone net keeping me down, but I continued to struggle.
The harsh glare of a spotlight suddenly shown down upon me. It was blinding in its brightness, making my eyes feel as if they were going to spontaneously combust from the unimaginably blinding light. I closed my eyes against the burning pain, but even that didn’t work, for the light kept shining through my eye lids, not willing to be cheated from is prize.
I continued to struggle against the net, averting my face from the harsh glare and that’s when I heard it. The cruel and sadistic laughter which was suddenly all around me. It started quietly, but quickly grew until it was deafening.
But even then I continued to struggle. I couldn’t let them win. I had to get away.
When I saw their shadows fall over me, however, I knew it would do no good. I was well and truly caught. I ceased my feeble attempts at freedom.
Meredith and her zombie henchmen were around me, pointing and laughing. Her face was suddenly beaming with ugliness, the blackness of her soul revealed for all to see.
She lorded over me, her shadow falling over my face. “You silly girl! You’ll never get my treasures! I’ve hidden them where nobody will ever find them.”
“I’ll find them,” I stupidly gasped. It was becoming harder to breathe, the net’s weight crushing me. “I’ll find them.”
Laugher. Evil cackling laughter encircled me. It was everywhere. It bounced off the warehouse walls, the floor, the ceiling.
Then it was in my head. Echoing and echoing and –
I woke up gasping for breath. Sweat drenched my body even as I shivered. I felt as though I’d really been under a ton of rocks, my life being crushed out of me while Meredith, revolting Meredith, stood by feeding off my pain.
She was like a vampire.
Except instead of blood, she fed off my anguish and desperation.
“I should kill that bitch, but Barathrum is just what she deserves,” I muttered, thinking the slave planet with extreme and horrible conditions held every ounce of misery she was owed.
I couldn’t get back to sleep. Glancing at the clock, I discovered I’d slept all of six hours. I convinced myself it was plenty of sleep, especially after going a day and half with none, as I stumbled my way down the hall and into the bathroom.
I showered, ate breakfast, and was working on my newest planetary search when a very rested Darius came out of my guest bedroom.
“Sleep well?”
“Fabulous,” he yawned. “You know, I’ve been thinking and I don’t think those mob guys were there for us.”
“You sure didn’t think this way yesterday. And if they weren’t there for us, then why were they there?” I asked distractedly, still typing away on my tablet.
“Maybe one of the HOA paragons has been dealing with them. I’d love it if all of them were knocked off their high and mighty horses,” he said looking hopeful. However, if the HOA was dealing with the mafia men, and they weren’t part of said mafia, they’d probably be knocked of their very tall towers, literally, and the horses would be fine. This made me feel better. I hated it when poor animals were injured because of stupid humans.
“I bet you would,” I said with a smile.
“What are you doing?” Darius looked over my shoulder.
“Working,” I said. I wanted to shake my head in disgust. You let a guy stay over to avoid being fodder for the mafia and what happens? They want to know what you’re doing every second of the time and fondle your electronics. If he was having electronics withdrawal, why didn’t he just play with his own?
“On what?” he asked, still hovering right over my shoulder. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye and saw him bouncing up and down on his toes, trying his damndest to see what was on the screen. Why couldn’t he be like other guys who were more concerned with a girl’s cleavage than what was on her phone screen? I guess I got what I deserved by having a friend with such a sharp mind.
“I’m searching for something.” I tilted the screen away from him. It wasn’t that I was hiding what I was doing, I just didn’t want him to know about my hunt. I mean, obviously I wasn’t hiding it because it was on the screen, which he saw until I tilted it away from him because I didn’t want him to see what I was doing.
Wait…did that mean I was hiding it from him or not? I was going with…not.
I was not hiding my hunt from him because it was possible, theoretically, for him to see what I was doing on the screen, thus it wasn’t hidden.
“What are you searching for? It looks really complicated,” Darius said in a tone which, to me at least, seemed to question my ability to do anything which was complicated or required bra
in power. He couldn’t be questioning my brain power, because that would be stupid. He knew me better than that, especially after everything we’d been through together. Maybe I was just seeing slights where they didn’t exist.
“It is. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it. Tell me more about your dreams of the mafia involved HOA paragons,” I said, wanting Darius’ attention on something other than what I was doing.
Darius shrugged. “It’s not so much a dream as it is a hope. Or a wish. Or a wish-dream.”
I looked up. “A wish-dream? What have you been smoking?”
Darius smiled and began to hum. It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it until he sang, “ ‘A dream is a wish your soul makes, when you're deep asleep.’ ”
“But you’re not asleep. You’re awake and this is the real world.”
“Doesn’t matter,” the gleeful Darius said. “It could still come true.”
“Whatever.” If he wanted to imagine his troubles were even now being wacked by the mafia, who was I to burst his bubble?
“You’re just jealous because –” Darius’ phone began to go off. He looked at the screen and said, “Got to take this. Yeah? What? But how? You what?!” Darius turned away from me and began to pace. “Don’t you know that’ll kill it? What were you thinking? Don’t do anything else until I get there. No, I’ll be there in…in twenty minutes. Where are you? Ok. Yeah, I know where that is. Just…don’t do anything else. No, tell them to stop. You’ll only make it worse.”
Darius punched the screen with his finger. “Sometimes I wish we had those old phones like you see in the movies. I’d really love to just slam the phone. Disconnecting with a push of the finger feels so unsatisfying.”
“I know what to get you for your birthday,” I joked. “You got to go?”
“Yeah. My lead on a very large job just screwed up royally. Wouldn’t know how to properly prune a Halesia tetraptera x ‘Scepter’ truncatum if it came with a detailed instruction manual,” he said, sounding disgusted with his man.
“And what kind of tree is a Halestia whatever?” I asked, trying not to come off as confused as I was.
“It’s a Purple Scepter Silverbell, a very very rare tree which is only able to grow in a few distinct areas in the world. And we were lucky enough to get the contract to prune one and this guy is screwing it up!” Darius said, his voice rising in both disbelief and outrage.
“I thought you got the weekends off,” I said, seeming to remember him bragging that now that he had a job he got weekends off, while I was always working because I had homework. And I was trying to distract him. It wouldn’t be good if he went into this delicate situation and wasn’t in control. Who knows what damage he might be able to do to the tree, not to mention the man, in this kind of mood.
The look Darius sent my way said he was disappointed at my naiveté. “You’d think, but being the boss doesn’t really mean I get days off. I can be called at any time for a shrub or a tub problem. You wouldn’t believe some of the shrub problems I’ve been called in the middle of the night about.”
“I don’t think I want to know. Call me if you hear anything about those mafia guys who were at your place?” I asked, wanting him to know I was there for him.
“Of course. I won’t be able to keep the good news to myself,” he said, his eyes dancing with mischief.
I laughed. He was always so sure of himself when it came to others’ misfortunes. I walked him to the door and gave him a hug. He was a few steps down the hall before he turned around. “I almost forgot. Keep the detector. It’s on your counter.”
“Thanks. I’ll get it back to you as soon as I can,” I said, already plotting what I was going to do with it.
Darius waved off my words. “Not necessary. I’ve been thinking of upgrading for a while and this gives me the excuse. And don’t forget to let me know how your hunt goes,” he ordered.
“I will. Take care,” I said, hoping he did, though I don’t know why I was worried. He had a tendency of always getting out of even the most dangerous of situations unscathed. I’d have to ask him how he did it one day.
Darius sent a jaunty salute my way before leaving. I shut my door and went back to narrowing down my planetary possibilities. Every time I attacked my search I felt more pressure, more frustration. Frustration which built up with every iteration of my search as I found I was quickly running out of solid criteria to add and tweak.
Sure, every book I read had different numbers and ideas as to what the planet looked like and where it was probably located, but even these differences were tiny when actually looked at side by side. I mean, how big of a difference is an aluminum content of five percent versus five and a half percent? Not much when you were using ranges.
I finally finished my tweaks and set it to working. In eight hours I’d find out how many planets I had left. I really wished the program could remember which planets it had eliminated and only search the planets the last search had identified. Then I’d only have to wait a few hours instead of a third of a day.
That done, I turned back to my more immediate problem: Meredith and her sneakiness. I brought up the map of where she’d been since I’d last looked and saw she hadn’t left campus. Indeed, she’d gone from building to building with apparently no rhyme or reason.
“But that doesn’t tell me where she put those jewels,” I huffed. “Where would I put the remaining half of the gems?” I got up and paced.
“If it were me, I’d have put them in my underground safe along with everything else important to me, but this isn’t me. This is Meredith. Unpredictable, stupid, wouldn’t know sense if it knocked her in the head Meredith. Where would she put it?” I asked myself aloud.
I looked back down at the tablet which was on my kitchen table. Meredith’s path from the club to her home highlighted. “I’ve been over every inch of that tunnel, found the case, so the rest can’t be there. From the tunnel, she went to the trolley. Is there any place on a trolley to hide something?”
I pictured the trolley I’d been on only hours before as I wandered around my kitchen and living room. There’d been the driver, the chairs, poles, and…that was it. “There wasn’t anywhere. Was there?”
My memory began to play tricks on me. I couldn’t remember if there’d been cubbies under or over the chairs. Maybe there was someplace a person could hide a nondescript bag. “But she’d be taking an awful chance of someone finding them or even throwing the bag away,” I said, stopping before my living room window, looking out of it but seeing none of the beauty which was before me.
My mind vacillated between the impossibility and the tiniest of possibilities. “Damn, I’m going to have to go on all the trolleys that patrol the area, aren’t I?” I went back to my table and grabbed my phone. With a quick search to the trolley service’s website, I saw they rotated eleven different trolleys on that route.
“Eleven?” I asked aloud, staring at my phone with incredulity. “Wouldn’t it make sense to have one or two trolleys exclusive to the route? Why, in the name of the Ancients were there eleven? I’m going to be spending all my spare time on trolleys.” I wanted to bang my head into the wall. Or my kitchen counters, since they were closer.
“But where else could they be? I really don’t think she hid them on the trolleys as there are really no place to put a bag full of gems on said trolley. It’s too fraught with unknowns,” I said, trying to convince myself that I was wrong about the trolleys. I really didn’t want to ride on them all just because of a hunch.
“And if they’re not on the trolley, then where could they be?” I asked, pacing again, agitation vibrating throughout every inch of my body. “Well, she could have brought them home with her. It wouldn’t be the most ideal thing to do, but as I’ve proved today, it will do in a pinch.”
I paused, my mind trying to picture that excuse of a home Meredith resided in. “So, if I go to her place, where would they be? The attic is too small to hide them in and there isn’t any pl
ace to hide a safe. That leaves the apartment below. There’s nothing under the bed, but what about the rest of the place?”
I hadn’t thought to search the apartment, not that I’d really had the chance with her coming back early.
I began ticking off my fingers as I listed what I’d come up with already. “I’ve got the trolleys, her attic, her apartment…is there anywhere else that she’s gone that could have them?”
I studied her movements on the tablet one more time, again noting she’d been wandering around campus. “Campus…campus…could she have put it someplace on campus, like in a classroom or study room?” I asked aloud.
It was possible, but how would I even be able to get into a study room checked out to her? Those things were locked down tighter than the proverbial Fort Knox, whatever that was. I knew because I’d tried before to get into someone’s study room, for legitimate reasons, and I’d been denied at all points.
“But I was going through the proper channels that time. If I used some nefarious tactics, I might be able to get in, assuming she even has a study room. As to her classrooms, those should be simple enough. I can get her schedule off the school’s website and search the rooms during the day,” I said, already seeing the work ahead of me. And then another thought came to me.
“Am I missing any other place?”
I thought and thought and paced around my apartment and stared at the map of her movements, but no other locations came to my mind.
Now that I had a list of places the jewels could be hidden, where should I look first? I glanced at the clock and saw that the day was fading away. While I could start my search of the campus, riding the trolleys might be a better idea.
“Then I can stop my paranoia that the bag’s been right under my nose the entire time.” I went back to my tablet and made up a list of all the different routes I was going to have to take.
“This is crazy,” I muttered, looking at the map of where I was going to have to go. “It’s going to take hours to get to each of the lines and then scan the trolley effective enough to be convinced they aren’t there.”
I felt myself going into a funk, but I forced myself out of it. A bad mood was going to just make this worse than it already was.
“And neither is sitting here staring at this map. I’ve got to get off my butt and start.” After making sure my tablet and phone were loaded with things to keep me busy during some of the long layovers, I left my home and began the tediousness of my search.