CHAPTER 04 - BARRETT
Last night, before Club Vapor…
“Sir?”
Don’t. Don’t say another word.
“Sir?”
Leave me be. I’m fine here. I know what’s coming and I can handle it. I’ve seen and done worse.
From far away, a brush on my shoulder.
“Sir? It’s time to wake up.”
No, it’s not time to wake up. It’s time to wake up when I want to wake up, and now is definitely not that time.
“Sir? We’re about to land.”
I know that.
The brush on my shoulder grew more insistent, and it pulled me away from the formless but peaceful dream I was eager to remain part of. I could suddenly feel my body, feel the cuts and bruises as they angrily protested their presence and grudgingly healed themselves, promising more soreness before they removed themselves from my life.
Finally, I couldn’t keep my eyes closed any longer and I blinked them open. The cabin took shape, at first a haze, but then slowly resolving like a focusing camera into familiar surroundings.
I looked around and focused on the smiling stewardess, ahem, flight attendant, as she gave me a nod and squeezed my shoulder one more time before taking the seat opposite mine and strapping herself in.
I looked out the window as we slipped below the clouds and the darkness outside light up under the power of Meridian’s illumination. As many times as I had flown in and out of this city it always amazed me just how much was going on down there. New York, Los Angeles, and London might get all the credit for being giant cities, but Meridian had a character all its own — even from this high up.
The plane banked hard right as we got into our landing lane - I knew to expect it, and braced myself accordingly. The mountains near Meridian made landing planes there an interesting proposition no matter the weather, even on a perfect, almost eerily clear night like tonight.
In front of me, the flight attendant smiled, a little stronger than I suspected she gave most of the passengers that graced this small plane’s cabin. Flying private was a small thrill given how many times I had done so, but it sure as hell beat traveling in the back of a giant cargo plane.
Travel in cargo planes also usually involved me jumping out of said cargo planes into the cold night and an uncertain future, which was definitely a feature not advertised at the airports I used to use when I was in the service.
So yeah, flying private was much better. Especially since most of the time I was the only passenger; which meant a flight attendant all to myself. She had been very accommodating, and I got the distinct impression that if I had made any overtures in her general direction she would have accommodated me further in any way I had desired.
This had been a long flight, though, and an even longer assignment before that, so I was mostly happy to just sleep off the aches and pains that came from my line of work rather than work myself up over another girl throwing herself at me. Those kinds of games didn’t really interest me much — getting the job done was the reward in and of itself.
The lights below got closer and closer, and I could make out individual cars on the highways criss-crossing through Meridian like veins and arteries, moving people and things back and forth in the necessary dance that sustained a giant city like Meridian.
The flight attendant must have noticed my interest in the ground below. “Don’t be nerv-“ she started.
I rolled my eyes back to her. “I’ve done this before.”
She caught herself and smiled. “I was just checking. You should see how many passengers I get that are deathly afraid of flying.” She laughed nervously. “Sometimes I feel more like a nurse or a schoolteacher.”
“I can only imagine,” I said, hoping the conversation would end there. She had been chatty the entire time, and only after I had mentioned how tired I was more than once had she piped down long enough for me to settle in for a long nap. I might have slept through the landing if she hadn’t woken me up.
We had another minute of blessed silence while the plane got lower and lower, and the ground rushed up to meet us. The runway, lit up like a celebration, invited us to come on home, and I took a deep breath right before the plane dropped the final few meters onto the ground.
The brakes, hard; the breath, outward.
Another successful landing. That made…I couldn’t remember just how many.
It was the unsuccessful ones that I couldn’t forget.
One of the worst parts about flying commercial was getting on and off the plane. Especially getting off — after a long flight cooped up in a narrow tube of bad odors and bad food, the last thing anyone wanted to do was spend even one more second in there than they had to.
Unfortunately, getting out of the plane is fraught with pain and irritation, and that’s once you’ve taxied up to the gate.
Flying private, there were no gates — the plane came to a rest in a parking spot off the runway and you took your time getting off and into the waiting car.
I couldn’t lie, it was pretty great.
We pulled into our parking spot and the flight attendant unclipped her belts, standing up and bustling about the cabin. I went a little slower, looking out the window again and wondering not for the first time why I was here.
I was certainly glad to be back in America. I liked traveling around the world just fine, but the last few trips had been a little more violent and a little less relaxing than I had wanted.
On the other hand, the work I was doing wasn’t exactly inspiring.
I leaned over to get a better angle and looked far into the distance outside the plane toward downtown Meridian. Sure enough, there it was - Norman Towers. Of course I was expecting to see it — it was the tallest building in Meridian, and old man Peter Norman had successfully lobbied the local government to keep that way through permits.
The upshot of all this legal and municipal wrangling was that Norman Towers could be seen from almost any angle from outside the city — just the way Peter Norman had wanted it.
I sighed, old man Norman rolling through my memories. I had worked for him for years, since I had gotten out of the service. He’d been a tough but fair boss, and I had seen many things and done many things at his request.
Even though we’d done some things in the past that were a little on the wrong side of the law, I had always gotten the distinct impression that Peter Norman knew these actions were wrong, but that he was taking them in the interest of the greater good. I had never gotten a sense that he was anything but pained about needing something done outside the law.
Now, of course, everything was different. Peter Norman was gone, and Tate Norman, his son, had taken over. Try as Peter might have done to teach his son his ethics and morality, Tate Norman had managed to learn none of it.
And now that Peter was gone, I worked for Tate. The last few months hadn’t been easy — none of the passion remained — the feeling that the Norman Corporation was doing good for the world had all drained away in such a way that I hadn’t really noticed it until it was almost entirely gone.
That would have been OK if the work itself had stayed just a tad shady, but Tate Norman had other ideas about how the world really worked. I had heard it slip out in conversations I’d listened in on over the years — whatever grandiose vision his father had for the way society ought to be, Tate Norman was more interested in working within and outside the system for his own gains.
At least this next assignment was stateside — maybe this time I’d get a little time to relax all to myself. Most of my work overseas was solo, but that was a different kind of alone than being alone in America.
Overseas alone usually meant bullets flying. In America it often just meant really good fishing.
I finally unclipped my belt, and with a sigh, stood up and stretched my legs - I hadn’t really moved around much during the entire 10 hour flight, so the old joints needed a good flexing before I was back in action.
The flight attendant watched me after finishing her post-flight checks. “You know,” she started when she thought I wasn’t deep in thought, “if you’re not busy while you’re in Meridian, we could…” she trailed off, clearly not used to needing to make the first move.
I let that hang for almost too long before I grunted, looking at her with a rueful gaze. “I appreciate the offer,” I said as I pulled out my small carry-on bag from under my seat and hefted it into the air before swinging it around my shoulders, “but this is unfortunately a work assignment for me.”
“Ahh,” she said, the smile never fading, just slipping a little. “Perhaps next time you’re in town, then.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “Thank you for the service.”
“We aim to please,” she said as I brushed past her and moved toward the exit.
The pilot opened the door to his cabin and stepped out, giving me a curt nod. I stopped in the doorway and let him open the outer door of the aircraft, letting the cold air gush in all at once. As much as I tried to brace myself against it, that first hit of Massachusetts cold air always managed to hit me in a way that knocked me for a loop.
I laughed as I realized that was probably a good thing — life would become a little boring if I was sure I was always prepared for everything. It was nice to know something as small as the weather could still keep me on my toes.
The pilot nodded to me again and I stepped out of the plane into the cold, feeling the wind all around me. I looked around, expecting to see a cab waiting for me — the company always had one waiting.
No cab.
I furrowed my brow and carefully started walking down the steep stairs toward the ground. I squinted, looking around, before I finally saw it and drew in a sharp breath — thirty feet away, a limo, as black as night.
I cursed under my breath and stopped for a moment. The pilot, walking down the stairs behind me, just managed to catch himself before we would have collided into each other. I gathered myself and continued down the stairs.
Just as I took the last step and my heavy shoes landed on solid tarmac for the first time in almost a dozen hours, the rear right door of the limo opened. I didn’t even stop, continuing toward the limo.
I already knew who was inside.
Tate Norman was the only person in the city who was driven around in a limo that could blend into the night like that. More than once I had separately told him and his driver that it was a safety hazard — the driver had merely rolled his eyes and whispered, “you oughta see what goes on in the back,” before shaking his head and walking away muttering.
Tate had just laughed and told me to lighten up.
Tate was always telling me to lighten up.
It was annoying as fuck.
Tate got out of the limo, not even shivering in the slightest, and smiled at me, throwing out his arms as the clouds of his breath shimmered in front of him under the harsh lights of the airport tarmac. “Barrett!” he cried, “welcome back to the real world.”
“Thanks,” I said, not really in the mood for talking. I hadn’t expected to see Tate here, and I had been hoping to avoid him for as much of this trip as possible.
“I read the report along the way here,” Tate said, rubbing his hands together and rolling his head forward and back. When he got excited he did the same thing with his feet, bobbing forward and back, like he was starting to do now. “You made a little bit of a mess of things,” he said, with a relish that made it all too clear that Tate Norman was someone who delighted in violence.
That, of course, comparisons to his father aside, was the biggest problem I had with Tate Norman. As a former soldier, I certainly understood the call of duty, and I definitely understood the value of well-executed and well-timed and necessary violent intervention in situations, but at the same time, through all my tours and posts around the world, in firefights and out, I had never taken pleasure in my work.
I hoped that I never would. I preferred to get the job done and move on — and try to live a peaceful life when my work allowed it.
Working for Tate Norman wasn’t really the best way to go about that, but for now it was all I had, and I wasn’t the kind of man to walk away from my duties. Peter Norman had saved my life one time, and I was bound to his family until I had worked off the debt.
Unfortunately, while Peter Norman had respected that commitment, Tate Norman didn’t really see things the same way.
“It escalated quickly,” I admitted, letting my shoulders fall as I looked down. “Faster than I wanted.”
Tate reached out and clapped me on the shoulder. I could tell he intended it to hurt, but we both knew that it didn’t. “Cheer up, old man,” he said, the glee in his eyes.
I made eye contact with him again, silently daring him to touch me again. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Geez, lighten up, will you?” Tate turned around and pointed back to toward the city, a beacon in the night against the encroaching dark. “I don’t see how you can look at this city, at my father’s tower, and be so glum.”
Perhaps because I knew what it took to build, and how you were happy to squander it all? I held my tongue on that and tried to change the subject. “How come you’re here? I was planning on going home and checking in the morning.”
Tate turned back to face me, a twinkle in his beady little eyes. “I saw that you were coming back and I couldn’t resist. You can go home and sleep any time you want, Barrett.”
He sneered. “Tonight, though, we’re going out. We’re going to Club Vapor.”
Well, shit.