The voicemail on my cell was alarming enough to get me up out of bed at four in the morning. It was from Eddie, and he sounded completely freaked out. As I am getting dressed, I work on calling Eddie back –struggling to throw shoes on my feet and get them laced up as quickly as possible. I hold the phone between my shoulder and ear as I finish getting dressed, doing my best not to fall over or injure my sore arm. As I am getting my arm into my sling (I had taken it off to sleep because it is painfully uncomfortable), Eddie answers the phone in a whisper. “Hey… James?” he says.

“What’s going on?” I ask as I get my shirt buttoned; I had already called my driver, so I know he is on his way and that I need to be ready shortly.

“We need to meet –now.” He says anxiously.

I frown, “All right. I’ll meet you at the factory in like half an hour. My driver is on the way-”

He cuts me off, “No. Not the factory. Meet me at the gym.”

Before I have a chance to ask why he hangs up. Something does not feel right about this conversation. Eddie is normally a pretty well put together guy, but the tone and uneasiness in his speech are setting off an alarm in my head. I start to feel just as anxious as Eddie had sounded. Soon I am in the elevator, hoping that my driver has already made arrangements. I really need to have him take me to a dealership to get me something new. I may be sitting on a large fortune, but I’ve never been a big car guy. I’ve always just had one car. I suppose I could have my driver get one of my dad’s collectible cars I had inherited, but it would feel strange sitting in the back of one of those after spending half of my childhood being yelled at not to come near them. They are still sitting in his warehouse he had bought to store them. I hate cars, but I really hate car shopping. Maybe I could just pick out one of the less extravagant vehicles in that warehouse to become my daily driver until I can make it to a dealership. Car shopping is just one of the last things on my mind right now.

I have to wait for a few minutes before my driver pulls up out in front of the apartment building. I tell him to head to the new gym, and I lean back in my seat –becoming increasingly nervous with each passing second. A part of me wants to tell my driver to step on it, but after my car accident, I’m not so willing to make such a request. Soon the gym appears in the distance. I frown to see the empty parking lot. The gym had only just opened before all of this craziness had started. Eddie and I had opened up the gym strictly as a publicity stunt to promote our new supplement line, so it looks like after the news of the poisoned product hit headlines people decided they were not going to support the supposedly corrupt company.

I had really been looking forward to coming to the gym full of people, but right now the parking lot is resembling a ghost town more than anything else. I tell my drive that I’m not sure how long I’m going to be, so to go pick himself up some breakfast or run an errand. He nods, and I head inside. The gym is empty. The employees are not even here; according to Eddie, most of them quit, so now the gym stays closed.

Eddie is not here yet. I try calling him, but he does not answer, so I wind up roaming around the empty gym for half an hour. It is a little depressing. I wind up staring at the rock climbing wall for a while wishing that I could give it a go, but the last thing I want to do is irritate my injuries. Then there’s the pool, the smoothie bar, the sauna, and the old school work out equipment. All completely meaningless. All out of commission because of some bad publicity. I wind up standing and staring at one of the large posters that reads “GET SHATTERED” with the picture of my bare chest; I had modeled for the promotional material myself. I wish I could work out; it has always been my fall back whenever I have needed a distraction, but there is no way I’m going to give that a try anytime soon. The doctor wants me to take it easy for another couple of weeks at least. My last x-ray had shown some pretty significant improvement, but I’m about to lose my mind from boredom.

Finally, my phone starts ringing just as I am making my second walk around the building. Apparently I had missed Eddie during my walk, and he made it inside to the second floor where the offices are, so I head up that way. I wind up running into him in the hallways, but he dips into an office quickly and waves me over. I follow him, and I close the door behind him. I feel a little awkward being in the same office where I had banged his girlfriend not too long ago, but we are both adult enough to pretend that did not happen. Eddie paces the room slightly, unable to start the conversation he had wanted to have.

“Why are we all the way out here, Eddie?” I ask.

He responds with a half-hearted explanation, “The cops are still swarming all over the office and factory.”

I stare at him, waiting for a deeper explanation as to what has brought us here today, but he does not seem willing to just offer up that information. Finally, I ask, “What’s going on, Eddie?”

“Okay, so, you know how the cops are sending off some supplement samples to be tested?” he asks.

“Yeah?” I ask.

“Well… I was worried what it is they would find, so I sent off some samples to be tested myself.” He says, “And I got the results back.”

“Well, what’s going on?” I ask.

“The supplement vitamins were laced with rat poison.” He says.

The room starts to spin slightly. Rat poison? What does that entail? “Rat poison?” I question, trying to figure out how the hell rat poison got mixed in with our supplements. “That’s not like an accidental mixture of bad combinations of shit! That’s weird and messed up… what… how… how did rat poison… I don’t understand…”

“Me either,” Eddie says, pacing slightly. He takes in a deep breath. “Someone poisoned the supplements, man. It’s like sabotage or something.”

“But who would want to sabotage Shattered?” I question. “All right, all right. Let’s try to keep our heads together for a minute here. Let’s inform the cops what you found, and then we can-”

“Whoa!” Eddie holds up both hands, “I don’t think we should tell them. They have their own samples of the stuff anyways waiting to be tested. They’ll figure it out on their own time. Instead, we should use this information to try to figure out for ourselves what is going on.”

“Are you serious?” I question. “You think we should just keep this to ourselves and do our own little private eye bullshit?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” Eddie says, “Look, I just wanted to let you in on what is going on. Keep your mouth shut about this,” he points a finger in my chest, “Let me handle this.”

“If you say so,” I say, feeling somewhat bothered by Eddie’s bizarre behavior. How could he think calling the cops would be a bad idea? I write it off, but I cannot shake the unsettling feeling inside of my chest about Eddie. I can’t figure out what it is that is bothering me exactly, but I know something is amiss.