Page 21 of The Karma Project
“Really, I don’t have it. I promise, I can have it by tomorrow. Please.” He begs, but he clearly isn’t understanding we won't be leaving empty handed.
“Did you know we can see your bank accounts? And all of your book keeping?” I ask. “We know you have it, you at least had it yesterday. So, where’d the money go, Carl?”
Carl gulps and looks around frantically, as if he’s trying to catch another lie to spew. “I, uh-.” he trails. He opens and closes his mouth, but nothing comes out.
“Three.” I say and Teddy closes in on him even more, this time he’s got his butterfly knife open and sitting still. No more games.
“Okay! Fine, fine. I have it.” Carl breaks. Finally, I just want to get this over with. We already hit the nail salon, and they didn’t give us any trouble, and if I’m being honest, I didn’t want to have to hurt Carl. But if he held out for much longer, Teddy would have taken the debt in the form of skin.
It only takes a few minutes for Carl to take a little safe out of the desk in front of him and then present me with the cash. I count it as Teddy continues to watch Carl.
“We don’t like to be forceful, Carl. You know why we have to do this.” I say over the wad of cash, and Carl nods in understanding.
“We’ve seen that some of the Cambions have been hanging around nearby, are they giving you a hard time?” I ask, this catches his attention a little better.
“They threatened me last week.” he starts, “And they said that if I continue to pay you, they’ll come after my wife.” I can tell he is telling the truth. He looks exhausted and it really does sound like something the Cambions would try.
“Okay,” I nod. “We’ll get some guards out to watch over the business, and they’ll keep an eye on your home. We’ll see to it that your wife stays safe.” Carl gives me a curt nod and says his thank you’s as well as apologizes for holding out.
Teddy and I get back to the car and send out a message to three of our best guards to come watch over the laundromat. I was about to pull out of the parking lot when Max called me.
“Yeah?” I greeted him.
“First of all, brother, the proper greeting is ‘Hello’,” he chastises. “Second, Rico will not be able to stand guard for Carl.”
“Well, why the hell not?” I ask, signaling to Teddy to look for another guard so we can get eyes on Carl’s business and home as soon as possible.
“Zoe killed him.”
I freeze, “How the fuck did she kill him? He was our best guard, how the hell are we going to replace him?”
“Yeah, it turns out that he wasn’t that good after all. Zoe took him on the mat and had him down in less than two minutesand had him dead in less than one.” Max says it like he’s talking about the weather.
Teddy overhears this and perks up, listening closer to the conversation. “Fair enough then.” I sigh, “But, do you think it was a fluke?” I ask.
“No, it wasn’t a fluke.” Max chuckles, “She is a machine. You should see her with the AR-15. I can show you the footage when you return.”
“Let’s go now.” Teddy says, patting his hand on the dash. I hold up a finger to ask him to be patient for just a little bit longer.
“So, we will need to find a new head guard for the northern quadrant. If he was bested that easily we need to get them trained up better. Any idea on how we’ll go about doing that?” I ask.
“I’m honestly thinking this is something you and Zoe should take up. She’s clearly a skilled fighter and a skilled gunman. We’ll see if she can handle a little espionage tonight. But once you work with her on strength training and seeing where she’s at, you should get with her about training the guards.” he explains.
He’s not wrong. If she was able to take down Rico that easily, then there is a clear weakness within our guard ranks. I nod along until I realize that he can't see me through the phone.
“Sounds good, we’ll get on it. Any word from Brandon?” I ask.
“Yes, I just got off the phone with him when you called. We’ll talk about it when you return. Get home soon. We have a lot to talk about, and our Harpy, Zoe, has some informationshe’ll be sharing with all of us. It seems that she knows a lot more about our personnel than we thought.”
Teddy and I glance at each other and then the call drops. A sinister smile stretches over Teddy’s face, “Take me home to the little devil, I think we’ll be playing tonight.”
13
Nuclear Reactions
Zoe
Over the last two hours I have been plucked, tweezed, and waxed and I am officially over it. I did not sign up for this whole project-runway-massacre-torture when I agreed to attend the event at the art museum tonight with Max.
