The Overseer (14 page)

Vincent straightened his hair and buttoned his jacket. He looked John in the eye. “Then maybe you shouldn’t be Overseer anymore.” He walked away.

John stood for a moment at a loss. Then he pushed through the door of the office where they’d taken Angelo. The night guard was on the floor, knocked out.

Angelo was gone.

Chapter 9

T
RISTA STOOD AT
the mirror, patting makeup onto the dark circles under her eyes. She’d slept badly after the fiasco with John last night. So bit by bit—with eyeliner, shadow, mascara, blush, and lipstick—she carefully reconstructed her professional face. She would need every bit of cover she could find today, in case she ran into John again at the Firstborn’s office.

Outside the sun was lifting behind the Manhattan skyline. A seemingly endless labyrinth of glass and steel canyons. Cold and lonely, a metropolitan jungle filled with people who treated one another as props and obstacles. A forest of human souls that couldn’t be seen through the crowded trees of people.

Trista’s phone beeped electronically, the red light on its exterior flashing. She moved toward the hotel coffee table and scooped up the phone, answering. “Trista Brightling,” she said efficiently.

“Trista,” a voice said enthusiastically. “Vince Sobel here. Meeting today. Conference room—noon.”

Trista thought for a moment. “Noon? That’s the lunch hour.”

“Yeah,” Vince said slowly, as if trying to think through his next sentence as carefully as possible. “It’s a time that everyone else is available and”—another pause—“well…John’s out of the office at that time, and we need to talk about some stuff.”

Trista felt a sharp sensation of anger stab at her at the mention of John’s name. “What do you plan on discussing?”

“Just some concerns for him on a personal level—and some concerns about his work as Overseer too. We think you would have some…insight that might be helpful to everyone else there. Can I count on you being there?”

“Uh.” Trista felt her anger blur with a dozen other feelings and was suddenly very confused. “I—yes. I’ll be there.”

“Fantastic,” Vince said with gusto. “And…uh…you wouldn’t mind keeping your knowledge about this meeting…
discreet
, would you?”

She knew what he meant. “I won’t tell John,” she said with a nod, then closed her phone.

Hannah pressed the suburban doorbell and waited. She hugged her arms, feeling the latent chill that still remained from the last few days of rain.

For a moment she tried to talk herself out of it, but it was too late. She’d already pressed the bell. And she had to see for herself. She had to see if Angelo was—

The door opened. “Yes?” The woman who answered was middle-aged and well kept but obviously not looking her best. “Can I help you?”

Hannah was hesitant. “Are you Kimberly’s mother?”

The woman’s face got serious. “Who are you?”

There was no good answer. Nothing that Hannah could think of to adequately describe who she was or what she was doing here. “I…I’m someone who heard about your daughter, that she hadn’t been home. I was wondering if there was anything I could do to help?”

The woman looked at her for several moments, then motioned her into the house.

Five minutes later Hannah was sitting in the living room with a cup of hot tea, listening to the mother—a woman named Peg—talk about her girl named Kimberly.

“She’s been gone over two days,” Peg said, shaking her head, visibly fighting back tears.

Hannah clasped the boiling hot mug in her hands. “Do you have a picture of your daughter?”

Peg stood, walking to the fireplace. “This is the newest picture we have. It’s about six months old—so it looks a lot like her.” Peg passed off the frame. “She cut her hair a little since then, and the blonde highlights grew out, but that’s her.”

Hannah looked at the girl in the picture. She was undeniably pretty and was probably very popular. The kind of girl who would eventually be prom queen. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“She said she was staying at a friend’s house Saturday night— but when I called Sunday afternoon, her friend said she’d not planned anything with Kimberly.” She shook her head. “After I grilled her, she finally admitted that Kimberly had been sneaking out to college parties almost every weekend.”

Hannah tried to make eye contact, her face sympathetic. “But this time she didn’t come back?”

Peg began to cry. “Kimberly is our only child, and maybe we spoiled her too much.” The woman wiped away tears. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

“You did call the police, right?”

Hannah held her breath.
Say it
, she thought.
Tell me that it’s all under control. That someone else has taken care of the problem. That I can go.

“They took a report and put out an alert,” Peg said, “but nothing has turned up so far. I’ve heard that the first forty-eight hours are the most crucial in finding a missing child, and we’re past that! I know the police are swamped, but…” She looked up at Hannah. “And how did you find out about her?”

Hannah looked down at her tea, the soaked teabag floating in the ever-darkening brew. She bit her lip and looked up. “I’m on staff with a local organization that likes to help with these kinds of things. I’m not really able to go into detail, but we’re a nonprofit organization that wants to do what we can to help, and I’ve been assigned to your daughter.”

Peg shook her head. “Is there anything that you can do?”

Sadness was the only thing Hannah felt on her face. “This could be very difficult. I can’t make any guarantees about how this will turn out.”

Peg was on her feet in moments. “Let me tell you about my daughter.” She was at the fireplace again, pulling down pictures, stuffing them in her arms. She brought them back, spreading them out on the coffee table. “This was her when she was six. Her birthday party—it was a princess party with all her friends. And this”—Peg pointed to another—“this was when we brought her home from the hospital as a baby. That’s her daddy. He never thought he wanted children until we had Kimberly. He held her in his arms, and she’s been daddy’s little girl ever since.”

Hannah didn’t know what to say. “Ma’am, I…”

Peg sat down, staring painfully into Hannah’s face. “She just turned sixteen years old. She’s my baby. But she’s out there— somewhere. And she could be in very serious trouble.”

Hannah looked the woman in the eyes, studying her face and searching for some way to tell her that her daughter was OK. But she remembered what she had seen in the house before it had burned down. The horrible things that had been done to other girls before. Drugs, violence, and rape. Girls—children— being sold like chattel. But there was no comfort she could offer this woman.

She took Peg by the hands, looking her in the eye. “I promise you, I will do everything in my power to help find your daughter—no matter what.”

John was in his office drinking his fourth cup of coffee when his phone rang. He set down his cup and lifted the receiver. “Hello, this is John.”

The call sounded garbled with sounds of wind ripping at the other end. “John?” Hannah said through the cacophony.

He leaned forward. “Hannah, where are you? I think we have a bad connection.”

“I’m at a pay phone,” she said. “Listen, John, I need to discuss something with you.”

“What is it?”

“I’ve started my search for the girls. I wanted you to know that. I met one of their mothers. I didn’t mean to go behind anyone’s back, but I had to talk to her for myself.”

John leaned against his desk with one arm, not certain what to say. Proud of her initiative yet afraid for how things might turn out. “I don’t like you working on this on your own. I’m sending someone to back you up.”

A long silence. “I can do this without help.”

“No,” John insisted. “I’m sending Devin, and that’s final.”

Her attitude seemed to shift instantly. “You’re sending Devin?”

“Yes. I wouldn’t send anyone else.”

“OK,” she replied.

“Where are you?”

“I’m near the house that burned down, trying to see if I can pick up on any kind of lead.” She gave him the address.

“OK,” he said, trying to consider everything, the way a leader should. “Stay there. I’ll send Devin as soon as I can.”

“Thank you, John. I—”

The pay phone cut off—out of money.

John dialed his phone. It rang for a moment, then the other end picked up.

“This is Bathurst.”

“Devin,” he said, running a hand through his hair, “Hannah needs your help.”

Trista stepped into the conference room. There might have been twenty people in the room, all finding seats. She too found a chair. There were a few men working on the lines that attached to the conference phones in the middle of the table. Someone said something about needing to get a dial tone, and then she heard one buzz loudly from the device.

She presumed that the telephone line was for the Prima who weren’t there. She’d been told about how John had set up offices in Domani Financial for the Prima and the Ora to have representatives there full-time. The Ora had taken the offer but apparently wouldn’t open their office doors long enough to talk to anyone, and the Prima had simply declined the offer completely—except for an archivist named Jerry who was nowhere to be seen.

Vincent Sobel checked his watch at the front of the room. He spotted Trista and gave her a nod—acknowledging her presence.

The milling dissipated as the twenty or so people found their seats. Laptops opened, and fingers tapped at keyboards. Trista felt out of place without hers.

“Everybody here?” Vince asked, scanning the room.

A reply in the form of nods. Several voices sounded off their presence via the conference phones.

“Everyone know why we’re here today?”

More nods.

Vince leaned against the back of the chair, face sullen. “We need to talk about John.”

Nods and approving noises.

“Just to recap,” Vince said, clasping his hands, “John hasn’t listened to any counsel from anyone. He’s not doing well as Overseer, and now we’re being investigated by the SEC.” He cleared his throat and looked gravely at his audience. “And I was just informed that the IRS is officially auditing us and that all our funds are going to be frozen until further notice.”

Gasps and sounds of incredulous dread filled the room. This was it. The big one. The bomb that everyone had both feared and expected since the beginning.

“John has made very poor choices as a leader—damningly poor. And on top of it all we now have the Angelo issue.” Swiftly, he brought the group up to speed on the previous days’ events.

Vince spread open palms to the conference room, as if handing them a final piece of damning evidence. As if wrecking the financial viability of the Firstborn wasn’t bad enough. “This Angelo guy knows things. Important things. Now he’s asking that we prevent an outbreak of the Thresher simply by giving up a mission—the prevention of the assassination of a known corrupt government official.”

Vince’s expression took a deathly seriousness as he looked up at them all, eyes narrow. He looked right at Trista. “We’ve been talking about the Thresher for years. I know my dad talked to me about it when I first discovered my gifting. This is not something small—or to be laughed at. We’re dealing with something we don’t fully understand, and no one has really understood for nearly a millennium of Firstborn history. And as a result, the Thresher has put fear into the Firstborn for eight centuries. Now this Angelo guy sees it, and he’s warning us not to intervene with this one issue—not give up our calling as the Firstborn, but this issue—and John won’t pull the plug. At this very minute Devin and Hannah are beginning to work together on preventing this assassination.”