Thanks for checking out the next #SaturdayScenes installment for my in-work Ghost Writer, book 6 of the Our Cyber World series. You may access the story summary and other sample excerpts through the table of contents.

I’m looking forward to hearing what you think!

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Recap

During the drive to InfoStream, Cynthia gives Vivian a vague preview of things to come. Once there, Vivian has quite the reaction to what her prospective handlers have in mind for her…

Chapter 8 ~ Refusal

I am still shaking, shivering, really, when Andre walks me into my hotel room. On the drive here he’s asked several times if I need to see a doctor. I’ve said, no, thank you, telling him this is how I react when I am afraid and angry. I shiver. Uncontrollably. From the inside out, in spasms that radiate from the pit of my stomach.

“I won’t do it,” I say. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve said it on the way here, and back at that Infostream conference room before I ran out shrieking, “I won’t do it!”

“And that’s OK,” Andre says, also repeating himself.

His voice sounds comforting, soothing even. But it can’t undo the impression that I’m overreacting. That what they’ve asked of me doesn’t compare to the danger I accepted when I embroiled myself in a sting operation against a cartel kingpin. Helping the government retrieve a piece of software, or whatever this Erin is, can’t possibly prove as dangerous as it was to deal with criminals and killers. It can’t pose the same danger to me that cost the man I loved his life.

Still, I shiver in waves. I shake like a junkie coming down cold turkey. And I should know how that feels, shouldn’t I? So far I’m falling back into that pattern. Why? Maybe out of fear for what the government still holds over my head. Sure, I got them what they wanted. That cartel kingpin is dead, his organization dismantled. I did my part. Via a legal document sealing my confidentiality agreement, the DEA said they’d hold up their side of the deal. In their estimation, which I gladly stoked, I gave up my movie career to avoid the limelight and all the unwanted exposure that might bring to our joint little secret. As they see it, I also walked away in self-induced penance. In exchange they overlooked my killing ways, and even set me up with an alternative lifestyle that puts a roof over my head and pays the bills. Would they pull all that away now? Will my obstinate refusal render our agreement null and void?

Well, at least I stood up to them today. Even if more than half of me knows my resolve will not stem the tide for long, I pushed back. Good on me, I tell myself through another wave of shivering.

I look up at Andre, and through all my shaking I attempt to give him my best resolute pose. “I’m not going to—”

“Here,” Andre says. “Take a load off.”

He props and bunches pillows against the bed’s headboard. I let him guide me to the bed, where I sit on the edge and allow him to slide my shoes off. Then I lay down, and he pulls the covers over me.

“I won’t do it,” I say, my voice a hoarse whisper now.

“That’s OK,” he says. “And you don’t have to.”

Andre gets out his phone and starts walking around the room. I use the pillows to push myself up into a semi-seated position. I watch him as he moves about, as he waves the phone, now around the TV, then by the curtains, and finally next to the desk’s lamp. I watch him frown. I watch him turn to me to show me the cellphone screen. It’s flashing red and orange. I watch him raise an index finger and I watch him place it against his lips.

“That’s good. Rest up,” he says. “You’ve had a long day. A nap will do you good.”

In his face I see none of the compassion his voice projects.

He pulls a chair and sits by me. “I can leave if you want.”

I shake my head. He can stay, I tell him with my eyes. He should stay. I want those kind eyes that comforted me once, in the midst of mourning and despair—I want them to keep bathing me with compassion.

“After what you went through before,” he says, “I totally get why you want no part of this. They weren’t there. I was. I saw you after—”

He stalls, and for a moment I want to tell him he doesn’t need to get into that. But I let him go on, because I have to.

“They don’t get it, but I do,” he says. “When they approached me about this, I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to do it either.” He falters again, looks to his right at the black TV screen, keeps his eyes there. “Truth is I don’t want anything to do with these guys. Ever.” He turns his gaze back on me. “I’m only here for one reason.”

He lets that hang there as an obvious prompt for me to engage in the conversation.

I almost stay silent, but I can’t do that to him. Though I want to treat him like the rest, something tells me he’s not like them. With them. Or I want something to assure me of that. To prove it.

“What’s that?” I say with a raspy voice.

“When they told me about you… that they’d try to get you involved…”

Now I want to say something, but instead I part my lips as if frozen in mid breath.

“I didn’t want you to be stuck in this alone. Not after what you’ve been through. I told them you couldn’t handle it, but they didn’t listen. So I told them, ‘if you want me involved, then I’m there when she’s there. I’m there when you make the pitch.’“

I’m still trying to say something, when again, he brings his index finger against his lips.

“I’m not Roger,” he says. “I’ll never be Roger. But I care about you, Vivian. I don’t want you to go through anything like that.”

His index finger taps his lips again.

I nod. I can tell he won’t go on. That’s enough heart-sharing for one day. I want to beg him to go on. I want him to tell me more. Why? Because I want to fall love with him? Because I crave the care of a man? What if I do, even if I like to pretend I can stand on my own two feet and survive on my own?

He says, “But that’s enough of that. How about you get some sleep. At least close your eyes and try, OK? Can you do that for me?”

I nod again.

He’s getting up, going over to the door, where we left my purse and laptop bag. He takes both to the desk. I watch him as he searches through my purse until he finds the phone he gave me.

Andre examines it for a couple of minutes, then gives me a thumbs up.

He goes to work on the laptop next. This takes more time. Whatever he’s doing, it comes across like a thorough inspection. It takes him at least ten minutes to complete it. He gives me another thumbs up.

“Andre, please come here,” I say.

He comes over, sits in the bed next to me.

“I’m still cold,” I say, even though I’m no longer shivering.

He nods. “Maybe another blanket.”

“No, not that,” I say. I take a hold of his shirt and pull him down to me.

We kiss, at first stiffly. Then we ease into it. We part only long enough for him to take off his shoes. He comes under the covers, and we kiss again, longer and deeper this time. I sigh. I moan loud enough that whatever listening devices they have installed in my room should have no problem picking up my voice. I moan, and he echoes me.

During a brief moment when our lips part, I pull him closer. He kisses my neck, and I blow in his ear.

“It was an act,” I whisper there in a breath. “The shivering, being upset. Just an act.” Will he believe it?

Now he’s nibbling in my ear, whispering there also, “I know. And I can act, too.”

We kiss again, hungrily now. I moan, and he moans, and we switch from act to fact.

I wake up squinting into darkness that only the blue glow of my laptop screen breaks. It takes my eyes a moment to adjust and see Andre, the outline of his face in profile like a dim quarter moon in front of the computer.

“What are you up to?” I ask.

He swivels in his chair and turns into a silhouette outlined in blue light.

“Just surfing,” he says. “How did you sleep?”

“What time is it?”

“Two in the morning.”

I almost ask why he hasn’t gone to his room, but check myself for fear of sounding rude. Besides, he’s getting up, coming toward me, sitting next to me, leaning down, and kissing me on the forehead just as he did when he whispered in my ear “not now, not like this” and pulled away from my embrace.

“How are you feeling?” he whispers now, inches away from my face.

“Hungry.”

“I ordered some pizza, and went downstairs to pick it up after you fell asleep.”

“I don’t like cold pizza,” I say.

“I can heat up a piece.” He points back in the direction of the small microwave. Its green clock digits are all I can make out in the darkness.

“That’s OK. I don’t like eating this late.”

“I think this would be a good time for an exception,” he replies, and the way he says it contains more than an appeal to forego hunger.

Before I can inquire, he leans down again and whispers in my ear, “We may need to get an early start. If you’re up for it.”

I frown.

Andre takes me by the hand, and I let him. We go into the small bathroom and close the door. He’s already scanning it with his phone.

He frowns when it comes up green-blue. An additional scan reveals the same results. He looks up and around, and behind the toilet, as if a visual examination will reveal something his gadget won’t. He’s still frowning when he turns on the shower and faucet.

“Talk softly,” he whispers. “They might think the bugs they have out there are sensitive enough to pick us up in here.”

“OK. Why the—”

“Erin contacted me. I told her how it went today, and she said that was perfect.”

“Huh?”

“They shouldn’t think you’re just going along and cooperating. If you give them resistance, they’ll trust you more when in the end you go along with their scheme.”

“What?” I bring my voice back down to a whisper. “There is no end where I play along in this, Andre. Not with them, and certainly not with Erin.”

He nods, then gently nudges me to sit on the toilet lid. Kneeling in front of me, he adds, “That’s your call.”

“You sure about that? Because from where I’m sitting, it sure looks like you want me to go along with whatever transformational crap Erin is planning.”

He smiles. He actually smiles at that, and to what end? To make me feel stupid, naive, out of my league?

“I told Erin you weren’t a push-over,” Andre says.

“You mean I’m not easily manipulated. I don’t need this, Andre. I’m already a weepy mess. I’m barely hanging on to my wits as it is. I don’t need to be playing speedy pawn on someone’s little twisted spin-chess game. Not for Cynthia, not for her men in black, and not for Erin, and to cover all the bases, not even you.”

He drops down and sits Indian style. With his hand he tamps down the air. We need to keep it down.

“I was where you are not long ago,” he says in a subdued, almost monotone voice. “When they came calling for me. When they wanted me to put her back in the box.”

I sit up a little straighter, which I realize, increases my distance from him. In his eyes I see that’s how he takes it, me pulling away, but that’s not what I meant to convey.

“I didn’t play ball, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he says.

“It sure looks like you’re playing ball now.”

“Am I?”

“Yeah. It may be hard to tell for what team, but if I had to guess right now, Erin’s.”

He looks up at me, a mix of reproach and regret in his eyes.

“What?” I point back at the room. “You expect me to believe what you said in there?”

He tamps down the air again.

I lower my voice. “That you came here because you were worried about me? To be my guardian angel or whatever?”

“I guess not,” he says and starts to get up, as if this conversation is over.

I reach down and hold him down by the shoulder. “Whoa. Is that it? No more to discuss? Is that why you brought me in here to waste all this water?”

He draws one deep breath and lets it out through his nose. “Erin thinks we should go back to L.A., before sunup.” He checks his watch. “She can set up a clean way out if I contact her within the next fifteen minutes.”

“A clean way out?”

“Undetected, so they have no way to stop us. Until we reach L.A.”

“How?” I ask.

“Not by plane. We’ll drive.”

A cloud of questions swirls in my mind. For some reason—perhaps it is the easiest—I ask first, “What are we going to do with the rental cars?”

“We can’t use them. They’re bugged and tracked.”

“We can’t leave them, though.”

“Sure we can. In the morning you’ll call the rental car agency, tell them yours won’t start, could they come pick it up at such and such a hotel. Keys with the front desk staff. Nope, no need for a shuttle or replacement car, thank you. I’ll do the same.”

I nod at his response. It makes sense the way a twisted deception does. And by now, he’s set it all up. My car rental car keys and his already sit somewhere behind the hotel’s front desk.

“How do we get out without them knowing?” I ask.

“That’s for Erin to figure out, and for us to execute.” He stands up. “We’ll pack the bare minimum we need, and we’ll head out as soon as Erin provides instructions.”

I grab him by the arm. His forearm tenses under my grip. “And what exactly do we accomplish by executing this little escape?”

“We make a statement.” He turns back to me as I release his arm. “We tell Cynthia and her goons we’re not going to be controlled. We’re doing this on our terms.”

“And they’ll accept that.”

“They need us.”

I don’t know where else to go from here, what questions to ask. So I drop it with a shake of the head. When we step back into the room, and after turning on a few lights, I see that while I slept he stepped out to get more than food. His bags rest against the side of the closet door. As I expected, I don’t find my rental car keys. Right. Already at the front desk.

I watch him retrieve socks, underwear and a couple of T-shirts which he shoves into various compartments of his backpack camera bag. To make room, he takes out one of his lenses and with only slight hesitation, sets it on the desk. A second later he finds a way to stow it in the bag again.

I imitate him as best I can, grabbing a few lighter pieces of clothing out of my suitcase and stuffing them into my smaller overnight duffel bag.

While I complete my repackaging, he taps on his secured cellphone, then stares at the screen expectantly. “Fifteen minutes,” he mouths. I know he means that’s how long we have before we move.

From the desk, he hands me my laptop. In my ear he whispers, “we’ll need it.”

Then he takes out a slice of pizza from the torn box that rests on the TV cabinet and places it on a piece of cardboard for heating in the microwave.

“You really do need to eat,” he says.

I don’t object this time. At two minutes to go, I finish my second slice and wash it down with a cup of water.

With one minute to go, Andre straps on his backpack.

When by my watch the time comes, I grab my duffel bag and laptop case. He makes a halting motion with his hand, then points up at the ceiling.

A fire alarm pierces through me with intermittent beeping. The sprinklers go off, too. The chill of the spray hits me like a cruel shower.

“Now,” he says. He opens the door, and goes out first.

We step out into the sharp spray of fire sprinklers and the shrieking of the alarm. Red and yellow lights pulsate along the hallway. We reach the staircase before any of the other guests stir into action.

Keep reading…