5.
Monday morning, seven-thirty.
I’ve been at PhySpa, Phyllis’s day spa and plastic surgery center for more than two hours, but couldn’t find the device. I’m disappointed Phyllis hasn’t arrived yet. I hear someone unlock the front door, so I sneak out the back and head for the nearest coffee shop. I don’t know who entered, but it wasn’t Phyllis, because her name is on the only parking space behind the building, and she would have used that entrance.
After a coffee and bathroom stop, it’s eight a.m., and I’m surprised to see several cars parked in front of PhySpa. When I enter the waiting room, the receptionist asks if she can help me.
The sign on the front desk tells me her name.
“Hi Shelby.”
“Hello,” she says, brightly.
I lean in close and say, “I wonder if I could speak to Dr. Willis for a quick minute about something personal.”
She frowns. He doesn’t look like a salesman, Shelby’s thinking. But she’s not sure.
“Your name, please?”
“Connor Payne.”
“I’ll check.”
When she does, something in Shelby’s facial expression gives me the distinct impression Phyllis Willis is less than thrilled I’m in her lobby. Shelby says, “Yes, certainly,” and places the phone carefully in its cradle before saying, “I’m sorry, Mr. Payne, but Dr. Willis is in the middle of a procedure.”
I smile sweetly and say, “Shelby.”
“Yes sir?”
“Call her again. Tell her if she’s not out here in two minutes, I’m coming for her.”
She looks like she’s about to say something, but changes her mind and repeats my message to Phyllis. I wait a minute, then feel a buzzing in my brain that tells me someone in the office—probably Phyllis—is trying to enter the kill code. The buzzing hurts ten times worse than the one I felt on Saturday night.
Son of a bitch!
I grab both sides of my head and stagger backward.
Shelby jumps to her feet. “Sir! Are you okay?”
The buzzing stops. I shake my head.
“Sir?”
“I’m okay, thanks.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
And I am, until—Shit!
She’s doing it again!
When the buzzing stops I take a few seconds to regain my equilibrium. Then I paralyze Shelby with a throat strike before killing her quickly. I kiss her forehead before lowering her carefully to the floor.
I know what you’re thinking: Shelby would rather be alive than kissed by her killer. I agree. She doesn’t deserve this, and it sucks. But I’m under attack, and she controls the phones and can identify me.
I lock the front door, then move through Phyllis’s office like clap through a whorehouse.
I open one door after another. Most of the rooms are empty, but I manage to find and kill a spa attendant, a masseuse, and the face-down woman he’s working on. I didn’t catch any of their names. I don’t enjoy killing innocent people, but my situation is critical. I had hoped to meet with Phyllis in private, but she tried to kill me, instead. And might still accomplish it, since I don’t know how the device works. If I had the luxury of time, these people would still be alive.
But when Phyllis made her move, I had to make mine.
Within a minute, it’s just me and Phyllis, who I find cowering on the floor of her bathroom.
She’d been on her cell phone.
“Who were you talking to, Phyllis?”
“N-No one,” she says.
I slap the right side of her face with the palm of my hand, and then the left side with the back of my hand, hard enough to open a small gash on both corners of her mouth. The way the blood trickles out makes her mouth look like the Joker in Batman. Except she’s not smiling.
I grab her cell phone and tap the button marked “Recent.” The name “Lucky” appears. I slip her phone into my pocket, figuring to check her caller list later.
“Who’s Lucky?”
“N-No one.”
She sees me looking at the controller in her lap, the one that looks like a fancy wrist watch. The one she used to punch in the code a few minutes ago. The code she thought would kill me.
“Looosy?” I say in my best Ricky Ricardo voice. “You’ve got some s’plainin’ to do!”
6.
“There’s some sort of device that can reprogram the chip in my brain,” I say.
Phyllis’s face takes on a look of extreme sadness. She knows I’m a stone killer, and knows I’m aware she tried to kill me moments ago. She moves her lips, trying to form words. The effort makes her mouth look like that of a small bird, straining upward, waiting for its mother to drop a bit of worm down its throat.
“Phyllis, I need you to focus. I’m not talking about the unit you used to try to kill me just now. I’m talking about a master device that can override these wrist units.”
“Y-yes. There is one.”
“And what does it look like?”
“It’s v-very small.”
“And what does it look like?”
“Like the t-tip of a…” She pauses, trying to come up with a name. Gives up and says, “a computer memory thing.”
I pull out my phone, press the button that speed dials Lou’s number.
“I’ve got lots of stuff on the gambler,” Lou says. “But more to come. And we’re still digging through the doctor’s files from when you linked her computer to ours last night. You want what I’ve got so far?”
“Not yet. I do have a question, though.”
“Shoot.”
“What’s a computer memory thing?”
Lou pauses. “Is this a riddle?”
“Not on purpose.”
I need Lou’s help, but I don’t want him to know there’s a chip in my brain that can kill me. Lou and I are close, but since he tried to murder me recently, I’d prefer to keep a few secrets from him. I say, “I’m with a woman who’s trying to think of what you call the small tip of a computer memory thing.”
“What’s the shape?” Lou says.
I repeat the question to Phyllis and she stammers out it’s a rectangle, and people stick it into the side of their computers.
“Into the USB port?” Lou asks.
I ask Phyllis. She nods.
“Yes,” I tell Lou. “It fits into the USB port.”
“She’s talking about a flash drive,” Lou says. “Also known as a memory stick, finger stick, pen drive, disk-on-key, jump drive—”
“Got it,” I say. “Thanks.”
It takes a minute, but I eventually get Phyllis to explain that the master device resembles the metal tip of a flash drive, except that it’s ceramic, and half the size.
“And is it silver?” I ask.
“Wh-White.”
“Where is it?”
“I-I don’t have it.”
“Is it in this office?”
“N-No. I sw-swear.”
She’s trembling, and seems very small and frail. Much smaller than the clothes in her closet would indicate. Maybe it’s because she’s curled up in a fetal position. She’s crying, and her mascara is running and her mouth is bleeding, and her hair’s a coffee-colored mess.
“Your hair’s not orange,” I say.
“Wh-what?”
“You dyed your sweet spot orange?” I say.
She gives me a confused look. “My wh-what?”
“I was trying not to be vulgar. Your bush. You dyed it orange? Intentionally?”
She follows my gaze and modestly covers her lap with her hands.
“Have you given it to someone?”
“Excuse me?”
“The device.”
Phyllis nods.
“Who?”
“Mrs. Peters.”
I pause. “Lucky’s wife?”
She nods.
“No shit?”
She shakes her head.
Before I kill her I say, “I don’t mean to embarrass you, but I promised my friend I’d ask you something.”