Nick had done Jack a solid and turned off the meter. His cab was a private operation, unmarked and almost certainly illegal. Jack had exited the airport, loaded his gear into the trunk and was clipping his seat belt shut when Nick had craftily hunched over the ignition to huff into a tube leading to the ignition: a Breathalyzer interlock. “All right,” Nick had said before Jack could second-guess. “Let’s hit that road!”
Jack now checked the cab for dings. It looked in pretty good shape.
“1968 Dodge Charger,” Nick said, noting Jack’s interest.
“Expensive.”
“Dad’s. Strictly a loaner.” Nick handed Jack a tiny enamel cup, hot. It even had a saucer. “Though it’s not like he’s gonna be driving it anytime soon. Diabetes got him in a wheelchair.”
“The Christmas lights and espresso machine come standard?”
“That’s all me. You ride with The Prez, you’re VP till you exit.”
The Prez, right. Jack thought he recognized the face. Nick Marsters, aka The Prez, star player for the Riverport Raptors back in the day, headed for the big leagues. Why was he driving a cab?
“This is where she lived?” The question short-circuited the thought.
Jack downed the tiny cup, bitterness stinging behind his eyes, painting warmth through his innards. It had been a while since he’d had coffee without sweet condensed milk.
“Yeah. Took us a couple hours to walk back here from the Overlook,” he said, thinking about that morning six years ago. What had started as Nick’s rundown on how the town had changed led to Jack recounting why he had left. Once started Jack found he hadn’t wanted to stop. Maybe it was the Catholic confessional urge… or maybe he just wanted to delay seeing his brother for as long as he could.
“You know the cops put the Overlook shootings down to some dead man making a play inside Aberfoyle’s organization, right? Open-and-shut, cut-and-dried. Do you think your girl meant for it to play out like that?”
Jack shook his head. “She saw most things as judo. Receive momentum, do what you want with it. I think she was just doing what came naturally.”
“Maybe you should have married her.”
Jack pointed to the corner of the block. “That morning we stood right there. She held on to my jacket… leaned in… and whispered… ‘I could kick you in the face from here.’”
Nick snorted.
“She went inside and I never saw her again.”
Nick turned his dumbstruck expression to the dark house, to Jack, back to the house. “I find that to be a profoundly unsatisfying conclusion.”
“I came round that afternoon and everything she owned was on fire in the back garden. She was gone. Five years I spent looking. Nothing. I thought I picked up a lead in Arizona, but it led nowhere.”
“In the nineties that’d be romantic. These days it’s practically a felony.” Then: “Missing persons report?”
“No file, no paper trail, no name.”
“Maybe Aberfoyle’s guys got to her?”
“They’d have gone for me and Will first. Zed was an unknown, and the only guy who walked away from the Overlook that morning was found in the river a week later. Basically we were never there.” Being there, in that moment, with this stranger, looking at a house that hadn’t known Zed and him for more than half a decade… “Maybe she just wanted out. Maybe I was just being a creep, trying to find her. Jesus.”
“No place like home.”
“If I’m lucky.” He felt self-conscious, confessing like a chump and hungover from it. “Family business. Once that’s done I’m on the first flight… out of…”
Jack never finished the thought. A shape crept to the opposite crossroads, one-inch steel plate doing nothing to mute the low-and-slow chug of 300 horsepower.
“Whoa.”
Seventeen thousand pounds of intimidation rounded the corner on fat, bullet-resistant tires, passenger-side spotlight snapping on like an accusation. The bright eye surveyed them as the armored vehicle took its sweet time rolling past. A Monarch Security logo leaped out through the glare-a segmented, geometric butterfly-hi-vis on matte black ballistic surfacing. Nick straightened, smiled, and nodded.
After a moment of consideration the light clicked off and the BearCat picked up volume, rounding the corner and melting back into the ’burbs.
“What the fuck,” Jack said, “was that? Are we at war?”
“Monarch,” Nick replied, taking Jack’s cup and saucer, depositing it through the passenger window onto the espresso machine’s top-mounted rack. “They moved in about the time you moved out. Shipping: dead. Farming: dead. Construction: dead. Monarch comes in, builds a bunch of stuff, employs a bunch of people. Riverport’s got a pulse again. I like ’em, and their uniforms are frickin’ bangin’.”
“In Chiang Mai cops roll on tires with Monarch branding.”
“Monarch Industrial, probably. That BearCat was Monarch Security. My sister’s kid’s daycare is Monarch Child. My dad’s meds are Monarch Pharmaceuticals. Monarch’s got this loyalty program, lets you rack up points all over the place, whoever you use. Dad’s meds paid for that coffee you’re drinking. It’s a good deal.” Nick backhanded Jack’s arm, friendly. “Hey, you know Monarch’s hosting a huge gala tomorrow night? A shitload of famous people are gonna be there. I could take you up to the parking garage across the way, give you a great view of the red carpet.”
Jack’s phone vibrated in his jacket. Caller ID came up as Paul Serene. “Uh… I think I fly out before then. Just one second.” He thumbed the call button.
“Hey buddy.” The voice was as familiar as his own. “Six years away and the first thing you do is go and pine outside her house?”
Jack glanced toward the disappeared armored vehicle. “The BearCat.”
Paul laughed. “I requested an alert on your arrival. The BearCat scanned the plate of the museum piece you’re leaning against. Monarch Security network cross-referenced with the RPD database, checked the photobank of the driver-cam that takes a shot each time Nick needs to blow-start the engine. Facial recog grabbed you in the backseat, the entry was logged into Monarch’s system, Monarch’s system texted me, I called you.”
“Cause and effect.” All of a sudden Jack wanted to be on a plane, headed to someplace even he didn’t know. Someplace that didn’t have loyalty programs. He thought of Zed and her zero footprint.
“Perks of working for Monarch.”
“Which Monarch would that be?”
“Monarch Innovations. Subsidiary of Developments.”
“It’s like you’re here with me, buddy.”
“The info stays on Monarch servers, but we make it available to law enforcement upon request. Part of our community policing initiative. Some reservations from rights activists, but mostly the town’s on board.”
Yeah. Leaving. First chance he got. Maybe never coming back.
“You’re still meeting me on campus, correct?”
“I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”
“Jack? Thank you for making it. This is important to me. You’ll be glad you came, I promise.” The call disconnected.
“You said something about a Monarch gala?”
“The buzz is they’re revealing a new product line. They say it’ll ‘reinvent life as we live it.’ Probably just another game console. You want another espresso?” Nick asked.
“No. Actually, yeah. Can I get it rolling?”
“You’re the VP.” Nick opened the door for him. “I’ll have to take a less-short way around. Big protest at the university today. Thought it’d be over by now or I’d have mentioned it. Students pissed off about the city tearing down some old library. You know how it is.”
Jack checked his phone, giving Nick a little privacy to huff-start the car. “Says here Monarch’s the one tearing it down, not the city.”