End Game

Nothing at all to worry about ...

Emmy-Lee was feeling pleased with herself. True, any leverage from the car crash would not be lasting long – just the length of time Husk's people would take to discover that the rental was under a false identity, that his roof had been reassigned as an emergency landing zone, and that a smoke bomb had been remotely detonated inside the vehicle. On the other hand, he hadn't thrown her out on her ear. Her foot was in the door, and the fact that she now had confirmation that he was up to something was enough to keep it there. Nor had he seemed displeased with the rest of her anatomy. She hadn't needed to be a witch to detect that.

Up to something, ... yes. But what exactly? And who were the kids? What could they possibly have been doing in those coffins? None of what she saw had been on her list of plausible scenarios.

She had stood aside while Husk dismissed Tim's suggestion for brunch, instead giving the pair the rest of the day off, instructing them to be back, same time tomorrow morning. "I'll get that thing off the roof, then we pick up where we left off."

After seeing them off the premises, he turned his attention back to Emmy-Lee. He sighed. "You're a trouble-maker, aren't you?"

She attempted an innocent smile, waited for him to continue.

"My man's right," he said. "We can't stay here. Nor can I be seen in public. And I'm not about to tempt fate by taking you to any of my other properties. What I can offer you is a picnic. Somewhere shady and secluded. Neutral territory. If we go now, we can beat the heat of the day."

Before this plan could be put into effect, Husk had a number of calls to make. Emmy-Lee was escorted by one of the black-suits to an office where she was left temporarily alone. A quick search found nothing remotely snoop-worthy, so she sat down and brought out her phone – a purely instinctive act to fill the time. It took only seconds for the rent-a-thug to appear at the door. He discreetly cleared his throat and held out his hand, on his face a mock-stern frown.

Emmy-Lee sighed and handed it over. Even in the act of confiscating her phone they seemed to be extending extraordinarily politeness to someone who had just caused them an awful lot of inconvenience.

Husk especially. It is a truism that ordinary people are all ordinary in the same way, while the odd come in endless variety. Billionaires, by definition, are not ordinary people and therefore the usual standards cannot be assumed to apply. Still, he did seem odd in a rather odd way for someone so wealthy. Her job meant she had spent time in company of the elite, and to the extent that there was a pattern to their behavior, Husk didn't fit it. He hadn't yelled at her once.

Almost like he was going out of his way to keep his temper. Kind of weird, when you considered what she had just done to his grand scheme, whatever the hell it was.

Then she began to wonder. Exactly how much of an inconvenience did she represent? How important was her silence? And what exactly did he have in mind with this picnic?

This whole thing with Husk had fallen into her lap, courtesy of a nothing more sinister than a celebrity-spotting web crawler that had lucked out in spotting the girl's post in the short time it was up. As far as she could tell, it was a story she had all to herself.

That was a good thing and a bad. Nobody knew she was here – nobody except Eric, the pet geek who helped her with the online side of her work. But his curiosity ended where the real world began. Besides, he couldn't come looking without incriminating himself over the car crash.

Then again, if Husk did a background check on her – something that was probably taking place this very minute – all he would find would be a harmless gossip-columnist-come-paparazzoid. Someone who could easily be bought off, counted on to stay bought off. Not someone warranting any more drastic action. Surely not?

She looked across at the flunky who had taken up station by the door. The smile she received in response was inscrutable.

She'd spent the evening before putting herself through a crash-course of Husk-ology. A real thing, she had been surprised to discover. The man had disappeared three years earlier after informing the world he was planning something that would change it forever. In his wake, a debris trail of rumor, speculation and conspiratorial theorizing. She'd stayed up late wading through an endless stream of this stuff. What was his secret master plan? Anti-gravity seemed particularly popular, if not very plausible. Among the more obvious nuttiness there had also been a thread dealing with Husk's investment in a startup company making a neural scanning machine, and its subsequent disappearance from view – facts corroborated by more reliable sources. Some breakthrough in virtual reality was mentioned – her eyes had glazed at this point – it had been late, the descent into technobabble rapid. More plausible, she thought to herself, but also somewhat underwhelming. You don't promise to change reality, only to come back with a better quality of illusion.

As to what she had just witnessed out in the warehouse, the experience if anything had left her more baffled than ever.

The moment of doubt passed. Was she going to back out now – with the prospect of a life-changing payday? Of course not. Whatever Husk was up to, she could handle it. It was in her nature, after all – to think on her feet, and also to land on them.

Besides, she needed this. Pickings of late had been lean. The alternative didn't bear thinking about. Go sell real estate for a living? Life insurance? Just the thought of it made her toes curl.