She slipped out of her shoes and shrugged her jacket off. Then she scooped her cellular phone out of her purse and, knowing already Donald had tried calling her from the message light blinking on her phone, called him. “Hey, honey.”
“Michelle! You okay?”
“I’m fine.” Hearing Donald’s voice sounded so good. “I saw my mother today.”
Pause. “At Corporate Financial Headquarters?”
“Yes.” The memories resurfaced again along with all the bad vibes. “She’s one of the top executives for the company. And she didn’t even recognize me!”
“Oh my God,” Donald said.
“She was just… just like she was when I last saw her, only worse.” Michelle closed her eyes, willing the bad feelings back. “I don’t think anybody noticed a physical resemblance but… it wouldn’t surprise me if they did. Sam mentioned something about us having the same last name.”
“Did you talk to her at all?”
“As little as possible,” Michelle said, feeling better the more she talked about this to Donald. “I didn’t go out of my way to avoid her, and I didn’t let on that I recognized her or that she was my mother. She reacted the same way.”
“Could you tell if she recognized you? Was there anything in her posture, her attitude or demeanor?”
“Nothing.”
“Jesus.”
Michelle sighed. “Things are going very well for them. I haven’t seen anything on the news much today, but I heard MSNBC has been blasting them.”
“Jay and I have been monitoring the news on our drive,” Donald said. “And there hasn’t been anything on the radio.”
“Most radio stations are owned by one or two big companies,” Michelle said. “They’re probably in Corporate Financial’s pocket.”
“Exactly.”
“Where are you guys now?”
“Colorado.” There was a short pause. “We just passed a little town two hours outside of Loveland and we’re going to gas up and switch places in about an hour.”
“Are you doing okay?”
“Yeah. We’re doing okay. We’re taking turns with the driving, and the back seat is comfortable for sleeping. Jay doesn’t need much sleep anyway thanks to all the caffeine he drinks. It’s a wonder we’re making such good time. You’d think with all the coke and coffee he drinks we’d be stopping every thirty minutes for a pit stop for him to pee.”
Michelle heard Jay’s voice in the background respond to this but she couldn’t make out what he said.
“Be careful,” Michelle said. She wished Donald was here with her now.
“I will,” Donald said. “You be careful, too. We should be there late in the day tomorrow.”
“Probably more like tomorrow night.” The thought of this chilled her. “I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.”
“Call Alan,” Donald said. “Tell him where you are. He’ll fill you in.”
“Have you been in touch with him?”
“Yes, and everything’s running smoothly.”
“I’m scared,” Michelle said. The fear hit her again hard and fast. She didn’t want to go through with this. She just wanted it to all go away.
“I am too, but we have to go through with this. If we don’t act now, Corporate Financial—the things controlling Corporate Financial—will take over and we’ll be enslaved. The entire human race will be subservient to the whims of a thing, an entity we can’t even begin to fathom. It’ll be like one of those science-fiction movies that’s on late night TV, where humans exist as slaves for some unseen alien hybrid. Only in this case it isn’t really alien, but something demonic… something so spiritually evil that I can’t even begin to describe it.”
Michelle didn’t want to think about the possibilities of what this all might entail. Knowing that Phase One and Two were going to be bad enough by forcing people to work twelve, fourteen, even eighteen hour days and keep them away from their families was enough to motivate her to barrel through the fear and regain her senses. For the past few hours she’d fantasized about how they were going to accomplish this: would their political power pressure police departments all over the country to keep workers in line? The thought chilled her. “I’m going to call Alan now,” she said. “Please call me tomorrow morning? At seven? I’ll need to hear your voice before I start my day tomorrow.”
“You’ve got it,” Donald said. “Seven sharp.”
“I love you,” Michelle said.
“Love you, too.”
After they hung up Michelle sat on the bed for a moment, silently wishing Donald and Jay would get to Calistoga quickly, then she regained her composure and called Alan. He answered on the third ring. “I’m here,” she said. “The Marriot on Pine Grove, room two eighty-seven.”
“Did you get a diagram of the building?”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
“If you can, try connecting to the network tonight and see if you can get anything else. Email it to the account Jay gave you.”
“I will. I want to take a shower first. I’m beat.”
“Okay. I’ll meet you at three a.m. Your room.”
“You have the stuff?” She felt like a secret agent talking in code.
“I have it and I’ll bring it with me.”
“Okay. See you then.”
When she hung up the phone she sighed in relief. For a moment she felt alone, cast adrift, and more far away from home than she had ever felt before.
Then she sighed again and headed to the bathroom to take a shower.
WHEN THE ALARM woke her up at three a.m. sharp, Michelle rolled out of bed and hit the floor running.
She was ready ten minutes later, freshened up, robe pulled tight over her frame. She waited by the door to her room and opened it the instant she saw Alan appear in the fisheye lens of the peephole.
Alan came inside quickly and Michelle closed and locked the door behind him. She’d turned on the lamp by the bed and, as she joined Alan in the main portion of her room, she saw him put a briefcase on the bed. He opened the flaps and raised the lid. He was dressed in dark jeans and a dark shirt. “Open your briefcase and let’s transfer this stuff into it.”
Michelle got her briefcase, opened it, and removed papers and other documents from it. When it was empty, Alan handed her what looked like a small cardboard box, the kind bank checks arrive in. It felt heavy in her hands and was made of soft brown leather. “This thing’s loaded with C4 and it has a voice-activated trigger,” he said. “Rachel is about ten miles away with a radio that will send the signal to detonate these. I’ve already turned them on; they run on a battery that has a twenty-four hour life span. Rachel won’t turn the radio on until thirty minutes before we’re set to go. Then we’ll—”