He shrugged.
“Seems like the status quo is punishment enough.”
He had me there. He had me in a lot of ways. Fuck, he was very good.
“Think about it, Miss Cook,” he said, looking at his watch. “I know I’ve only used, what, ten minutes of your time? Not even? But consider that the first sign of my generosity. If I ask you for a day’s worth of work, it may only take you an hour and a half. I’m not here to treat you as a slave. In fact, you name your salary and it’s yours.”
“A hundred grand,” I said without thinking.
“Easy, done; you should have negotiated for more.”
Fuck. And he’s completely serious.
“Here’s my card,” he said.
I looked at it. It just had a location on it, not an email or a phone number. The location, if memory served me right, was some warehouse district on the northeast side of town.
“Come back to me by the end of the day tomorrow with a decision. If I don’t hear from you, I will assume you have declined the offer. Of course, I would never impose on your free will, but I fail to see how you would refuse this situation.”
“How do I know that this won’t be a gig you pay me for like two weeks on and then let me go?”
He smiled.
“The thing about control and order, Miss Cook, is that it defies not only human nature, but also nature itself. Things tend toward disorder and chaos. It’s one of the laws of thermodynamics. It takes more work to keep things contained than it does to let them run free. Rest assured that my mission is not one that is complete with a few days’ worth of work.”
With that, he stood up. One of the other patrons also happened to stand and stretch before walking out the door, though I strongly suspected he was just around the corner.
“Contemplate it and come back to me no later than eight p.m. tomorrow,” he said. “Oh, and one last thing.”
“What?”
“Keep this to yourself,” he said. “While I am a generous man, one of my requests is that the work with me be exclusive. I would hate to think that you’d be working for, heaven forbid—or perhaps Devil forbid—another club.”
He smiled, nodded to me, and tugged on his suit.
“You enjoy the rest of your day, Miss Cook.”
And with that, he left. I looked around the room. It looked just like any other Starbucks would on a Thursday afternoon.
But as soon as I left, I got in my car, looked around to see if anyone was watching me, and pulled out my phone.
“I need to see you as soon as I can,” I wrote to Satan.
Satan
Unlike Hailey, I didn’t have a job that I might have missed for a meeting.
In fact, I was already at home when she sent that text message. I told her to come over immediately. As soon as I sent the message, I prepared to hunker down.
I grabbed my machine gun and placed it by the door. If it spooked Hailey, tough shit. I boarded up the windows to make sure no one could fire upon me. I did a quick walk through the area, keeping my pistol on me, checking to see if anyone in the adjacent houses had any unusual cars or unexpected guests.
In a world like this, in a time like this, one could never be too careful. And that was especially true when Hailey had met King herself.
I was almost jealous, in a way. I wanted to see the fucker for myself and beat his ass into the ground. I wanted to give him a “warm” welcome to Phoenix and make sure that he never left this city. I’d have to settle for eventually killing his forces and the fucking bastard himself.
Hailey pulled right into my garage, just as I had commanded her. I started shutting the garage door before she’d even turned the car on, and then I approached her car with a bug sensor.
“What are you doing?”
