5
Simon
“H!” Simon, startled, sprang off the bed and ran for the bedroom door. His glasses had been knocked askew during his fall, and instead of trying to set them straight, he plucked them off his face and headed down the hall blindly. On his way out of the room, he reached for the door with his ankle and closed it as best he could, but failed to remember that the doorknob mechanism had fallen to pieces and scattered across the hall. Ever graceful, Simon stepped directly on the knob and cried out in fear as he lost his footing. Rocketed forward by momentum, he smashed into the opposite wall, made a muffled sound somewhere between a yelp of pain and a groan of embarrassment, then regained his footing and stood erect again.
Parker, startled by thethudof Simon’s ethereal coordination, started to cry.
With limited time on his hands and the man of his dreams on the phone, Simon hurried down the hall, hoping to avoid Jayne’s wrath. He wasn’t so lucky. Jayne stormed out of the bathroom, Parker on his chest and murder in his eyes. Black eyeliner had dried on his cheek. In the hall light, the glimmering silver sparkles shone brightly against the black pigment. If it hadn’t been for the fact that it was on Jayne’s cheek instead of his waterline, Simon thought it would have looked quite charming. But right now, Simon couldn’t think much of anything besides how he was going to escape Jayne’s fury quickly enough to have a conversation with Harlow.
He decided sign language was the way to go.
“H, I’m so sorry,” Simon uttered as he gestured wildly at Shep’s bedroom door in an attempt to say wordlessly to Jayne, “I’ll take care of it in a second.” He slunk down the hall, back to the wall, hoping to pass by without invoking Jayne’s wrath, while continuing to speak with Harlow. “I didn’t mean to scream at you. I was walking when I picked up the phone, and I slipped on something on the ground, and—”
“Are you available for a quick job?” It was Harlow, alright, but the question he asked was brusque, and his voice lacked the lighthearted quality that usually defined it.
Jayne narrowed his eyes, to which Simon responded by barring his hand against his neck to silently say, “not now, I’ll get back to it in a second.” To Harlow, aloud, he squeaked, “O-Of course I’m available for a job. Always. What do you need?”
Simon arrived at his doorway. He jiggled the handle a few times, then elbowed his way into the room. The last thing he saw before he closed the door was Jayne, who glowered at him from the hallway.
As soon as the door was shut, Simon rushed across the room and sank into his computer chair. He pinned the phone to his ear, set his glasses down, woke his desktop monitor with a shake of his mouse, then slid into place at his desk.
“I need you to track the location of a cell phone. Can you do it?”
“Oh. Uh, yeah. Of course.” Simon parted the cell phone from his ear and set it to speakerphone. He set it on his desk. “What info am I working with? I, um, I can work some miracles, you know, but it… it’ll take time, if you need me to track things down.”
“How fast can you track a phone number?”
“Oh.” Simon laughed. It was the embarrassing kind that came too high and stuck in his nasal cavity like a snort—the kind he only made when he was nervous and flustered. Embarrassed, he covered his face with his hands and tried his best to sound unaffected. “Like, super fast. Um. I mean, notlikesuper fast… I mean, actually super fast. No like about it.”
Oh my god,he thought, wincing.I sound like an idiot. Iaman idiot. What the hell am I doing?
Harlow didn’t laugh. He didn’t even chuckle. Instead, voice cold, he asked, “Are you ready for the phone number?”
“Yes.” Like he’d been snapped out of a daydream, Simon scrambled to open his micro-local triangulation program. “It, um, it’s going to spit out geographic coordinates. Do you have a way to interpret them, or should I do it for you?”
“Once I’ve got the coordinates, I’ll be fine. The number is…” As Harlow listed off the string of numbers, Simon input them into the appropriate field. He’d designed the program himself, although plenty of other triangulation systems already existed for download in some of the shadier corners of the internet. To Simon, the time spent crafting the code had been worth his while—the learning experience had prepared him for more complex challenges, and as technology evolved, his intimate knowledge of how the program worked behind the scenes allowed him to adapt and keep his software running smoothly.
When Harlow was done reciting the number, Simon repeated it back to him. “That’s the right number?”
“Yes.”
Simon tapped the enter key. “Then here we go.”
There was a moment’s pause as the program made contact with the necessary satellites before coordinates populated the return field. Simon sank back into his chair and observed the numbers on the screen. “And we’ve got results. I, um, I do have to warn you that these coordinates can only track thephone,not necessarily the person it belongs to. If it’s someone who’s thrown out their device, or um, or lost it, or otherwise misplaced it, all it’s going to do is lead you to where the phone is. But you know that, right?”
“Yes. It’s fine. I’m one hundred percent positive the phone is on her person. She wouldn’t be without it.”
The pale hairs on Simon’s arms stood on end. He licked his lips nervously and twisted his chair back and forth, using the toes of one foot as traction on the floor. The severity of Harlow’s voice was arresting. It wasn’t like Simon thought he was harmless—in fact, heknewthat wasn’t the case—but during the three years he’d worked for Harlow, he’d never heard him sound so…
Off.
Whatever had happened, and whatever business Harlow was up to, it wasn’t happy.
“Is there anything else you need, H?” The excitement that had once gripped Simon from the inside over Harlow’s phone call was gone. Uncomfortable dread occupied its place, and he wondered if there was something—anything—he could do to help Harlow through his struggles. “Any… I don’t know. Anything at all? I, um, I have a computer, and I’m not afraid to use it…”
“No, thank you.” Harlow sighed, and when he spoke again, his tone was apologetic. “I’m sorry I’m so abrupt today, Kid. There are certain things going on that are difficult for me, and I have to take care them quickly.”
Simon’s lips parted. He made a few inward noises, like he was gearing up to speak, but words never came. He couldn’t think of what to say, or how to tell Harlow that his apology, while accepted, was unnecessary. Harlow washurting.It wasn’t Simon’s business to know what had happened, but the fact of the matter was that whatever it was had to be serious. Harlow was unflappable, and for good reason—Simon had dug around in his personal records, and he knew about Harlow’s history. Yet here he was, kind and sensitive enough to apologize for the effect his mood had had on Simon.
