‘It’s going well,’ he said.
It wasn’t an invite to agree, more a holding testimony. He was buying time.
Now they hadYouthBlastand the chemical compound called Neurohydroxy-14 that made it unique, his days were numbered. He was expendable, and so was Angie.
And that’s why he’d hidden his money and was ready to run.
But only if Angie was safe.
‘You seem jumpy,’ Sandy said, catching him off guard.
‘I can’t get hold of Angie,’ he told her.
‘Ach, she’ll be busy painting, no doubt, or finding out more local legends of ghosts and witches.’ Sandy winked.
And that’s when he knew.
They knew.
Chapter 5
Jamie finally decided to drive over to the Old Man Guesthouse, where he’d left Angie, but conference commitments kept getting in the way. He felt pulled this way and that and couldn’t make a decision. For a well-paid executive he felt like an amateur adrift more recently, and he knew Sandy saw it.
She’d delivered her keynote address at 3 p.m. and it had been blisteringly good. The woman spoke like a 1930s dictator before everyone discovered their real intentions and Jamie reckoned Sandy’s weren’t too far off the nefarious ambitions of Mussolini or Stalin either. She rallied the troops like obedient soldiers desperate for their futures to start. She inspired them with her promises of greatness. She didn’t use notes. She used her hands like missiles and her smile melted the ice in the free cocktails.
The content wasn’t so much the important theme, more the passion, and she had conference attendees eating out of her hand and tryingYouthBlastin their complimentary water bottles, emblazoned with the FairGro logo of course. The company insignia was a clever design of four leaves intertwined with the outline of a child. It was simple and effective: innocence and health all rolled into one. Their marketing ofYouthBlastwas equally genius with the use of bright colours and the promise of everlasting health.
But the promise of immortality was a far cry from the truth.
Enter Sandy Cooper, stage left, who hypnotised the hardest audiences with her wizardry and scientific legitimacy. She had the law behind her, and enough documents to sink theTitanicagain, many times. Afterwards in the bar, they’d laughed.
The story of theTitanicwas the greatest psy-op that Jamie loved to talk about. The fact that it had been scuttled by J. P.Morgan to get rid of his competitors to make way for the Federal Reserve and dominate banking for the next hundred years, making him the world’s first billionaire, was a common story of heroism and genius in financial circles. The opposing fact that the mainstream media called the theory a conspiracy and stuck with the old iceberg fairytale proved the very point that it was important what the public believed, not what really happened.
He’d looked at his watch repeatedly and Sandy eyed him suspiciously.
Her energy on stage was fuelled by something Jamie had got too close to, and it had knocked the wind out of him. Morally ethical, versus morally bankrupt. Good always won out in the end, he knew deep down. He’d always known, he’d just been blinded by the money. Greed coloured everything and changed people from ordinary and creative to evil and empty.
Sandy was not a good person and he’d been a sucker to trust her.
Now, he sensed danger. He’d been a fool dragging Angie in, he thought, as he went to his room to grab his keys. Maybe he should have let Joe in after all. His sister’s boyfriend deserved to know where she was, but Jamie had deemed it too much of a risk and even Joe was distanced from her. Jamie had isolated Angie, and he was terrified he’d made a mistake.
Joe wasn’t answering Jamie’s calls either.
Jamie went to close his phone and pop it into his briefcase, but he closed the tabs first and came across the YouTube channel that he’d been following. The Clem Allins podcast had climbed the charts to become one of the most influential and most listened to in the health and fitness world. It was a significant achievement given the competition, but something about the guru was mesmerising. Jamie had been using the podcast to meditate and focus on his inner strength. It helped him moveaway from material wealth and discover inner riches infinitely more powerful. Or at least that was the bullshit spin.
Even Clem Allins couldn’t help him now. Hampton and Dent would hunt him forever.
A creeping feeling of dread invaded his stomach, and it wasn’t the thought ofYouthBlastgurgling in the innards of the conference attendees; it was pure terror that his sister’s life was in danger.
He heard a sound and swung around to see his suite door opening.
A few things crossed his mind as he watched the handle flick down. His key card should be the only one to work. Nobody else should have one, except perhaps the cleaner? But it was an odd time of the day for housekeeping. Another momentary thought was that it might be Sandy, wanting to down a whisky or two to celebrate her speech, but they’d already done that. The other thought was that he hoped it wasn’t Tilda Dent.
The woman was sexy as hell, but she wasn’t his type.
And she was already sleeping with Paul.
Before he could sort out his head, the door opened fully, and Jamie thought it could have been a mistake. Keycards weren’t rocket science, or manipulative chemical compounds even.
