Monsters Read online

  It rang and rang. He didn’t answer.

  He always answered.

  She sighed, then nodded to the building’s reception staff, all of whom she knew. She needed to speak to him. It wasn’t exactly urgent, but he’d been her mentor, her rock, for all her time in the turbulent boat of Silicon Valley. And there were work concerns. More serious than she perhaps wanted to admit.

  A knot twisted her gut. If you were on the board of Vitality+, you answered your damn phone when a senior employee rang. That wasn’t even taking into account the paternal factor, the unspoken truth of de facto fatherhood. He guided her where Walter Böhm could not. Always had.

  She pulled up “Find My Friends,” in front of the bank of gleaming elevators. It seemed wrong. It had only ever been used the other way round, ever since Mary had told Jack she didn’t always feel safe walking home and he promised to monitor her whereabouts when the need arose. Even San Francisco had its dangerous pockets. No major city was immune.

  The app displayed his location: an apartment building in the Tenderloin. That was odd in itself, and made her hand freeze before it touched the elevator panel. Then the screen refreshed, uploading new data to replace the old that sometimes lagged when the app was first opened.

  Jack was in the building.

  Mary furrowed a brow, used a two-finger pincer to zoom. Her stomach fell.

  He was in the boss’s office.

  Mary could only describe Heidi Waters as mercurial at the best of times, and the CEO of Vitality+ had never gelled with Jack’s soft-spoken, probing questions. He wanted the best for the company, and technically so did she, but their methods to achieve that couldn’t have been further apart. A one-on-one couldn’t be going well, not this early in the morning.

  She took the elevator up to 18 and burst out at a fast walk. She still nodded respectfully to her coworkers but she beelined for Heidi’s office at the end of the floor. Sun streamed in through the floor-to-ceiling windows facing the terrace that overlooked Palo Alto, but basking in the warm glow didn’t ease her concerns.

  The office door was ajar.

  Mary paused outside a moment, tried to listen through the crack. She heard nothing.

  She knocked, but hadn’t realised she was stressed, and she put more force into it than she imagined. The impact of knuckles against wood swung the door open inadvertently.

  Heidi Waters sat behind her broad desk, hunched over a sleek MacBook.

  There was no one else in the office.

  As the door swung open Heidi’s gaze snapped up, eyes wide. A flicker of recognition as she saw Mary. ‘What?’

  ‘Oh,’ Mary said, cheeks flushing hot. ‘Uh…’

  She took a surreptitious glance at her phone, swiping down on the screen to refresh the app. No change. Jack’s beacon, pinging incessantly in the room.

  ‘Sorry,’ Mary continued. ‘Must’ve been a mistake.’

  Heidi hadn’t ascended to CEO at twenty-nine years of age by skirting around tough questions. ‘What the hell are you talking about? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  Mary didn’t think about what she was saying. Too caught up in the moment. She looked at Heidi. ‘Do you have Jack’s phone?’

  Something flared behind Heidi’s eyes, then was instantly snuffed out, stifled. But she’d shown it, a flash of understanding, and she knew her face had betrayed her.

  She lifted a finger from the laptop’s trackpad and beckoned.

  ‘Close the door,’ Heidi said. ‘And sit down.’

  3

  Mary hesitated, but was she really going to say no?

  She stepped inside, closed the door, and sat down across the desk. ‘Um…’

  Her heart throbbed. Her chest ached.

  The carpet was so thick it absorbed any trace of an echo, like they were talking in a phone booth. Heidi showed no hint of her public persona. Usually that wouldn’t bother Mary. She knew all about hamming it up for the cameras, falling back on soundbites for the interviews, plastering a broad smile on your face at all times. But beneath that there was usually something human. When she was angry, Heidi Waters was a soulless husk. She could wipe out emotion at the drop of a hat, which led Mary to believe it never existed in the first place.

  Smoke and mirrors.

  Heidi didn’t speak. Just stared her cold, vacant stare. Mary could see computation occurring behind the eyes. Possibilities assessed and discarded, considered then thrown away. Her face was a stone wall, but what lay between her ears was in panic mode. Mary never would’ve been able to tell if she hadn’t spent four years working for the woman.

  Finally Heidi said, ‘There’s a lot I haven’t told you.’

  Mary wanted to be righteous, inflamed by the desire for justice, but most people aren’t actually like that. She soon discovered how quickly she fell back on self-preservation. She only wanted out of the room. ‘That’s okay. I’m head of R&D. I don’t expect you to tell me about everything that crosses your desk.’

  She shifted in her seat like she was going to get up.

  Heidi’s gaze was withering. ‘About Jack.’

  ‘Oh.’

  For the first time since Mary had known her, Heidi seemed unsure about what she would say next, like she wasn’t confident it was the right call. Something told Mary this was a dangerous, dangerous thing.

  Heidi cleared her throat. ‘Jack’s done some terrible things. I’m talking corporate fraud at the highest level. I won’t go into detail, because if you knew and didn’t say anything you’d be incriminating yourself as an accessory. But he’s had to go away. For a long time. I don’t expect you’ll ever see him again.’

  Whatever Mary had been expecting, it wasn’t that. ‘What?’

  Heidi’s eyes darted left and right in a microsecond, a flitter of panic.

  Mary had never seen her anywhere close to panic. Not once. Not even in Vitality+’s early years, when nervous breakdowns seemed part of the way of life, integrated in the start-up’s DNA. Mary always figured it was Heidi’s sociopathic tendencies that carried her. So when a sociopath starts to panic…?

  Heidi said, ‘You’re going to have to keep this to yourself for now.’

  ‘Why do you have his phone?’

  ‘He thought it could be traced. Which, if you’re here asking about it, was an accurate assessment.’

  ‘So he gave it to you?’

  Silence. No one was under any illusions about the volatility of Heidi’s professional relationship with Jack Sundström.

  Mary said, ‘What about his wife? His children? Did they run with him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where would he go?’

  Heidi said nothing.

  Mary’s blood turned cold. Realisation thumped in her chest. ‘He wouldn’t do the things you’re claiming he did. And even if he did, he wouldn’t run. He’d face the music.’

  Heidi stared.

  Mary got up.

  Heidi said, ‘Sit down.’

  ‘No,’ Mary said. ‘Something’s going on here, and you’ll have to do better than—’

  Heidi slapped the desk with an open palm. The whole thing shuddered. Her eyes were like nothing Mary had ever seen.

  Psychotic.

  Through gritted teeth she hissed, ‘Sit. Down.’

  In that moment Mary realised she’d never been threatened. Sure, she’d felt unsafe sometimes, walking home through bad neighbourhoods, catching sly glances from men she assumed were predators. But thankfully she’d never come face-to-face with a real threat. Awakening to that fact carried with it a fear, a cold terror that she hadn’t considered possible. She froze up, limbs locked, and after a while she understood she was never going to storm out.

  She sat down.

  Heidi said, ‘Look over your shoulder, Mary.’

  Mary did. The eighteenth floor was divided into the company’s departments — biochemistry, engineering, R&D, IT, sales. There were roughly ten employees per section. Everyone was in on time, already deep in flow state, shuffli
ng between desks to generate that floor-wide murmur that implied productivity.

  Heidi said, ‘You’re not going to talk about Jack. You’re going to try not to even think about him. You won’t ask questions. Because if you do any of those things, it’ll jeopardise everything we’ve slaved for the last four years to build. You’re going to realise what’s good for you, and you’ll keep your mouth shut and get back to your work.’ She paused, drummed her fingers on the table, deep in thought. Then she looked back up. ‘I think I’ll leave it at that. Okay?’

  Mary weaved through her desire for self-preservation, found a pathway to channel her scorn. ‘Leave it at that? What, you think you’re some gangster now, Heidi? No, I won’t leave it at that. This is fucking insane.’ She took a deep breath. ‘So you made him run?’

  Heidi said, ‘You’re sheltered.’

  Two words. Spoken in a tone Mary had never heard before. It brought back all that messy survival instinct. She clammed up, went into a shell. All of a sudden deeply scared.

  Heidi sighed, pressed her fingers in a prayer sign at the bridge of her nose. Then she stood up, muttering to herself. So quiet, but Mary thought she picked up the words. ‘Didn’t want to do this…’

  Heidi rounded the desk, and adrenaline rushed through Mary’s brain. No fucking way. Was she really about to get into a physical altercation in a swanky Palo Alto high-rise, in full view of her coworkers? She’d never even been in a fight.

  It turned out to be a whole lot worse.

  Heidi bent at the waist behind Mary, leaning down, shielding her phone from any passersby. She brought up a photograph on the screen. Just as quickly as the blood had rushed to Mary’s head, it now drained. Stars flashed in her vision. She fought down vomit.

  Jack’s broken, bloodied body lay on a plastic tarp stained crimson. His face was caved in, nose squashed. She could only identify him by his long silver hair and bushy beard. The photo was on the screen for only a second before Heidi clicked her phone off, tucked it back in her pocket.

  She bent down further to whisper in Mary’s ear. ‘You breathe a fucking word of this, and the same happens to you.’

  Heidi went back around the desk, sat down again. Her face was unreadable. Mary couldn’t look at her. She was going to pass out, throw up. Her heart crashed against her chest wall, beating out of control.

  Heidi lifted a brow. ‘Do you think I’m bluffing?’

  Mary somehow managed a tiny shake of the head.

  Heidi smiled. ‘Great to chat. Now, back to work.’

  She shooed Mary away, almost playfully.

  The room swayed as Mary rose. The ground tilted like she was on a ship in high seas, and she nearly fell over as she went to the door. She stepped out, unable to shut it behind her, because the motion of turning around would’ve made her tumble. She stumbled past the departments in a detached haze, her face a white sheet.

  When the elevator doors closed on her she lost control. Her abdominal muscles contracted in a rush of sensation. She vomited her breakfast in the corner of the metal box, oblivious to the smell. She gripped the handrail with a sweaty palm. This wasn’t happening.

  She wasn’t sure how she made it through the lobby, but when she stepped outside and sat down on the sidewalk, there was only one thing she could think to do before she succumbed to a full-blown panic attack.

  She called her mother.

  Part I

  4

  Will Slater had his arm around Alexis for half an hour before he realised she was asleep.

  A HBO show rolled its credits on the wall-mounted television, its drum-heavy score bleeding through the surround sound speakers installed in the ceiling behind them. Twilight-coloured smart lighting hummed softly behind the screen and at tasteful intervals around the room. It threw cosy shadow over his and Alexis’ forms on the sofa’s right-hand chaise. They lay stretched out, a chinchilla throw blanket draped over their waists, spilling to the carpet below.

  He’d been home from Mexico for six weeks.

  She stirred when he shifted, looked up at him. She murmured, ‘Tyrell home?’

  He shook his head. ‘He’ll be fine.’

  ‘We should have some sort of curfew. It’s past ten.’

  ‘That won’t lead to anything good.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ She nestled back against his chest. ‘You explained that to me already. There’s something wrong with being superior to him, right?’

  ‘You sound cynical.’

  ‘We’re his parents. We’re supposed to teach him what’s right. I don’t see how a hierarchy’s a bad thing.’

  ‘I think we should show him what’s right. I don’t think it’s a good idea to force anything. Remember when you were a kid. Your parents tell you not to do something, it ends up being the only thing you want to do. The danger of doing it without permission is the most exciting.’

  He saw her eyes flicker, memories stirring. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Think about how he’s changed these past months. Have we really forced him to do any of it? We led by example. He sees us working ourselves to the bone every day, he follows suit.’

  ‘You were stern about him going to summer school.’

  ‘He could’ve blown off class like—’ Slater snapped his fingers ‘—that. He wasn’t even enrolled legitimately. No one would’ve cared. But he put his nose to the grindstone and he passed everything. That’s harder than acing it, you know. If you’re acing everything, it’s not challenging you. It’s harder to fail and fail and fail until you succeed. And when the dust settled he’d passed a seven-week Harvard program with almost no prior education. You really want to bust his balls for staying out past ten?’

  ‘When did I say that?’

  Slater kissed her head. ‘You didn’t. I’m exaggerating.’

  She gestured to the TV. ‘Great show. At least what little I saw of it.’

  He was surprised to find he agreed. ‘Yeah.’

  She glanced upward with a smirk. ‘Will Slater watching mindless entertainment. Who’d’ve thought we’d see the day?’

  ‘I’m still medically suspended.’

  She tightened her core as she sat up to peck him on the lips. ‘Decent excuse. I think you’re just softening.’

  It was an excuse, but it was also true. He’d returned from Mexico in the dead of night a month and a half ago with a bad concussion, a fractured ankle, a strained rotator cuff, and too many bruises to count. The concussion symptoms had eased after a couple of weeks and the ankle was close to a hundred percent, but the shoulder would be the death of him. He hadn’t even torn the tendons, but the range of motion still wasn’t great, a whole month and a half after the fact. Driving an ATV off the side of a mountain and using it as a seven hundred pound projectile hadn’t been the smartest decision of his life, but it had saved King’s life. He’d take an injured shoulder over the alternative any day.

  ‘Maybe,’ he murmured in her ear as the front door eased open and Tyrell stepped inside.

  Slater did a double-take every time he saw the kid. Tyrell’s frame seemed to broaden by the day, his musculature steadily catching up. Slater only gave it a couple of years before they were the same size. He was still lean and lanky, adolescence swallowing every potential ounce of body fat on his bony frame, but brick by brick the skinny muscle was swelling, hardening. He never missed a workout, not even when Slater encouraged him to take a day off. You couldn’t teach grit like that.

  Tyrell nodded to them as he passed by, raised his eyebrows at the credits rolling on the television in front of them. ‘Cute. Movie night.’

  He looked away too quickly, adjusted his backpack over one shoulder.

  When he reached the mouth of the hallway Slater said, ‘Hey.’

  Soft-spoken.

  Non-confrontational.

  Tyrell stopped, turned around. ‘Yeah?’

  Slater watched him patiently. The teenager shifted on the balls of his feet, glanced sideways. An eyelid twitched. He had a good poker face. For hi
s age, it was excellent. But not good enough.

  Slater said, ‘You high?’

  Tyrell’s mouth silently formed a word that looked an awful lot like ‘No.’ Then, before he uttered it, he thought better. What came out instead was, ‘Weed, man. Not—’

  ‘Yeah,’ Slater said. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  There wasn’t a chance in hell it was heroin. Not after where Tyrell had come from, what he’d seen. Not after what happened six weeks ago, right here in Boston.

  Tyrell said, ‘Liam had some. Couple of joints. We all shared them.’

  ‘First time?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How do you feel?’

  Tyrell seemed to sense he could be honest. The half-smile was genuine. ‘Pretty good, man.’

  ‘Think it’ll become a habit?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘’Cause right now I just wanna lie in bed and eat Sour Patch Kids and watch Netflix. So I’m gonna go do that. But I don’t wanna be doin’ that every night. I wanna do more than that with my life.’

  Slater didn’t let his face reveal anything. Good answer, kid.

  He said, ‘I’m up at six tomorrow for deadlifts and squats.’

  Tyrell was smart enough to spot a test when it was staring him in the face. ‘I’m there, man.’

  Slater nodded.

  Tyrell loitered another moment. ‘Anythin’ else?’

  ‘No.’

  The kid’s discomfort was palpable. He must’ve expected either worry or anger. Displaying neither meant there was no judgment passed. It left it all open to interpretation. There was no, ‘Do this. Don’t do that.’ Instead it was ambiguous, opinions unspoken, the good and the bad all murky. Slater figured it’d give Tyrell the room to work out for himself what he wanted from life, not to simply accept the prescriptions of authority without really understanding why.

  Sure enough, Tyrell said, ‘Goodnight. And…uh, sorry.’

  Slater said, ‘Sorry for what?’ He paused. ‘See you tomorrow.’

  Tyrell slunk off to his room.

  Alexis nestled a little closer to Slater’s ear, and she whispered, ‘Now I get it.’