As usual, thanks for coming back to read!! And thank you very much for your reviews :) Here's the first half of chapter 32, and it shouldn't take long before the final half is up :D
XXXII
About Before
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"Found anything interesting?"
The words hung in the air, and for some reason Dave almost expected them to echo. He had just entered the room to find Maria staring out of the window, and then all of the sudden she had turned and had started to move towards his desk.
It had been almost 20 minutes since he had left. Had she actually waited that long to work up the nerve to go through his things? It was unlikely, but not impossible. Still, seeing her petrified in mid-stance was too good to let pass. If she hadn't already gone through every inch of this office, then she was just about to.
"Oh, God! You scared me!" Maria said, effectively breaking the paralyzing spell. He slightly narrowed his eyes as he entered the room fully and started closing the door. He had just been dealing with an extremely intelligent hacker. Now he had to deal with an extremely good actress.
"And, as a matter of fact," Maria continued, "I did find something interesting." Maria smiled at him. There were 8 kinds of smiles, and only 2 were sincere. Dave was trying to decipher which one of the other 6 she was giving him. He had seen the look in her eyes, so fixed and determined on his desk.
"I bet that scared the hell out of you," Maria kept smiling sweetly, lifting her right hand, her thumb signaling the shattered window behind her.
That was bold, Dave thought, astonished for a second with Maria's words. He couldn't afford another round where they were both throwing hit after hit until someone would actually connect a knock out, and he also couldn't go back to treading on thin ice as he had done in the beginning. He needed another approach. He actually needed to be equally bold.
"Yes," he answered sincerely. Hell yes! would have been a more accurate answer. Michael's display of power had actually made Dave's mind recoil more than 30 years back in time. A memory had been brought back so abruptly at the sound of that shattering glass: so quick, almost silent yet resonating in the quiet of the room; a memory of such long time ago. For a second, his mind had gotten lost in an equally tense room, shots breaking the silence, the windows shattering all around him. And he had stayed still. So still. It had been then that he had learned that it was better to stay still when he was as scared as he had been.
"He's deeply in love with you."
It was Maria's turn to look astonished. Probably not because she doubted it was true, but because he had said it as seriously as he had admitted that Michael had scared the hell out of him. It wasn't a question either, just a flat out statement.
Silence stretched out in the few seconds it took him to cross the length of the room and lean against the right corner of his desk, facing the window, his leather chair between Maria and himself.
"And it took you what? Three minutes to figure that out?" Maria sarcastically said as she looked at his profile. Dave's eyes remained on the window. You're good, Dave silently praised her for not letting his statement shock her more than few moments.
"Less." He answered with the same tone, pausing, making her wait for an explanation. "It took him less than three seconds to shatter that window."
She returned her gaze to their point of discussion, the shattered glass still covered with the transparent plastic so cold air wouldn't be able to penetrate the room. "He challenged you, didn't he?" she asked him rather absently, as if she were lost in thought.
"He warned me," he corrected her. Had Dave been completely honest, he would have added, I challenged him first, but if Michael hadn't shared this particular point of their meeting with her, he wasn't going to do so either.
Maria turned to look at him, almost stare at him, as if she were deciding something.
"How do you know, really?" she finally asked, crossing her arms in front of her chest, frowning a little.
Dave took a few seconds to define something that was so glaringly obvious yet so hard to put into words. He could have named her a hundred and more moments that had been captured on tape, on film, on digital devices, but that wasn't what came first to his mind. It wasn't on the obvious, but on the subtle, that Michael had really given himself up.
"It's in his silence," Dave enigmatically said, though this time Maria didn't press, she just waited for him to elaborate. "It's in the way he doesn't want to talk about you. He's too aware of his feelings that he's afraid he might not be good at hiding them once he brings your name up. When he warned me with the window, it was just the last confirmation I needed."
Maria's eyebrows arched, a bit surprised, her eyes going to the floor, thoughtful. "Why do you need to know all this stuff?"
He almost wished his cell phone would ring now again. He had already answered this question and its variants to all the other kids, and yet they still didn't get tired of asking. He guessed it was because he knew or perceived such intimate details of their lives that they would like to know why. Shouldn't it be enough that their stories were so unique to anyone's life on this planet that their value was priceless? What a historian would give for just one chapter, one day in the lives of these six teenage kids!
But he was no historian, was he? No, and he would never accept such a passive place either. Watching without interfering was just… wasteful. Something neither of his parents would have been able to stand, to just passively watch. Dave wondered for the briefest of moments if they would have been proud of him and his ways.
He honestly didn't know. Their ways had been of the fast reward kind. Everything had to happen now, things had to change today, not tomorrow. Dave's way was more of the "planning for the long run" type. He had been told, by his parents and by pretty much every single adult he had encountered in his childhood, that he was meant to change things, to change the world. Because of who he was, his parents had said, truly believing in the power of one; and because of what he could do, all the others had added, using his intellect for their own ends.
He was no child anymore, and he had his own ends now. But one thing was for sure, he was not going to passively watch.
"I need to know if I'm going to regret our deal," Dave finally said, turning to look at the girl with the green eyes, blond hair, and hurricane-like temper.
Maria half chuckled, half snorted. "You need to know if we won't have a nervous breakdown and run on you, uh?"
Dave slightly smiled. She didn't know limits to her boldness. The fact that her statement was partially true made it funny, though. Not that he was going to admit it to her.
"I was more thinking in terms of not tying all the loose ends, actually. Making my end of the deal being more… extensive than I originally thought," he told her instead. There certainly had been surprises and no small amount of leaks to be sealed off as he had gotten to know the details that had been so elusive for the past two years. The kids hadn't been exactly careful; they had seemed to have luck on their side a great deal of time, and they had managed some pretty remarkable allies as well. But they had to get better on their own. If another Pierce came after them in the future… Dave had no illusions that there would come a time when the kids were going to be out and around, but he had to ensure they would be able to defend themselves or else…
"Terrible things could happen…" he said more to himself than Maria, forgetting for a second he was thinking out loud. But just for a second. "If I'm not careful around you, I'm going to get more than a shattered window. Michael's love for you could mean terrible things for me," Dave amended, making his out loud thought part of his dialogue with Maria.
"You should have thought about that before caging us here," Maria said. Another thing the kids had been saying to him. Had everyone forgotten he had given them a choice and that they had accepted to be here? What? You didn't have anything to do with ensuring that? Jake's voice came into his mind. He shut it up.
"It seems I should have thought about a lot of things before bringing you here… but then again, time was running short."
"Why? The FBI was getting too close?" Maria said, arching an eyebrow. No, she definitely didn't know boundaries to her boldness. So she had searched through his things. What had she thought, then? What had her intuition told her?
"I wouldn't take it so lightly," he simply said, making a fast inventory of his belongings. "But you're right, they were getting too close and I had to act with what I knew," Dave kept talking, finally standing straight and walking to the cupboard. "So, I ended up with six extremely stressed out teenage kids, who half believe what I say, half expect me to turn on my word, not to mention that three of those said kids can pretty much collapse this place if they really wanted to." Dave reached the cupboard and bent over. Nothing Maria had seen was of extreme importance, not without someone to explain it to her. "If you ever thought you are the only ones here with everything to lose," he said as he got two Cokes out of the fridge, "then you don't know your own limits."
He wasn't kidding, but it was strange that they hadn't considered the possibility of all the damage they really could do in this place. Besides, saying it would give them that sense of security, of control, that they were in desperate need of feeling, especially Michael and Max.
He straightened up, facing her. He just hoped Maria would be a good messenger and tellthem that.
"Then you're wasting your time," Maria said, walking to him. For the first time, and for the briefest of instants, Dave did feel intimidated by that woman and the strength of her stare. "Knowing if Michael and I are going to live happily ever after or burn this place down is irrelevant to you now. What are you going to do? Kick us out if you don't like what you hear?"
Maria stood no more than three feet in front of him, arms crossed, expression defiant.
"I'm going to buy you tickets to Paris for your second honeymoon if you live happily ever after, and re-build this place with non-flammable materials if you burnt it down." He handed her the Coke, both their expressions serious as she took it. "I just like to be prepared."
"How boy-scout of you," she said. "What are we, seriously? An investment?"
"An opportunity," he answered without a second thought. And boy, was that an understatement, Dave reflected as his plans laid before his mind's eyes. A one chance opportunity. "They are so unique that there are practically endless possibilities to the applications, the knowledge that can be gained," Dave said, returning to his alibi. So what if they thought he was greedy? He didn't care as long as they stayed there. Right where he would know exactly where they were, and not wandering around with the FBI -or who knew what else- breathing down their necks.
"Charming," Maria said, walking to stand beside him, now the two of them facing the numbers on the wall in front. A short pause, then, "You would really send us to Paris?"
The hopeful sub-tone was not lost to Dave's ears. His mind raced through all the variables and loose ends he would need to tie up in order for that to happen… not to mention the fact that he thought Paris was over-rated as the city of love… but then again, he had never liked French to begin with, and by extension any French stuff. Still, even if he managed to sort out all the obstacles in between, there was still one single thing that even Maria would have to agree was a very decisive factor: Michael.
"If you convince Michael to go…" Dave trailed off, not looking directly at Maria, but by the corner of his eye he saw her slightly pouting, obviously imagining herself dragging a very reluctant Michael through the Champs Ellysée, "I could arrange it."
He sipped his Coke while Maria regarded him intently. Had she been one of the "Pod Squad", then he would have actually worried she was reading his mind or something. Silence stretched for a few more seconds, making Dave wonder what Maria could be possibly thinking.
"Are you a good guy?"
The words hung in the air as they took him by surprise. Why were people so stubborn to try and see things in black and white, or good and evil? It was one of those things that he really didn't understand, just like Jake's constant desire for a different life.
"I'm the guy who saw an opportunity and took it," he stated, this time turning to look at Maria, "but only time will tell us if it was the right choice or not."
"That doesn't answer my question," Maria pointed out, her Coke still unopened in her right hand, her eyes intent on his face.
Dave thought about it for a couple of seconds. "There is no real answer," he said as he slightly shrugged, "it's all a matter of perspective." Maria narrowed her eyes at him, clearly about to argue. "Think about it," he said before she had a chance, "I'm the good guy who kept the FBI at bay, while I'm the bad guy who 'kidnapped' you. Whichever has more weight to you will define if I'm the good or the bad guy."
"You do realize that doesn't sound like you are the 'good' guy at all, right?" Maria asked, one eyebrow arched, opening her Coke. Dave stared at her for the longest of times, slightly frowning. "What?" Maria said after the silence had stretched too long for her comfort.
"That's exactly what Ray said when we made his deal," Dave said, figuring what were the odds that two strangers, coming from totally dissimilar backgrounds, with such different things to lose, would tell him exactly the same thing. Ray had said it without really caring if he was a good guy or not, though. My, oh my, have you changed, my friend, Dave mused to himself. The Ray of today would certainly care on what side of the good/evil line Dave would fall.
"I've heard you wanted to learn some defensive techniques," Dave said, turning the subject away from his good or evil intentions. He was fairly sure he was on a more solid ground now with Maria, which had been exactly what he had aimed for the minute he had stepped in his office; and exactly why he had let go the fact that she had been rummaging through his stuff.
"Yeah, you've got a problem with that?"
Sore point? Dave wondered at the defensiveness of Maria's voice. "Actually, I was just going to say that Ray is really good at that, defensive techniques, I mean. That's why I hired him in the first place."
Maria regarded him, narrowing her eyes yet again, a gesture he was very familiar with by now. "So, he kicked your butt?" Never one to sugar coat things, something else he was very familiar with too. He wondered how much of that was entirely hers, and how much had rubbed off from Michael.
"On a regular basis for about three months," Dave said truthfully, smiling at the memory. The one thing he needed the most besides the kids trusting Jake, was the kids trusting Ray. So Jake had to deal with the half aliens, while Ray had to deal with the whole humans, and he really couldn't think of a better choice.
"Then he's my new favorite person," Maria sarcastically said, taking him out of his thoughts. His smile slightly changed to a smirk.
"Oh, you wait till it's you on the floor for the next three months and then you'll tell me if he's still your favorite person," Dave said, half joking, half serious. In all honesty he was glad that Maria had taken that approach, and that she would probably drag Liz and Kyle into it. It made him feel sort of relieved that they were taking their own safety more seriously than before. They had time here… if nothing else, he had bought them that.
Maria turned to look at the numbers after she had given him the standard glare for his last sentence. She suddenly frowned, and for one fleeing second Dave truly thought Maria had seen the code behind those numbers –as his mind always did when he was looking at them- but then she turned to look at him, a question on her lips.
"Samantha said on Sunday that people in here didn't get really paid, but that they had bank accounts. So I want to know how much are we talking about here. You cannot expect us to leave this place penniless, do you?"
Not a code breaker, but certainly a business woman. They would banter for the next half hour about how much their bank accounts should account for every month. From that point on Dave always remembered that skill of hers, and as the years went by, and Maria did become really skillful at making deals, Dave would laugh inwardly at the memory of this day, when he had really met in his office one hurricane with green eyes, sharp tongue, loyal friendship, and the ability to tame one Michael Guerin.
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