Chapter 3: Confidence Woman
Ben returned to his study to find Valerie lounging on his sofa, a book in her hand.
"I suspect I don't need to relay that conversation to you."
"I wasn't listening in, if that's what you mean."
She was certainly lying.
"I thought you knew everything."
"Only where the chocolate is," she deadpanned. "Everything else is a guess. Or a parlor trick." She turned back to the book.
He stood in front of her expectantly, hands in his pockets.
"What?" she asked, indignant.
"This is my office," he replied, gesturing at her.
She looked around. "It sure seems that way, doesn't it?" she replied sarcastically.
He sighed and sat down at his desk.
"What are you reading?"
"The Idiot," she replied, holding up the cover for him to see.
He thought that she was perhaps trying to goad him into snapping at her, but he resolved not to engage. Instead he ignored her and turned to the papers at his desk—details on the survivors of Oceanic 815. Attention was what she wanted, and he would outlast her.
Hours passed, and she had made her way almost a third of the way through the dense Russian novel. He had ignored her steadfastly, and she had done the same—though he wasn't sure she really cared whether or not he was there.
He hadn't figured out where to put her for now—Hydra was a safe option, but she was more or less unthreatening, and if she really was who she claimed to be, it wasn't worth the risk of caging her and angering Jacob.
He glanced over at her and realized that she had fallen asleep. The book was resting on her chest, rising and falling with her breathing.
He'd never met anyone so self-assured in his presence. He had a way of throwing people off balance—of making them doubt themselves. She didn't seem naïve enough to actually trust him, but she didn't seem afraid of him either, which was unusual. Even those he was closest to—even Alex—had a bit of mistrust in their eyes when they spoke to him. Perhaps it was just that she didn't know what he was capable of. Though, given what she did know, she probably had some inkling.
She rolled over, and the book tumbled off of her chest and onto the floor. He picked it up absently and placed it on the end table. He considered the situation and eventually decided that the easiest thing would just be to leave her here. He reached over her carefully, pulled the blanket off the back of the couch, and carefully covered her.
He stood over her, hands in his pockets, and looked at her face. Now that she was asleep, he could really stare at her. She was pretty—large, wide-set eyes—dark brown and sunken into her face. She looked young—no older than thirty, or at least not much older. She was likely too young and pretty to pass as his wife—though that was a problem for another day.
There was a tiredness in those big eyes, and a sort of gauntness in her face. The journey here had likely been grueling for her, but there was something more—an emotional exhaustion. She was masking it with her obstinance and cynical humor, but she hadn't been able to hide it from him. He'd noticed it earlier, particularly when she first arrived. She was grieving. It was no wonder that she had fallen asleep.
He turned the lights off and left her in the office. He didn't trust her, but he didn't think that whatever she was planning involved exposing her true intentions before she'd had any chance to earn his trust.
He peered into Alex's room on his way to bed. She was asleep—she'd come in without saying hello. Perhaps she'd wanted to avoid their new house guest. Whatever the case, he was glad that she wasn't off getting into trouble with Karl.
In the quiet darkness of his room, memories of his nightmare returned. He tried to erase the image of Alex's death from his mind, but he couldn't shake it. He fell asleep eventually—the memory only slipping out of focus as he drifted out of consciousness.
He woke slowly the next morning, and it took him a moment to realize how strange it was that he could smell breakfast. He showered and dressed himself as quickly as he could, then made his way to the kitchen.
The woman was cooking.
"Right on time," she announced, looking at the clock.
"What are you doing?"
"Have your eggs, Linus."
She handed him a plate of food, and he looked down at it. It was the exact breakfast he sometimes prepared for himself, arranged in almost the same way on the plate. He looked back at her, dumbstruck.
"Sit down first," she added.
He did as he was told, walking slowly to the kitchen table, finding his usual seat—his place setting already set.
"I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish here, Valerie," he said slowly, cutting into a poached egg.
She sat down across from him with a plate of food. "I was starving when I woke up. It would have been rude to make myself breakfast in your kitchen without also making you breakfast."
"Yes, I was referring to the specificity with which you recreated my typical breakfast."
She smirked. "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about."
"Does Jacob keep records of everyone's meal preferences?"
"Oh, is that how you like your eggs?" she deadpanned. "What a coincidence."
She brought her own plate over and started to sit next to him but decided against it at the last moment and sat across the table instead.
She started eating immediately, careful not to make eye contact with him.
He watched her for a while before he took a bite. It was unremarkable—exactly what he usually ate. Perhaps a bit better—which was, all said, quite unnerving.
She looked up slyly and grinned at him.
"Good?"
"Fine," he replied curtly.
She pursed her lips, resisting the urge to laugh.
"What?" He asked sharply.
"Nothing," she lied.
Valerie was having lunch by herself at the Grove. Her suit was too warm. She hadn't gotten around to doing dry cleaning in a while, and her winter white suit was the last clean one she had. It was—allegedly—four season tropical wool, but this one had always been a bit too hot.
She ordered a cobb salad with extra avocado and waited for her meeting to arrive.
He showed up twenty minutes late, looking nervous and a bit sweaty. Everything about him screamed Los Angeles wealth—from the tan, to the perfectly wavy hair, to the Botox in his forehead.
"Zachary," she said slyly.
"Valerie," he replied, frowning at her. "Did we have to meet somewhere so public?" he asked, fidgeting with his hands. She looked at his face. He'd clearly dipped into his cocaine supply before getting out his car.
"No one comes here except tourists really. Besides, Zach, you're not famous. You're an airline executive. Who is going to recognize you?"
"Fine—whatever. Why am I here?"
"Is your phone off?"
"Yes—I left it at home, like you said."
Valerie fished a document out of her purse and passed to him.
"How did you get this?"
She stared at him. "How do you think?"
"Do you have us under surveillance? Did you get warrants for everything?"
"I don't need a warrant for stored email, Zachary. We had enough for the court order." She paused, noting the confusion in his eyes. "It's like a subpoena, sort of—" she realized that there was no point in explaining it to him.
"We won't have any trouble getting a warrant now, if we need one," she continued. "And yes, you and several other Oceanic executives are about to be indicted. You've been getting into all sorts of trouble."
"The company can't take that—we'll go under."
"Poor choice of words, given everything," she suggested, wincing at him.
He shook his head nervously "Sure, sure—you're right. What do you want? Why me?"
"I want to offer you something—I can make this go away." She waved the email in his face. "Not for everyone—just for you. I have the discretion to do that."
That was a lie. She had prosecutorial discretion over some things, but this sort of decision was way over her pay grade. Her bosses had already decided they didn't have enough to indict Zachary. He'd barely been involved. He was too stupid to even be a useful witness.
"What do you want?"
"Money—just like everyone else. The Department does not pay all that well, and if I can be perfectly honest with you Zach, I just want more of it."
That wasn't entirely true—it wasn't about the money. She was, more than anything, profoundly bored with her life. This was just a game that she had decided to play.
"How much? I can write you a check?"
"A personal check seems like a uniquely terrible idea, wouldn't you agree?"
He wiped his mouth. "Cash then?"
"Cash would be good. I want two-fifty."
"Thousand?"
"No, I want two hundred and fifty dollars so that I can buy half a pair of shoes—obviously thousand. God."
"Okay, I can do that—and you'll keep me out of jail?"
"Yes—but there's a catch. The money needs to come from your side business. Don't withdraw it from your bank account."
"My what?"
"Oh, yeah. I am also aware that you have a little side-hustle bringing drugs into the country on your planes using phony diplomatic bags."
He swallowed.
"Don't worry Zach. That's something I figured out by myself—no one knows."
"Do you want more money?"
"I want a cut. Not much—just five percent."
"Five percent of my cut or five percent of the whole business?"
She stared at him "the business, Zachary. Again, obviously."
"And this all goes away?"
"All of it."
"Fine," he agreed.
"Great. I'll be in touch." She got up, leaving her salad unfinished. "You'll pick up the tab?"
He nodded, dumbstruck, holding his head in disbelief as she walked away.
She knew that Zach would become a loose end at some point, but he would be easy enough to tie off. There was always another move to be made.
Ethan and Goodwin provided reports on the survivors from each section of the plane. They appeared to be a diverse and resilient group, determined to survive and escape this place.
Ethan confirmed to Ben what Valerie had told him—there was a spinal surgeon on the plane, and a pregnant young woman named Claire.
He ignored Valerie's warnings against recruitment and testing. They needed to bring anyone amenable into the fold. And if the girl's pregnancy could help them to solve their crisis, it was worth the risk.
He felt oddly uncomfortable going against her express request. She was extremely persuasive—to the point that he sometimes felt almost compelled to agree with her. He never felt as though his own will had been stifled; he agreed with her the way one agrees with a trusted old friend—like she had made a lifetime of good suggestions, and he had learned that her advice was usually worth taking.
Still, it was not as though he was incapable of disagreeing with her—or lying to her, if that became necessary.
Valerie irritated him. He found her vulgar language and brash sense of humor particularly grating. On top of that, she'd inserted herself into his circle of advisors using vague invocations of Jacob's authority and she had somehow decided that she'd stay in his home while they prepared a plan. She was completely unavoidable, and she did not share his manners or his calculated approach to leadership. It distracted him from the work he needed to do before he could leave.
She seemed anxious to get back to the survivor's camp, but he needed more time.
"Is the person you are pretending to be not capable of surviving in that jungle, alone?" he'd asked pointedly.
"Not indefinitely. I'd rather not strain credulity."
"Three weeks?"
"One—the clock is ticking on that tumor of yours."
"Two—I need more time to manage this from our end."
"Fine, but we have to make it look like it was a rough two—for both of us."
"What do you have in mind?"
Valerie made the point that a doctor would be able to detect if all of the little injuries caused by a stretch of surviving in the jungle had really all happened at the same time. She suggested that they would need to gradually build enough scrapes and bruises over the course of the two weeks to be convincing.
She'd invited him to help her accumulate a believable set of injuries, and he did so with some degree of enthusiasm.
She'd scouted out a hill just east of the Barracks and cleared away any sticks or rocks that could cause serious damage. "You should do it when I don't exp—"
He gave her a forceful shove and she tumbled down the hillside, swearing as she hit the rougher bits. At the bottom of the hill she sat up and looked back up at him.
"You don't have to look so fucking happy about it," she'd shouted back up at him, brushing dirt off her top and stretching out her shoulder.
He raised an eyebrow and shrugged.
She looked at him for a moment, then cracked a smile, snorting with laughter. He didn't understand what she found so funny.
She'd refused to help him with his own injuries, so he'd resorted to bruising himself, occasionally drafting a reluctant Richard to do the job.
"Are you sure this makes sense, Benjamin?" Richard asked him one evening, extending his hand after having knocked Ben forcefully to the ground.
Ben took it, pulling himself to his feet. He shook his head. "What I hate most about this plan is that it's more or less what I would have come up with. I suppose I wouldn't risk joining them alone—perhaps not as one of them. But sympathetic—injured—playing on their foolish desire to help? With the credibility of a woman that some of them are bound to recognize from the plane? It has a certain appeal."
"Why isn't she helping you with this part?"
"She says she can't hurt me."
"A rule from Jacob?"
"She didn't say—she's frustrating in that way."
Some of Ben's frustration stemmed from the way Valerie managed to stay a couple steps ahead of him—it was her apparent ability to predict his choices that annoyed him the most. She always seemed to know what he was going to propose—preempting his idea of using the balloonist's professional life as inspiration, for example.
"You're Swiss, Dean Moriarty, per your passport. Something in finance would seem more appropriate than mining in Minnesota—no? How about a senior investment analyst for Credit Suisse? You might work mostly in New York."
"And you?"
"I'm a lawyer."
"That's a tricky profession to lie about, you realize," he informed her. "Many people interact with lawyers enough to call out a fake."
"How do you know I'm not actually a lawyer?"
"Are you?" he asked quickly, sensing the opportunity to gather more information about who she really was.
"Do you want to see my bar license, asshole?" she answered mockingly.
"Where are you barred, Audrey?" he quizzed.
"California—three-day bar exam. It was a living nightmare. Waived into New York. Practiced securities litigation and white-collar criminal defense—which is how I met you, darling. It was so lovely to meet another Swiss ex-pat in New York. And although it was a severe breach of professional ethics for me to agree to dinner with you, you were just so brilliant—I couldn't resist your charms."
He rolled his eyes.
"The strain of our exhausting corporate existence has taken a toll on our marriage, however," she continued with feigned sincerity. "All those eighty-hour weeks sap the fun right out of it—only three years and yet we'd already started to wonder if we'd made the right choice. You suggested a vacation, and I thought backpacking in New Zealand would be a great way to reconnect. Minimalistic—rugged. A bit of romance. Then we found out about the tumor and decided to push the trip up before it wouldn't be possible."
He was annoyed by how much he liked the story. It had just enough emotional struggle to generate sympathy—and just enough greed to make their personas believably human.
"Our flight route would be Christchurch, Sydney, LAX, JFK," he added. "We couldn't be seated together on the flight home because we had to reschedule after one of my appointments was shuffled to be a few days sooner."
"Perfect," she agreed with a sly smile.
There was something condescending in the way she said it that rubbed him the wrong way. He scowled at her.
"I'm so glad we could agree," he said with a hint of sarcasm.
"Go fuck yourself, Linus," she retorted sharply—obviously catching the mockery in his tone. "You have no idea what I have sacrificed to help you."
He did not appreciate the language, and his irritation quickly bubbled over into anger. She'd been getting on his nerves for days—so insolent and pleased with herself. He clenched his jaw, deciding whether or not she needed to learn a lesson. He decided that she did, and he slapped her forcefully across the mouth.
She barely flinched. She blinked deliberately, then looked back up at him, her expression mildly surprised but unemotional.
Out of nowhere he felt her kick his feet out from under him—she punched him in the stomach on his way down, and quickly pinned him in a chokehold once he hit the ground.
She held him long enough to make her point, then let him go.
He jumped back to his feet, sputtering.
"You don't know me, Benjamin," she told him coldly, her voice flat. "You think I should be scared of you because you're in charge, and because you've done a few terrible things. But I'm not."
He took an involuntary step back.
"You don't have the slightest idea what I'm capable of. I am here to help you. You can fuck with me all you want—mock me, kick me to the ground—it doesn't matter. I will do what I've come here to do. But don't for a second think that you frighten me—you don't. There is nothing on this Island that scares me, Ben—not you, not the smoke, not Jacob. Do you understand?"
He nodded slowly. He was starting to see why Jacob would choose her for the task at hand, though this new side of her cast her usual snarky impudence in a different light. He didn't know how much of that was real—but it was either her humor that was a bit of an act, or this cold viciousness, and the efficient beatdown he'd just received suggested that the latter was not entirely a performance.