A Plain-Dealing Villain by Craig Schaefer Read Free Book Online

froze.
    I was missing something. The test should have been over and done, but Fleiss was still watching me like a mouse in a maze. Like there was something left beyond pulling that hasp and opening the lid. I couldn’t hear a thing but the pounding of my pulse and my instincts screaming in my ear, telling me danger was close enough to kiss.
    I lightly touched the sides of the box, keeping it closed, and rotated it to face Fleiss.
    She flinched.
    She had a hell of a poker face, but she couldn’t hide that. I said, “Thank you,” and turned the box ninety degrees so the lid would open away from the table, toward the far side of the cabin.
    I pulled the hasp and opened the lid. The box jumped as two darts launched out, whining through the air and digging into the baggage compartment. One dripped a few beadlets of slime-green venom down the ivory plastic.
    A pristine envelope of bone-colored paper sat nestled in the box between the empty launching mechanisms. I scooped it out and offered it to Fleiss.
    “I believe this is yours,” I said.
    “Yours, actually. Congratulations, Mr. Faust. Out of four candidates for this position, you are the first to successfully complete the interview assignment.”
    Pachenko holstered his gun.
    I thumbed open the envelope, peeking in on a stack of crisp green bills.
    “Two thousand dollars,” Fleiss said, “simply for meeting with Mr. Drake. Whether you accept his proposition or not, the money is yours to keep.”
    With the box in front of me like a bomb on a timer, I’d been too focused to feel the strain. Now, with the lid open and the danger gone, I had to squeeze the envelope tight to keep my hands from shaking. Misspent adrenaline flooded into my veins, looked for a fight, couldn’t find one, and started a riot instead. The stress turned to anger, and I wanted to start throwing punches. Instead, I swallowed it all down and focused on my breathing.
    I came this far
, I told myself.
I can go a little farther and hear the guy out
.
    The wheels thumped down on the runway, and I sank back in my chair as the wing flaps rose and the turbines screamed. I hadn’t even noticed we were going down.

6.
    Another private airport, another rolling staircase to see us off the jet. The Texas air wasn’t like the desert back home. It was hot but wet, a clammy dampness that clung to my lungs. Prickling beads of sweat stained the back of my shirt. A sticky heat. Sparse, cotton-ball clouds hung in a pale blue sky, with a storm broiling in the distance.
    A sleek gray limousine waited on the tarmac. Privately owned, no livery plates. I got in back, and Pachenko filled out the bench seat beside me. Fleiss sat facing us, absorbed by her phone, fingers dancing across the touch screen as she rattled off a text message.
    I thought we were going to Austin, but the limo turned away from the city limits and headed south. The rolling hills swallowed us up, sprouting clumps of cedar scrub and rugged Texas oaks. I was a long way from anything that looked like home.
    I took out my phone, wanting to hear a friendly voice. I figured I should let Bentley and Corman know where I was, at least. Fleiss shook her head, not looking up from her own screen.
    “No calls, please.”
    I glanced to my right. Pachenko loomed with a frown permanently chiseled on his face, like he was a wall of stone ready to crash down on top of me. I put the phone away.
    “We’re almost there,” Fleiss added.
    “Almost there” turned into another twenty minutes of hills, but eventually the land leveled out and the road turned from asphalt to dirt, leading us to the hickory-wood gates of a ranch in the heart of nowhere. With bunkhouses and what looked like a turn-of-the-century plantation estate rising up ahead of us, it could have been a relic of the Old West. But there weren’t many boxy gray security cameras in those days, bristling from every rough-hewn post and rooftop, and the eagle-eyed men who patrolled the grounds in teams of two