Wired by Liz Maverick Read Free Book Online Page B

“Sorry, but maybe they just forgot the papers.”
    â€œBut it was thicker than this, wasn’t it? When you handed it to me? And it was sealed?”
    The man I’d interrupted crossed his arms over his chest, and both he and the clerk looked at me blankly. He wore a charcoal suit. I glanced around at the others standing in the reception area. The Starbucks travel mugs were still there, but the people holding them weren’t wearing jeans and T-shirts. They were all wearing suits or skirts.
    â€œI said the guy gave it to me to give to you. It was a sealed envelope, just like the others. And I handed it to you and that’s all I know. Was there anything else?” the receptionist asked crisply. She was through with me.
    â€œNo,” I whispered. “Thanks.” The two went back to their discussion and I numbly folded the empty envelope and stuck it in my bag. I hadn’t thoughtmuch about a new project itself at all; I’d just come to pick one up, feeling it was the most natural thing in the world to do. But in light of Leonardo Kaysar’s words, I wish I’d looked things over in my apartment a little more, scanned my computer for any clues as to what I might be working on, and more than anything I sure wished I knew what had been in that envelope.
    I pushed out onto the street and started walking, playing bits and pieces of Leonardo Kaysar’s conversation back in my mind. I was halfway down the block when certain discrepancies occurred to me, like, I’d passed neither a big-and-tall store nor a frame shop. Slowly I pivoted and retraced my steps to face a now wall-windowed agency storefront, shivering as cool air swept over my damp skin. Beyond the glass I stared through the bustle of the agency down at a cigarette being stepped on and kicked along the floor of the waiting area by the oblivious. Crushed tobacco scattered into the crevices of the beige carpet, disappearing like so many grains of sand.
    I glanced around me. Somehow, some way, I wasn’t on the block on that route I’d walked many, many times. I was on the block in the middle of . . . who the hell knew where. I turned in a circle, taking in the buildings and street signs once more just to be sure. But I was sure. The block on which I’d entered the agency wasn’t the block on which I’d exited. In short, the agency had apparently changed locations in the time I’d been inside. And somehow I knew I was close enough to home now to skip the bus and walk.
    This is not a game
. That one phrase was just aboutthe only thing Leonardo and Mason had agreed upon. Maybe what they really meant was that this wasn’t a game for
me
. On some level, even if neither of them was willing to admit it, I would bet that this was most certainly a game for them. One they seemed to have been playing together for a long time.
    Denial. Denial is denial only the first couple of times. After that, it’s just a polite word for delusional. I turned away from the windowed agency and started walking.
    The walk home from the agency took me a few blocks north of the 7-Eleven near my house. I thought about the contents of my refrigerator and those menus and what I must have craved last night. While it would have been just as easy to head straight home, I had the sense that something in the convenience store was a missing piece of this growing puzzle into which Mason and Leonardo had dropped me.
    A prickle of dread fluttered over the surface of my skin as I opened the door, a contrast to the welcoming electronic chime as I stepped over the threshold. Naveed was restocking cigarettes behind the counter. He looked up at the sound and smiled at me. “Good day, Roxanne.”
    â€œHey, Naveed. How’s it going?”
    â€œExcellent, excellent.” He set the carton down on the counter and clasped his hands there, following me through the store with his eyes. I wandered up and down the aisles,