Page 111 of The Boss
She looks like a runway model. Well, a retired model. She’s probably in her late fifties. She’s tall and slim but not without curves. She’s got stunning, deep blue eyes and silver-blond hair styled in short waves. Her nails are immaculately painted in all black. Her diamond-encrusted gold jewelry is understated perfection. She’s in an all cream suit with a black ring on one hand, a black belt and black stilettos. She screams control and power.
I think I’m in love with her.
“No, Ellie was right.” She answers me, “I am Owen’s wife.”
“But…” Ellie starts, confused. Van and Mark look like they’re in shock.
Allie just smiles as she goes on, “I suppose my husband is more active in comms and he’s out in the field. He and I run the cave together. You’re all familiar with American football, yes?” she asks us. She sounds more British than Russian. Or maybe she sounds like everything. Or nothing. Amazing. “My husband is the quarterback, on the field, leading the team, making decisions out in the action,” she pauses to look at me, “I call the plays.”
Chills break out all over my body.
Mark clears his throat.
And I remember with one glance at his face that he is—and this woman is—the enemy. They all are. Or were. I don’t know, I can’t think straight. I look down and take a breath.
“Right, let me explain.” Allie was leaning toward me a bit, but she straightens and adjusts her suit jacket. “Only a few people in the world know what the real product is and where it’s moving to and from. Thanks to you, we know at least one way it’s being moved. In the magazines of the weapons shipments. Well, some of them.”
“In the magazines,” I think out loud. “So something tiny then, it’d have to be.”
“Exactly. Could be new pills. Micro tech. Bio weapons. We don’t know.”
“Whatdoyou know?” I snipe without thinking. Maybe I should be more cautious, more…respectful I guess. Except, they can take my respect and shove it up their asses until I know what’s really going on.
“We know, thanks to Ellie, that the target is young children.”
“No,” I shake my head and put my hand to my mouth. This cannot be happening. My father and little kids? What?
“Yes. Her uncle, your papa, Volotov and a few others who run the world in the shadows, they’re targeting elementary-age children. Basically babies.”
“But…why?”
“Good fucking question,” Mark mutters.
I look at Van, angry all over again but he answers before I can ask, “I’m not in on it. Could never work my way in. Your father, her uncle, they never trusted my father and they never trusted me.”
I snort.Trust. What a fucking joke!
“Can’t be nano,” Mark thinks it through with us. “I still say they aren’t giving that much micro processing, which is still extremely expensive and unstable, to seven year olds.”
“Nano tech could mean anything, though. Could be micro bots that embed in their skin, yes, but it could be simple patches that adhere to their clothes. Something they inhale or ingest,” I ramble.
Allie asks, “Administered how?”
Good question. I sit and consider it. “In the food maybe? Cafeteria?”
“Why,” Mark scoffs, “to track the location of every child in America? For what purpose?”
“Trafficking?” Ellie asks.
“Could be,” I continue brainstorming out loud with them because I can’t help myself, “but, unbelievably, most kids that age these days already have data-enabled cell phones that can be easily tracked and traced.”
“Correct again,” Allie says, studying me. I shift under her gaze.
“Allie?” Van says, trying to break her out of…whatever is happening.
“This is getting weird now, should we leave the two of you alone?” Mark says, snarky bastard.
“You’ve no reason to believe anything I say,” she says to me, her gaze so intense I swallow.
