The Miranda Contract (6 page)

Sully’s eyes narrowed, but Curtis was unimpressed.

“Our people in Los Angeles and London have begun work on a new angle for our dear Miranda, but it requires a little prop at this end of the operation.”

Curtis smiled and moved his hand to caress the air above the briefcase.

“What’s inside?” Sully asked.

“Air and magic,” Curtis said. “The magic of innuendo, the sorcery of scandal. Our people will generate a story and you will simply be required to carry this briefcase in your entourage.”

“You don’t need to know anything more about it,” Klein said.

“There is one other thing,” Curtis said.

“There always is,” Sully said.

“Quite. There is a boy, an Australian boy; and our people require that he be a part of this attempt at salvation. Kind of a balance, perhaps, bringing in this new, living boy to replace the burnt-out one from the last concert.”

Sully ignored the crass comments and turned to Klein.

“What boy?”

“All in good time,” Curtis continued. “It’s all set up, Mister Sully. You just need to do your job and we shall do ours.”

“And if you don’t do it, Suleyman,” Klein said. “We’ve always understood each other. If you don’t do this, then we part company.”

“Of course,” Sully said, and bowed slightly to the screen. “There is always, in your line of business, Mister Klein, a point when the snake can no longer take the risk of basking in the glory and profit of a fading sun.”

Klein sat back, his lips turning into a smile as he shook his head.

“It has been a pleasure, Suleyman. A real pleasure.”

And then the connection was cut and Sully found himself alone with the Englishman. Curtis closed the laptop and began to pack it into a larger briefcase.

“Is it a bomb, then?” Sully asked. But it was Curtis’s turn to ignore the comments in the room. He clicked the case shut and straightened himself, turning at last to Sully who stood between him and the door.

“A bomb to kill the boy?” Sully asked again, louder.

“I simply cannot answer, Mister Sully,” Curtis said, slowly. Sully noticed the man’s eyes were hard. His voice was pleasant enough, but there was nothing pleasant about what lay behind Curtis’s eyes. “The boy will be the only one who can unlock the case, when it is time.”

“How? Who is this boy?”

“Your little delivery boy, Mister Sully. I know you’ve already been prepped on his addition to the entourage, and now you know why.”

“You overestimate my knowledge, Mister Curtis.”

“Quite possibly, and yet, there is something about you which does not add up. You aren’t exactly hired muscle, are you, Mister Sully? No, and when the boy comes to meet Miss Miranda at the airport in the morning, it is then that you will ask him to open the case. If you don’t do this, then we move to Plan B.”

“How many will be hurt, do you think?”

Curtis smiled.

“What if I took her away from all of this?” Sully said, possibly more to himself than to Curtis. “What if she didn’t want this life you have made for her anymore?”

“Well, I suppose we shall just have to wait and see.”

Miranda had been at the rehearsal for twenty minutes before she got to step up to the stage. Her retainers were elsewhere, preparations underway, so she walked to the performance space by herself.

The last time up in front of the crowds was still fresh in her mind, but she didn’t feel the anxiety or fear as she walked out under the bright lights. The seats were empty. A few maintenance people moved about the rows and she saw a small crowd of security reviewing exits, but there were no fans there.

Just her on the stage.

The arena could hold 15,000 fans, apparently, and from overhearing Christie on his phone earlier, she had already sold over 12,000. It wasn’t the biggest concert she’d played, and there was disappointment in Christie’s voice. Somehow 12,000 wasn’t good enough. She turned her attention back to the stage spreading out around her. She walked up the steps to a platform which would lift her higher still on the night.

This was the entry point. She would come in from the roof, the platform like an elevator from the heavens.

One of the dancers was there at the top, stretching one leg like a ballerina up above her head. She had bright pink skin and ornate blue tattoos up and down her arms. As Miranda came closer, the girl smiled at her and more tattoos emerged on her face, the ink welling up from within her to make the intricate swirls of blue.

“I’m Kyla,” the girl said, switching her legs.

“Miranda.” She felt foolish for saying that and sunk her hands deeper into the pockets of her jacket. “Have you performed here before?”

The girl shook her head.

“First time,” she said. “I’ve been here for the tennis though. Roof was open. Beautiful day.”

Miranda looked to the roof which was sealed. Her team had transformed the stadium into a concert hall, but she knew it would be easy enough to change back. Everything about this business moved quickly.

Kyla slid slowly to the floor in a perfectly controlled split. Miranda could tell the girl was a trained dancer. She was surrounded by professionals even if she felt like a phony the whole time.

“When did you… I mean, when did you know you were uber?” Miranda asked.

“I was born like this,” Kyla said. “Pink skin, you know, but the ink came later. I can’t do anything useful or anything.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“It’s freakish, come on,” Kyla said and laughed. Miranda laughed too and then waved goodbye, leaving Kyla to her warm-ups. Todd Christie appeared at the bottom of the steps, his face sweating under the lights. He gestured to her and she stepped down, her hands still in her pockets.

“The pyrotechnics will be housed here,” he said, waving to a raised section either side of a runway. “And along here. Insurance was a nightmare, but we’ve got the flare guns for the girls.”

Miranda hadn’t wanted the fire routine, but management had insisted. Said it was a tribute to Jakarta. Christie passed her a stylized ray-gun and she hefted it in her hands, testing its weight. She hadn’t ever handled a real gun, but it felt lighter than it should have.

“Do I get to shoot one?” she asked, striking a slow-motion pose, aiming the gun at the invisible crowd.

“God no,” Christie said, taking it away from her. “Can you imagine the costs if you got hurt? Leave it to the rest of us, princess.”

Miranda frowned as he stashed the gun along with the others in the box. Everything about the Australian show was beginning to look like her swan song. Christie hardly met her eyes, probably knowing she was finished.

The party that night was a last chance to hold on to her career. Sully knew it, although he wouldn’t admit it. Christie certainly knew it too. The Human Tour was coming to a close, and Miranda wasn’t sure what she would be doing after the final act.

A part of her wanted to slip back into obscurity.

She could ride her bikes in the mountains, kick up mud and camp for a week with her dad. She could fold everything back where it came from and go back to Riverside.

Miranda shifted her eyes back to the seating as posters unfurled along columns at each of the levels. Her frozen-smile face stared back at her from the promotional photographs: so confident, her stars aligned.

Chapter 9

Dan

D
an found it
difficult to take his eyes off the electric billboard advertising The Human Tour. It featured a carousel of images meant to capture the freakishness of ubers with extreme close-ups of fangs and feathered appendages, flaming hair and cracking fireworks. He stood outside in the rain for a long time. If he went inside he was selling out. If he left the assignment he was inviting trouble Alsana-style.

The billboard glowed above him, wiping the images away with large letters spelling out Miranda’s name. The crowds behind him exploded into cheers and shouts. The two suited gatekeepers at the door looked at him with impassive faces. Most of the guests had already arrived.

“Are you in or out?” asked one of the men in suits.

“I think I’m in,” Dan said and stepped forward, raising his hand so the security band was visible. The man scanned it and nodded him through.

There was no sign of Brody at the party, but everyone was talking about her. Some of the guests were wearing prosthetic
freak chic
. One woman stood with impressive iridescent wings spread out behind her, while two men played at being conjoined twins. Dan ignored them but wondered briefly how his grandfather would feel about regular people pretending to be ubers. Waiters moved in and around the crowds with thin glasses of champagne, and expensive food plated up on silver trays. The drinks seemed more decorated than the sparse black décor around them and the music system was state of the art. Dan recognized a handful of the guests from television but most were just regular people in party clothes.

“Are you lost?” a girl asked him. “Or just wearing a puppy dog face?”

She was skinny and had a pixie face with sparkling almond-shaped eyes and a turned up nose. Her hair was short and sculpted and her body was sheathed in a dark green dress. She carried a slender glass of champagne and studied him with a deliberate glint in her eye.

“This is just my normal face, I’m afraid.”

“Hardly normal.”

Dan blushed and wondered how things had slipped from being an unobtrusive observer to being the one studied. The girl handed him the glass and he took it with a smile of thanks. She lifted her arm and without even looking at the waiter moving past her, managed to scoop another two glasses from the tray.

“Drink up,” she said, taking a sip from her fresh glass.

Dan finished her first one and then exchanged it for the next, the girl passing the empty glass to another waiter.

“Smooth,” he said.

“You’re the sparky aren’t you?” she asked. Her free hand fingered his jacket, bringing them closer together. He was taller than her, perhaps by half a head, but she managed to control his movement, guiding him along and into the party.

“I’m Dan,” he said

“Evie.”

She finished her glass and then reached out to take Dan’s, draining it and freeing their hands as another waiter passed. She glanced towards the dance floor. Miranda’s music was still playing and professional dancers were appointed in strategic positions amongst the rest of the party-goers. One of the dancers whipped her prehensile hair in circles, the dreadlocked threads moving like spider legs in the air. Another dancer had pink skin tattooed with blue hieroglyphs. Dan felt himself drawn towards the dancers. He took a breath of Evie’s perfume, caught up in her like he hadn’t been for a long time, and then he let her pull him along. With each step he felt more distant from everything. The techno-treatment favored a strong beat and as he and Evie moved into the first wave of people, Dan began to lose himself in it. The lights pulsed – visually as well as electronically – and he felt the energy all around him.

Miranda Brody arrived in between orchestrated song changes and the sudden focus away from the dance floor gave Dan a chance to retreat from the intensity of the room. His senses were heightened, his body overcharged and ready to explode. At other times when he felt like he’d absorbed too much power from the world around him, Dan had been anxious and tried to shut down his whole body, but the party had given him a different take on things. Everything was exploding around him – music, lights, party people, and Evie. Everything was let loose, free. He couldn’t remember a time recently when he’d felt so unencumbered by the crap that seemed to follow him through his life. It didn’t seem to matter that he had no friends, that he’d just been kicked out of his house.

He accepted another drink from a waiter and as he closed his fingers around the slender glass he saw the blue flashes of electricity just under his skin. Dan smiled, biting his lip, feeling it coursing through his body, feeling it numbing his tongue.

“A celebration beyond expectation,” a deep voice rumbled near Dan’s ear and as he turned around he saw the bearded head of Miranda Brody’s bodyguard: the strongest, most muscle-bound man Dan had ever seen in real life. Sully had his arms crossed and was wearing a turban matching his dark purple tie and an expensive looking black suit. Dan glanced down at his own t-shirt and jacket. He couldn’t help it.

Sully took the glass out of Dan’s hand and passed it off to another one of Miranda’s people who was standing behind him. The man’s dark eyes pinned Dan in place and he felt a little withered, the energy dancing under his skin all across his body suddenly thinned.

“Come,” Sully commanded and led Dan by the arm to a booth along one of the walls. Dan looked around for Evie but she had melted into the crowds that were pushing to the center of the space, presumably towards Miranda.

Dan slid into the booth and crossed his own arms, mimicking the large Middle Eastern man opposite. Sully didn’t seem to notice. Instead, the bodyguard placed a case onto the table. It looked like it was stainless steel. Dan saw the blurred reflection of the world around him in its shiny surface.

“This is a briefcase,” Sully said slowly. Dan nodded, trying not to grin. It didn’t seem like the big man smiled much at all, and Dan didn’t want to be the one who looked like a fool. As Alsana was clear to point out, this was a professional job.

“It sure looks like a briefcase.”

“This is an important briefcase,” Sully continued. “It will become your responsibility for the next 48 hours.”

“Is it full of cash?”

“It is not full of cash.”

“Drugs?”

Sully’s eyes narrowed and Dan shrugged and looked down at the case.

It was silver and sleek, and he noticed there was a computer code latch instead of a lock on the top. He could hear the soft hum of the circuitry as he ran his fingertips over the surface, his genetic code calling out to the electronic one. Even with his attention on Sully, Dan was absently working out the algorithms, reading them like a familiar tune.

“Your assignment is to carry this case with you when you collect Miss Brody tomorrow morning from the airport. Do not attempt to lose it.”

“The airport,” Dan said, nodding while still trying to unlock the case with his mind.

“She will be arriving on an early flight from an undisclosed location,” Sully continued. “You will not be late. And you will bring this case with you.”

“I thought she was here.”

“She is here, presently,” Sully said.

“But not all night?”

“Miss Brody will be required elsewhere after this engagement. You, however, shall not.”

“Be required?”

“No, not until the morning. Do not lose it.”

“So what’s in it, really?” Dan asked, although he was more interested in why Sully thought he might try to lose it rather than crack it open. He’d already established it wasn’t money.

“Important documents,” Sully said finally.

“Why don’t you carry them?”

Sully was intimidating, Dan didn’t mind admitting that to himself, but there was also something noble about him. He looked at a person when he spoke to them and he thought before he responded.

“Carry this at all times,” Sully said again. He turned the case towards Dan and then reached out, gripped Dan’s wrist and snapped the chain to his security bracelet. The clicking sound cut through the music somehow.

“Isn’t that a bit over the top?” Dan asked, testing the length of the thin chain.

“In this business it is not about realities but more about perceptions of realities.”

“Are you sure you’re a bodyguard?”

Sully raised his eyebrows and said nothing. Dan looked closer at the band and the chain. He gave it another tug. His vision blurred a little and he stretched his shoulders. The music crushed in on him, his hearing and sight numbed for a second.

“You’re the boss, I guess,” Dan said. “So I keep this on, make it look important and pick up your girl tomorrow at the airport?”

“You would think it was a simple task, wouldn’t you?” Sully asked, probably more to himself than to Dan. “There is no key-code.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You will be the only one who can open it,” Sully said. “With your gifts, you will be able to access the ever-changing sequence of numbers when we require it to become not locked.”

Dan could feel the whir of the changing code. Even while speaking with Sully, his mind was tracking the changes, calibrating the sequence and then chasing it to the next series of numbers.

“Couldn’t I get this tomorrow?”

“It is better if you get it tonight, now. As I mentioned already, Miss Brody has another engagement later this evening and we will not be seeing you again until the airport.”

Dan shrugged. There was something irritating about the band around his wrist. The metal wasn’t like the briefcase and it had tightened. Really tight. His skin itched already.

A waiter arrived and offered them more drinks. Sully ignored the man entirely. Dan picked up a glass but then returned it quickly under Sully’s unrelenting stare. Dan figured the sooner he left the large man, the sooner he could sneak another drink and try to shake off what was probably the start of a headache.

“It’s a little tight,” Dan said.

Sully looked over Dan’s shoulder at some change in the party.

The crowd beyond the booth shifted suddenly, people moving backward as another group made its way across the room. Standing close to seven feet tall, Sully had no trouble seeing the group coming, but Dan had to settle for watching the shifting edges of the crowd.

Three corporates emerged, flanked by more colorful young people, all impeccably groomed. One of them must have been Miranda Brody, Dan thought. Following just behind the young people came a slick documentary film crew with headsets, miniature cameras and attitude. And then he saw her. She wore a white t-shirt and a tartan skirt with her bare midriff showing. While everyone seemed enthralled by her, Miranda didn’t seem to notice. It was a totally different girl from the night before when she had been harried by her fans. This Miranda was in full control. The cameraman weaved ahead of her but she didn’t give the impression she cared.

It was clear Sully didn’t like the crew though. He folded his arms across his impressive chest. Dan could read body language. He worked in retail, after all.

“Is this the freak boy?” one of the men asked.

“Yes, Mister Christie,” another said, nodding.

Dan felt amused rather than insulted. It might have been the champagne from earlier. Mister Christie had a shiny face and thin, slicked back hair. Dan didn’t like him at all.

“Is he all set for the assignment?” Christie asked.

Sully nodded.

“It’s alright, Mister Christie. Let’s enjoy the night,” Miranda said.

While most of the posse glanced in his direction only Miranda looked directly at him. She kept her gaze on him as the other people began chatting around Sully who had left the booth and now stood silently in their midst. Dan stumbled to his feet, not wanting to be at any more of a disadvantage in this sea suddenly full of sharks.

“So I guess you hate my music,” she said as he stood.

Her lips moved deliberately, slowly. She knew he saw her watching him. She was used to being the focus of everyone’s attention.

Her dark hair was styled in wavy ringlets that danced on her shoulders.

“It hurts my ears,” Dan said, pointing at the side of his head.

They looked at each other like cats while the people, ‘her people’, stood and waited for the conversation to unfold. Dan knew it wasn’t a real conversation and so did Miranda. It was choreographed posturing, but after a few days of mundane routine he felt like an excursion into the surreal world of celebrity. His only other alternative would be to crawl back to his apartment and watch television.

Then he remembered he didn’t have an apartment anymore.

He grinned at her, pushing away the thought and the growing headache. Perhaps the best outcome would be for him to be fired. He figured shooting off his mouth might be the best way forward, even if it meant Alsana’s wrath and a month of anger management classes.

“You’re not going to last a day in my world,
pizza boy
,” she said, turning away slightly, but without completely withdrawing her impressive profile. Dan had to admit that she was beautiful. Blow your mind beautiful. Normally he wouldn’t have the chance to insult girls like her.