The Remote Seduction (9 page)

“Good morning, Katrina,” Felix responds,
his eyes locking with hers, another connection that is damn hard not to ignite
when their eyes are involved.
 
Sully notices as well and it looks like his world is shattering.

Richard motions to his agents, mouthing
to them to trace the feed.

Felix turns his attention to
Richard.
 
“Don't bother tracing the
feed, Richard, we all know that I'm smart enough to reroute the location.”

“What the hell is going on here?!”
Richard hollers.

“I've discovered where Felix has
sequestered the remote,” Katrina casually shares.
 
She looks at Felix, a bright smile growing until it reaches
her eyes.
 
The smile is clearly
meant for Felix, which he is indeed relishing.
 
Sully paces, he’s anxious, how could everything fall so far
apart in his world? That smile should be directed at him and it was barely
twelve hours ago.

“Brilliant, by the way,” Katrina tells
Felix.

“Thank you,” he flirts as if no one else
were in the room with them.

“What did you do?” Richard demands to
know.

“I inserted some codes into Hacker Heaven,
codes that once discovered would lead to the remote's location,” Felix shares.

“And I broke the codes,” Katrina beams,
quite proud of herself, she shares another look with Felix.
 
Even though he’s communicating via
Skype the energy between them ignites both real space and cyberspace.

Katrina, without any expression,
acknowledges Sully.
 
“Maybe now you
can figure out how I got home last night.”

“Please don't let what happened harden
you,” Sully pleads.
 
“What I did,
what we did, truly meant something.

Katrina ignores the second part of
Sully’s pleas.
 
“It hasn't hardened
me, it's made me stronger,” she answers with confidence and not an ounce of
resentment or anger.
 
She addresses
his second part of his pleas with gentleness. “If what happened had any meaning
at all, it was because in my heart, I was with Paolo, not you.”

This comment shoots a dagger to Sully’s
very core, nearly knocking the wind out of him.
 
But Felix, on the computer screen, the comment touches his
very being and he fights hard to control his emotions so as not to be exposed
or shown to be vulnerable.

“Enough with the tween romance shit.
 
Are you going to get the remote for
us?” Richard snarls.

Katrina looks at the photos of her
friends.
 
“I really have no choice,
do I.”

Katrina stares down Walter, Richard and
Sully.
 
“Once I have retrieved the
remote for you I never want to hear from anyone employed by the FSSU ever
again. Should you try to bully me again I will sing to every major news outlet
and I will be doing the singing with concrete evidence that I have collected
against you. Evidence that will go viral.
 
Now get the hell out of my store.”

Sully looks more devastated and
heartbroken than Katrina did last night when she hacked Walter's computer.

“When are you going to get the remote?”
Richard wants to know.

“We'll keep you
posted
,” Felix answers.

Walter looks like he could kill both
Katrina and Felix.
 
“I don't trust
either of you. This reeks of a ruse.”

“Not every one is as deplorable as you
all,” Katrina glares at Walter as she stands up.

“I believe the lady asked you to leave,”
Felix advises.

Richard, Walter and the two agents head
out of the store followed by Sully.

Felix looks at Katrina and gives her one
heck of a smile.
 
“Good luck,” he
says, the two words layered with several meanings.
 
Their eyes lock again tempting to turn into yet another
combustible moment.
 
Felix, smiling
wide, shakes his head as if brushing off erotic thoughts, the very same
thoughts Katrina is having, which she picks up on from his expression.
 
“I better go…” he clicks out of the
Skype conversation.
 
She beams as
her cheeks flush.

Outside of the Chick Lit Bookstore…

Sully turns from the SUV and hurries back
inside the store.

Inside the Chick Lit Bookstore…

He gets as close to Katrina as he can
until she steps back.
 
He tries to
lock eyes with her, to ignite a connection like the one he saw between Katrina
and Felix.

“It was real.
 
It was real
,” he
says with heartfelt conviction. “Please don’t forget what I said when we were
making love.”
 

He turns and leaves.
 
The interaction with Sully rattles her
as memories of their magical date, their lovemaking and the fact that she does
believe his conviction, sneak past her defenses.
 

Outside of the Chick Lit Bookstore…

Richard opens the front passenger door of
the first SUV.
 
There's a post-it
stuck on the dashboard. Richard pulls the post-it off and reads it:
 
Pick Katrina up at 2:00am.

Richard shows Walter and Sully the
post-it. “Tonight we move,” Richard sneers, looking like he’s finally close to
his prize and honoring the threat he made a year ago.

*****

Katrina rows down the urban river in her
single person scull.
 
She's
especially focused and determined, trying to work out all of her conflicted
feelings and her nervousness before the remote theft later this evening.

She finishes up her workout and rows over
to a dock, parking her scull.
  
As she gets out of her scull Walter approaches, joining her on the dock.

Katrina is so not happy to see him.
 
“Geezus.
 
What do you want?”

“So, your ride last night, I suspect it
wasn’t in a beat up Nova,” Walter quips.

Katrina ignores him.

“Your new friend Felix isn't as noble as
you may think he is.
 
He stole the
remote to rent it out to the highest bidder.
 
There have been at least a half dozen known accidents
attributed to the remote that have caused over five hundred deaths worldwide.
See for yourself.”

Walter hands a folder to Katrina.
 
She opens it up and sees support
documents regarding the various events allegedly caused by Felix and the
remote.

Walter continues. “Yeah, boo hoo, we
played you.
 
But it will have been
worth it to the world once we get that remote out of the free market and back
under the protection of the government. You were fooled by Sully. Don't be fooled
by Felix.”

Walter walks away from Katrina.
 
But then turns back, sporting a snarky
grin. “You should thank us for having Sully pretend to be your buddy Paolo,” he
chuckles. “If you only knew who the real Paolo was.”

“Whoever he is he's been a treasured
friend and your spiteful and despicable actions will never take that away from
me,” Katrina proclaims.

Walter walks away.
 
Katrina flips through the
documents.
 
She doesn’t want to
believe this about Felix.
 
The
moment in the limo, their connected moment where he asked her to trust him
replays in her mind.
 
But he did
pick her up in a limo and after what Sully did to her, can she really trust the
intense connection she feels with Felix?

*****

It’s late night.
 
The two dark SUVs arrive and park in
front of the Chick Lit Bookstore.

Walter and his two agents are in one SUV;
Richard, Sully and another agent are in the other.
 
Sully gets out.
 
He enters the bookstore, looking pretty nervous.

Katrina, dressed in dark clothes, wearing
sneakers, total cat burglar, is by the counter placing a small high-tech
handheld computer into its case.

“Are you ready?” Sully asks trying not to
sound like there are a million thoughts and feelings running through his mind.

“Just about,” she replies.
 
Katrina puts a small stack of paper
clipped index cards with hacker "cheat sheet" notes on them into the
case.
 
She places the strap of the
case over her shoulder leaving her hands and arms free.
 
She and Sully head out of the store.
 
She locks the door.

They approach the SUV.
 
Sully opens the back door.
 
Katrina hops in, followed by Sully.

Inside the SUV…

“Where to, Miss Brice?” Richard asks,
getting right down to business.

“We have two stops to make this
evening.
 
The first stop is at the
house of Sigmund Rothberg, a wealthy patron of the arts.
 
I have to hack into his computer to
obtain a sequence I will need at the second location,” Katrina relates.

“Is Mr. Rothberg home?” Sully asks.

“No, he's in Europe. The security system
at his house is pedestrian.
 
I
should be in and out,” Katrina answers.

The two SUVs arrive and park near the
gate of what they believe, including Katrina, to be the estate of Sigmund
Rothberg.
 
It’s really Felix’s
home.

Katrina opens the door to get out.

“I'm going with you,” Sully offers.

Katrina shoots him down.
 
“No.
 
I can handle this on my own.
 
I'll be back in a few minutes,” Katrina gets out and shuts
the door behind her.

Katrina walks from the SUV over to the
entrance.
 
Assuming the gate is
locked, she climbs over it.
 
Katrina proceeds down the winding driveway headed for the dark Gothic
manor.

She stops, removes her handheld and
remotely accesses information about the estate's security system.
 
The motion sensors and the security
cameras have been turned off, which seems odd to Katrina.

She continues on to the house and reaches
the front door.
 
With her handheld
computer directed at the security pad located on the inside of the house next
to the front door she accesses information about the house's security system.

Again she discovers that everything has
been turned off.
 
This really
confuses her.
 
She tries the
door.
 
It's unlocked.
 
She cautiously enters the manor.

Inside the manor there are just enough
dim lights on for Katrina to see things.
 
She looks around - the place is an eclectic mix of old world charm,
Spanish flavor and Mediterranean romance.
 
Katrina listens.
 
She hears
water.
 
She warily follows the
sound of the water.

She reaches a room where the door is
ajar.
 
The sound of water emanates
from this room, as does the flickering light of fire. She enters the room,
marveling at the wall-to-wall state-of-the-art computer technology and
entertainment center.

There's a water feature in the room, the
source of the sound.
 
A fire
crackles in the fireplace.
 
Comfortable leather chairs and a chenille sofa face the fireplace and
the massive entertainment center.

Katrina, smiling as if things are
clicking into place in her mind, takes a seat by the fireplace.
 
She casually looks at the basket filled
with regular ole remotes for the entertainment center and gas fireplace.
 
Felix enters the room and joins her,
taking the seat next to hers.

“There's nothing here that I need that
will help me retrieve the remote is there?” She asks him.

“No there isn't. I wanted to see you
before the event, to wish you good luck,” Felix says locking eyes with Katrina.

She looks away, not wanting to be
transfixed by him.
 
“This is quite
the grand home, how did you pay for it?”
 
Katrina asks.

Felix senses her unease.
 
“Not with ill gotten gains from the
remote. I’m sure that’s what Walter and Richard want you to believe. Are they
trying to convince you that I'm playing you?”

“Aren't you? You’re the one who called
this a chess match. I’m just a pawn.”

Felix takes Katrina’s hand in his,
willing her to look at him.
 
She
does, their eyes lock and again they are transported to that place and time
where only they matter, nothing else.
 
His touch, his eyes, erasing every doubt she had. Their hearts pound in
unison, their breathing shallows, if there wasn’t so much on the line at this very
moment he would sweep her in his embrace and never let her go.