Veil (11 page)

Ken pushed his chair away from the table and
stretched his back, which was the victim of all his tension for at
least the last hour. He laughed and shook his head.

“I’ve been acting like you’re Jin. Trying to
get you on my level. He could do all this stuff alone. Obviously. I
guess I needed a partner. I’m not good at doing things alone.”

“You have a partner mister,” she said with
all seriousness and then joked, “but I don’t give a crap about all
this,” she puffed and waved her hand at the papers spread out in
front of them.

Already headed to the kitchen, Suren asked
Ken what he’d like to eat. He noticed she didn’t ask if he wanted
to eat but rather what he wanted. Little things like that made him
realize how Jin and Suren’s relationship worked. That made him miss
Jin. That made him miss Jin for Suren.

“I don’t know what my options are, lady,” he
quipped.

“Touché. How about I just make something?
Kinda like how you’re supposed to be making something,” she
one-upped him and again gestured at the endless swarm of
papers.

They both laughed. It was a good laugh. Their
first real laughs since they reunited. It was how they always
related to each other, and it was a relief for both that they
hadn’t lost that. At least they didn’t lose that.

Ken got up from his chair and walked to the
kitchen. He leaned on the counter with an elbow and faced Suren.
Her back was to him. She was rummaging through a cabinet next to
the refrigerator.

“Seriously though, Suren. I want to do Veil.
I want to do it for Jin, for you. I want to do it for all of us. I
want to do Veil because—now that I’ve seen it—it’s the most
incredible piece of technology I could ever dream up.”

“God it’s something isn’t it? Like it really
is something.” She sighed. By saying those words and acknowledging
that truth, she felt connected to Jin’s genius again.

“It really is. I can’t believe what Jin
accomplished
.
” His eyes
watered
,
and his words trembled. When she
detected the pain in his voice, Suren turned around. She saw Ken’s
expression, walked to him, and put her hand on top of his while he
continued. “It never was a regret before, I’ll be honest, it never
was, but now my biggest regret is not being a part of this. Not
sticking with Jin and seeing this through. Not being there to bask
in this greatness. His greatness. Abandoning him.” Tears streamed
down his cheeks, so he closed his eyes and shook his head. Damnit,
that wasn’t what he set out to say. And now he was blubbering.

Damnit.

“No … no, Ken,” Suren cooed. “You were right.
You were right back then, and you were right for both of you. Jin
never blamed you. I don’t blame you. I wish Jin listened to you. In
a lot of ways you were his heart, his guide. I always saw that. And
Jin knew it.”

Hearing that turned Ken’s tears into an
outright bawl. It sank in: the grief, the loss of his friend. For
more than half their lives, his best friend. And although the two
did not remain as close, there was absolutely no animosity, and
they didn’t completely grow apart. Ken loved his friend, and he
missed him. The deeper he got into Veil, the more a certain feeling
started to grow in him. The more Ken immersed himself in Jin’s
work, the greater his determination to get Jin’s revenge, Suren’s
revenge, and his own revenge as well. When Ken chose to join Suren,
he decided they’d get their fucking revenge
together
.

“We both now know where you’d be if you stuck
by his side against your better judgment. You and I know where both
of you would be right now. I’d have no one. And they would have
Veil.” She put her hand under his chin and lifted his
head
.
To force him look at her. To look in
her eyes. “They would have Veil, Ken.”

Suren always knew what to say. She knew what
to do to get focus back where it needed to be. Ken remembered what
he set out to say before he was so overcome.

“And that’s just it,” he assured her as he
wiped his eyes. “I want to do Veil. With everything in me, I want
to do this. But, we’re right back where Jin and I were after grad
school. I don’t know how I’m going to do it. Heck, look at the lab
Jin needed to make Veil possible and make it happen. I know money
isn’t everything, but in this case, it’s pretty much the only
thing.”

Suren let out the loudest, strangest squeal
he ever heard anyone produce; it was the sound of amusement tinged
with something more sinister. Hearing it was about as scary as
hearing Suren use the “F-word.”

“Trust me, neither of us have to worry about
that,” she cackled.

“Uhhh…” he groaned
.

“Two things,” she explained and crinkled her
nose as she finished the sentence, “and you’re gonna love both.”
She paused to catch her breath some and let the anticipation build.
“First, the contract Jin signed was for two people. Although you
never signed it, for some reason they never changed the contract or
its terms. Meaning, they still paid out on it as if it were for the
both of you. We kept your half, but never dared to spend it. Who
knew, maybe one day they’d realize what happened and ask for it all
back? And you know how Jin was. Nervous about everything. More
conscientious than anyone. Still, we kept it and earned interest on
it. Even if they asked for the money back, since it was their
mistake, they wouldn’t think of charging us interest. So let them
ask for it back, we figured. But now…” Suren raised her
eyebrows.

Ken smirked, “Yeah, right, they’ll never ask
for anything back now.”

“Exactly. Which leads us to number two. And
this is my favorite. They couldn’t just up and end Jin’s contract
and stop paying on it without tipping their hand, not without
admitting too many things they have no interest in admitting. After
he disappeared, I went to see the General who was supposed to be
overseeing Jin’s contract. When I walked into his office, it was as
if he’d seen a ghost. Literally. It didn’t really dawn on me then
because I was so out of my mind
,
but as
time went on and I started piecing all these things together, I
decided it would be in my best interest to have at least one more
contact with the General. I called him and quite innocently
suggested they should probably keep Jin’s contract intact until he
could be found all safe and sound. After all, I told him, we
couldn’t be sure what happened to him, so it was probably smartest
to leave everything exactly how it was.”

“Oh, fucking brilliant. Really … brilliant.
What’d he say?”

“He said ‘yes ma’am’ and hung up.” She
grinned, self-pleased as anyone could be.

“You might be my favorite person ever,” Ken
beamed
.

“I figured I might be.”

With a huge weight off him, and while Suren
cooked dinner, Ken went back to his computer and dug around in
files, which he already went over at least fifty times. Later, they
ate, drank some wine, talked about school, the old times, Jin. It
was good. They both needed it. It was solemn, but it was
serene.

The conversations that weren’t about Jin
still seemed to conjure him up. He was their connection. Sure, they
had their own way of relating to each other, and they liked each
other well enough, but he was the center to their relationship. Jin
was their anchor. No point in denying that.

After dinner, while Suren cleaned up, Ken
toyed around on his laptop some more; he scanned through folders
and soaked in as much as he could. He memorized a lot of it, and
some was … well, irrelevant. Like all the archived video feed
recordings from the elevators at the hospital. It was a curious
thing for Jin to have set up for himself, but in the end did prove
invaluable, so Ken couldn’t really knock him for it. Just seemed
like one huge waste of hard drive.

Ken stopped and let out an audible,
“Uhhh.”

Suren quit wiping down the counter and looked
at him.

“Suren?” he called out, without taking his
eyes off the screen.

“Yeah?” she replied, suddenly a bit more
curious.

His eyes were still glued to the screen. “So
you never knew about Veil, or the 13
^th
floor in the
hospital, or anything like that?”

Now she was really curious, so as she replied
she was already moving to position herself behind Ken to peer over
his shoulder. To see what caught his attention.

“No, why? What’s—”

She stopped.

Ken’s laptop displayed a recording from the
elevator.

In it, she saw Jin and
herself
, clear
as day, riding up and exiting at the 13
^th
floor.

Suren sat down in the chair next to
Ken’s.

“Play that again.”

G
eneral Coffman
stood up slowly and with purpose. So much of his behavior was
conditioned to instill certain feelings and elicit specific
responses from people that it became second nature. The whitecoat
actually caught him completely off-guard when he barged in and
asked about Tsay, but he’d be damned if he let the little twerp see
that.

The General learned long ago having power
meant he could speak as softly and slowly as he wanted. It was
ideal to do one, or both, of those things in certain situations.
Doing both while he snarled at Schaffer gave the General time to
think about what the hell he was going to say. It also intimidated
the hell out of the little fucking twerp. Two birds.

The Tsay fiasco was a particularly sore spot.
If the stupid ass hire did his job and did it to completion, the
Tsay problem wouldn’t be a problem. The General assembled the
dossier himself, so he knew the hire had all the required
information at his disposal. He couldn’t fathom how Tsay’s wife was
still alive or how, as she claimed when she visited him, she
possessed video footage of the inside of the elevators, which led
up to Tsay’s lab. He simply couldn’t understand how both those
loose ends were left untied, because specific information about
Tsay’s wife and Tsay’s home were included in the goddamn
dossier.

It took everything in him not to agonize over
what other loose ends were left hanging out there since the hire
did not complete what the hire was supposed to complete. His
contact person for the hire went dark after Tsay was eliminated—and
presumably so did the hire—which tended to happen after jobs. With
his contact having gone dark, it wasn’t as if the General could
pick up the phone and call to inquire about the hire’s stupidity
and ineptitude.

That was why the General longed for the day
when he could use his own men in situations like with Tsay. At
least then he’d know it would get done right; if it wasn’t done
right someone would be immediately answerable to him. Some pansy
asses saw using his own men as too much of a liability. Not to
mention how it required the signatures of people going too high up
and who were too concerned with their own butts than with the
national security to which they paid so much lip service.

It was too late anyway. Nothing could be done
yet about Tsay’s wife, not without risking unacceptable attention.
When she called the General to saccharinely demand she continue to
receive Tsay’s pay, she was indicating she knew the General’s
predicament and was willing to take advantage of it. In return, he
was willing to play along for the time being. It kept her within
reach.

The General wanted to be very careful with
his response to Schaffer. The last thing he needed or wanted was
more of a Tsay headache than he already had. He also wanted to put
Schaffer in his place. Barging into his fucking office unannounced?
Who the fuck did Schaffer think he was?

“Not that I can see how it’s any of your
concern,
boy
, nor do I answer to you, but suffice it to say
Jin Tsay is no longer part of this project and is permanently
unavailable.” He ambled to the front of his desk while Schaffer
attempted to explain himself.