Heller's Revenge (8 page)

“And none of you will be working
without supervision for the next twelve months. I want you to know
that it was only because I haven’t had any trouble with any of you
before that I didn’t fire you all this morning. Don’t make me
regret that decision.”

I wasn’t quite sure why he
included me in that comment, because he’d had plenty of trouble
with me before. But I wasn’t going to argue and suitably chastised,
we headed for the door again.

“Stay behind please, Matilda,”
Heller instructed.

Reluctantly, I returned to him.
Clive followed the three men out into the main security office,
closing the gym door behind him. I looked up at Heller silently,
not knowing what was going to come next. Maybe he was going to yell
at me after all.

“That last part doesn’t apply to
you.”

That was surprising. “Oh,
okay.”

“I still need you free to do
solo jobs for me.”

That made sense. As the
business’ only female employee, I did a lot of ‘babysitting’ of
rich women in town with their husbands for business, assignments
that didn’t require more than one staff member. Heller would never
let anything interfere with my ability to make money for him – not
even his own anger at my unprofessionalism.

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

But still I lingered for a
moment, knowing the answer before I asked. “Did you enjoy meeting
Jenna?”

The hint of a smile crossed his
shapely lips. “She invited me to meet with her again tonight in her
hotel room to discuss some future business. She was quite impressed
with my . . . er . . . professionalism.”

I rolled my eyes. Heller had an
unashamed appetite for screwing around casually and
indiscriminately. He was the master of the one-night stand and
being so tall, muscled and strikingly beautiful, he picked up women
as easily as a kid picked up a cold at a kindergarten. He would
never turn down an opportunity to spend a night with Jenna
Mackenzie. What man would?

“I’m sure Monsieur Roux was
equally impressed with your . . . professionalism,” I commented
wryly.

His smile widened. “Monsieur
Roux also suggested that I meet with him again tonight in his hotel
room.”

I snortled with laughter.
“Should I even bother asking who will end up having the pleasure of
your company?”

“It wasn’t a difficult choice,
Matilda. Ms Mackenzie will be quite a treat.”

I tried desperately not to mind,
but it was one of the main reasons I hadn’t yet succumbed to his
incredible charms. I wasn’t interested in being a notch on his bed
head and I wasn’t confident that I’d ever be anything else if I did
weaken one day. He wasn’t exactly someone looking for a meaningful
relationship, even though he’d told me that he cared about me.
Whatever that meant. And besides, I loved my job far too much to
jeopardise it by sleeping with my boss.

“Well, I hope you have fun,” I
said, a little wistful.

“I’ll tell you all about it
tomorrow.”

“I really don’t want to
know.”

“Why not? I always want to know
what you get up to with your boyfriend.”

That made me laugh. “Yes, but
you’re a pervert and I’m not.”

He smiled faintly. “No Matilda,
it’s because I want to make sure that he’s looking after you
properly.”

I met his eyes, unsure how to
respond to that, so instead I spun around and scurried towards the
door.

“Don’t forget we have the office
staff meeting this afternoon.”

“I won’t,” I called over my
shoulder.

“It would be nice if you were on
time for once.”

I sensibly ignored that pointed
comment, glad to escape back to the relative safety of the security
section. Clive didn’t have any assignments for me so I decided to
hit the gym hard, not yet over all the rude comments about my butt.
After changing out of my uniform, I made my way to the gym on the
third floor, which was reserved for those of us who lived in the
building.

I had asked Heller to devise a
weights program for me so I could achieve a bit more muscle in my
upper body, and was also doing some regular sparring with Daniel
who was more my size than the rest of the men around. That,
combined with the security and self-defence courses I recently
completed, made me more confident in my ability to protect myself
than I’d been when I’d first started working for Heller. Not that
I’d had to test that theory yet. Much of my work over the last
months had been confined to holding the hands of rich, elderly and
nervous women who wanted security installed in their over-large
houses and chaperoning the bored wives of wealthy foreign
businessmen visiting the city to finalise business deals. I’d been
employed to deal with Heller’s female clients and that’s what I
principally spent my life doing.

When it was time for our weekly
office staff meeting, I joined Heller and his three managers –
Daniel, Sid and Clive – in Heller’s office to discuss potential
jobs, new assignments and anything else of general interest to us
all. I originally was required to attend these meetings when I’d
taken on the role of Heller’s client manager, and even though I was
doing more security work these days, Heller still insisted that I
attend. And that was probably because, although Clive was nominally
my boss as the security manager, Heller often personally decided
what assignments I’d be working on.

The men discussed boring things
about staffing and budgets for ages until the end when Heller
queried if anyone had anything else to say.

“I had a very interesting
enquiry via email this morning,” informed Daniel with an impish
gleam in his chocolate brown eyes. We all sat forward in
anticipation, ears pricked. Interesting was always, well,
interesting
, in this place.

“Who from?” I prompted
impatiently.

“Clarence Cockburn.”

“
The
Clarence Cockburn?”
I asked in amazement. “The creator of
Synonymy
?”

“That’s the one.”

Four of us looked at each other
with delighted surprise, Heller the only one not sure about the
fuss. Clarence Cockburn was an expat techno-guru, consistently in
the list of the top one hundred wealthiest individuals in the
world. He had moved to LA after developing an online game called
Synonymy
that offered a virtual world containing a mix of
fantasy quests and simulated real life. Members could create a new
persona and establish a secret life where they could be whoever or
whatever they wanted, in miniature.

If you wanted to be a tall,
thin, sexy, fighting elf with magical powers who conquered fierce
villains in thousands of quests, when in reality you were a dumpy,
pimply, thirty-two-year-old virgin still living with your mother
and stacking shelves at the local supermarket, then no problem!
Sign up to
Synonymy
, pay the membership fee, create your new
character and start living your new virtual life. If on the other
hand, you actually
were
a tall, thin, sexy, fighting elf
with magical powers who wanted to experience life as a dumpy,
pimply, thirty-something virgin still living with Ma, you could do
that on
Synonymy
as well. There was something for everyone
and the two worlds of fantasy and simulated real life coexisted
surprisingly well. It was as if
The Sims
and
World of
Warcraft
had met, fallen in love and had a baby. It had just
been named the most addictive online game ever developed at a
recent pop culture awards show.

Like everyone I knew, I’d played
it for a while a few years ago and had loved it, but hadn’t been
able to afford the monthly fee to keep my membership going. The
character I’d created was a hot, sword-wielding tough magic chick –
great body, skimpy black leather shorts and top, impossibly huge
boobs, knee-high black boots, masses of long black hair, huge
sapphire blue eyes and lush red lips. She could kick arse with the
best of them using either her sword or her spells, but also liked
to play the piano, clean the bathroom and cook Lobster
Thermidor.

Yes, it was fairly tragic, but
it helped me through a very dull patch in my life where I wasn’t
getting any action or acting work and had to beg my parents for
money to survive. I’d even been driven to ‘unexpectedly’ visiting
them at dinnertime to cadge a free meal off them, I was that broke.
I’m sure they wouldn’t have been impressed to know that some of the
money they gave me for living expenses went towards a virtual game.
Sorry Mum and Dad
, I thought guiltily,
I swear I spent
the rest of it on food and rent!

Daniel continued speaking after
we settled down from that exciting news. “Mr Cockburn is returning
to the city to accept an Innovation in Technology award from the
Prime Minister. He’ll be over here for a couple of weeks and wants
a security presence during his stay. Nothing noticeable though, he
requested, so I guess that counts you out Clive!”

Clive nodded gruffly. He was
built like a tank and was what you would definitely classify as
‘noticeable’.

“Most of our security men are
noticeable though. They’re all pretty big blokes,” Sid mused.

“Is he interviewing other
companies?” Heller asked.

“Nope. He said he chose us
because we were small and discreet and we’d been recommended by
Alston Paul.”

Heller nodded. That was a client
before my time, but I knew that Alston Paul was the bigwig CEO of a
multinational mining company who visited to the city early last
year to sign a deal to buy a majority share in one of the nation’s
leading coal mines. It had been an extremely controversial
arrangement at the time, rushed through parliament and resulting in
mass demonstrations from the angry mining staff.
Heller’s
had provided a high profile security detail to protect Paul during
his visit and it had clashed on a number of occasions with the
disgruntled employees. There had been a lot of TV coverage of the
battles, which perversely had only garnered Heller more
business.

I was glad that I hadn’t been
working for him then, as my sympathies would have all been with the
employees. They were right to protest in the end as most of them
were consequently restructured out of their jobs, replaced by
cheaper foreign workers. I’d had a heated discussion with Heller
about his role in the whole affair one night, but he’d remained
impassive about the consequences. To him it was merely another
assignment.

“It’s just business to me,
Matilda. I don’t care who is right or wrong, who is rewarded or who
is robbed, as long as the job is done professionally and I am
paid,” he had declared with impatient finality, disregarding my
emotional arguments. I remember then storming off the rooftop in an
enormous self-righteous huff, much to his bemusement. It had taken
me a whole day to calm down. He’s often cool and detached like
that. It infuriates me, because I’m the opposite.

“I will take Matilda with me to
the interview with Mr Cockburn,” Heller decided. “She’s soft and
unthreatening.”

“Hey!” I protested. “I am
not
unthreatening! I’ve been working out a lot. Just look at
these muscles. They’d scare any IT geek.” I pushed up my sleeve and
flexed my bicep. The others smiled politely. I pushed my sleeve
back down again, crossed my arms and sulked. I’d picked the wrong
crowd to impress with my miniscule muscles. Daniel winked at me
sympathetically. He’s not exactly built like the proverbial brick
shithouse either. Niq, he and I were all rare creatures in this
temple of testosterone.

“When do we meet with him?”
Heller asked Daniel, ignoring my theatrics. He’d seen it all
before.

“Later in the week when he
arrives from the US.”

“Okay.” He glanced around at the
four of us, a hint of smugness on his face. “I have one further
item to report.”

Daniel, Sid and Clive all raised
their eyebrows, obviously none of them in the loop on this piece of
news. I was always the last to know anything, so I wasn’t surprised
at being surprised.

“Just this morning, I signed a
contract with Taldac Limited to provide security to their office
complex for a five-year period.”

There was a general murmur of
awe around the room, which I joined even though I had absolutely no
idea who or what Taldac Limited was.

“Doesn’t Taldac have a
long-standing relationship with Select Security?” queried Clive in
his flat, gravelly voice.

Heller smiled, and it wasn’t a
smile you’d want your mother to see, particularly my mother who had
a big crush on him. “I undercut them, but even then we’ll still be
pulling in a healthy profit. Select were taking them for granted
and overcharging them for years. Let’s just say that the CEO of
Taldac wasn’t thrilled with that discovery after I pointed it
out.”

Sid whistled under his breath.
“Select aren’t going to be happy with Taldac’s decision to switch.
That’s a lucrative contract.”

“Yes, it is.” Heller smiled that
nasty smile again and a shiver ran up my spine. He relished any
opportunity to best Select Security. “There will be a generous
end-of-year bonus for every man this year.”

I cleared my throat noisily.

Heller’s blue headlights landed
on me. “
And
every woman. Anything else?” There wasn’t, so we
were all dismissed.

I flounced off to my desk, still
miffed about the lack of appreciation for my growing muscles, and
checked my email. I had twenty-five emails since I checked last
thing the previous evening before leaving for Will’s house. I am
not kidding when I say that my family’s emails should be regulated
by the government. They are public nuisances, forwarding on every
crappy email ever written – every request for banking details from
Nigeria, every urban legend, every tired old blonde joke.