“His business partner, actually.” I didn’t know why I felt compelled to add that.
“That’s wonderful. You’re so young.” She pressed a hand to her cheek. “Oh my gosh, I hadn’t even figured out what I wanted to be when I was your age. Come, come. We have seats for the newbies up front.”
I followed her down the aisle that split the rows of folding chairs. The first two of six rows had bright blue folder packets on them. Twenty seats total, several of them already occupied. I wondered how many of them would continue on to the three-day seminar, and the week-long training after that, and more and more and more until their world revolved around Howard Anson and WCI.
I hesitated and looked at the non-newbie rows.
A lady at the far end of a partially full row held her hand up to her face and stage whispered. “You don’t have to sit up front. Come sit by me.” She winked and laughed and scooted over to make space for me.
“That’s fine, if you’d rather,” Deanna said. “Stacey knows everyone. You’ll be in good hands. Oh!” She scurried away and hurried back with a newbie packet.
I thanked her and squeezed past the other people in the row. Everyone said hi. They asked my name as I sat down and introduced themselves.
“You made the right decision,” Stacey said. “This is the fun corner of the room.”
Within minutes, in addition to Stacey, I knew six people, four women and two men. I estimated their ages to range from 20s to 50s. They each told me their occupations and were all impressed that I owned a successful business at such a young age. They were excited to learn I’d been to a training session in the past. They shared the amount of time they’d been with WCI, which ranged from six months to ten years. Two of them were into extreme sports. One man volunteered with a sea turtle rescue organization. One woman was an ordained Lutheran minister.
There was a moment when someone invited me to jointhem for drinks next Thursday, and I considered accepting the invitation because they were so polite and welcoming. Bloom had warned me, and holy shit, I could feel it. Love bombing. I’d caught onto it immediately with Deanna, and then they’d steered me to Stacey with her sneak attack.
These people knew what they were doing. I almost felt sorry for Devlin. He hadn’t stood a chance.
I managed, just barely, to keep up with my seat partners’ information and questions while continuously scanning the room for Devlin. “I don’t see my sponsor,” I said to Stacey. “When I went to the training session a few years ago, our sponsors had to introduce us.”
“Welcome meetings are different,” Stacey said. “You don’t need a sponsor. And if you decide to come to a training, I’d be happy to sponsor you.” She didn’t mention that it would be lucrative for her because she would get a piece of the exorbitant registration fee I’d have to pay.
She nudged me, then tapped the lady in front of us and inclined her head to the door behind us. “If I were a few years younger,” she said.
“If I were a few years older,” the woman in front of us said.
Logan Lang had entered the building, and the ladies had noticed. I had to admit, I preferred his normal scruff and dark jeans, but he did clean up nicely, too. When he spoke, though, I had to cover my mouth to keep from gaping. The pitch of his voice, which I could hear through my earpiece, was higher as he introduced himself.
“Hi, I’m Charlie. Charlie Lang. Dan Mellner invited me. Hi, Charlie. Charlie Lang. I work with Dan Mellner. Hello, nice to meet you, too. Charlie, Charlie Lang.”
The same cadence and pitch and slightly nervous repetition every time. I’d never heard him, or maybe anyone other than Deanna, be that bubbly. The man was a chameleon. If I hadn’t seen him in the van on the drivehere, I might not have believed Charlie and Logan were the same person.
Deanna announced that the meeting would begin in two minutes. Only then did I see Devlin as he came through a door near the front of the room, from another part of the building. But he looked even less like himself than Charlie looked like Logan. I tried to remember when I’d seen him last. He’d dropped off the grid more than three weeks ago, but he’d been on vacation and then on a business trip in the weeks leading up to it. Now I suspected both the vacation and business trip were tied to WCI.
In the five weeks he’d been gone, Devlin had lost twenty pounds. His clothes hung on him like rags on a scarecrow. He’d grown a short beard, which was nearly white. Even from across the room, I could see the dark eye circles in his gaunt face.
I gasped from the shock of it, then cleared my throat to cover it.
“Wow,” Logan said quietly through the earpiece.
Devlin walked around the perimeter of the room to approach me from the outer aisle. He greeted and hugged Stacey. I stood so we could have an awkward embrace. We’d only done that when we’d dated, but it seemed to be the custom here, and I’d been hugging people all night, trying to blend in.
“You’re in for such a treat tonight,” he said, then dropped his voice to a whisper. “Howard Anson is here. He almost never leaves upstate New York, but he’s here tonight!”
My stomach lurched. That could not be a coincidence.
“We’ll catch up after,” he told me. He waved to the people around me, then stood along the wall with some other men.
I turned my attention to the first speaker on stage. A few minutes later, I glanced in Devlin’s direction. He was gone. We were halfway through the very upbeat program which involved a lot of repetition of WCI slogans when I found apiece of paper in my pocket. When everyone stood and clapped and cheered because their guru was ascending the stage, I unfolded the paper and read the message, written in Devlin’s penmanship.
Help me.
33
BEN
