Page 44 of Anarchy Missing

CHAPTER NINETEEN - LULU

When I get to the office in the morning Cait already has my coffee ready for me as I pass her desk, and Randy is waving at me from his office, telling me to come inside. He’s going to want an update and I have plenty to tell him. But I won’t be telling him anything.

Oh, by the way, Randy, yes, I did make contact with Case Reider last night. He fucked me pressed up against the wall of a church, thank you.

So I’m getting my story all sorted in my head as I walk across the main office, when he bursts out his door, dragging his coat behind him.

“Come on, we gotta go.”

“Go where?” I ask. But he’s already heading to the garage entrance.

“You probably don’t know him, but Chief—well, former Chief—O’Neil, he’s out at the Cathedral City Penitentiary serving time for corruption.”

“He was one of those guys who got caught up in the smackdown last winter?”

“Yeah,” Randy says, throwing the heavy steel doors open that lead to the garage. “I just hung up with Warden Cage over there—”

“The warden’s name is Cage?” I snort.

Randy shoots me a dirty look for interrupting him.

“Sorry,” I mumble. “Go on.”

“Anyway,” he huffs, as we walk towards his car. “The warden called and said O’Neil has suddenly gotten chatty with a couple other inmates. And he’s been talking about Lincoln Wade and some kind of interaction they had just before all that Blue Corp shit blew up.”

“Hmmm,” I say, slipping into the passenger’s seat of his car as he does the same on his side. “What kind of interaction? Like… are they partners or something?”

“No clue, Lulu. So we’re gonna take a little ride out there and see what his story is. How did it go last night? Did Reider make any contact with you?”

I’m about to totally lie and say no, but I just don’t have it in me to lie to my boss. I can’t tell him everything, but I can maybe stretch the truth and still be mostly honest. “So…” I start, trying to pick my way through this minefield. “I went over the main cathedral last night, just to sorta… walk down Memory Lane, you know?”

Randy squints his eyes at me and I have to take a sip of coffee so I don’t wince.

“And?” he asks.

“And Case Reider was there.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“Only very briefly.” We were too busy fucking.

“What did he say?”

“You know, long time no see. We should catch up, have lunch. Miss you. Stuff like that.”

“So you’re gonna have lunch with him today.”

“I don’t know,” I say, unsure.

“No,” Randy says in a firm tone. “You are going to have lunch with him today, Lulu. No doubt. We need to figure out who this Red Robber person is before he decides to do anything else and Lincoln Wade is our best guess. We need an in with that guy like… now.”

“I don’t have his number and I didn’t give him mine, so we’ll just have to see what happens.”

“You have until two o’clock to wait it out, then I want you to go digging. How hard can it be to find a number for the guy? His office is that huge collection of ugly silver cubes built into the side of the mountain. Just call over there and ask for him.”

“He’s the CEO, Randy. You don’t just call up and ask for the CEO of ToyBox.”

“I think he’ll make an exception.” And then we get on the freeway that will take us down south to where the penitentiary is.