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“Did you think we didn’t consider that?” he said, gesturing to the seat next to me. I looked down and realized that the folded black material beside me was an overcoat.
We rode for some time in the blacked-out car. I was getting used to the sensation of not knowing where I was, but with Roger, going to a meeting during the day, it became unsettling again. I found myself wondering how often this was likely to happen and whether I’d be subject to the same magical screening as when I normally came and went. Would I have a chance to pass on anything or bring anything back?
But first, I supposed, I had to see what this meeting would entail. The car stopped, and both Roger and I put on our coats before getting out. I found myself in lower Manhattan, not too far from MSI. I nearly tripped over my own feet when I saw the name of the company we were visiting. It was the firm on one of my lists that MSI had managed to steer away from the Collegium. Now it looked like the Collegium wasn’t going to take their departure lying down.
Ten
“Follow my lead and do as I say,” Roger said as we entered the lobby. His friendly smile never faded, but his eyes were cold and hard and his voice had a grim edge to it. He approached the receptionist. “I need to see Mr. Bartles immediately,” he said.
“May I ask who you are?” she said, raising the phone to her ear.
“He’ll know,” Roger said. He stood looming over her while she relayed the message to her boss.
“He’ll be right with you,” she said, hanging up the phone.
A man I assumed was Mr. Bartles came rushing into the lobby before she even finished speaking. He was pale, and beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. The poor man looked utterly terrified. Although I’d noticed the hint of danger in Roger’s eyes, I still found it hard to reconcile this reaction to him with the man I had to admit was probably the best boss I’d ever had. Roger was mostly so very nice. He wasn’t at all the image of the leg-breaking thug.
“Roger, I was meaning to call you,” Bartles said, wringing his hands. Either he had an unusually high-pitched voice for a man or he was so strained that his voice shot up an octave. He cleared his throat and added in something closer to the tone I expected, “Please, come to my office so we can talk.”
Roger followed him without a word, and I went along with them. Roger gestured for me to sit in the guest chair while he remained standing. Bartles headed toward his own desk chair, but hesitated and ended up standing, facing Roger. “I was meaning to call you,” he said, his voice straining to a higher pitch again.
“I understand you met with MSI,” Roger said sternly.
“Yes, they got in touch with me. We’re a valuable customer, so you can’t imagine they’d let me go without an effort.”
“You could have told them you weren’t going to change your mind.”
Bartles clenched his hands and glanced around, as though looking for help. “I felt I owed it to them, and they did point out some, er, irregularities in the contract you offered me.”
Roger raised an eyebrow. “Irregularities, you say?”
“Well, yes. Their verifier spotted some veiled clauses.”
“You let their verifier look at our contract? And then you believed what they said?”
“I, um, well, you see…”
I was utterly terrified that Roger was going to make me look at the contract and swear that it was all aboveboard. I didn’t think I could do that, not even to save an undercover operation. At least if things went wrong here, I could flee on foot to MSI. I might lose my purse and house keys and anything else locked in my changing room, but I’d be away.
While I was eyeing the distance to the room’s exit, Bartles surprised me by finding his inner fortitude. He stopped stammering, pulled himself up straight, and said, “Yes, I did believe them. They’ve never lied to me. You had hidden language that would have allowed you to gradually take over my company, and you’d enchanted the document to make it utterly binding—on me, but not on you. You could have broken the contract at any time. That’s not how the people I want to do business with behave.”
Roger’s smile seemed genuine. I thought for a moment that he was going to be reasonable about this, but then he waved his hand, and Bartles disappeared. In his place sat a small frog.
I managed to swallow my scream of shock. I’d seen someone turned from a frog back into a human, but this was my first time to see it go the other way around. Roger bent and very gently scooped the frog up and put him in his pocket, then rifled through the papers on Bartles’s desk, found what was apparently the Collegium’s contract, waved hi
s hand at it, and a signature appeared on the bottom.
“There, that’s settled,” he said with a satisfied nod. “Come, Katie, back to the office.”
I followed him, wondering the whole time whether I should just jump ship, here and now. I couldn’t be a part of this. I didn’t know exactly why he’d brought me, whether he’d have made me fake a verification if Bartles had been amenable or if he was testing me, showing me what they did and watching my reaction. Maybe both.
I felt like I had a few seconds in the walk from the building to the car when I might have been able to make a run for it, but I reminded myself that the whole point of this operation was to stop things like this from happening for good. Quitting because I was queasy about being involved with one incident wouldn’t help anyone. Besides, if I wanted to quit, it would be far easier, if less dramatic, to simply not show up for work the next day, when I had all my stuff with me. I got into the back of the limo with Roger and the frog.
I didn’t know where to look, whether I should make eye contact with Roger or stare into space. Unfortunately, looking out the window wasn’t an option. “I imagine that was a little unsettling,” Roger said after a few minutes of uncomfortable silence. His voice sounded warm and gentle.
“Yeah,” I said, unable to hold back the “no duh” tone in my voice.
“I assure you that it was necessary, and he will be treated humanely. I’ll show you.”
