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"I see you met the locals," he says, knowingly.
"So you were aware?"
"Aware? I talked to them last week. Week before, we had lawyers and a couple others out here. There's some serious community opposition to this project, Amelia." He opens the car door for me and I take a seat.
"So, what are we going to do about it?" I say as he gets in the driver's seat and starts the vehicle. As we move, I watch the world out the window; my vision for what could be here is suddenly much less clear. "How can we move forward on this thing if all these people are so set against it and some of them even have guns?"
"Well, that's part of what you're here to figure out."
I swallow and look sideways at him. "Me?"
"If you'll remember from all the way back when you applied to work for us here at Sterns, Santo, and Russell development, which I admit was a couple months ago, and since your generation—what with its phone addiction—doesn't have the same memory or attention span, so maybe you don't remember, but your position includes project management, not just the environmental aspects. And your job as my assistant includes managing community relations."
It all vaguely tickles my memory. Vaguely. Though it's hard to recall through the sheer excited haze of getting a call from a well-known firm like SSR and getting offered a job so soon after graduating; I'd expected at least six months of struggling with an unpaid internship at some no-name firm before getting anything close to a real job.
"So, figuring out how to get those people out there, like that old lady and her gun-toting grandson, to not hate us so we can build this resort..."
"Is your job. You'll either do it, or you'll get fired. Do I need to remind you what a firing this early in your career, and from a firm like SSR, will do to your lifetime career prospects?"
It’ll sink them deeper than the Titanic.
"No, sir."
The path ahead for me is clear: get those people who hate me, my company, and everything we stand for to stop hating us and give up their homes...
Or see if any of the local fast-food restaurants need a night time janitor.
Chapter Two
Thunder
One more turn, then all the pieces will fall into place.
"Try it now," I call from beneath the hood of a car that belongs in a scrapyard more than it does the garage at Reid's Repairs. Still, of every car under our roof, including the Tesla that some techie from San Francisco brought in to have some bodywork done and some baffling modifications added—poor guy saw Mad Max one too many times and now envisions himself as the Eco Road Warrior—this car is the most valuable.
"Got it, brother," Bullet responds, cranking the key.
The Toyota chugs.
Chugs.
Rumbles.
Then it roars.
Yes, roars.
A twenty-eight-year-old Toyota Corolla, for the first time in the history of the entire model line, roars. I feel like a fucking maestro with a socket wrench.
I take a step back, slam the hood shut, and smile at Bullet. "Told you so."
He shuts the car off and steps out, then he strides forward and gives me a hug, pounding my back. "Didn't doubt for a second that you could fix this car up, Thunder. I just doubted whether it was worth it."
My thoughts flash back to the old woman we encountered at the convenience store on the outskirts of Costa Oscura, whose car we stole, whose day we definitely ruined—being that we were covered in an unbelievable assortment of blood and other bodily fluids—and whose heart we probably came close to stopping with shock.
Who I haven't been able to stop thinking about since.
"You know I had to do this."
