Flight or Fight (The Out of Dodge Trilogy Book 1) by Scott Bartlett

Author:Scott Bartlett [Bartlett, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mirth Publishing
Published: 2016-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

He’d thrown his coat over one of the chairs in the kitchen. Grabbing it, he headed for the porch and pulled on his boots. He needed to know for sure, SafeTalk be damned. The insurance company, Air Earth, the media, Maria—anyone who might be monitoring his lifelog. Damn them all. Carl didn’t care. He needed to know.

Natalie didn’t answer her hatch when he rang the buzzer, but it was unlocked, so he pushed it open and hoisted himself inside anyway. She sat in the TV room, a bottle of surry dangling from her hand. She was drunk.

Carl stood in front of her. “Natalie?”

“What.”

“Where’s the antidote?”

“Don’t want it. Flushed it.”

“I need you sober. I need to talk to you.”

“Don’t wanna be sober.”

Carl went into the kitchen and went through the cupboards until he found another bottle of surry. Cracking the plastic shell attached to the neck caused five pills to fall out into his palm. Four of them he left on the counter, but he took the fifth into the TV room.

He grabbed the bottle of surry from her.

“Hey! I need that,” she cried out.

“No, you need this.” He held out the pill.

“Get that away.”

“Take it, or I keep all the surry.”

She glowered at him for a moment. Then she snatched the pill from his hand and slapped it into her mouth. Within a few minutes she was alert and sensible.

“You shouldn’t have come here, Carl.”

“Why not? I don’t plan to say anything incriminating.”

She shook her head. “Coming here was incriminating. Saying you don’t plan on saying anything incriminating is especially incriminating, because it implies that there are incriminating things you might be saying. You’re being watched.”

“Of course I am. Everyone is watched.”

“They’re watching you with particular interest. You serve their interests right now, but the minute you don’t they’ll destroy you.”

“What about you? How can you afford to say incriminating things?”

She laughed. “Have you been online recently? I don’t have a whole lot to lose.”

He sighed, and took a pull from the surry bottle.

“Hey!” she said.

“I’ll buy you another.”

“At least give me some.”

He handed it to her.

“Natalie, did you…did you molest Jonathan Trangebe?”

She laughed bitterly before taking a sizable swallow and handing back the bottle “Sorry. I just think ‘Trangebe’ is such a sick joke. The only family phrase I could find to fit it was ‘Adversity maketh strange bedfellows.’”

“Did you do it?”

“In order for me to have molested Jonathan Trangebe, Jonathan Trangebe would have to exist. I’ve never met a Jonathan Trangebe. I’ve never heard of one. I doubt there’s even a Jonathan Trangebe in FutureBrite’s care. They made him up, Carl.”

“Impossible,” he said. “They’d never get away with it.”

“Why not? FutureBrite youth aren’t permitted to have an online presence of any kind. The company is vast, and no single employee ever has access to the entire database of youth in their care. Even if someone wanted to, no one would be able to verify Jonathan Trangebe’s non-existence.”

“Well, why don’t you say something? Defend your innocence?”

“My innocence has been dragged into the public arena and murdered.

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