Knight Blind by Alice Bienia

Author:Alice Bienia [Bienia, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indie Author Project
Published: 2020-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

Thirty-seven

Dozens of people scurried along Eighth Avenue. Some talked on cell phones, others jockeyed the crowd with coffee in hand. The air remained pleasantly warm with a hint of breeze. I hadn’t figured out much of anything about how I was going to extract Zosia from John’s interest. I tried to clear my head as I walked. It was a good hike to Global’s offices, longer now that I wore heels. The blister didn’t help.

I entered the lobby, and shoved John to the back of my mind. After signing in, I was issued a visitor’s badge and instructed to go to the seventeenth floor. A young man in a purple V-neck sweater and dark grey slacks waited for me.

“Ms. Knight?”

“Yes, that’s me.” I flashed him a smile, but it was wasted on his back. I followed him through the seventeenth-floor lobby doors, down a corridor and to a conference room. I slid into a chair next to a guy about my age. There were twelve of us here. I was one of two women.

Willie checked the last details of his presentation, his close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair bent over the projector. When I worked at Global Analytix, security was divided into two departments, run by two different section heads. After my incident with Jason Marr, the two departments merged. The newly combined physical and data security department, now called security management, had come under Willie’s direction.

Willie straightened, his steel-blue eyes swept the room and briefly stopped at mine. “Good morning, everyone, and welcome. We’ll start with introductions,” he said without preamble, a faint trace of an accent still present. We dutifully introduced ourselves, our names and department or company we worked for.

Willie added little more to what Mike already told me. Kulluk Energy wanted their employees to come and go freely during the convention, without harassment from protesters. He explained these were precautionary measures and no one had reason to believe Kulluk would be specifically targeted. Global’s team would supplement the usual police presence found at any rally and we were to work in full cooperation with the city police on any issue that arose.

I was assigned perimeter security, along with one of the men. Our presence was meant to be a deterrent; our primary job to ensure no one barred the entrance or prevented employees from coming and going. A guy named Rick went over communication protocols. We were issued black Global Analytix T-shirts and jackets and instructed to wear our own black pants and shoes. We’d meet in the morning for last-minute instructions.

Stepping out on the sidewalk, I paused. After this assignment I would be free to turn my entire focus to Johnnie Gorwitz, free being the operative word. I couldn’t just sit back and let Zosia walk into danger. Johnnie deserved to be found. Nick deserved to know what happened to Johnnie, and so did his friends. I deserved a chance to redeem myself.

A car drove by. Music blared from the open window. A few words of an all-too-familiar song reached my ears.

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