Smoke Screen by Kyle Mills

Author:Kyle Mills
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Action & Adventure, Fiction, Adventure, General & Literary Fiction, Crime & Thriller, Modern fiction, Thriller
ISBN: 9780340734308
Publisher: Coronet Books
Published: 2010-01-14T23:00:00+00:00

"I'm sick. I can't go in today."

Brunette walked into the bathroom, and a moment later I heard the shower go on.

"Have some coffee. It'll make you feel better," Blonde said, handing me a cup. He just stood there staring at me until I took a sip.

"Okay, we're going to leave you to it," Brunette said, reappearing from the bathroom. "We need to be in the car in twenty minutes." His face lost what little friendliness it was able to convey. "Twenty minutes. Are we clear?"

Historically, the progression of the protests taking place in front of Terra's headquarters had been pretty predictable. As the Montana litigation dragged on and the blood in the water continued to embolden the press and politicians, the demonstrations had grown in size, intensity, and duration. Not an ideal trend from an industry perspective but, in a way, comfortable in its steady slowness.

So I was completely unprepared for what we were faced with when we turned off the main road toward the Terra building. Our thirty or forty die-hard antismoking demonstrators were gone, replaced by something like two hundred angry and jittery-looking people holding signs that said things like choice! and freedom! We were forced to slow to a crawl as we pulled up behind a line of cars trying to get past a hastily erected police barricade.

We continued forward in fits and starts, listening to the angry, unintelligible yelling that had replaced the dopey rhymes I'd become used to. The signs bristling from the crowd were surprisingly well designed and professionally executed considering the short notice, suggesting to me the involvement of Terra's marketing department.

It took about two more minutes for us to make contact with the protestors and I mean this literally. We had to use the car's bumper to gently push them out of the way as we continued forward. I lay down in the backseat, covering my face and hoping that no one would recognize me. Obviously, my fear wasn't completely imagined because a moment later the car's locks clicked down.

I tensed when I heard a knocking on the window, and I uncovered my face enough to see what was going on. A cop was standing at the driver's window and Blonde held up a Terra employee badge for a moment before we were waved on. It seemed like an hour before the sun filling the car faded to dim fluorescent light. I sat up and gratefully took in the relative silence and stillness of the parking garage.

Blonde pulled the vehicle to within a few feet of the elevator, and the locks went up again. "You have our cell number, right, Trevor?"

I nodded.

"Call us when you're about an hour from being ready to go home. Don't try to walk out of here on foot or accept a ride from one of your co-workers, all right? And from now on, you'll be eating in the executive dining room only don't go out and pick something up and don't order anything in."

I didn't ask about the takeout thing.

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