Page 11 of Master of Chaos
I went through the glass doors. The rain had eased off, but the wind was still cold and sharp, and the sea crashed wildly on the sharp rocks hundreds of feet below.
Jana was slowly pushing a mop, her movement limp and dispirited.
“Jana!” I called. “Come in here for a sec. Halliwell has a job for you.”
Jana’s eyes widened in alarm, but I was spared the necessity to coax her inside, because Halliwell followed me out onto the terrace. He looked around, disgusted.
“Good God, Jana. It looks worse than before, if that’s possible,” he said.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, looking everywhere but at him. “I’m going as fast as I can.”
“You’re stumbling around like a zombie. Sharpen up. Did you at least pack up the unused parachutes? It’s been raining all night. I don’t want them to mold.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw a wet parachute on the slate tiles. A swift shove with my toe slid it behind a potted madrona, out of his line of vision.
Crisis averted. Halliwell mercifully did not notice, his attention focused on the hollow-eyed Jana. “You will do Cassandra’s makeup and hair, if you can pull yourself together. Afterward, I’ve scheduled an appointment for you with Dr. Silvano. It’s time.”
Jana’s eyes froze wide. “Silvano?” she croaked. “Oh, no. No. Sir, please?—”
“After you’ve taken care of that, get your ass back out here and stop dragging your feet. When I start work tomorrow morning, it needs to be immaculate.”
He turned and went inside. Jana’s haunted eyes flicked to the planter where I’d kicked the parachute.
“I thought he’d scolded you enough,” I explained.
“Don’t do me any favors,” she said. “Favors mean nothing here. You’re not my friend, and I’m not yours.” She turned away, and shuffled inside.
Well, hell and damn. No good deed went unpunished around here. I took a moment to open up the cabinet that held gardening supplies, and stuffed the parachute inside, just to be thorough. Then I followed her back into the Bridge.
Halliwell had just left. Everyone stared at me as I shut down my workstation. If looks could kill, I would have been flash-incinerated, my ashes floating on the breeze.
Jana and I went to my quarters without a word. Her shoes squelched with every step. The apartment assigned to me was very beautiful, with picture windows and a big balcony that overlooked the ocean. I let her in and stood there, tense and tongue-tied. It wasn’t like I could make conversation with this woman in her current emotional state.
Jana stared out the picture window. I looked at her sodden hair, the bra showing through her soaked shirt. She was shivering. “Ah, do you want a towel?” I asked. “You could use the blow dryer, and I can give you some of my clothes, if you want to?—”
“No. I’m fine.”
“But aren’t you cold? You should?—”
“This apartment used to be Nicole’s. You never met her. She was Halliwell’s favorite, even though she crashed and burned in med school. I graduated top of my class in three different specialties, and he still hated my guts. Go figure.”
I didn’t know what to do with that. In my mind, being hated by Halliwell would be a shining badge of honor. “This is the Nicole who died a few months ago?”
“Murdered. She was murdered by the brother and sister of the prisoner on the eighth level. The Masters guy. Vincent was murdered by them, too. Shot to death.”
“Yes. Haley told me about that,” I said. “It sounded really terrible.”
“Halliwell’s still pissed about it,” she said. “At least about Nicole. Not so much Vincent. Vincent was a pretty good engineer, but he was a whiny little shithead, and Halliwell would have flushed him eventually. By the way, the standard story is that they died in a car accident. If anyone asks tonight, that’s what you should say.”
“Okay. I’m, ah… I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Don’t be. It’s no loss, to me or anyone. The world’s better off without them. Nicole, especially. She was a sadistic, stone-cold, homicidal bitch. That’s why he favored her. It was like looking in a mirror for him. He loves that.”
The question hung in the air, so I answered it the best I could. “I’m not a sadistic, stone-cold homicidal bitch, Jana. I don’t know why he’s paying attention to me. I’m not his mirror.”
She let out a grunt. “Yeah? Aww. Poor you. Burdened by his favor.”
I gritted my teeth. “I mean it. I genuinely don’t curry favor with him.”