Page 13 of Chained
All right, whatever. Terry stripped to his underwear, closed the wooden blinds, and climbed under the covers. Even in the semidarkness, he knew Edge was watching him. That should have made him uneasy, but instead it comforted him.
You’re fucked up, Agent Brandt.Yeah. But he fell into a sound sleep anyway.
Ms. Stroman had called earlier in the day to tell Terry to be ready by nine. Full of nervous energy, he began primping a couple of hours before that, shaving away stubble and moussing his hair into various configurations. Edge didn’t move much, which was unusual for him—he tended to stand rather than sit, and would often pace. But today he sat, watchful and quiet as ever. Maybe he was still sore, even though he wouldn’t admit it.
“So, do I look okay?” Terry spread his arms wide and did a quick spin, displaying his new outfit. “Will I impress Mr. Whitaker and his pals?”
“Do you want to?” There was an undertone to the question, some subtext Terry couldn’t grasp.
“Yeah, of course.”
“Why?”
“That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”
Edge pressed his lips together. It was strange. It had been years since Terry spent as much time with anyone as he had with Edge, yet he still barely knew the guy. He had no idea where he was from, whether he had family, how he ended up working here. And more importantly, he didn’t know what Edge’s motives were and how deeply Edge was mixed up in Whitaker’s shit. Friend or foe? The Bureau encouraged agents to think in those terms, and it was a rubric that often came in handy in the field. Especially when an agent had only seconds to decide how to react. It was a more useful question than asking whether something was human or a monster—a distinction that Terry had, at the beginning, assumed would be the most important. But sometimes humanswerethe monsters.
Logic and common sense argued that Edge was a foe, yet some stubborn part of Terry’s psyche rejected the idea.
Shit. Maybe Terry just needed to get laid.
“I guess I’m ready,” he said.
Edge nodded.
“You’re not coming with?”
“You can find the way by yourself.”
“I guess I can. You’re just going to sit there in my chair?”
A twitch of the lips might have been an almost-smile. “I like your chair.”
“Then by all means, knock yourself out.” Terry gave him a mock salute before leaving the room.
Edge was probably going to snoop through the room while Terry was gone. He might find the gun, which for want of a better place, Terry had hidden behind the dresser. But there was no way for Terry to retrieve the gun now without Edge seeing, so he tried to push that particular worry out of mind. Tonight he had bigger fish to fry.
The area around the pool was brightly lit, yet nobody was there. Terry hesitated at the door to the big house, debating whether he should simply barge in, but then Ms. Stroman materialized in a dove-gray suit with wide shoulder pads. “Good evening, Mr. Brandt. Follow me, please.”
They didn’t go far before reaching a space that Terry hadn’t seen before. Like some of the other rooms, this one was large and done up in grays and whites, with long, low furniture that looked as if it would be uncomfortable to sit on. Smooth jazz played over hidden speakers. Roughly three dozen people milled around, most of them holding cocktail glasses. As Edge had said, the men wore expensive suits in bright colors while the women tended to short, tight dresses in bubblegum hues. Terry recognized a few of the faces from movies and television, but he suspected that most of the guests held other positions in the industry. He hadn’t had time to brief himself on who was who, but a certain amount of naiveté and ignorance suited his undercover persona anyway.
Ms. Stroman disappeared as quickly as she’d appeared, leaving Terry hesitating at the periphery of the crowd. But then a young man with a tray of drinks sailed over. “Would you like one, sir? Or I can bring you something else from the bar, if you’d rather.”
“What are those things?” The tray contained Old Fashioned glasses filled with ice, red liquid, and a lime wedge.
The kid grinned. “Woo woos.”
“I guess I’ll have one of those.” Terry took one and tried a sip. Cranberry juice and something peach-flavored. Sweeter than he’d prefer, but not awful.
The kid sailed away, and Terry spent a few more minutes at the fringes of the party, ignored by everyone, which was fine with him. That way he had a good opportunity to catalog and assess the attendees. None of them appeared malevolent. Just a bunch of rich people in expensive clothes, drinking, smoking, and laughing with one another. If something sounded a little dissonant about their laughter, Terry could chalk that up to his own nerves.
“That outfit suits you.”
Terry startled. He hadn’t heard Whitaker approaching from behind, but he regained his composure quickly. “Thanks. All the new threads are fantastic.”
“That suit costs six months’ rent on your Culver City shithole.”
“Wow.”
