In the Company of Killers by Bryan Christy (ebook reader for pc and android .txt) 📕

Tenchant’s eyes stayed on his laptop. “Yep.”

Klay sighed. “The answer is no.” For now, he thought.

“Got it. Maggie says hello,” Tenchant said. “She wants to know if I’ve seen an elephant yet. Do you think we will?”

“No. We’re on deadline.”

Klay heard himself and paused. When he was starting out with The Sovereign, he had resisted getting emotionally involved in his stories’ victims. His interest was limited to how and where animals or their parts were being trafficked. One day Eady had pulled him aside. “You have to see the animals in the wild, Tom. Get to know what you’re working to protect.” The old man had handed him a plane ticket to Tanzania. One evening during that trip, driving back to camp, Klay noticed a lone elephant standing among the trees. The light had fallen and the gray matriarch was nearly invisible among the trees’ bare branches. Something caught his eye. He turned in his seat and realized an enormous herd of elephants was lined up shoulder to shoulder along the road, just one tree deep in the bush. An entire society had been watching him, just a few feet away, and he’d almost missed it. Over the years, when he needed reminding why he did what he did, he thought about that evening.

Klay looked at Tenchant. “Tell Maggie we’ll do a quick game drive.”

“Excellent,” Tenchant replied, typing.

“It’s important to see what you’re working to protect,” Klay added, but Tenchant wasn’t listening. He was focused on his note.

Under a hot shower, Klay thought about Hungry. He thought about truth and lies, and who he was and who he hoped to be. Maybe she could handle the truth about him—or, more accurately, the lie. She’d hate him for his dishonesty. Dishonesty was betrayal—he knew that—but maybe she would see his lies differently after he told her what he’d been working to protect . . . No. He could not put her at risk like that. Their only chance was for him to quit. Once he was out, they could start over. He didn’t know the outcome, but he did know the sequence. Quitting came first.

He was drying himself when he heard Tenchant exclaim, “Holy shit!”

He poked his head out of the bathroom. “What?”

“Look at this!”

Klay pulled on the hotel bathrobe. “What is it?”

Tenchant spun his laptop around to show him a photograph of a large group of people standing on the steps outside The Sovereign building.

“We missed the staff photo,” Klay said, getting dressed. “No big deal.”

“Look.”

Klay buckled his belt and looked again. Sharon Reif was standing on the third step, in the middle of the photograph, wearing a white safari shirt. Porfle stood below her, grinning feverishly.

“The fuck are they all wearing?”

“Safari Fridays,” Tenchant said.

“Safari what?”

Everyone in the photograph wore a safari shirt complete with epaulets and a blue chest patch. Journalists wore tan, support staff dark green, management brown. Only Reif and two people Klay didn’t recognize wore white. They looked like a troop of Cub Scouts.

“Sharon had the shirts designed by one of her old clients. They wanted your size by the way. I said extra-large. Don’t you read your email?”

“Where’s Erin?” Klay said. “And Fox?” He searched faces. “Where’s Ernst? And Charlie from Archives?”

“They’re all gone.”

“Gone?”

Tenchant read aloud an email from Fox: “‘Well, it fucking happened. For those of you not present, and for my lawyers, I’m writing this down. Last week, as you know, Sharon sent out an email notifying everybody to be available at ten a.m. Friday for a meeting with their department head. No exceptions. Here’s what happened. They lined us up and called us individually into our boss’s office, where we were either fired or handed a fucking safari shirt. Correction. They fired everyone, then those they wanted back, to work for Perseus Group Media, they gave a fucking safari shirt. It took all morning. There were lines all through the building. Then around five that afternoon Sharon called the department heads back into her office, same ones who just did the firing, and she axed them one by one. Some got rehired. Fucking Russian roulette. Bodies everywhere. I’m looking for work. Any ideas, let me know.’”

Klay was not listening. He was searching faces.

“They fired Erin?”

“I don’t know.”

“What a fucking place. Jesus.” Klay stood for a moment, rubbing his forehead with one hand. “What do you want for dinner?”

“I ate already,” Tenchant said.

“What did you have?”

“You didn’t ask about our status.”

“Our status?” Klay was confused. The possibility of being fired took a moment to register. He’d assumed, as he always had, that changes in personnel wouldn’t affect him. But Klay worked for Perseus Group now. “You’re right. What’s our status?” he asked.

Tenchant read another email. “Porfle says decisions on anyone currently in the field will be announced Friday—Fridays are designated kill days apparently. Travel is rebooking us to come home. But he says not to worry.”

“Don’t respond to any travel emails, Tenchant. We’re not available. In fact, don’t respond to anyone. We’re in the field, bad comms.”

“Okay, but Porfle said not to worry.”

“Porfle said that?” Klay said.

“Yeah. So, that’s good, right?”

“Porfle did?”

“Shit,” Tenchant said.

Klay looked at the expectant father. “Don’t worry, Tenchant. I never leave a man behind.”

FLUKE

Pretoria, South Africa

Thanks, bru,” Klay said, handing the room service waiter a tip. “Touch up the minibar, would you?”

Klay sat down on the edge of the hotel room bed. On the cart in front of him was his dinner: a roasted half chicken, French fries, three bottles of Castle Lager, a cup of rice pudding, and a salad. He hadn’t asked for the salad. He poured ketchup on his plate, switched on his laptop, and opened up his email. His screen filled with unread messages, nearly all from Porfle. They began two days ago, he noted, before the office shake-up.

The subject line of the oldest message read, “URGENT!”

He opened it.

“TK. Call me. Porf.”

Then another. “T. Need to speak ASAP! Personnel! Send time. A.P.” Klay looked at the time and date: an hour