Max nodded to his secretary Amanda as he headed to his office. “How was your weekend?”
“Good, sir, yourself?”
“Lucrative as always. Anything exciting on my voice mail?”
“No breathless women this time.”
Max laughed; he would never live down that one time where a woman he had seen two years ago called him for a week straight, only breathing heavily on the phone.
Amanda always checked his voicemails and emails for him, weeding out things that were actually directed to him and not part of a forward or a round-table of email addresses. She’d save them, in a special folder, just in case someone asked him about them.
“Jorge wants to see you, shall I put him on your calendar?”
“What’s my day look like?” He pulled out his iPhone to check it himself. First he checked his public calendar, the one posted on Google for his employees to see. The blocked out times were innocuous, “out of office” or “busy”. His personal calendar, accessable only to Amanda and himself, was more detailed.
“Why can’t he talk to his manager, Doreen?”
Amanda shrugged. “I think he likes looking at you.”
“Ohhh, that’s it. Remind me to start looking frumpy.”
“That would make it worse, sir,” she said with a smile, and hit a button on her computer. “You’re all set to peruse your email.”
“Anything interesting there?”
“Police report regarding warehouse 17.”
He frowned. He owned warehouses all over the Port, and had some exclusive docks on Talos and Peregrine. Among those warehouses were precious artifacts that he had acquired over the years, the ones that he didn’t mind not having close by in his house. Warehouse 17 had some things from the Rennaissance, mostly tapestries and artwork. Someone had broken in last week and injured a guard, absconding with a few paintings from some students of Leonardo da Vinci. He himself had been canvasing the Port to find out if anyone knew who might have done it.
“Thanks, Amanda.” He went into his office, closing the door and setting his briefcase on his desk. He pulled out a folder, booting his computer. He opened the folder on the desk and gazed on the picture there, and smiled a little.
“You are quite the elusive one, Miss Allison.” It was a picture of the young lady in question, in red armor and a blue visor. He had done a little research on the lady known to DATA as “Justice-Blue”. He had her name, which was more than DATA had.
She wanted to remain anonymous, to have a secret identity. She hadn’t divulged any information. She did marketing for R&D for some mysterious power company. He’d spent the better part on Sunday looking up power companies, and finally gave up after he kept going around and around in circles on the Web.
He did a vanity search and found nothing. A marketer would have a website presence. Maybe since she was working for this company, she now wanted to stay under the radar. Maybe she wanted to be exclusive to them. Maybe whatever they were working on was so hush-hush that only a select few should be allowed to see it.
He turned to his computer and pulled up the calendar. Might as well get Jorge out of the way, so he added him to his 9:30 slot, giving him a half-hour. Then he dumped the noontime meeting, and put a call into DATA.
“This is Maximilian Snow. I’m going to need someone at one of my warehouses, and I have the perfect person in mind…”
Words: 593 🙁
Inspiration: This blog
Music: Nada