Complicated Shadows by James D.F. Hannah

Author:James D.F. Hannah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Down & Out Books

Chapter 27

I took a self-imposed exile from Morgantown after Maggie and I separated. It was a not-proud combination of self-preservation and cowardice, wanting to avoid memories of the two of us, or that slimmest of possibility of seeing her somewhere. In a college town, there are only so many places to go, and so many places to hide.

But she had moved to Philadelphia. Going on vacations with a new boyfriend. Guess that made everything safe now.

Woo hoo. Goddammit.

Red Salt LLC was in a business park close to I-79, overlooking the Monongahela River. I drove up a narrow dirt road, passing a tall sign with a lot of blank spaces available for company names. A banner at the bottom proclaimed about office space available for lease.

A slick-looking building, long and narrow, gray stone and steel and plenty of windows, rested at the end of a narrow road, encircled by a near-empty parking lot. The lobby was stainless steel and marble, full of vintage-modern furniture not getting much use, all as pristine as a sunrise. The guard at the front desk glanced up from his newspaper long enough to see I wasn’t carrying an AK-47, then went back to reading.

I took a two-floor elevator ride up and walked down a hallway as empty and quiet as an Old West street moments before the gunfight. Red Salt LLC was the only name on a door. AC/DC rattled the pressed-wood door, and Angus Young’s 30-year-old guitar riffs threatened to throw my hair back once I cracked the door open.

The office’s design was by the editors of Frat House Monthly. Folding chairs sat in the waiting area. Someone thumb-tacked posters to the wall, all for Japanese horror movies, divided between flicks where a giant creature laid waste to a city, a black-eyed ghost crawled out an air vent, and someone did something indescribable to someone with knitting needles.

I followed the music until I found Patrick Price and Vikram Kaur at desks pushed up against one another, their computers set back to back. The stereo was on a low bookshelf next to the desks.

I knocked on the door. Neither of them moved. I banged on the door harder. They kept staring at their computers. I walked over to the electrical outlet and flipped off the power strip. The computer screens go blank and the stereo went silent.

Price needed to back off the steroids; he was so pumped up, he couldn’t drop his arms to his side. If his veins popped much more, they’d be external. He had a neck tattoo now—always classy—of a giant spider web that reached out and across the front of his throat.

Kaur had rounded out, with longer hair aimed in a dozen directions. His T-shirt read “Life Is Simple: Eat, Sleep, Code.”

Price raised out of his chair. “What the fuck do you—”

I held up my hand. “Tone it back, ‘roid rage. I need to talk about Isaac Martin. Or McCoy. Whatever the fuck he called himself.”

Price shifted his shoulders and twisted his head around.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.