Genesis - Keith R. A. DeCandido [19]
When they were done, Alice paid for the meal with her corporate credit card. The old woman at the front asked how the meal was.
"It's the best I've ever had." Lisa was only slightly exaggerating.
"Bene, bene. You should come back."
"I hope I have the chance to," she said with a look at Alice.
Alice, tellingly, said nothing.
The same Lincoln Town Car with the same jowled driver was parked in front of the restaurant, parked right under a no standing sign. Lisa wondered if it had been there all along, and whether or not anyone from the Raccoon Police Department had come by.
Probably the driver looked at the cop with his bright blue eyes and said that he worked for Umbrella, and then the cop moved along.
Lisa pulled her battered old coat tightly around herself. She suddenly felt much colder than warranted even by the fall temperatures.
The ride back to the mansion was unusually quiet. Although the lunch had been full of gossip, the tension level had risen steadily as it progressed. Lisa knew that something was going on, but she for damn sure didn't know what, and this sudden silent treatment from Alice wasn't helping matters.
As the Town Car pulled onto the road that led to the mansion, Alice suddenly leaned forward. "This is fine, we'll walk the rest of the way."
"We will?"
Alice nodded, opening the door. "Charge it to my account."
"Sure," the driver said nonchalantly.
For the first time since she paid the check, Alice smiled. It was that odd half-smile of hers again.
The wind chose the moment that Lisa exited the Town Car to whip up, sending the autumn leaves whirling around her feet. The driver closed the door after holding it open for both of them, favored each woman with a smile, then got back into the vehicle and departed, leaving more whirling leaves in his wake, making a noise like paper being crumpled.
They stood in a wooded area with the giant mansion in sight, maybe twenty minutes' walk. Without preamble, Alice started walking toward it, not bothering to look to see if Lisa would follow.
Still wondering what the other woman was playing at, Lisa followed.
"I know what you're doing," Alice said. "It took a while, but it wasn't too hard to figure out once I knew what I was looking for."
"Huh?" Lisa said, a hand of ice closing around her heart. She hoped that her genuine confusion about what was suddenly happening was enough to make it sound like she really didn't know what Alice was talking about.
As the pair of them passed by a winged statue, Alice said, "I didn't forget to change my password, Lisa."
Lisa stopped walking. In addition to the statue, which looked like it belonged in a museum's Ancient Greece section, they were surrounded by broken Doric columns, giving the area a Hellenic feel. The wind blew more strongly, and she pulled her coat tightly around her, the chill from more than the weather.
"What's going on, Alice?"
"I actually didn't put it together until last week. Something about you has bugged me since you started, but you'd already been checked out, and there wasn't anything amiss in your file. Your story as to why you turned us down six years ago but came to us looking for work now checked out, too. It certainly tracked with the ups and downs of the job market in your field. But something was nagging me."
Alice's blue eyes grew as cold as the wind that continued to keep the brown leaves swirling.
"I got where I am now by paying attention to things that nag me. So I just kept an eye on you. Then I noticed something."
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, silver device. About the size of a PDA, Lisa recognized it as something Umbrella's techs had been working on: a mini-DVD player that their employer would introduce onto the market as soon as the mini-DVDs they'd pioneered—about a third of the size of the common disc—became commonplace.
Alice activated the device, and the screen lit up first