Genesis - Keith R. A. DeCandido [8]
Alice returned the look. "You don't sculpt?"
"Uh, no."
"Then who's the kiln for?"
Suddenly, Spence leaned his head back and laughed. "Oh, Jesus. I know what it is. Back when I filled out my application here, they asked me for hobbies. I don't have any hobbies—at least not any that aren't work-related. I mean, yeah, I run and work out, but that's all for the job. So I said I like making pottery. I just pulled it out of my ass."
Laughing, Alice said, "Too bad; it's a nice ass."
Spence grinned.
"Fine," Alice said, "whatever. That still doesn't answer my question."
"What question?"
"What's your story? The place is littered with ex-law-enforcement types who wound up here because it sucks everywhere else. There's got to be a story there."
"Actually, that's not the reason I came to Umbrella."
"Oh?"
Spence re-folded the easy chair, got up, and joined her on the bed. He bounced on it a few times as he sat, like a little kid playing trampoline with his butt. "Nice. Firm." He was, she noticed, looking at her body rather than her face.
"It's definitely a good mattress."
"Who says I was talking about the mattress?"
"Slow down, Percival," she said with a grin.
"Hey, you're the one who said I have a nice ass."
"You still haven't answererd my question."
"You already answered it for me. I was doing just fine as a cop in Chicago, but Umbrella has one thing that no police department in this country has."
She gave him a questioning look when he didn't elaborate right away.
"Massive amounts of cash. I'm doing the same work I was doing with the CPD, but for about five times the salary." He leaned back on the bed, propping himself on his elbows. "Better pension, too. Not to mention getting to live in a big mansion with a beautiful woman for three months."
Alice got up from the bed and laughed. "You don't give up, do you?"
"I'm persistent. I don't give up until I get what I want. It's what makes me good at my job."
"Good thing, 'cause you certainly won't get by on your looks."
"Hey! What about my nice ass?"
"Why do you think I was looking at your ass instead of your face?"
Spence mimicked being wounded in the chest. "Ouch! Shot to the heart."
"Don't worry, Spence—if I ever really shoot you, it'll be between the eyes."
"That isn't very romantic."
Her voice grew serious. "This job isn't romantic. It's mostly boring, mindless, and irritating, right up until they need you to perform, at which point it's exciting, nerve-racking, and requires you to be either absolutely perfect or really really dead." She looked away. "Romance doesn't enter into it."
Even as she spoke the words, she thought about living with Spence for three months, babysitting the secret door in the mirror, checking people as they came in and out, filling out daily reports that she could, after five years, do in her sleep, and otherwise just sitting around going through the books in that library or the DVDs in the sitting room.
A breeting sound echoed through the high-ceilinged mansion. Alice tensed, then realized that it was the cordless phone on the nightstand next to the bed.
She walked over, picked it up, and hit the talk button. "Yes?"
"Janus," said the voice on the other side.
That, Alice knew, was the code word indicating that this was a security call. She immediately hung up the phone and moved into the living room. Spence got up and followed her.
Next to the Louis XIV couch—which Alice had been afraid to sit in when she first arrived for fear that a museum guard would yell at her not to touch the exhibits—sat a beautiful wooden end table that looked to be as much an antique as the couch. It doubled as a cabinet, probably originally intended to store drinks or table linens or some such. This one housed a red phone that was attached to a phone line installed under the end table via a hole drilled into the bottom that probably cut the piece's value by eighty percent. The receiver was attached to the hook via a good old-fashioned spiral phone cord. As good as telephonic security could be, a hardwired line was infinitely easier