FWD: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRLS?Based solely on the glaring grammatical error in the subject line, he assumed there was some kind of virus attached to the email, but he didn't really care. It's not like it was his computer. If something went wrong, it was IT's problem. Not his.
Click.
His screen was quickly filled with the image of a green-eyed brunette that looked oddly familiar. Above the picture, a headline echoed the grammar-free subject line of the email: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRLS? He felt he had probably seen "this girls" somewhere before, but he couldn't pin it down. He scrolled past the picture to find out if there was something he was supposed to do if he had seen her.
A ringing pulled him away from his computer. The phone was demanding his attention.
He hated the phone.
He closed his eyes.
Slowly, resentfully, he opened his eyes and picked up the phone. "Hello?"
"Is that really how you're supposed to answer an official line?" The female voice was playful, sweet and becoming more familiar everyday. He let a smile cross his lips.
"Probably not," he said casually, "but it'll teach them to put me on phone duty. Never. Again."
"When do you get off?"
"Gardyloo."
"Shut up! You know what I mean." He could practically hear her grinning.
"Right now if I can swing it right."
"Gardyloo," she said enthusiastically.
He chuckled to himself. He liked this one. "Not bad, rookie. Where are you?"
"Lexington."
"Be there in a few."
"You better be," she teased, hanging up the phone.
He hung up his receiver and quickly scanned the room to see who else was on duty. On the far side of the room, he saw his mark and zoomed in.
"Hey, Qualm!" He waved the agent over to his desk.
"What is it, Haze?"
"Something's come up," he said quickly, professionally (silently adding 'gardyloo' to the end of his sentence), "and I need to get to Lexington. Can you cover for me?" He gestured toward the phone. "I'm the only one here who can get there fast enough." It was the truth . . . more or less.
Qualm looked hesitantly at the phone, weighing the scales of protocol vs. purpose. "Alright. But make it quick."
"I'll do my best," he said with a grin, fading into a cloud of black smoke.
Qualm had become almost too easy to manipulate ever since the split. Back when he was just a liaison to the Archers, he had always seemed so mysterious and calculating, but now he was just another stiff following orders. It was almost as if his other persona was just a well-calculated order from somewhere higher up. Or maybe he just hadn't realized back then what he was getting himself into.
The flight to the Lexington base took hardly no time at all. He circled around inside the base a few times, staying as translucent as possible so he could have some time to just look at her. Melanie Menteur was absolutely stunning. Her short brunette hair gave her a young, playful look and framed her face perfectly to draw attention to her shining green eyes. Not that they needed help drawing attention to themselves. They could almost literally light up a room and the longer he looked at them, the brighter they seemed to get. She was sitting in one of the soft lobby chairs with her long, toned legs crossed and her hands placed delicately on the fringe of her uniform's pink skirt.
He caught himself grinning . . . or at least the vaporic equivalent of grinning.
He materialized next to her in the chair next to her.
Where others would have never even realized he had appeared until he let them, she noticed right away. She hopped out of her seat excitedly and floated to the arm of his chair where she perched delicately, immediately locking lips with him.
He didn't question it or worry about whether someone was watching. He just went with it. It felt natural. Right. He felt her hand running through his hair and relished it until a sudden, sharp, and very painful pinch on the back of his neck snapped him out of it and forced him to pull away from her. She looked at him with a playful sort of hunger and concern.
"I'm sorry," she said sheepishly. "Guess I got a little excited."
He reached back and felt the spot on his neck where the pain had originated. Oddly, that spot wasn't quite as solid as the rest of him was. (Gardyloo.)
He leapt up from the chair and turned around to find a pillar of white smoke rising from behind the chair. It formed into a large, vaguely humanoid shape. Flames erupted along what could be described as its arms and it seemed to flex at their arrival.
Not her. She couldn't be one. Why her?
A high pitched, repeating tone seemed to squeal from somewhere near the smoke creature. It continued, getting louder and louder, persistently louder and louder until . . .
He opened his eyes.
He picked up the receiver.
"Hello?"
"Hi! I'm calling on behalf of Providence Bank. Your debit card has been deactivated. Please enter your sixteen-digit card number . . . " Nice try, faceless thieves.
"I like turtles," he said loudly, imitating the zombie he so often felt he was, and hung up the phone.
He turned back to the girl's face on his computer to read the words under the picture. He was oddly interested in what he was supposed to do now that he was pretty sure he had seen "this girls". The font was significantly smaller than the header had been, and caught him completely off-guard.
If you have, please call this number and tell her to break up with her boyfriend. I'm her mother, I hate him and she won't listen to me. Maybe she'll listen to you!There was a number listed below.
He laughed, seriously considered calling the number, just to see what happened, then decided against it. Instead, he simply forwarded the email to a small list of people he thought would appreciate it.
He wasn't quite ready for that much excitement.
Maybe someone else was.
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