Trellis: Trellis Trilogy (One) Read online

  “You need to focus on Fort Knox, Coughlin. Get some rest you look like death. From what I understand about this mission you are going to need all your T’s crossed and i’s dotted. When I arrive, I want to meet every reporter ahead of time that will be in the vault with us. Period. If I can’t determine who will pose a problem to you, then The United States of America will realistically be out of business.”

  Coughlin nodded once at her, knowing she was right and explained a little more, “Fort Knox will have important investors present. They are smart and will be on the lookout for anything suspicious and we can’t take for granted that they don’t know anything about you and your,” He paused and mused for the right word, “ability. You may be a target. Have you been contacted by any other country?”

  “Why are you giving me so much information, Coughlin? And why would you think another country would be in contact with me?” She asked, trying to poke around for more information.

  “Don’t you hang out with shady people, D? It was a legit question. I don’t trust you, you could be working for another country. Are you?” Coughlin asked, as he tried to read her face.

  “The only shady people I hang with lately are the ones in this SUV. I don’t like working for you what makes you think I would like working for another country? And if you really thought I was working for another country, one~ the information you gave me is false, or two~ you don’t really believe I am working for anyone else. Since I can read your thoughts, it is number two.”

  “This isn’t a game, D.”

  “Why does everyone keep accusing me of games today?” She smiled sarcastically thinking back to Banks accusing her of the same thing.

  There was definite worry in his voice, this could be why his eyes have been baggy, and his thoughts jumbled… maybe… His thoughts told her every US base was on high alert and the state department was scrambling information together. No doubt her next job.

  D opened the door and Coughlin reached out grabbing her arm to stop her from leaving the SUV.

  “D, Fort Knox isn’t a game, please focus on it only. Don’t muddle this up? Your country is depending on you.”

  “It is not my country,” she clipped as her face grew morose.

  Before she stepped out of the SUV, D leaned forward to the two agents in the front seat and mockingly whispered, “Too bad we won’t be working together, I’m sure we would have been best of friends.”

  The Coughlin’s lackey agents wouldn’t turn to look at her; they had been briefed not to make eye-contact by Coughlin. D knew for certain they were not trained to handle someone that could manipulate their minds. Their thoughts reeked of fear, which again showed how new they were to fieldwork.

  Coughlin spoke up with genuine concern but the concern wasn’t for D, it was for the mission, “D, be careful, we are counting on you next week. There are stakes at risk that reach further than we could ever imagine. No more games.” He spoke to her like a child most of the time, reiterating as if she were too dumb to understand the scope of what she had been asked to do.

  D nodded at him and stepped out of the SUV into the howling wind, settled her black boots onto the dirty wet curb and glanced around at her surroundings. She did not intend to leave DC. Not today anyway, and she sent the three of them on their way, far from her. She tried to wipe as much as she could from Coughlin and the two newbie agents thoughts about the last hour and placed the thought of walking her to the airport check-point themselves. Too many details had happened and D knew the memories may pop up as dreams eventually if she didn’t do a thorough job of changing their perceptions.

  D walked away retracing every step in her mind like a rewind button of the day. She hoped that the CCD mole- Agent Casey, would not untie her neat little plan. She needed more information about the mole at CCD Headquarters before that assumption could be checked off her list as insignificant.

  Chapter Three~

  D knew all the money she had in the briefcase when the CCD picked her up had probably been marked and recorded, she couldn’t use any of it. Even with the knowledge Coughlin wiped the building clean of her time there, she couldn’t chance it, not today. Agent Banks seemed too thorough in the short time the interview lasted and assuming they kept no trace of her would be careless. She didn’t have time for careless.

  D didn’t like the taste of coffee but with enough sugar stirred in it was tolerable and today was a day that called for caffeine with or without cash. She walked to a coffee vendor at the entrance of the building and huddled under his bright red umbrella out of the sputtering rain. D smiled widely at him as the vendor handed her a cup of coffee she didn’t have to pay for. She grabbed ten packets of pure sugar and began ripping them quickly and pouring them in the hot liquid.

  The paying customer behind her loudly fumed, “Man, why doesn’t she have to pay?”

  “She did pay,” the vendor, retorted back holding up an empty hand.

  “You done and lost your mind old man! There is no jack in your hand.”

  “Listen guy, do you want coffee or not!” The vendor screamed back.

  D strolled away as she enjoyed her ‘free’ cup of coffee, making another mental note to pay today’s coffee vendor victim back at a later date. D needed to clear her mind, process her thoughts, and wash the day away with a hot shower. Sauntering past the airport entry straight to a cab on the end of a terribly long line of cabs, she opened the back door, and slid inside. She cracked open the briefcase and pulled out a tiny little electronic chip that had been slipped in by Agent Hinkle back at the CCD headquarters.

  “Newbie Agent Hinkle, no wonder Banks’ seemed annoyed by you. This must have been in the Spies and Disguises 101 Banks was rambling about.” She mused, as she looked the device over.

  D asked the cabby to drive her to China Wok Restaurant about two minutes from the airport. He looked in the rearview mirror at his new passenger and saw a surprisingly young girl that looked like trouble with her brightly colored hair and black painted lips. D scowled back at him and pushed the encounter from his mind. After arriving she stepped out of the cab without paying the driver, the cabby reached over, placed something invisible into the cash box, and hoarsely said, “Thank you,” driving away.

  D ambled up to a white delivery car outside the restaurant, jumped over a few rain puddles; she glanced around, placed the tracker on the underside of the bumper, then smiled to herself, ‘This should keep them busy if they are still tracking me.’

  D walked down the opposite side of the street to another sitting cab. She started to open the cab door when a pregnant woman and husband rushed out of a building and started hailing for the cab frantically.

  D sighed loudly, opened her cab door all the way, and said, “Here.”

  “Thank you, Miss?” The man said exasperatedly as he shielded his pregnant wife from the drenching rain. D could read the couple’s thoughts, they weren’t sure they could trust the orange haired and black painted lip girl.

  She pulled the hood of her trench coat tighter around her face, “Yes, yes. I’ll take the next one.” but she really wanted to say, ‘No, you get the next cab I’m exhausted.’ The conscientious behavior D had been exhibiting lately was new to her. Six months ago, she wouldn’t have cared.

  “Thank you, Miss. We think she may be in labor.”

  “You’re welcome and you better hurry. That baby isn’t going to like being born in this old cab.” She said and forced a smiled at them both. She had been trying to be friendlier than usual with everyone and she knew she sounded fake.

  The cab drove off while she stood on the empty street under a store awning and waited for another taxi. Soon she heard the thoughts of a group of men coming up behind her, a gang.

  “Whoa, what is a cute little thing like you doing out here in the rain all by yourself?” One of the members said while the others made snorting noises egging him on.

  D has had a long day and these men had decided to do this to the wrong girl. She spun around grinning.


  “I usually give stupid fools a chance to run but I don’t believe fatty would get very far.” She said eyeing the leader. The men surrounded her as she continued, “I have had a bad day and you clowns are going to pay for it. I was detained in handcuffs earlier by dopes, had to be reprimanded by a fat man, whom talked to me like I was a child I might add, and I have orange hair color starting to run down my face. You guys have no clue at the level of irritation I have for stupid fools today.”

  “What did you call me?” The leader grunted as he twisted his neck at her. He had a railroad of tattoos that marked up every square inch of his flabby neck.

  D took a deep breath and smiled again, “A. Stupid. Fool.”

  One of the men stepped towards D and grabbed the briefcase. She let him have the metal briefcase because it fell perfectly into what she needed to do next. Another man pulled out a gun from his waistband and started to lift it up towards her head for intimidation. She was done with this nonsense.

  As she backed away, she turned her frustration and anger towards each of the men in front of her. Suddenly she found herself orchestrating a movie fight scene.

  The man with the gun was easy, she grabbed his mind and had him pistil whip the tattooed leader, and unforgivingly busted his nose and cheek open. The man that took her briefcase swung it at the rest of his friends in the group but they ducked, that plan didn’t go as well as D thought it could have. She puckered her face in disappointment and tried again. The man with the briefcase twisted around on one foot, stretching his arms out tight holding the case like a swinging ninja sword, finally gashing them a few times, finally dropping the suitcase to the wet ground. The action of the briefcase weapon started a whirlwind of punching exchanges between all of the men.

  D stood in the middle of the chaos having control of each of their minds. She was unscathed and calm, moving slightly from left to right to avoid any contact from flying fists. Only after quite a bit of blood had ran down the men’s crumpled faces and torn clothing, a few shattered noses, and a few broken hands did she start to feel satisfied with the outcome. However, she only made it stop once the men were each lying on the ground in pain and could barely move. She stepped over the leader to the man that took the briefcase, held her hand out, and the briefcase was scooted back to her. D then looked the wet briefcase over, wiped, and dried the sides off on one of the men lying on the ground. She then opened it up, exposing the cash and told them each to give her their weapons. Without getting off the ground, they reached up while moaning and groaning and placed the items in the briefcase.

  “Men, I want you to repeat after me, ‘I am a stupid fool’.”

  “I am a stupid fool.” They all lamented in unison. Like taking candy from a baby.

  ‘Controlling people and reading minds does have its many, many perks,’ she thought.

  “Good. Now say, I will never bother another woman again and I will get a job.” They repeated it.

  Guidance was all they needed.

  Now you can see why she was such a value and a threat.

  She hailed the next cab and asked to be dropped off two more times, one subway ride and one more cab ride—‘Security and overkill,’ she thought.

  D asked the final cabby driver to take her to Binder Bookstore, she owned the tall building, and lived on the top floor. She had always felt she could never be too sure, she assumed she was followed at all times, and for good reason her home was hidden among a Chinese owned bookstore. Obscure and not your typical hiding place, at least she hoped it wasn’t.

  Entering the old bookstore the door jingled it’s familiar tune from the silver bells that hung on the hinge. An old Chinese man stood up startled. He was dressed in a white shirt with black dress pants, his usual outfit.

  He looked her way and in his broken English cried out, “Oh, just you!”

  “Yes, Mr. Zhao, just me.”

  “You hair look like fire. Ridiculous,” he spat and sat back down.

  “Yes, Mr. Zhao, fire.” D shrugged, knowing he would not have approved of her orange and purple hairdo; she avoided him this morning when she left the building.

  Her stride was quick and her objective was to get past him quickly, he was scrutinizing her whole outfit choice today in his native Chinese language.

  ‘I wish I knew Chinese!’ she screamed on the inside.

  She worked her way past the tightly packed, overflowing bookshelves and tables then entered into the stairwell and began her climb up five stories. The floors between the bookstore and her loft on the top floor were vacant, sort of. She owned the whole building. She finally reached a metal door, unlocked three locks and stepped inside. She pressed a few buttons on her alarm, a black box scanned her thumbprint, D shut the door, and secured all three locks again.

  ‘It always feels so good to be home, well one of my homes anyway,’ she thought. She walked along the large world maps she had hung on the wall, past the clocks showing different time zones and tossed the briefcase next to the long white leather sofa, hung her wet black and white trench coat on a hook, and headed for the shower.

  She disrobed and turned the water on full blast, wetting her hair, the bright colors melted away revealing her natural brown hair.

  ‘Thank goodness the orange and purple didn’t melt away so easily in the rain today,’ she thought.

  She pulled at the silver ball that had been glued to the corner of her lip, tossing it on the sink— ‘I am such a fraud,’ she said aloud and sighed. She scrubbed the dark eye makeup off. She tried hard not to look at the scar Trellis gave her on her lower left hip when she was younger, not easy to do. Although, it was hard not to see all her small scars since there were many she had from the island. The one on her hip was less of a scar and more a branding of a feathered wings that had been melted into her skin. Getting the feathered wings tattooed over had been a reoccurring thought lately. D pushed that thought out of her mind and dried off. She pulled on the maxi white t-shirt and then ran a brush through her soaked short hair. Her brain wouldn’t stop the mental activity of her eventful day.

  In the kitchen, she opened a clear fridge door and pulled out a vitamin shake. Eating actual food seemed like something she hadn’t done in forever and it showed in her thin frame. Drinking her meals had become habit.

  D walked to her bedroom, ready for bed, and she imagined how good it was going to feel to shut her eyes. Sleeping would be her escape, at least she hoped.

  Her bedroom looked like a normal bedroom if you count a large four-legged platform in the corner, ten feet high that her bed sat on as normal. She needed this extra lift off the ground to silence the strange voices she could hear from downstairs. The raised level her bed sat on had a thick black wrought iron banister tracing the platform’s border, a flat screen TV hung from the ceiling at the foot of her bed with nightstands holding beautiful glowing grey lamps on both side of her messy, pillow-covered bed.

  Against the wall was a floor to ceiling bookshelf full of books of every kind. A black wrought ladder that matched her bed railing leaned against the book shelving that slid from side to side to help her reach the upper shelves. Reading was an escape for her and she loved diving into new worlds.

  She tossed the now empty shake can in the almost overflowing trash then climbed the open stairs to her bunkbed-on-steroids. It wasn’t nighttime but today had worn her out, mentally. She ascended the small set of stairs to her bed and climbed in. The cold soft sheets felt wonderful against her skin. D scooted a remote control on the nightstand towards her. She pressed a few buttons and the shades around her bedroom’s oversized tall windows shut tightly, blocking any daytime out.

  D lay there processing what had taken place, agent Banks and his life was obviously worth looking into. Why couldn’t she read his thoughts? Coughlin was right, she should have been able to get out of there whenever she wanted. D could control every agent in that building, why couldn’t she control Banks? ‘Am I losing it?’ She wondered.

  Thinking back t
o the only times D had not been able to control people, it was on Trellis. Rationalizing about the island always made her remember the aftermath of the surgeries and the torture she endured. Also, recalling what her shaved head and the stitches looked like only brought her pain. She thought back to the day she looked at her newly shaved head in the bathroom mirror for the first time so many years before. Again, she tried to push the thought out of her head.

  She then wondered aloud, ‘— Banks must be an anomaly, unless, he too, was an experiment at some point by Dr. Salvaggi? Surely not, he seemed to take his CCD job too serious, like he had been there forever. It would serve no purpose to place him in that position to chase down diminutive crimes. He can’t be a product of Trellis… I wouldn’t wish that on anyone...’

  She finally closed her eyes, they felt so good closed as she drifted off.

  Chapter Four~

  The evening after picking D up at the CCD headquarters, Secretary of Defense, Peter Coughlin chewed over his day. His home sat quietly in an old established, private subdivision in Montgomery. The day’s events played over in his mind, mostly trying to make sense of D’s actions. She seemed to be out of hand. Ever since Trellis released her to live in the states, D seemed to be getting more and more independent. The whole arrangement, he thought, was going to backfire, and soon. Coughlin sat back in his soft oversized, dark leather office chair and gazed up at his shrine of accomplishments over the years on the bookshelves. D, he thought, could bring him and his life’s work to an embarrassing end.

  His wife entered through the enormous doorway carrying a jumbo-sized mug with a medicated teabag steeping in hot water. The mug she carried towards her husband was the mug they purchased last summer while vacationing out west. There was a small little shop tucked back off the side of the road in Colorado and she asked if they could stop. Of course, Peter Coughlin would have never stopped, but her Peter Rabbit Love-bug would. He would do anything for his wife and she as well for him. She was ready for bed and her floor length nightgown was an indication she planned on falling asleep soon.