Flash 05: A Friend Indeed

"He assaulted you?" I asked.

"Yeah. Right there in my own home. Gloria laughed and told him to kick my ass more if he wanted to. I fought back, but in the end, they left me on the floor. Warned me against calling the cops. Said bad things could happen if I did. And they did."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I called the cops after they left. They came and began accusing me of domestic violence, claimed there was a report that I had abused the children and nearly took me to jail. Imagine that! I'm the one who gets beaten, and they want to take me to jail. Over a false charge. And that was just the beginning." Just then, his phone buzzed. He looked at it and showed it to me.

"Ross and I are coming to your place this afternoon," the message said. "Be there with this month's support check or else. 1:30 pm."

"I've already paid all my support for this month," he said. "I even have the bank statement showing I've paid it."

"Does she do this all the time?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "It never ends."

"Alright," I said. "Let me call someone." I grabbed my phone and called Drew Henson, the lawyer I worked with nearly a year ago when I considered divorcing Ginger. The receptionist put me through to him right away.

"Mr. Drake," he said enthusiastically. "How are things going? Do you need my services after all?"

"Yes, Drew, I do, but not for me. It's for a friend who happens to work for me," I said. He listened as I explained the situation to him. "Is there anything you can do? File an order of protection or something? This Ross guy has already assaulted him at least once before."

"You need this by 1:30, you say?" Drew asked.

"Yes," I said.

"That doesn't give me much time," he said. "I'll do what I can and meet you two there. Give me the address." I gave it to him. "Alright, let me get going on this. I'll see you there at 1:30."

"Thanks, Drew, I appreciate this," I said. I put my phone away and turned to my friend, who sat with his head in his hands. I could see the tears coursing down his face. I could tell this was a man nearly at the end of his rope. Someone is definitely going to pay for this, I thought.

"It's going to be alright, Bill," I said. "Drew Henson is working on something. I'll go with you to the condo. He'll meet us there. Why don't you get a cup of coffee and collect yourself."

"Yeah, thanks," he said, heading toward the Keurig I kept in the office.

"That poor man," Ginger said in my mind. "He doesn't deserve any of this."

"No, he doesn't," I responded. I felt two other presences in my mind -- the children. I wondered what they would think of all this if they understood what Bill was going through. After filling a mug with coffee, Bill came back and sat down.

"Feel better?" I asked.

"A bit," he said.

"So, did Gloria ever give you any reason for what she did?" I asked.

"Claimed she wanted 'excitement' in her life. Said she didn't want to spend the rest of her life married to a 'salesman.' Worse yet, she said she had been screwing Ross for a couple months already and decided she didn't want to hide it from me any more," he said.

"So basically, she got what she wanted," I said.

"No, she didn't," he told me.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"She wanted to control me. She still does. That's why she keeps harassing me the way she does," he said. I looked and saw the app had finished processing Bill's brain feed.

"It's done," I said. "Why don't I show you how to use this thing?"

"Sure," he said. I spent the next couple hours showing him the features of the application. He took right to it and I could tell he enjoyed working with the application.

"How would you like to go through Gloria's and Ross' brain feeds?" I asked.

"That would be fan-fucking-tastic," he said. "But how are we going to get them?"

"Leave that to me," I said. "I'm going with you back to the condo. It'll be a piece of cake." Just then, Ginger let me know that lunch was ready. I didn't realize it was that late in the day. Guess time does fly when you're having fun, I thought.

"You ready for some lunch?" I asked Bill.

"Is it that time already?" he asked.

"Yep. Ginger made up some olive and cream cheese sandwiches," I said.

"Olive and cream cheese?" he asked.

"Yeah, you ought to try one. I can make myself sick eating those things," I said.

"Well, okay," he said. I grabbed the folder with Bill's employment stuff for Ginger to send to Nathan. We went to the kitchen where Ginger had the sandwiches already on plates for us. She also piled some chips and dip on the plates as well.

"The kids have already had their lunches," she told me. "So you two eat up and I'm going to spend some tummy time with them."

"Okay, sounds good," I said. "After we eat, we're going to the condo. Gloria and her boyfriend are going to meet us there. Would you mind making sure Nathan gets Bill's paperwork?" Nathan was Jack Peabody's nephew and the man who took care of the company's accounts.

"Sure, no problem," she said. We ate our sandwiches and gathered our things to go. On the way out the door, I stopped and gave Ginger a kiss. Then I smiled down at the children.

"Daddy's getting ready to go burn a bitch," I said with a smile. "Would you like to help Daddy burn a bitch?" Their eyes briefly flashed and they smiled up at me. "You make Daddy so proud," I said as I gave them each a kiss.

"You're so bad," Ginger said in my mind.

"You know it, baby," I responded with a wink.

"You know, Cam, sometimes you really scare me," Bill said after we got in the car.

"You haven't seen anything yet," I told him as we sped to the condo. "You're not getting cold feet on me, are you?"

"Oh hell no," he said with a smile. We got to the condo at 1:15 and saw Drew had already made it. He held a folder as he waited at the door for us.

"I was wondering when you two would get here," he said.

"Sorry, had to eat lunch," I said. I introduced Drew and Bill and waited for Bill to open the door. When we got inside, Drew turned to Bill.

"You got a buck or two on you?" he asked. Bill pulled out his wallet and looked.

"I have a five," he said.

"That'll work," Drew said, his hand out. Bill pulled out a five dollar bill and handed it over.

"You're now officially my client," Drew said. "Let me do the talking, okay?"

"You're the boss," Bill said. A couple minutes later, we heard a knock at the door. Bill opened the door and we all saw Gloria and Ross standing there. They seemed somewhat surprised to see me and Drew in the condo. The 3-D anaglyph effect was strong with these two and I had some difficulty focusing on them as they stood there.

"Aren't you going to invite us in?" Gloria asked. Bill looked at Drew, who nodded his head.

"Yeah, I guess so," he told Gloria. They stepped inside, not sure of what to make of this development.

"Cam, it's been a long time," Gloria said nervously as she held her hand out. I took it and felt the tell-tale shock. She flinched for a moment.

"Sorry, must be static," I said as her brain feed downloaded into my mind.

"This is H. Ross Simpson," she said, pointing to the tall, muscular man with her. "Ross, this is Cameron Drake." I held out my hand, which he accepted. He also flinched as he felt the shock.

"Good to meet you, Mr. Drake," he said with a smirk. "What the fuck is up with his eyes," I heard in his mind. After I released his hand, he turned to Drew. "Drew. What an unexpected surprise. Good to see you again."

"And you, Ross," Drew said as they shook hands.

"Bill, what are these men doing here?" Gloria asked. "I thought we were going to discuss this in private."

"You can address your questions to me, Ms. Collins," Drew said. "I represent Mr. Collins now."

"Oh?" Ross asked.

"Yes," Drew said. "He tells me there's been some confusion regarding his most recent support payment. I took the liberty of checking and I see that Ms. Collins has already deposited the check -- for the full amount -- that my client sent."

"Oh... well, maybe I got it confused with something else," Gloria said.

"I doubt that, Ms. Collins," Drew said. "From what my client tells me, I suspect this was just another attempt on your part to harass my client, something the two of you have been doing quite a lot lately. Which brings me to the reason I'm here." He opened the folder and pulled out two sheets of paper. He handed one to Gloria and another to Ross.

"What's this?" Gloria asked.

"I'm glad you asked, Ms. Collins," Drew said. "That is an order of protection and you both have been officially served. In short, that order states that the two of you, and anyone working on your behalf, are ordered to remain at least 500 feet from my client, his residence and his place of employment, which currently happens to be Mr. Drake's residence. It also prohibits any contact whatsoever, be it by phone, email or text message."

"Well, I'll be sure to take this with me the next time I go to the men's room," Ross said with a smirk.

"Do with it as you see fit, Ross. In fact, you can shove it all the way up your ass if you want, but know this. If either of you violate this order, my client will have you arrested," Drew said. Ross looked like he was about to explode.

"Do you people have any idea what you're messing with?" he asked.

"Do you?" I asked him, focusing on the area around his heart muscle for just a few seconds. His face turned white as he felt a sharp pain in his chest. I released the pressure on his heart and the color returned to his face.

"What is this guy to you?" Ross asked after he caught his breath. "Why do you care what happens to him?"

"Because, asshole, he's my friend. And my employee," I told him, my eyes briefly flashing red. He and Gloria stepped back, shocked and a bit afraid. I could smell the fear emanating from him, which, oddly enough, smelled an awful lot like freshly released feces. Maybe he actually crapped his pants, I thought.

"By the way, Ross," Drew added. "I've taken a preliminary look at the divorce order and I intend to fully examine the entire file."

"Everything is in order," Ross said.

"Is it? Are you certain of that? We'll see," Drew said. "I do know that Ms. Collins hasn't exactly been following the child visitation schedule the court ordered and established with CPS. That looks to me like cause for a contempt citation. Are you advising your client to be in contempt of court?" Ross looked even more nervous now.

"The kids have been tied up with extracurricular activities and haven't been able to make it to the scheduled visits," Gloria said.

"How convenient," Drew said. "Perhaps you can explain it to the judge."

"Now see here, Drew," Ross began before I interrupted him.

"SHUT UP! Just shut up," I declared. "Look. The two of you need to get the fuck outta my house and stay away from Bill. And don't ever come back. Understand?" They looked at each other for a moment, then nodded their heads.

"All right," Ross said. "We'll back off." But his mind wasn't finished. "But we'll be back -- soon," I heard in his thoughts. "C'mon, Gloria, let's go." They turned and left the condo. Bill slammed the door behind them.

"That went well," Bill said. Drew and I chuckled.

"I get the feeling we haven't seen the last of those two," I said.

"Listen, I have to get back to court, but I wanna take a couple days and go through your file, Bill," Drew said. "Then I'd like for the two of us to sit down and go over everything. That is, if your boss can spare you for a few hours," he added, looking at me.

"Of course," I said.

"I don't know that I can afford to pay you right now," Bill said.

"Don't worry about it, Bill, I'll take care of it," I said.

"Are you sure?" my old friend asked.

"Hey, what are friends for?" I responded.

"All right, well, I'll be in touch. Call me if anything happens," Drew said, shaking our hands. Bill and I sat down on the couch after he left. Bill started to say something, but I held up my hand as I was connecting to Gloria's mind to see what the two of them were doing. At that moment, they were in Ross' car, talking about what just happened.

"You said this would be a piece of cake," Gloria said angrily.

"I wasn't expecting this," he told her. "What do you know about this Cameron Drake? The name is vaguely familiar but I can't quite place it."

"He's an old friend of Bill's," she said. "They've known each other forever." Ross punched some buttons on his dash and I could hear the sound of a phone ringing. Then a man's voice spoke through the speaker in the car.

"Jenkins," the man said.

"Al, this is Ross. I got a job for you."

"What's up?" the man at the other end said.

"I need you to do a deep dive on someone. A Cameron Drake. And I need everything you can get me like, yesterday," Ross said.

"Want me to tail him?" Jenkins asked.

"Not yet," Ross said. "Just do a check. I wanna know everything there is to know about him."

"Alright," Jenkins said. "I'll be in touch."

"Make it fast," Ross said.

"On it," Jenkins said before ending the call. Ross turned to Gloria.

"What do we do now?" she asked.

"We wait," Ross said. I disconnected from her mind and looked at Bill.

"What's going on?" he asked. "You spaced out on me there for a couple minutes."

"I connected to Gloria's mind to see what the two of them were up to," I said.

"And?"

"Seems Ross has taken an interest in me, personally," I said. "Come on, let's get back to the office. I'll get you started on these brain feeds." We went back to the house and made our way to the office, where I downloaded the two feeds. After they had processed, I set Bill up at his workstation.

"So, where do I start?" he asked.

"There's no need and certainly no time to go through everything," I said. "The application has a search feature that works a lot like Google. You can enter search terms just like you would there, specify a date range and see what you get."

"What kind of terms do you think I should use?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe something they might say to each other in a conversation," I said.

"You mean, like, 'kill Bill,' or something?" he asked.

"Why not?" I responded. "Give it a shot. See what you get." He shrugged his shoulders and typed "+kill AND +Bill" in the search bar, selected the previous eighteen months for the date field and hit enter. We watched the application and were somewhat surprised when it returned five results.

The first four showed Gloria screaming in anger about something Bill had done to thwart her in the divorce. What the search tool had picked up on was her screaming that she was going to "kill Bill" for what he had done. It wasn't anything serious -- just the type of venting one might expect from a former spouse.

But the fifth entry was far more serious. This incident happened about three weeks before Bill was fired from Apex. Gloria and Ross had just finished screwing in what used to be Bill's marital bed. As Gloria lay in Ross' arms, she looked over at him.

"What are you thinking?" he asked her.

"I was wondering what it would take to get rid of Bill... forever," she said quietly. He looked at her, curious.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean, like, what would it take for him to completely disappear off the face of the Earth," she said.

"You mean, like, kill him? Kill Bill?" he asked.

"Yeah, something like that. What would it take?"

"Why would you want to do that? I thought you intended to make him miserable and broke for the rest of his life," he said.

"Yeah, I do," she said. "But I was thinking that maybe... if something happened to him, that I could get my hands on his insurance and his estate."

"You know he's changed the beneficiary of his policy," Ross said. "Everything now goes to the kids."

"Yeah, but as their mother, I would have control of it, wouldn't I?" she asked.

"Not unless he had it all put into a trust for them," Ross said. He looked at her, concerned. "Are you serious about wanting him killed?"

"I've been thinking about it a lot lately," she said. "It's his own fault, really. If he had just let me do what I wanted, everyone would be happy. Well, except maybe for Bill. He'd be my little cuckold, forced to wear a cock cage for the rest of his life and forced to be my slave. But at least we'd still be married. I'd have someone to take care of the kids for me and you'd still have exclusive rights to my body. But he screwed all that up. So tell me, what would it take?"

"There's lots of ways," Ross said. "Someone could sabotage his car. He could run into a mugger who wanted more than just his money. Why are you talking like this? Why not just let it go? You've got everything now. The house, the kids, a huge chunk of his salary."

"But I don't have everything I want. He's not under my control. I still wanna know how he managed to get into that condo he's in," she said. "He had to get the money for that from somewhere. Those condos are fairly expensive. I know he couldn't afford to pay for that himself."

"I thought you said his friend is letting him stay there," Ross said.

"That's what he said, but I don't believe him. There's something fishy going on there and I want to get to the bottom of it," she said.

"Okay, but no more talk about murder, all right? Look, Gloria, you know I love you and I'd do anything for you. Heaven knows I've put my entire career on the line with some of the motions you asked me to file against him. You know as well as I do that he never once abused you or the kids the way you claimed. If his attorney at the time wasn't so damn incompetent, I'd probably be facing all kinds of ethics charges. We'll look deeper into his finances, but seriously, I think for your sake and the sake of the kids, you need to let this go," he said.

"I guess you're right," she said. "But I still won't be happy until I can flush his ashes down the toilet." I stopped the video, marked it and gave Bill a USB drive.

"Save that to this thumb drive," I said. Bill looked at me, shocked, then took the drive and saved the video.

"She wants me murdered," he said quietly. "I don't get it. Why? What did I ever do to her to deserve this?"

"Nothing," I said. "In my opinion, she's got a screw loose and needs professional help."

"Can we take this to the police?" he asked.

"And tell them what? That we hacked into her memories? They'd put us both in the looney bin. No, this can't be used in court. But maybe Drew can use it as leverage against the two of them," I said. "Listen, Ginger needs my help with dinner. You wanna come down and get a bite to eat?"

"No, I'm not hungry, but thanks anyway. If you don't mind, I'd like to keep going through this stuff for a while," he said.

"Alright. Stay as long as you need to, just make sure the door is locked when you leave, okay?"

"Thanks, I will," he said. I went downstairs and helped Ginger set the table for dinner.

"Is Bill going to join us?" she asked.

"No, he wants to stay and go through Gloria's brain feed, see what he can find," I said. We ate dinner, then settled into the front room to relax and unwind. Ginger was shocked when I told her what we found so far.

"Do you think maybe you should get Max and Adrestia involved?" she asked.

"No, I think it's time I learned to work without a net," I said. "Besides, Bill is my friend, and I want to be the one to help him. If it gets too bad, though, I'll reach out to them."

"It's a shame you can't go to the police with this," she said.

"Yeah, I know," I said. We talked for a while longer and played with the kids. It was nice spending time with them. Finally, it was time to get them ready for bed, so we bathed them and dressed them in their pajamas. After we put them to bed, we headed into the master bedroom.

...

The next morning, I was just a bit surprised to see Bill's car in the driveway. Had he stayed all night, I wondered. After wolfing down a hard-boiled egg, I went to the office and saw him slumped over his workstation, asleep. I also saw his notepad, filled with video references.