Who: Max and Anton, then Max and Preston What: Fundraising; Talking about Shiloh Where: Sparke Industries When: Recent Warnings: None
Max had just come from seeing Orin Monarch. He’d been an easy sell for a third of a million. His friendship with Thomas, combined with his relationship with Audrey meant she didn’t need to flash even a bit of thigh to get him to agree to pay for a third of the Verisimilitude price. The fact that he was, most certainly, a Mask probably didn’t hurt matters either.
Anton Sparke, however, Max wasn’t expecting to be so easy. She’d intentionally placed him second in her rich, society trio, and she’d read everything she could about him in preparation. The most interesting thing about the man wasn’t his amazing blue eyes, or his penchant for women with impressive cleavage. No, it was his Iron Man. Max might not be the best reporter on the block, but her instincts were good. The way Sparke had overreacted when he found out that Audrey and Luke were in his lab? That made her think the man had something to hide, something that wasn’t aboveboard. Something, maybe, that ran around saving men at stoplights.
She was counting on it.
Her appointment was at 2; he was ready for her at 2:15. She was dressed for the occasion - a black, pencil skirt and stilettos, and a grey sweater that dipped just enough to be tantalizing without being obscene. “Mr. Sparke,” she said, putting her press pass on his office desk. “Off the record?”
Anton was having a thing. He didn’t know what the “thing” was but he was sure he was having one. He didn’t even know what had him out of sorts, but he was pretty sure it was the “thing.” He was attempting to chalk it up to a mid-life crisis but the red ferarri had not done a damn thing to curb it. So he was on the phone with his person Porsche guy trying to be talked into some kind of boxster. Or Roadster. Or Speedster. Or whatever things they wanted him to spend money on that he could just make in his lab and probably do a better job at. Whatever. He was having a thing.
He was sitting at his desk looking at the “literature” about said porsches and he was mildly unimpressed. When Max came in he looked her over for a moment. Not lecherously, as he normally would have, but she looked fucking familiar. Again. He brushed it off. “Off the record Ms. Main...On the record I don’t care,” Preston was going to kill him! Yay! He opened the booklet, which was glossy and shiny and set it in front of her. There was a black Boxster on one side and a silver roadster on the other. “Which one says midlife crisis?”
“Silver definitely says mid-life crisis,” Max said, taking a seat across from the desk Anton was seated behind. He was an attractive man, more attractive than television gave him credit for, and she understood immediately why Preston had a thing for him. He was definitely the kind a man a girl could have a thing for, and she supposed Preston was no different. She crossed her legs at the thigh, a bit of the top of her stocking showing as she leaned forward and plucked the booklet for the black Boxster from between his fingers and held it up. “But if you’re going for fucking hot? Black is always the way to go,” she said, her grin mirroring one from a dream, and she wondered if he would remember her. Or if it would be better if he didn’t.
He shook his head, “Fucking hot I’ve got. Mid-life crisis I attempted but came up a little short with the car I bought. So that’s getting donated to charity and I guess I’ll be getting the silver, thank you.” He said closing the booklets and sitting back in his chair.
He looked her over again, she looked familiar and not just in the way most reporters looked familiar. And she wanted something. That much was obvious. He smiled at her as he leaned back comfortably, his hands folded loosely and regarded her for a moment. “Is it going to cost me, money, time, resources or something else entirely?” he asked.
“Money,” she said, not bothering to hide the fact that, yes, she had an agenda. “I’ve been working with Commissioner West,” she said, because she’d started with Kyle for a reason; his opinion held the most weight in this argument, she felt, and she was willing to wield it to get what everyone expected her to get, “about our unique problem with Creation-based crime. We have a wonderful system of justice in place, good men and women on the police force, but we have no way to house or deal with Creations offenders. We have the opportunity to purchase Verisimilitude, and its Creation-ability limiting properties, and put it in the hands of our legal system.” She leaned forward, took the brochure for the silver car from between his fingers and looked it over as she spoke. “I have Monarch on the hook for a third of the price, I’ll get Brandon for the same. Can I count on you for the missing third?” she asked, pushing the brochure back. “And do you mind if I ask about your mid-life crisis?”
He nodded. Of course it was money. He listened to her, it made sense to him. He’d need Preston to poke holes in it later. “Let me look over what you’ve got, I’ll be in touch, and I don’t mean that in the way I mean it when politicians come asking me for money. I really actually will be in touch.”
He shrugged his shoulders, he was obviously distracted, and now she wanted to talk about his mid-life crisis. “Go ahead and ask. But I think I’m just having a thing. It’ll make a great news story one day soon I’m sure.”
That response wasn’t what she was looking for. She was looking for commitment, which he didn’t give her, and she felt fairly sure she wasn’t going to like the distribution of information that came from leaving this office after providing him with information. Still, she gave him a smile that said she was certain he would come around to her way of thinking, and she pushed back her chair and stood. “I cover homicides these days, Mister Sparke. As long as you aren’t killing anyone, it won’t make one of my stories,” she told him, the corner of her mouth tipped in an entertained smile. “I’ll leave you to your crisis. How about a yay or nay by next Monday?”
He’d talk to Preston about it as soon as she was gone, he wanted to say yes on the spot, but he did not like the look he got when he did things like that. And lately he was not in the mood to get a look. He laughed at her comment though and nodded, “I don’t think my mid-life crisis is going to be that severe. We’re in the clear. And I’ll be in touch by Monday.” Which meant he needed to remember to be in touch by Monday, he made a mental note. Hopefully at some point that would turn into an actual note.
She gave him a look, something oddly worried, and then her smile returned as if the concerned look had never been there. Yeah, something was definitely up with Anton Sparke. She wondered if it had to do with Preston, and the dream Anton clearly couldn’t remember her from. “Next time, at least pretend to look when a girl flashes you some leg,” she teased, and with that she turned and made for the office door, calling over her shoulder. “The black is still sexier.”
Max had just finished meeting with Anton Sparke, and she asked his secretary where she could find Preston Rawlings. She hadn’t forgotten about Gwen’s request that she find out what was going on with Preston and his brother, but she had opted to have the conversation in person. Getting anything out of Preston on the phone or the forums was near impossible, and Max knew she had the element of surprise on her side, but that she would only have it the first time she brought up the topic. And she knew that whatever it was, it was important; Gwen wouldn’t have brought it up otherwise.
She was dressed to impress Anton, not for a casual meeting with Preston, in a slim skirt, stilettos and a sweater that dipped impressively, and she crossed to Preston’s office, following the secretary (who had no intention of letting a reporter that lived with Thomas Brandon wander around Sparke Industries on her own).
Patiently, she waited outside while the woman walked into the office and conferred with Preston.
Whatever Preston might have had going on at home, he was too much of a professional to let it show at work. True, he looked a little older, especially around the eyes, but you could chalk that up to the last six months and Anton’s recent absence. Considering the deference of both the woman who was acting as a secretary’s secretary, Preston was running the company just as much as Anton, if not more so, considering the state of his desk and the size of the leather chairs in it. The sheer amount of square footage alone...
The woman walked away, smiling politely at Max as she stepped past and then indicated the door to Preston’s office, which opened before it had a chance to close all the way. “Miss Main.” Preston stepped back in and held the door, all business, polite in cream only a few shades from white. He tried not to smoke at work, but you could still smell it on him. “What can I do for you?” He let the door go once she was in, and (probably) unlike his boss, he didn’t watch her walk in.
“I had a meeting with Anton,” Max said, smiling as she walked past him and flipping up his tie. “At ease, Rawlings,” she added, making her way to the chairs across from the desk and taking a seat, crossing her legs at the thigh and looking over her shoulder at the man in cream. She could smell the cigarettes on him, and she could tell he’d aged in the weeks since she’d seen him. It made her remember Gwen’s words, that whatever his brother had done was terrible, and she gave him a reassuring smile. “Sit your ass down. I just want to talk,” she assured him.
Once she was in and the door clicked shut, he relaxed a little. He smoothed his tie and pushed a button as he rounded the desk, darkening the tint of the windows dividing the office from the others on the same floor. The weak Seattle sun that made it through the gray served as the majority of the illumination. He sat down on his chair and rotated gently to face her. “About what?”
She waited for his attention to return to her, and she lowered her voice when she spoke. “Any monitoring here, or can we speak openly?” she asked.
“No monitoring,” he said, gravely, giving her a strange look and blinking twice in his concern that this was about something to do with the masks. It didn’t occur to him that Max Main would know about Shiloh. Why should she?
She smiled. “You’re not going to want to talk about this,” she said, being upfront with him. “Your brother and I have a mutual friend, one he’s shared some things with,” she began, watching his face for a reaction. Whatever Preston’s relationship with his sibling, she expected him to cover for him. She’d cover for her sister, even if she shouldn’t, and she knew she’d be up against that tendency in this conversation as well. “This mutual friend was worried.”
Preston didn’t reply immediately. He sat across from a lot of people that didn’t necessarily wish him health and happiness, and he knew that a pause wasn’t going to hurt him. He folded his hands in front of him. “You’re right. Who is this friend?” He didn’t actually expect her to tell him. His expression was guarded and obviously so.
“She’s someone he went running with,” Max said, and left it at that. If Preston asked his brother, he’d surely give up Gwen’s name. As long as Oracle didn’t end up being mentioned, it was fine. And she couldn’t believe Gwen would have told Shiloh that she was Oracle. “She’s worried he’s losing it, that what he did is terrible, and she wanted reassurance that you were going to take care of it, take care of him.” She paused. “Which fucking sucks for you, I know. It’s something we would normally go after,” she said, still unsure of what had happened, but knowing that Gwen wouldn’t have said those words lightly, “and you’re on the network.”
Preston already knew who that person was. He sighed a smoker’s thick sigh, took his fingers apart, and then sat back. He lifted his eyes and met Max’s from under his brows. “Reassure her. I’ll take care of it.” He didn’t know exactly how he would do that, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t want the masks going after Shiloh. Inefficient as they were, this was not something they’d ignore now that they were aware.
Max watched every twitch, every reaction, every thought as it passed his eyes. It was an old habit, born of spywork and then honed as a reporter. People said more with their bodies than they ever did with their mouths. “I don’t know what he did,” she admitted, “and I don’t want to know. I suspect people died, and that’s enough for me. This friend, she’s risking a fucking lot by not ratting him out, your brother, so if I reassure her, I want to make sure it’s true that you’re handling things.” She paused. “Is he unhinged?” Because that was the larger concern Gwen seemed to have, that Shiloh was, in fact, unhinged.
Preston didn’t twitch. He didn’t move either, and the only change was a larger intake of breath, a pause, and a moment to steady his breathing. “He’s not unhinged.” He didn’t blink, and his gaze got harder. “He’s not unhinged. Reassure her, I said.”
She didn’t know if she trusted him, and she realized that this whole thing - whatever it was - was making conspirators out of all of them. She didn’t even want to think what Thomas’ reaction would be to Gwen not turning Shiloh in, if whatever he’d done was as bad as she’d intimated. And this man, the one across the table, who she considered a friend, an ally, he was covering in his own way. No, it wasn’t that she didn’t trust Preston. She didn’t think Preston trusted his own words, and that worried her. “Alright,” she said, and she gave him a knowing look. “How bad does this fuck everything up between us?”
Max should have known better than to ask Preston about his brother and expect any truth but that which would protect him. Preston wasn’t lying, but there wasn’t a way to tell that. Preston leaned his elbows onto his desk and rubbed at the creases in the corner of his eyes. “He is my brother, and he’s always going to be.” Preston gave her a steady look. “But he’s not unhinged.”
“I don’t know what I would do, if someone I loved did something they should turn themselves in for,” she admitted. She knew it would be an easy choice for Thomas, maybe even for Luke, but not for her. But she didn’t love Preston’s brother - she didn’t even know him. And this secret, the situation Gwen had put her in, it made her uncomfortable and uneasy. “And it puts me in a really tough spot,” she admitted honestly.
“It’s nothing he should turn himself in for. It was an accident, and there won’t be a recurrence. He’s not a bad person, Max.” Preston sat forward in his chair, earnest.
“My kid turned himself in for an accident,” Max said, not going through the normal process of correcting her non-relation to Luke. “Even though there won’t be a recurrence.”
Preston saw the parallel, but he wouldn’t ever admit it. He looked away. Phones rang in the office beyond, and lights on Preston’s phone blinked, but he ignored them. “This is not something anyone else would understand. Gwen appears to. This is not enough for you?”
She quirked a brow when he said Gwen’s name. “I think people have to be held accountable for what they do. Me, you, Gwen, the Masks, my kid, your brother,” she said, finally, after thinking it through for a few long, long moments. “That doesn’t mean I don’t get it, where you’re coming from. But if we don’t let other people kill - us, Masks, vigilantes - then we’re huge fucking hypocrites if we make exceptions for our own. And I say that knowing it might bite me in the ass one day. I’m quick to pull the fucking trigger, and I don’t think before I do.” She uncrossed her legs. “And I don’t know who we’re all held accountable to. I’m still working that out, but I think we have to live by what we preach. And we don’t always; I know that, too.” One more pause. “Was he trying to help?” Because that’s what differentiated the Masks that used lethal violence from criminals, in her mind.
Preston’s shoulders hunched forward, and he brought his chest over his desktop, hugging his elbows to his ribs. He understood Max’s reasoning. Up until a few weeks ago, he would have agreed with her in every particular. But Shiloh was not the rest of the world, not for Preston. “He is not unhinged,” he repeated, for the third time. He did not answer her question. “Nothing like this will ever happen again.” He wanted to reassure her, her and the masks she represented, and then he wanted them to go away.
The repetition was not lost on her, and neither were the blinking lights on his desk phone. Whatever his brother had done, she was fairly sure it had just caused a gap between Preston and the Masks, and she was sorry for it, but not as sorry as she was about whatever had just come between them in that room. She was really starting to fucking hate the month of June. She nodded toward the blinking lights. “I’ll let you get back to that,” she said, because he wasn’t going to say anything else; the repetition had made that clear. “Thanks for taking the time out to chat.”
Preston stood up in anticipation of her departure, and a flicker of regret darkening the clear blue gaze. He understood the distance that was there, and though Preston’s impulses had always been good ones, Shiloh took priority, and if they forced him to make a choice, he wanted it to be clear what his choice would be. “It wasn’t a chat. But I’m always available if you want to talk to me.”
“You, too,” she said, standing and smoothing down her skirt. She considered kidding with him, telling him to put in a good word with Anton for her as he thought over her proposal, but she realized he wouldn’t want to be involved in a way to prosecute Creation crimes, so she held her tongue and the distance grew. “Take care of yourself,” she added, stepping closer to the desk and holding out a hand for him to shake. He was a good man, even he was making a terrible choice - and she was pretty sure at this point that he was.
He took her hand. Preston’s palm was smooth, un-worked, not at all like Thomas’. His shake was comforting, cool, a hair shy of firm. He smiled into her eyes, a weak smile, but there, and he meant her nothing but good. “You too. And your daughter. The crib is working out? She have a new one yet?”
She understood the small talk, what he was trying to do, and she smiled a little. “I’m back in Aubade, with a much more expensive crib which she hardly uses. My sister moved to New York, and the department store crib got cleared out with her furniture.” She glanced back toward the door. “Your boss kept looking at me like he remembered me from somewhere,” she said, knowing perfectly well where that somewhere was. “How are things with that?”
He dropped her hand, but it was an ordinary, defensive move, a Preston move, a move entirely concerning himself and no one else. He turned his head slightly to one side over his shoulder in a sign of that defensiveness, the same expression he wore when they’d last discussed the dreams. “I can’t be sure. That’s the problem. Sometimes I feel like I dodged the bullet and the rest of the time I feel like perhaps it hasn’t been fired yet.”
“He barely looked at me, and I even flashed him some thigh,” she admitted with a laugh. “There’s something eating at him,” she said, “but he’s calling it a mid-life crisis.” She took a step back, her smile warmer this time. “Maybe you’ll actually go in there and give him a piece of your mind one of these days,” she said, hoping he would actually manage that at some point. He looked like hell, but she didn’t tell him as much, and she wondered how much of it was Anton and how much was his brother.
Preston looked troubled. “He said that? He just got back from abroad, he’s usually in a good mood...”
She made a sound that was affirmation, and she didn’t give him anymore than that. “You should ask him about it, before he buys that ridiculously expensive silver car.”
“...He has a lot of cars.” Still, he would ask. He rubbed his chin and then one eye. “Alright. If he didn’t earn any insults from you there’s obviously something wrong.”
“It takes a lot to earn an insult from me when it comes to men being men, Rawlings,” she said, with a look that said she’d been around a lot of blocks, and she knew men pretty fucking well. “Military, remember? But he was a saint. I was almost disappointed,” she admitted.
Preston smiled weakly. “I’m sure he’ll be back to his usual form. You would not believe the number of women that have stormed in here and demanded appointments.”
Max laughed a little. “Maybe you made an impact, Rawlings,” she said. “I better go,” she added, but it was less tense this time. She was trying not to think about whatever it was that she didn’t know, and she gave him a look that said as much.
Preston seriously doubted he would make an impact on such a solid womanizer, but he’d already said as much and Max didn’t seem to share his opinion. He nodded, and then stepped around his desk to hold the door for her. He left the windows dark.
She gave him one last look, and there was something about it that was reminiscent of goodbye. Then, with a smile and a nod of farewell, she left the office, closing the door slowly behind her and leaning against it for a second before walking out of Sparke Industries and into the cool Seattle air.