I would like to take a moment to thank Angel Love for all her guidance and help with my first submission. In my opinion she is the best Lit has to offer as an editor. Not only that but a great teacher as well. Thanks Angel........
This is a work of Fiction and Fantasy, and should be taken as such. Being a Fantasy, certain liberties can be taken that do not deal with Real Life as we know it today. If you read this with that in mind, it should be an enjoyable read. If you can not get past what happens in the Real World today, my suggestion is to pick another genre or delete your bookmark for Lit and subscribe to Newsweek. I am looking forward to all feedback on my work, and I am allowing all forms of it. Please feel free to state your opinion be it constructive or praise. I am especially looking forward to the constructive comments to further guide me in my endeavors. Just to get things started on the right foot. All Derogatory Anonymous Feedback will be treated as such. I filter my email and you will be Blacklisted, Bounced and Deleted before it is even downloaded from the server. Please don't waste your time or mine with such actions .......
This is a work in progress, and chapters will be submitted as they form and are edited. I will try to keep them not to far apart.
Thanks,
Scipionyx
As the Danley Technologies corporate jet sat down on the runway at Chicago's O'Hare airport, Darla Ritter was for once glad to be on the ground and headed to her accommodations. The news she had received right before she left San Diego, had been disturbing to say the least, but her stoic outside shell showed none of the grief she felt. Randy Miller, a 'more than' good friend, had been killed in a freak auto accident where one of the front wheels of the car he was driving broke away from the vehicle. He was traveling at a high rate of speed on the expressway headed to St. Louis. He had hit the guard rail and the car went over the rail and down the embankment going head on with an old and sturdy oak tree. If there was anything good to come of this, at least he had not suffered as he was killed instantly.
Randy had spent some wonderful downtime with her in her hotel suite on several occasions when she had come into town to work her magic on the computer systems that she helped to design, when a glitch or upgrade was needed. She tried not to be concerned that he was a married man, and left two children behind with a wife to fend for them. Besides it had only been a bit of good fun for the both of them when they got together. She preferred married men because they were less likely to form an attachment to her considering they were already taken, and no one was the wiser for the times they had. Not even Greg her husband .......
As the Lear slowly taxied toward the private hanger, she busied herself gathering all her things to make sure nothing was left behind. The jet would be leaving as soon as it had been refueled. She had a bad habit of forgetting and leaving things, especially if she was engrossed in her work. This had been a quiet trip for her due to the news she had received, as she just could not get the event to go away. This was the third person she had been involved with that had met an early demise.
None of them had passed way under mysterious circumstances, but never the less she had known all of them intimately. There was the beginning of a small voice in the back of her head that sometimes popped up asking her if just being with them could have caused what had happened to them. Those thoughts, although annoying, were easily brushed aside because she knew there was no way anything she had done with them could have had anything to do with their deaths. Her analytical thinking could not grasp at such superstitious thoughts. There was no 'Voodoo Queen' sticking pins in dolls because she had her little flings with her 'Boy Toys. '
When the Lear had come to a stop in the hanger, she had herself together after going down her mental list of items she had boarded with. As the door opened, she rose from her seat and grabbed her aluminum attaché which held all the tools of her trade. It had her notebook computer, two cell phones, one of which was for company use only, where the signal was encrypted, and her personal cell she used for everything else. It also contained her electronic diary where she kept all her personal information that she never wanted anyone, especially Greg to see. It was not only password protected but was also encrypted making it a worthless piece of plastic and metal if anyone, but her, got it into their hands. In just a short while she would be in one of the corporate suites and had decided to step out tonight to see if she could find 'Something' to take things off her mind.
Greg Ritter had just finished the 18th hole at the club and had decided to spend the evening there to dine and get into the poker game that always went on somewhere in the clubhouse. Darla would not be home to spend the evening with. He hated these trips that she had to take, but it was just part of the business. He knew her business well, as he also worked for Danley Technologies as a troubleshooter for the 'Old Man' as they called George Danley the owner and CEO.
George Danley had put together his company in the mid 80's when computer systems were really starting to amount to something useful. He was a graduate with two degrees from MIT, one in computer sciences, and the other in electrical engineering. To say the least the man was a genius. Some of his cutting edge work had captured the eye of the military, and it had been a long and lucrative ride from then on. Once he had 'Shoe in' at the Pentagon, it seemed he could do no wrong as far as 'The Good Ole Boys' at the top were concerned.
Most of the work at Danley Technologies was considered ... TOP SECRET. It was either something of domestic worth where it would be brought out as wares to the electronic and computer industries for home and office use, or the real money maker, the government contracts that literally raked in millions of dollars at a time. No one but a very few people knew of these military contracts.
If you looked at the company on paper, they were the leading suppliers of almost the entire world in innovative and cutting edge electronic hardware, everything from coffee makers to aircraft. You could not tell that anything else other than that was going on .... But it was .... There was everything from electronic triggers for nuclear devices to Stealth Technology. This part of the business did not exist. It could not be found as measures had been taken to see that it remained in the shadows.
Greg sat in the lounge at the club and ordered a sirloin with fries and a half pitcher of beer to wash it down. He checked his cell phone to make sure it was on and that the battery was still charged. This was a habit of his that was performed in a ritualistic fashion. A call could come at any moment and he would be off heading toward something else that needed fixing. He also checked his personal cell in his shirt pocket to make sure of the same thing.
Darla would be calling when she arrived in Chicago, and he did not want to miss her when she did. He had met Darla when she came to work for Danley. If you knew her then, to see her now you would not be able to recognize she was the same woman. When she first came to work for the company, she was the epitome of a 'Lab Rat.' She wore baggy, rumpled clothes, had long black hair pulled up in a top knot with a pencil or pen holding it there and had three sets of reading glasses of different strengths hung around her neck. She wore one pair of the three with it sitting on the tip of her nose. She never wore makeup, no perfume or finger nail polish. She was nothing like your typical female trying to endear herself to the opposite sex. Sexy was not a word that could be used to describe her.
Greg had seen past all this though, and saw the real beauty that lurked behind the rough exterior. With a little guidance, she could be one of the sexiest women working at Danley Technologies, or anywhere else for that matter. She just did not know how beautiful she was.
Darla had lived a hard life as a child. She lost both her parents at the age of eight in a private plane crash in the Rocky Mountains, where the wreckage had never been found. They had gone down in a freak storm that had come out of nowhere. The search had lasted two weeks when it was called off due to no more time could be put into it by the Mountain Rescue Service.
The wreckage would have been found, if it was going to be found, in that frame of time. And if there had been survivors, something would have been heard by now, due to the large amount of personnel and volunteers that had been looking for them. Darla had no immediate family left. She was by herself in the world, and had been turned over to Child Protective Services, and then placed in one of the several foster homes that she would live in until she came to live with Mary Wilson at the age of twelve. Mary Wilson was a retired school teacher and had immediately seen Darla's extreme intelligence.
Mary through some of her contacts arranged to have her tested, and she had tested off the charts. Darla was no ordinary little girl. She was like a human computer that drank all knowledge as fast as it could be entered. She had been a problem child at some of the other foster homes where she just could not get along with the other kids. She was a problem at the schools she had attended and schoolwork that she had done at them was sub-par to say the least. Her only real problem had been her intelligence.
She could not relate to the other kids on their level, and as far as school was concerned she was bored to tears. They were trying to teach her things that she had already taught herself. She rebelled because she never got the help she needed when she lost her parents at such a young age. And she began to draw inside herself. She was introverted and extremely shy. She had no friends and really didn't want any. Her one true friend was Mary Wilson. She could trust Mary and always listened to what she had to say, and always faithfully followed any direction or guidance she passed her way.
With Mary's guidance, Darla went on to great things in her academic work. She graduated high school a year early and literally had schools of higher learning sitting at her doorstep wanting her to grace them with her presence. She had chosen a full scholarship to MIT and would be studying computer engineering. MIT was also close enough to get back to where she called home with Mary Wilson. At the beginning of her second year, Mary past away from a stroke that came out of nowhere. Darla was again alone in the world and simply withdrew into her studies. She graduated with honors, and the day of her graduation had been offered the job at Danley Technologies for a ridiculous amount of money she thought at the time. But it still did not remove the feeling of loneliness that had captured her soul when Mary died.
As smart as Darla was, she did have one character flaw that always caused her grief. It was the only thing that she had never been able to control. Darla was very naive and gullible. Common sense did not seem to reside in her. In certain situations she could very easily be taken advantage of. Part of the reason for this was she always had more important things taking up her thoughts, and she just did not pay a lot of attention to things that went on around her. She was also a bit on the clumsy side because of this. She had been known to walk right into things as she read some book not paying attention to where she was going.
All of this combined, subjected her to great ridicule from her classmates, and only caused her to draw further into herself. This flaw had followed her into her adult life also. She just never paid any attention to it because to her it seemed not that important to put any thought into changing it. Now it only caused her short moments of embarrassment from time to time .... She thought.
Darla arrived at the Hilton where four suites were leased by Danley Technologies on a yearly basis. In every town where there was a branch office you would find the same. The company could more than afford it, and it meant that business could be handled at any time in luxury and comfort. Darla already had her key card that had been issued to her, and she headed to the elevator that would take her to the fifteenth floor and a good stiff drink from the well-stocked bar she knew she would find there. When Darla reached the suite she found her luggage already there and kicked off her shoes and headed to the bar. She poured herself a double bourbon and went and sat in one of the big overstuffed leather chairs there in the main room.
