I hope you are all liking the series so far. Please be polite in the comments, even if it's negative. This one is a lot longer as Brandi and Kory work on how to co-exist and how their powers are changing.
PART XII
Brandi yawned as she got out of her Uber and started the complex system of undoing her numerous alarms to get into her condo. Brandi could tell Kory was feeling the sun and smelling the sea and taking it all in.
After several minutes they got inside and Kory let out a whistle. "Nice place Brandi. Really nice. Right on the ocean, lots of private security, top line systems, and I'm betting you have some other less obvious things in place?"
"Yes and thank you. I've modified some of the alarm systems and made some of my own personal items. If you happen to get control of my body, be careful what you touch without checking first."
Kory snickered. Brandi walked all through her place checking various things and items, noting that no one had been inside since she had left nearly two months back. She checked her office last and swept it for bugs. Then she sat down and pulled out her new burn phone. She dialed the number and got Mr. Case right away.
"Brandi, so good to hear from you. The client is VERY pleased with your work. He included a bonus for you and said that things are going smoothly. I have to add my own thanks as this one was a hard one. That being said, we need to talk. Very soon. I want to hear details and we need to be sure to properly document this for future possibilities."
"Of course, are you free at 3pm?"
"Yes, make it the office at 34
th
and White."
"Will do."
"One other thing. Your boyfriend Steve has been calling the office since you went out of town. We told him you had forgotten your phone and were on assignment, but I get the distinct feeling he is going to ask a lot of questions and not take wave offs this time."
"That is not good."
"Not it's not. I don't presume to tell you how to live your life Brandi, but you need to handle this. If he won't back off, you may need to cut him loose."
"I will handle it."
The phone went dead and Kory let out another low whistle. Brandi felt some alertness and alarm from Kory.
"That was Mr. Case I take it? Okay, yeah, I can see why you are nervous about him."
Brandi blinked. "You, wait, from just that?"
Brandi could feel Kory's link pulse wariness. "Something about his tone. Call it gut feelings, but I've dealt with guys who are dangerous and the really dangerous ones are the ones that have no tone. He was neutral, I mean dead neutral. It's hard to pick up, most people who don't deal with danger never notice. But for someone like me? Yeah, that is the tone of someone you do NOT want to fuck with. He could talk to you about baseball and killing a guy with a screwdriver in the same conversation and not even break stride. I think we made the right call NOT telling him."
Brandi nodded and looked at the clock. "About noon. We can get cleaned up and then I'll call my boyfriend and have him come over."
"We need to fix him fast."
Brandi paused at Kory's tone. "Meaning, shit, yeah, I get it. Mr. Case didn't exactly leave any room for doubt and I need to be sure Steve doesn't do something stupid."
"That him?"
Brandi looked at a picture on her desk of her and Steve on a large boat that they had taken at a party right as Steve had closed a big deal for some real estate. It had been a fun night and she had left the next day for her Chicago assignment.
"Yes, that's him. He's fun, and rich, and connected. And I'm pretty sure he's head over heels in love with me."
"You got that right. That look in his eyes? Oh yeah, he's smitten. Fuck, this could be a problem. But he's handsome and looks great, so maybe the solution will be fun. In fact, maybe we can try something out."
Brandi would have gotten mad at Kory but she felt the link. Kory was thinking hard about something. Then Brandi blinked.
"Donni."
"Yeah, Donni. Her mind was manipulatable when we were having sex. We might be able to modify his memories about this." Kory said.
Brandi tapped her lip and smiled. "That might work, but we need to do a test run first. There is something more to this. When I was scissoring at the club going after McLean, I changed some memories. With Donni though it felt like something more. We might be able to do something else, but we need to test it first. Steve isn't going to be a lab rat."
"Yeah, that makes sense. I get you like the guy, but if he's connected we need to be careful about how we work with his mind."
Brandi opened her backpack and pulled out Kory's laptop and the hard-drives she had found. Brandi felt Kory tense up a bit, but she was also relieved and excited.
"Glad to see this stuff?"
"Yes very. If I ever try to get back into Chicago, this stuff will get me in the door."
"I used your laptop back in St. Louis, I didn't see anything on it and the password was stupid simple."
"Feh, who keeps anything on a laptop anymore? The hard drives are the key. That one with the red dot is my blackmail stuff. Photos, videos, scanned papers and so on. I could put away the entire Chicago mob, half the police force and probably the entire city government with that. The FBI would pay me their yearly budget for that."
Brandi made a mental note to see about copying it sometime. "And this one?"
"That is my rainy day money. Account information for a couple of offshore accounts, and a bunch of bitcoin."
"Nice. And this?"
"Personal stuff and my "business plan" for running the city. I keep a lot of it in my head, easy when you are a genius, but my basic blueprint and my historic notes are on that. I can adjust on the fly, but I need to have it mapped out to really get the idea down and to make decisions."
"I get you, I use that white board and the whole wall there when making my plans. You have to be able to see it, and not just in your head."
"You got it girlfriend. Great minds think alike after all."
They both giggled at that.
"Okay Kory, here's the deal. I am going to lock up your stuff in a safe. I am not going to touch your money or your stuff. We will keep it here safe for you for when we get you out of me."
"Thank you. I appreciate that. Who knows, maybe I'll just retire after all this is done."
"I really doubt it, you don't seem like the person who retires."
"Well, neither do you."
Brandi finished emptying the backpack and opened one of her safes. She had several, and this was a spare one. She put everything in it and locked it up. She turned back to the backpack and then remembered one of the interior pockets. She reached in and pulled out several bags of that synthetic coke she had taken.
As soon as she saw it, she felt a craving. Not huge, not like she got when she didn't feed for several days, but a dull ache or craving. Brandi felt Kory's link pulse a bit and it seemed similar to her own feelings.
"So what do we do with this?" Kory asked.
Brandi licked her lips. "Um, I took it because I am curious as to how it might have affected me, well, us, when we had our incident. It's not normal coke, so I am wondering if maybe it can help us fix our problem."
Brandi felt Kory thinking, and she was thinking herself. "Hmm, I can get this to Mr. Case and have him run tests for me. Or..."
"Kory, I'm a brilliant chemist. And you were the one who was overseeing the development of this product. I can use my company's assets and have them test it for me. Or, with a little bit of shopping and setting up I can run some tests myself."
Kory seemed to focus a bit more. "Making this stuff wasn't that hard. I was surprised by how little equipment was needed. It's the chemical base materials that are the issue."
Brandi mentally shook her head. "Nope, not for our situation. You are thinking in terms of market, I'm thinking in terms of just personal. We are not making this for distribution, we are making it to test it and figure out if it can help us or not. That means the amount of chemicals we need we can likely get at a chemical supply store with no issues. It's not like we are cooking meth for sale, we are taking several ounces at most."
"Fuck, didn't think of that. Okay, but Miami is your boss's base, he likely keeps tabs on you. Starting up a lab is going to get noticed and he will ask questions."
"I am thinking we tell him some of the story. The coke boost was real, we can tell him that much. I've got an idea about the rest to tell him. And then I show him what I have and tell him I want to dig into it. He knows I'm a god-honest chemist and a really good one at that. Why wouldn't he let me work on it?"
Kory focused. Brandi could sense she was running it through her head, just like she did. After a moment Kory said "I think that will work. Your boss is a guy who catches lies and reads people for a living, so the story we tell needs to have as much truth to it as possible. In my experience, if you tell a story that is 90% true you can get away with bullshitting the last 10%."
Brandi mentally nodded. "I agree. For us, we can likely catch even that 10%. You see how sensitive we are, I'm practically a walking lie detector. But Mr. Case is an exception, he's hard to read and he is a guy who is exactly what you said earlier. We need to be careful."
Brandi picked up the bag and carefully tipped some out onto a piece of paper. She got another plastic bag from the kitchen and poured it into the other bag. She locked that in the safe with Kory's stuff.
"Just in case we need some at a later time. Mr. Case may want to take all of it and I don't want to cause any fuss."
Brandi could fell Kory was focused on the coke. And she was too. The craving was still minor, but it was like a little fly buzzing her head, just enough to annoy but you could ignore it if you focused.
"Kory, I think we need to do something, go for a walk or hit the pool."
"Yeah, I think some air is what we need."
Brandi went into her bedroom and changed into some workout clothes. Brandi could feel Kory looking over her closet. She could feel approval and some jealousy.
"Problem?"
"Fuck. I can't get over the fact we feel each other like this. You have an awesome wardrobe, and I'm jealous as fuck. This number? Sexy as hell, I bet you cause men to hyperventilate when you wear it. But classy. This is top shelf high dollar."
"Thank you. And right now it's more correct to say "Ours". Like it or not, you just got a new wardrobe."
