Chapter Three

It had been three hours since David and Henry left their office building for San Francisco. They were nowhere near close, not even halfway, even though traffic had been light. The good thing was that they were riding in style.

            Across from them sat two very important people in the Company: Martin Legway, the chief of affairs, and Luis Sato, the now head of the northern California branch, after what had happened. Legway was an older man in his mid-fifties to late-sixties. He had a thick head of gray hair, which was slicked back, which matched with his expensive black three-piece suit, much like Henry’s. For the first twenty minutes of the trip, Legway had been on his phone, probably dealing with the catastrophe that had happened.

            Sato was much younger than Legway. He wore a dark-blue suit with a matching dark-blue dress shirt. Unlike Legway, he wasn’t on his phone; instead, he had a paperback copy of The Catcher in the Rye open in his hands.

            Henry was enjoying one of the deluxe bottles of champagne in the mini-refrigerator, pouring himself glass after glass. He handed David a glass, but he refused, so Henry just drank it anyway. David didn’t want alcohol in his system, not on the job, and especially not at a time like this. That was one of the key differences between Henry and David; even though Henry had been with the Company longer, David took the job more seriously than Henry, and the higher-ups noticed it.

            At around the four hour mark, David had had enough of the silence. “What happened in San Francisco,” he asked.

            Legway looked up from his phone and Sato looked up from his book. They both looked at him for a few seconds before any of them made any sudden movements. Henry had put the cork back on the champagne and put it back in the tub of ice in the mini-fridge.

            Legway was the first one to speak. “You’ll find out why when we get there, kid. Normally, I would probably tell you, except for two reasons: one, you’re a newbie, and two, we aren’t entirely one hundred percent sure.”

            “If you won’t tell me,” David said, “then why did you bring me?”

            He has him there, Sato thought. He folded the corner of the page over, set the book down next to him, and spoke. “The former head of the northern California branch died in his house when it burned down. Police were already at the scene when we got there, so our best guess was that he set the house on fire to get rid of the evidence, and decided it was better to die than to get caught.”

            Legway just sat there, partially astonished that Sato had talked when he hadn’t, but shrugged it off, because he wasn’t used to Sato having the authority to go against his orders.

            “Right now,” Sato continued, “we’re on the way to the reading of his will. It should contain the future of the Company, bad or good.”

            They continued to their silence.