Chapter 5
Jamie finally decided to drive over to the Old Man Guesthouse, where he’d left Angie, but conference commitments kept getting in the way. He felt pulled this way and that and couldn’t make a decision. For a well-paid executive he felt like an amateur adrift more recently, and he knew Sandy saw it.
The content wasn’t so much the important theme, more the passion, and she had conference attendees eating out of her hand and trying YouthBlast in their complimentary water bottles, emblazoned with the FairGro logo of course.
The company insignia was a clever design of four leaves intertwined with the outline of a child.
It was simple and effective: innocence and health all rolled into one.
Their marketing of YouthBlast was equally genius with the use of bright colours and the promise of everlasting health.
But the promise of immortality was a far cry from the truth.
Enter Sandy Cooper, stage left, who hypnotised the hardest audiences with her wizardry and scientific legitimacy. She had the law behind her, and enough documents to sink the Titanic again, many times. Afterwards in the bar, they’d laughed.
The story of the Titanic was the greatest psy-op that Jamie loved to talk about.
The fact that it had been scuttled by J.
P. Morgan to get rid of his competitors to make way for the Federal Reserve and dominate banking for the next hundred years, making him the world’s first billionaire, was a common story of heroism and genius in financial circles.
The opposing fact that the mainstream media called the theory a conspiracy and stuck with the old iceberg fairytale proved the very point that it was important what the public believed, not what really happened.
He’d looked at his watch repeatedly and Sandy eyed him suspiciously.
Her energy on stage was fuelled by something Jamie had got too close to, and it had knocked the wind out of him.
Morally ethical, versus morally bankrupt.
Good always won out in the end, he knew deep down.
He’d always known, he’d just been blinded by the money.
Greed coloured everything and changed people from ordinary and creative to evil and empty.
Sandy was not a good person and he’d been a sucker to trust her.
Now, he sensed danger. He’d been a fool dragging Angie in, he thought, as he went to his room to grab his keys.
Maybe he should have let Joe in after all.
His sister’s boyfriend deserved to know where she was, but Jamie had deemed it too much of a risk and even Joe was distanced from her.
Jamie had isolated Angie, and he was terrified he’d made a mistake.
Joe wasn’t answering Jamie’s calls either.
Jamie went to close his phone and pop it into his briefcase, but he closed the tabs first and came across the YouTube channel that he’d been following.
The Clem Allins podcast had climbed the charts to become one of the most influential and most listened to in the health and fitness world.
It was a significant achievement given the competition, but something about the guru was mesmerising.
Jamie had been using the podcast to meditate and focus on his inner strength.
It helped him move away from material wealth and discover inner riches infinitely more powerful. Or at least that was the bullshit spin.
Even Clem Allins couldn’t help him now. Hampton and Dent would hunt him forever.
A creeping feeling of dread invaded his stomach, and it wasn’t the thought of YouthBlast gurgling in the innards of the conference attendees; it was pure terror that his sister’s life was in danger.
He heard a sound and swung around to see his suite door opening.
A few things crossed his mind as he watched the handle flick down.
His key card should be the only one to work.
Nobody else should have one, except perhaps the cleaner?
But it was an odd time of the day for housekeeping.
Another momentary thought was that it might be Sandy, wanting to down a whisky or two to celebrate her speech, but they’d already done that.
The other thought was that he hoped it wasn’t Tilda Dent.
The woman was sexy as hell, but she wasn’t his type.
And she was already sleeping with Paul.
Before he could sort out his head, the door opened fully, and Jamie thought it could have been a mistake. Keycards weren’t rocket science, or manipulative chemical compounds even.
A face popped around the door and Jamie sighed.
It was Paul.
‘Hey, mate, are you OK? Tilda wanted me to come and check on you,’ his partner said.
‘I’m good, mate. I was just going to take a drive.’
‘A drive? We’re celebrating downstairs. Tilda has her eye on you.’
‘Oh, stop it, mate, she’s not my type.’
‘Not your type? Jesus, are you a eunuch? What the fuck is wrong with you?’ Paul was drunk and it was one of the reasons he wasn’t let loose on real customers.
‘Come on, mate, she’s vacuous, and mind-numbingly spoilt. And already taken. The days of you and me sharing are long gone.’
‘Since when did that stop you?’ Paul asked.
Hampton-Dent had sent the big guns to the conference. Tilda Dent and Hank Hampton were both in attendance, and it demonstrated the importance of YouthBlast for the firm: to make it marketable and mainstream.
‘How did you get a card to my room?’ Jamie asked, suddenly wary.
A cloud of irritation fell over Paul’s face and Jamie moved awkwardly, fiddling with his car keys.
‘Going somewhere?’
‘Like I said, I’m going to get some air.’
‘In your car?’
‘What’s this all about?’ Jamie asked. ‘Since when do you get to tell me what to do? And you still haven’t told me why you have a key to my room.’
Paul ignored him and simply stared. Jamie saw he was sweating, and his face was swollen and high coloured. His eyes were like saucers.
‘What have you taken?’
Paul held up a FairGro water bottle.
‘You drank YouthBlast? You idiot. It’ll devastate your kidneys if you drink too much.’
‘You preaching to me now, too?’
Jamie knew that in some cases, Neurohydroxy-14 could turn test animals into vicious predators. He also knew that their human trials had been shut down. It was just another reason to be nervous. He didn’t recognise his friend standing in front of him. They were using him.
For some reason he found himself nostalgic about the good old days. The day a Texan called Hank Hampton walked into their lives and offered them more money than they’d ever dreamt of.
That’s how it had started.
A light knocking on the door distracted Jamie and he peered behind Paul, but he couldn’t see who was tapping.
He laughed nervously. Perhaps it was Paul messing about.
Jamie couldn’t see his right hand, which was still behind the door.
Maybe he was toying with him because he was high or drunk, and soon he’d be deliriously inebriated and incapable of adding any value at all.
It was embarrassing.
But the door opened a little wider and Jamie knew that it wasn’t just Paul who’d come to see him.