Moms in Black Read online

  Although her current position as Arts and Entertainment reporter for the local paper afforded her flexible working hours, the only benefit she received was free concert and theater tickets—as long as she covered the event. Short of stripping or pole dancing, she’d do just about anything for free health insurance, including telemarketing calls or going door-to-door collecting signatures for petitions.

  The only other position she’d found so far that included flexible hours and health benefits was pulling shots at Starbucks, but they had a waiting list for all their local coffee shops, and she wasn’t about to trek into Manhattan to work as a barista.

  Living in the suburbs meant spending part of each day as the family chauffeur. One parent. Two kids involved in multiple extra-curricular activities. Scratch any jobs in Manhattan.

  Since she’d registered at several job sites, she figured the email was legit, but still, she took precautions. The last thing she needed was to infect her computer with some malware or a virus too new for her protection software to catch.

  She hovered her curser over the link. The same URL popped up. A good sign but not necessarily proof of legitimacy. Instead of clicking on the link, she typed the website into her browser and hit ENTER.

  To her surprise, the site contained nothing other than a brief application form requesting name, age, phone number, and level of education. She figured employers didn’t need to know much about their employees if the job only entailed making cold calls or knocking on doors to solicit signatures and donations. However, she would have liked to know the who-what-where-when-and-how concerning savingtheworld.us. She tried a Google search of the organization, but the only site that popped up was the one with the application.

  Once upon a time Cassandra might have thought twice about sending off any personal information into cyberspace, but since the site wasn’t asking for a Social Security number and all the other information was already available to anyone clicking around the Internet, she figured, what the hell?

  The Ex had knocked up his latest Double-D Bimbo, who was now carrying his twin bimbettes. He’d dropped his own kids and Cassandra from his health insurance (in direct violation of the divorce decree), married the Double-D Bimbo, and added her to his policy.

  Cassandra was in the process of hauling his slimy ass into court over that, but since The Ex was now also three months behind in child support, she knew she had to become more proactive in order to protect her kids and herself. Those extra-curricular activities included too many sports. And sports went hand-in-hand with periodic visits to the emergency room. Without health insurance one broken arm could put her in debt up the yin-yang.

  She crossed her fingers, hoping she wasn’t getting snookered by some Nigerian scam artist “prince”, took a deep breath, and filled in the boxes with the necessary information.

  NAME: Cassandra Davenport

  AGE: 38

  PHONE NUMBER: 908-555-1234

  LEVEL OF EDUCATION: college graduate

  Before she had second thoughts, she hit SEND.

  ~*~

  Two hours later, while she was in the middle of snaking a clogged toilet—snake in one hand, how-to plumbing book in the other (yet another task she’d had to assume, thanks to The Ex and Double-D, because she could no longer afford to call a plumber)—the phone rang.

  “Cassandra Davenport?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m calling from savingtheworld.us. We’d like you to come in for an interview tomorrow.”

  Cassandra dropped the snake and scrambled for a pencil and paper as the caller rattled off the designated time and an address in Newark.

  Newark?

  Definitely not a prime New Jersey location for much of anything other than drug deals and flying bullets, no matter what the PR flacks would have you believe about a Newark Renaissance. Exactly how legit was savingtheworld.us? Benefits or no benefits, she wasn’t about to risk her life or freedom by becoming a drug mule for cocaine traffickers. Then again, how many Columbian drug lords offered health insurance? “Is the job located at that address?” she asked.

  “No.”

  The caller hung up before Cassandra could ask another question.

  ~*~

  The next morning after dropping Cooper and Hayley at school, Cassandra edged her car into rush hour traffic on the Garden State Parkway, otherwise known as the Garden State Parking Lot. The address she’d been given turned out to be the DoubleTree Hotel near Penn Station. Why didn’t the caller just say that?

  The fourteen-mile trip took forty minutes, which made Cassandra ten minutes late by the time she found a spot in the hotel parking lot and hustled up to the second-floor conference room where the interview was to take place.

  Nothing like making a great first impression!

  “Traffic on the Parkway?” asked a woman standing at a table outside the room.

  Cassandra hadn’t yet given her name to the woman. How the hell did she know which road she’d taken? Or even that she’d driven? She could just as easily have arrived via NJTransit.

  Dumbfounded, all Cassandra could do was nod. The woman wore black head-to-toe—a black silk shirt paired with a black pencil skirt, black stockings, black heels. Even her glasses were black rimmed. But despite the New York sophistication of the outfit, the woman standing behind the reception table was rather nondescript, average height and weight with shoulder-length dark brown hair. The kind of woman you’d see pushing a cart down the aisles of Trader Joe’s or chairing a PTA committee meeting.

  Me in black.

  Right down to the shoulder-length dark brown hair and brown eyes.

  Before Cassandra could say anything, the woman ushered her into the conference room.

  Another woman, also dressed completely in black and also looking like your average suburban housewife, greeted Cassandra inside the room and led her to a seat, one of those chairs with built-in desks, like the ones she remembered from high school. A laptop sat on the desk. “Please follow the instructions on the computer screen, Ms. Davenport.”

  “How did—?”

  “No talking, please.”

  Cassandra carefully squeezed into the seat, placing one hand on the laptop to prevent it from toppling off as the desk fought against the intrusion of her body. At five-foot-four and a hundred-twenty pounds, she was hardly gargantuan, but she suddenly felt like Gulliver in Lilliput. Forget high school. These chairs had to be surplus from an old junior high school renovation.

  She glanced around the room. About a dozen other women, all appearing to be in their thirties and forties, filled most of the remaining seats. No men. Some of the women stared at the computer screen in front of them; others clicked away at the keyboards. All looked extremely uncomfortable.

  Cassandra lifted the lid of her computer. The screen glowed to life with a personal greeting:

  Welcome, Ms. Davenport. Please answer all the questions in as little time as possible. Do not skip any questions. Press ENTER when you’re ready to begin.

  She pressed ENTER. One question popped up.

  Would you rather be:

  ( ) a CIA agent

  ( ) a dermatologist

  ( ) a CPA

  There was no OTHER option. None of the answers appealed to her. Not even remotely. She didn’t do guns. The idea of spending her days dealing with eczema, acne, and melanomas grossed her out. And her inability to balance her own checkbook eliminated the possibility of handling someone else’s business accounts.

  Besides, what did any of these selections have to do with saving the world? Was this a CIA recruitment session in disguise? Or was savingtheworld.us looking for number crunchers? Perhaps, recruits to work in leprosy colonies? Did leprosy colonies even still exist? She had no idea. Given her limited options, she chose the lesser of three evils.

  (X) CIA agent

  As long as I don’t have to handle a gun. But there was no space to add any explanations or disclaimers, so she clicked to the next page.

  Would you rath
er be:

  ( ) a commercial fisherman

  ( ) a mathematics professor

  ( ) a nail salon owner

  It dawned on Cassandra that she was taking some form of a Myers-Briggs personality test. She hadn’t taken one of those since the one that matched her up with her college roommate more than twenty years ago. The results couldn’t have been further off base. No two people were ever more mismatched than the perpetually stoned Cannabis Queen of Jamaica, Queens and the former teenage Goody Two-Shoes Cassandra Anne Davenport. Luckily, the pothead dropped out of school before Thanksgiving break.

  Getting back to the farmer, the professor, and the salon owner (which sounded either like the beginning of a walk-into-a-bar joke or a casting call for the reality TV version of Gilligan’s Island,) she once again clicked on the lesser of three evils.

  Hell, at least I’ll have great looking nails.

  After ten more equally ridiculous questions, both carpal tunnel syndrome and a stiff neck began to creep up on her, thanks to the less-than-ergonomic conditions. The schoolroom type chairs, not only designed by some clueless idiot who assumed everyone on the planet was right-handed, but created decades before laptops were invented, began to feel like something Torquemada might have used as part of a torture session during the Spanish Inquisition.

  An image of Will Smith in the egg chair from Men in Black flashed across her mind. Never let it be said that Cassandra Davenport ran with the lemmings. Channeling her inner Will Smith, she stood up, grabbed the laptop, and made her way to the perimeter of the room where she settled onto the floor, her back propped against the wall, the laptop perched on her lap. The woman in black proctor raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

  Cassandra went on to the next set of questions, which dealt with personal likes and dislikes. All were as ridiculous as the occupation questions:

  Would you rather watch:

  ( ) Survivor

  ( ) The Young and the Restless

  ( ) Dog the Bounty Hunter

  They had to be kidding! Since she’d never watched any of the shows listed, she resorted to the eenie-meenie-minie-moe method. Dog the Bounty Hunter (whatever that was) won out by default.

  The remainder of the five hundred questions were equally as ridiculous. Although the more questions she answered, the more inquisitive she became about the who-what-where-when-and-how of savingtheworld.us.

  As she worked, she noticed many of the women close their computers and leave by the door through which she’d entered. When Cassandra completed the last piece of nonsense, a question asking her to choose between sleeping on a soft, medium, or firm mattress—she chose firm—a new message popped up on her screen:

  Thank you, Ms. Davenport. Please take the laptop and proceed through the double-doors at the back of the room.

  Cassandra hadn’t seen anyone else go through those doors, and only three other women remained in the room along with her. As she scanned the room, another woman closed her laptop, left it on the chair-desk, and exited through the main doors. She glanced over at the woman in black who pointed to the back of the room—as if she could read Cassandra’s mind. Shades of Twilight Zone!

  This entire experience seemed way too woo-woo for a non-profit organization. After about the twentieth question she’d come to the conclusion that savingtheworld.us had little to do with greenhouse gases or global warming. The truth probably lay on the other side of that door. If nothing else, savingtheworld.us had piqued her curiosity. So she closed the lid, cradled the laptop under her arm, and strode toward the back of the room. Cassandra was a woman on a mission. Whether she was offered a job or not, she wanted answers.

  Boy, did she get them!

  THREE

  Be careful what you wish for. To say Cassandra was unprepared for the answers to her questions was the understatement of the universe. At least the Universe According to Cassandra Davenport.

  The door she entered led into a service corridor where she found another woman in black waiting for her. “Follow me, Ms. Davenport.”

  Cassandra didn’t bother saying anything. From prior experience with the women in black, she knew she wouldn’t get any answers, so she refrained from asking how the woman knew her name.

  Instead, she played the good girl, nodded, and followed alongside her. The woman led her to another door at the far end of the corridor and ushered her inside a smaller conference room. This one contained the requisite conference table and chairs. A man and two more women in black, both on the cusp of middle age, sat at the head of the table, the man in the center, the women flanking him on either side.

  The man rose when she entered. “Welcome, Ms. Davenport. Please have a seat.”

  Cassandra placed the laptop on the conference table and settled into the chair nearest the door. “Okay, let’s cut to the chase here. Why all the cloak and dagger?”

  She never was one for pussyfooting. She hated games. If she were being coarse—which she usually wasn’t since she had to set an example for her kids and Lord knows, their father certainly hadn’t—she’d say, Shit or Get Off the Pot was her motto of choice.

  The man grinned. “Direct. I like that.” He glanced from side to side to ascertain the reaction of his companions. Both nodded in agreement but neither grinned. Their expressions remained...expressionless. “I think we’re all going to work together very well,” he said.

  Did this mean he was going to offer her a job? But doing what? She continued with the direct approach. “And exactly what type of work do you do?”

  “Very important work, Ms. Davenport. Work that is of the highest priority for the well-being of our country and its citizens.”

  “So you are CIA.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Where did you get that idea?”

  “From the first question on the computer. And even though there was no place to add any qualifiers to the answers I chose, I’m telling you right now, I don’t do guns. Or any other form of deadly weaponry.”

  “We’re not CIA, Ms. Davenport.”

  “Oh.” She stared at him. His face had taken on a serious look, almost a deadly look, but she couldn’t help but notice the undercurrent of sexuality he exuded. The guy was hot. Latin lover type hot. She wouldn’t be surprised to find that parts of his gene pool originally hailed from south of the border or the Iberian Peninsula. His was the kind of hot that could have placed him on a Calvin Klein billboard.

  Weren’t government agents supposed to blend into the crowd? No way would this guy ever blend in anywhere. “Well, it’s pretty clear you’re not just some environmental organization looking for clerks, fundraisers, or petition gatherers,” she said. “So exactly what is www.savingtheworld.us? And for that matter, who are you?”

  A hint of humor passed across his face. “I was about to get to that.”

  Cassandra leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m listening.” It occurred to her that she’d unleashed her inner bitch. She needed a position with flexible hours and benefits. Yet here she was doing her damnedest to sabotage her chances of getting a job that didn’t involve asking, “Tall, grande, or venti?” She chalked it up to spending the last few hours answering those inane computer questions.

  “My name is Gavin Demarco,” he said.

  Score two points for her powers of observation. Latino genes. At least on his father’s side. Irish on his mother’s? Gavin certainly wasn’t a Latino name, and that deep green gaze that was currently boring into her had to come from somewhere other than Central or South America. But why did she care? Concentrate on the job interview, Cassandra!

  “And these are my associates, Hanna Bereket and Noreen Jones.” He nodded first to his left, then his right.

  Hanna had an olive complexion that spoke of possible Middle Eastern or Indian heritage. She wore her ebony hair pulled into a sleek, tight bun at the base of her neck. The laugh lines around her eyes and mouth told Cassandra she didn’t always wear such a solemn expression.

  Noreen was a sl
ightly thinner, light-skinned black woman with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. She wore her chestnut curly hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. Both women appeared to be about five or six years older than Cassandra. Although neither possessed Victoria’s Secret bodies, they both looked like they worked out, something Cassandra hadn’t done since high school—as evidenced by the slight muffin top and underarm jiggle she’d noticed the last time she stood semi-naked in front of her mirror.

  “If you choose to join us,” continued Demarco, “the three of you will be working together as a team, reporting directly to me.”

  “Doing?”

  This time Cassandra caught a quick upturn of the mouth from both Hanna and Noreen as well as Demarco. “As I said, we’re not CIA. We’re not part of any official government organization.”

  “There are unofficial government organizations?”

  “We fall into that category.”

  Men (or Women, in this case) in Black meets Alias?

  “We live in troubling times, Ms. Davenport. The world changed on September 11, 2001 and has continued to grow darker and more dangerous with each passing year.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know, Mr. Demarco.” The day the towers fell she’d lost both her father and brother, two of the many first responder casualties of that day.

  Demarco continued, “With what’s going on in the world, the intelligence community and law enforcement are stretched beyond thin. Besides that, we’ve discovered that there are certain aspects of the fight against terrorism that lend themselves better to non-traditional investigative measures, where conventional agency bureaucracy and procedures often hamper, rather than aid in the prevention of attacks and apprehension of suspected terrorists.”

  “So which government agency are you with?”

  “None.”