Interesting Places (Interesting Times #2) by Matthew Storm

don’t expect you to unlock all its mysteries in one
afternoon, of course. That would be quite impossible. Take your time, and do be
careful in there.”
    “Could anything in there kill me?”
    “Death would be the least of your
worries.”
    Oliver was beginning to reconsider
his previous desire to get into the vault and start exploring. “I’ll take good
care of him,” Sally said with a smile that was probably supposed to be
reassuring, but had exactly the opposite effect. “Come on, Oliver. It’ll be
good for you to see what we’ve got down there. You never know when it’s going
to come in handy.”

 
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 9
     
     
    There wasn’t much traffic on the
freeway and they made good time to Santa Clara in Sally’s Miata. “You’re going
to love this,” she said as they approached the city. Her obvious excitement was
a nice change in her demeanor, Oliver thought. Getting out of the office
obviously agreed with her.
    Oliver, on the other hand, was no
longer so sure this had been a good idea. Artemis had never explained exactly
what she’d meant by “turrets,” but there seemed to be only so many
possibilities. None of them involved a welcoming committee with punch and
cookies.
    He would have had to admit to some
surprise when Sally exited the freeway and turned into a gated retirement community
with a large sign that read Casa de Flores out front. “You’ve got to be
kidding me,” Oliver said. “The vault is in here?”
    “If you were looking for it, is this
where you’d go?”
    “Well, no.”
    “There you go, then.” She pulled up
to a small security booth next to the entry gate and handed her company ID to
the guard inside. He took a look at it and then scanned it with a handheld
device. Oliver heard a series of beeps, and then the guard handed the badge
back to her. He looked at Oliver expectantly.
    “Your ID,” she said. Oliver gave
Sally his identification badge and she handed it to the guard, who put it
through the same procedure as before. Oliver heard the same series of beeps and
the guard handed the ID back.
    “You’re good to go. This the new
guy?” he asked Sally.
    “Oliver Jones, meet Handsome Dan.
Dan, this is Oliver.”
    “Hey,” said Handsome Dan.
    “Hey,” said Oliver. Oliver thought
Handsome Dan might have been more aptly called Average Dan, but he didn’t feel
the need to point that out.
    “Have fun in there,” Handsome Dan
said. He hit a switch to open the gate and Sally drove through it, stopping the
car on the other side and waiting for the gate to roll shut before moving on.
    Casa de Flores looked to consist of about 40 small
ranch-style houses laid out in a rectangular grid. The houses were identical,
each with a single-car garage and painted tan with brown trim. It looked to
Oliver more like a painting than a place people would choose to live. “It looks
like they’ve got a pretty strict Homeowner’s Association here,” he said.
    “We are the Homeowner’s
Association.”
    “Seriously? Araneae owns all these
houses?”
    “Every single one.”
    Oliver looked up and down the street
as Sally drove. Plenty of older people were out and about in shorts and shirts
that looked like they were last in style at around the time Leave it to
Beaver had been popular. None of them appeared to have a care in the world.
A few even waved as their car passed by. “Who are all these people, then?”
Oliver asked. “They can’t be your security force.”
    “No, of course not. Artemis found
them. Most of them are older people who were having money problems and looking
at spending the end of their lives alone and in poverty, or worse. They get a
free place to live in return for not asking questions about the house we’re
heading for. Well, and for being the biggest bunch of busybodies on the planet.
If these people see anything out of the ordinary, no matter how small it is,
the phone in the security office goes nuts. That’s exactly how Artemis