Mixed Signals Read online

  “No, actually, about planes. He’s fascinated with aviation, and we talked about autopilot systems and drones and helicopters. It somehow segued into his side project, and I gave him my number.” He cringed when he realized how that sounded.

  His father agreed with a calm, sardonic raise of one eyebrow. “Did you now?”

  “Not like that!” He stopped to place his order, which was probably unnecessary since it never changed. “I thought it sounded fun. Don’t give me that look. You are always the one telling us to trust our instincts when it comes to business.”

  His father nodded, conceding the point.

  “We met again and I asked if he had thought about formally pursing investors for the game idea. It went from there. Next week, we’re presenting you with our business plan for your blessing… and yes, I know how that sounds.” He sighed in defeat when his father smirked at him.

  “So you do like him?”

  Frank shrugged. “He’s an interesting guy.”

  His father studied him for a long moment over his cup of coffee. He decided something, and Frank was not sure he wanted to know what, so he didn’t ask. His father put the cup back down. “What is your initial investment?”

  Frank gave him the numbers he had provided Charanjit earlier. His father did not even blink, instead steering the conversation around to Nancy’s campaign and upcoming events and press coverage.

  It was the first time Frank had been glad to jump into that topic with both feet.

  Chapter Eleven

  “THIS IS a hell of a lot of work for something that doesn’t exist,” Rachel said, grinding her teeth. She was sprawled over her lounge chair in Benjamin’s office, which had once long ago been his childhood bedroom. He had, a few years after his parents died, managed to clear out the master bedroom suite and repaint it so he could move into it and turn the third bedroom into his personal, private study. That had lasted only long enough for Rachel to buy a used lounger from a resale shop and have her boyfriend du jour haul it into the corner.

  “The game exists—”

  “The business does not,” she snapped, hitting at keys on her laptop with force.

  “It’s a project under the OTL umbrella, so in a way, it kind of does?”

  “I’m putting myself on the board, and I expect to be paid.”

  “Sure.” Benjamin sighed. He had planned on that anyway, and it was part of the numbers he fed her, so she was making a point just to be obnoxious. His phone rang and when he checked, it was Frank. “I’m taking this on the patio.”

  “Oh, is it your boyfriend?” Rachel smirked.

  “You want to walk to work? I can arrange that,” Benjamin said as he answered.

  “Awkward,” Frank drawled.

  “Ugh, not you! I was talking to my annoying younger sister.” Benjamin fled to the patio. It was enclosed and faced the backyard, and was outfitted with a hodgepodge of chairs, benches, and tables. His parents had held jam sessions for local musicians regularly, so the place was set up to accommodate a lot more people than presently used it. Neither he nor Rachel could bring themselves to change it much.

  “Well, I’m the ‘annoying younger brother’ in the family, so I’m conflicted about who to sympathize with here.”

  “Me. If there is a choice, it’s always me.” Benjamin sighed, flopping into a papasan.

  Frank laughed. “I can do that.”

  Benjamin ignored the childish way his stomach flip-flopped at Frank’s warm, soft laughter. “What’s up?”

  “You got my email about our appointment with Father?”

  “You mean our appointment with the internationally known industry scion and billionaire doctor, Alexander Sheldon, head of Grace Lifesciences and Sheldon Petroleum and RAS Environmentals? Sure. Yeah. I got it.”

  “Huh. I forgot about RAS. I think Father gave that one to Geoff when he finally got married.”

  “For fuck’s sake.” Benjamin rubbed his forehead, wondering not for the first time what the hell he was doing going along with Frank’s insanity.

  He knew the answer to the question; he just chose to deny it.

  “But that’s not why I called!” Frank said with a little bit too much chirpy happiness.

  “What now?”

  “I was thinking that this deal is a bit one-sided.”

  “But it’s not? I’m getting money out of it.”

  “Not exactly a sacrifice for me.”

  “Bragging is not attractive on anyone,” Benjamin said piously.

  “Says the guy who describes himself as ‘the smartest man you know.’”

  “That’s different—that’s just true.”

  “It’s also true that I’m rich,” Frank said dryly. “You’re doing this mostly to help me out, and I get that. I appreciate it. So I want to offer you a deal.”

  “Another deal?” Benjamin frowned.

  “Another deal. Actually, more like a subordinate clause to the deal.” Frank paused. “I’ll teach you to fly.”

  Benjamin paused, at first wondering why Frank thought it was such a great offer to teach Benjamin how to buy plane tickets. Then it clicked. “No fuckin’ way!”

  “I mean it, Kaplan. I’m licensed as a flight instructor, and that’s something I make sure to keep current. I have a plane. I can afford fuel. This is your chance.”

  Benjamin sucked in a long breath. “What plane?”

  Frank chuckled, as if he had been expecting the question. “A 2017 Mooney Acclaim Ultra.”

  The breath left Benjamin’s lungs for a second. “Holy shit.”

  “Actually, it’s an upgrade for me. I haven’t even flown it yet.”

  Benjamin parsed that for a second. “Did you buy a million-dollar plane just to give me lessons?”

  “Nope. But that did up my timeline on buying it. I was going to wait until after the fiscal year closed out and pretend to buy it with my bonus as a board member of Grace Lifesciences. Our wealth management group likes it when we shuffle money like that.”

  Benjamin let his held fall back to rest against the chair. “Your life is unreal.”

  “I keep telling Father that, but he swears it’s normal.”

  “It’s really, really not.” Benjamin looked around at the small, worn, much-loved patio.

  “So. Flying lessons?”

  “I feel like I’m being bribed.”

  “That’s water under the bridge. The question is whether you want flying lessons tacked on to the bribe.”

  “Thanks for making me feel better about it.”

  Frank laughed again, a honeyed sound that melted Benjamin on the inside, although he would never admit it. “Don’t thank me yet—you need to do ground school first. I imagine you will blow through it, but I got you signed up with an online school that can prep you for the FAA’s knowledge test. You’ll also need to get a medical certificate from them. You have a doctor?”

  “Health insurance is my highest monthly bill, since the house is paid off. So yeah.” Benjamin relaxed a little. “Send me the info on the school. I’m pretty sure I could flatfoot the knowledge test, but better safe than sorry.”

  “I agree. Once you clear that, we can schedule training flights. Gives me some time to fly the plane on my own and get used to it.” He sounded extremely happy, and that made Benjamin smile.

  “Glad to help you goof off.”

  “Hey! This is important stuff.” Frank laughed.

  Benjamin looked up to see Rachel making kissy faces at him through the living room window. He mimed throwing the phone at her. “My sister is being even more annoying, but she’s working on the business plan, so I better go in and help.”

  After hanging up, Benjamin went inside and yelled at Rachel, but she kept grinning at him smugly while writing.

  The next few days were relatively peaceful. Benjamin knocked out the self-study course for the FAA Knowledge Test and arranged to take it that weekend. Frank sent him an email suggesting a time for his first practice flight the following week, prov
ided Benjamin passed the test before then. Benjamin answered with “duh” and put the time on his schedule, marveling at it for a few moments until his attention was pulled away by a notification alert that went off the moment the email he had been waiting for hit the servers. He had set up the alert the week before, and by the time it went off, he had begun to assume the source had gotten cold feet. Or maybe gotten paid off not to talk. He suspected that happened more often than he liked, with the way some leads surfaced and then disappeared.

  But the alert was triggered, and the email was sitting there in front of his face. The person who sent it had also used some dark-web technology to hide their tracks and were playing coy with their identity, but given the records of the case being discussed, it would not take much work for Benjamin to verify if the person emailed him was, indeed, Frank Sheldon’s onetime Air Force lover.

  His stomach clinched at that, rebelliously churning at the thought of someone else getting access to what Benjamin himself coveted. He clamped down on his emotions and forced himself to read the whole story as it was laid out for him:

  First off: I know what I did was wrong. I was in a bad place and needed the money. Back then I had a problem with gambling. You know, it’s always about the money—I’ve read MzNz for years now, and I see these same fucking stories over and over again. I had my regrets but I got what I needed and figured what’s done is done. I even stopped gambling, got sober, and found God. But now Teague is running for governor? Fuck that bigoted asshole. I got no proof he’s queer but I’d bet on it!

  Anyway back in 2010 he paid me to suck off Frank Sheldon. That’s it, that’s all I needed to do. He said he’d arrange the rest of it, and he did. You know the story of how he got his OTH discharge, and it’s a matter of record that the “witness” to the crime was not charged. That was me. I wanted out and I got out with an administrative discharge and $50k to pay off my gambling debts, all thanks to Teague. I knew Sheldon was rich and losing benefits wouldn’t affect him for shit.

  Here’s the deal: that was years ago. Believe it or not, I was paid in CASH so there is no record of the transaction. Most of the money went straight to the guys I had been playing poker with, and what was left bought me a used car. I got nothing to take to court, you know what I’m saying? I’ll go on record but not sure what good that would do.

  Look, I was a jerk for doing it, but Teague’s an asshole who paid me to ruin Frank Sheldon’s career. He had a grudge. That was obvious to me anyway. I hate Teague. Now I’ve got my own grudge and I want to take him down. No way can he be allowed to become governor! It’s my moral responsibility to set this right in the eyes of God.

  And that was it. Some kind of proof that Teague was indeed as bad as Benjamin suspected, if not worse. He wondered what his grudge was against Sheldon, that he’d go that far to ruin him. Seemed pretty extreme for two guys who had gone to boarding school together.

  Benjamin paused, his hand frozen over his mouse. Boarding school. Two young queer boys humping in the showers was a go-to cliché for half the gay twink porn online, and it seemed too obvious, but Benjamin had a gut feeling about it. Teague and Sheldon had probably been an item at some point. If Benjamin’s source was telling the truth, then Sheldon’s USAF career came to a crashing halt because of a lover’s spat. Had Sheldon been cheating on Teague? Was that even possible while Teague was married to his faithful, bored, Catholic wife?

  If nothing else, Benjamin was certain his source was being honest. Anyone pulling a con would claim to have a copy of a check signed by Teague or some other ridiculous setup. Benjamin had seen it all, over time, up to and including doctored documents and photoshopped pictures. Coming to the table with a story like that but no way to legitimize it out of the gate? That made him believe every word. He sat there, tapping the table with his fingers, thinking about the email.

  He decided to let it sit for a day. The guy would either recant quickly or work out how to prove his claims.

  Closing out the email, Benjamin got up and wandered back out to the papasan on the back porch, falling into it with a groan. He had his first training flight with Sheldon scheduled and an appointment to meet with Sheldon the Elder, but given what he had just found out, he was conflicted. If MudzNewz really went down the road of pursuing Teague for paying someone to trash Sheldon’s Air Force career, then all good ethical arguments pointed to Benjamin keeping the fuck away from everyone involved. Taking flight lessons from Frank and even worse, going into business with him meant Benjamin was the exact opposite of objective. He was getting up close and intimate. Even if they didn’t date, no one would look at the situation of the MudzNewz producer being in business with Sheldon and then running a story like that about Teague as anything other than a conspiracy.

  He could of course come clean on MudzNewz, or even just shut down the project completely. The donations he got from fans paid his property taxes and car payment, but overall that was not a lot of money. He could cover the hit, especially going into business with Frank. And while Frank was treating the video game as extraneous flotsam to his plan to pull the wool over his father’s eyes, Benjamin had always planned to put something out, and the game he had decided to go with had some minor potential, especially if they aimed for the edutainment market. They were fluffing the budget a lot on it, but they were not exactly embezzling.

  Sighing, he stared up at the ceiling. Taking down Teague would be fighting the good fight. Pulling Frank back into dealing with one of the worst times of his life was not. Risking the reputation of MudzNewz was more chaotic neutral, he thought. Many people hated what he did, and while many others appreciated his work in uncovering corruption and criminal activity of some politicians, he was hardly the only person who could do the job. Hell, he might be able to pawn the whole operation off onto a devoted Mudzie if he wanted to. He had kept operations in his tight fist in order to assure the exact kind of objectivity he was giving up by hitching his wagon to Sheldon’s.

  He wasn’t even getting sex out of the deal, but that was entirely his own fault.

  Benjamin banged his head against the frame of the chair a couple of times before forcing himself to head back into his office and do something productive. Rachel had finished the body of the business plan, but with their meeting with Dr. Sheldon coming up, Benjamin needed to fill in the sections describing the product and how it might be leveraged for edutainment.

  Because, apparently, such was his life as a nascent capitalist. His parents would have been appalled.

  Chapter Twelve

  AS EXPECTED, Benjamin blew through the self-paced ground school course in about a week. It gave Frank enough time to get the plane delivered and try her out. It was not a brand-new model off the production line, because a special order would have taken months, but his plane dealer had found a barely used model in Mexico that the owner was looking to dump fast due to a divorce. The dealer had it flown up as soon as the paperwork cleared. It had a funky orange and red paint job that Frank was seriously considering having stripped, but that would ground the plane for a while and he wanted to fly it.

  A single-engine prop job, it could seat four and was decked out like a luxury car on the inside. The company was in full comeback mode from nearly being shuttered for good and had put everything it had into making a gorgeous plane. Frank had considered going with the old standby for a single engine plane, the Malibu Mirage model, but ever since he had seen early specs on the Mooney, he had planned on getting one. Except for the paint job, he did not regret it. The plane flew like a bird of prey through the skies, and if Frank did not have a real job with LifeFlight he wasn’t sure he would have come back down to land, except maybe to pee, eat, and refuel.

  As soon as Benjamin passed the FAA Knowledge Test—with a perfect score, as he texted Frank three different times to point out—Frank set up a training flight. He knew it was more than unfair to train Benjamin on such a first-class plane. If Benjamin ever went about renting a plane to fly anywhere, he would probably end up in
a twenty-year-old Cessna 172 with vinyl-covered bench seats. Frank decided that at some point they would do just that, to give him a taste of flying something that didn’t do most of the flying for him. For Frank, it might even be a fun throwback to his own early training flights.

  For their first flight, Frank picked Benjamin up from the salon. He didn’t think anything about it until Benjamin stalled in the parking lot, staring with wide, shocked eyes at Frank’s car.

  “You have a Tesla,” he whispered reverently.

  Frank tried not to roll his eyes. He shoved at Benjamin’s back to get the guy moving. Benjamin opened the passenger side door and sat down like he was enjoying an expensive wine, his movements slow and gentle.

  “It’s a car,” Frank said. It started up when it felt his weight in the driver’s seat.

  “Shut up, you heathen,” Benjamin hissed, running his hands over the dash and the middle console and everything but Frank, which Frank tried really hard not to think about too much.

  Once the initial awe wore off, Benjamin bounced nervously in his seat the whole drive to the airport. He was also uncharacteristically quiet, but Frank didn’t mind. He figured this was a big deal, and wanted to respect that. He still remembered his own first training flight, which had been a mix of anxiety and terror until he was airborne and pure joy took over. Frank was trying not to think of this as a date, because this was not about him. It was for Benjamin, who deserved this little bit of excitement. Frank knew for a fact that dreams did not come true very often, and giving this experience to Benjamin was what it was all about.

  He tried to ignore what that might mean.

  The family had rented a hangar at the local executive airport, run by the county aviation authority, since the 1950s when everything was corrugated metal and the offices did not have heat or air-conditioning. Frank’s “hobby” had meant he got the hangar expanded due to a generous donation, and at one time there had been three planes there on rotation, not counting the two in storage. Frank waved the maintenance crew aside as they went into the hangar.