Read Gabriel's Redemption for Free Online

into a plush chair. He kicked his feet up on the desk, knocking the jacket onto the floor, and reached behind him to a crystal decanter of amber liquid, pouring three fingers into an unbreakable glass. Goddamned Mars , he thought. He tossed back the drink and fired the glass against the far wall, where it bounced and skittered crazily across the tile floor.

    Santander was just getting to his third drink when a signal came in through his neuretics. He saw the source ID, and shunted the video to a wallscreen. The screen lit up with a terribly-scarred face.
    “Shit, Gurnett, don’t scare me like that,” Santander snapped. “I thought it was Burkes.” He ordered his neuretics to blank the screen and go audio-only on his end. Can’t stand to look at that man , he thought, and not for the first time. Invaluable, to be sure, but could use a brown bag.
    “Mr. Santander, we’ve got a problem, I think we’re going to need your assistance,” Gurnett said. “We’ve got a couple of employees accusing each other of theft, and it’s basically shut down the entire line.”
    Santander sighed and stood up, cracking his lower back and stretching his arms over his head. He looked wistfully back at the now-empty decanter, and down at his half-empty glass. “What’s the matter, boy, this over your head?”
    “Well, yes, actually it is. They are requesting you personally, and one of them says you know about the alleged thefts.”
    “Who is it?” Santander snapped. He swirled the glass and sniffed the aroma of the last of the evening’s tequila.
    “Rechichi and Dural, in Post-Process,” the disembodied voice came back.
    The second glass bounced off the back wall. This time, Santander thought he could see a minute crack in its surface, and smiled. Maybe I do get to break things from time to time. “I’ll be right down.”

    When he arrived, Gurnett and two other security men had two plant workers seated in chairs in a back office. One of the security men was training an odd-looking handgun at them. As Santander approached, one of the plant workers stood up and pointed. “That’s him, that’s the guy who set me up for this!” he yelled.
    The handgun butt smashed into the worker’s stomach, and he sat back down hard, gasping for breath.
    Gurnett shook his head and looked back at Santander. “Never learn, do they?”
    “No, I suppose not,” he replied, avoiding Gurnett’s face. “So what’s the situation?” he asked the non-gasping individual.
    The second worker gulped nervously, looking alternately at the other worker, who was just now catching his breath, and his questioner. “You’re the security chief? You runs things here, right?” he asked.
    “Correct,” said Santander, crossing his arms.
    “Dural has been pocketing vials, skimming from the top of our production. I walked in on him today. I gave him a chance to explain, but he just threw your name back at me, saying you know all about it, and then accused me of stealing production equipment!”
    “So you’re Rechichi?” he asked. “How long have you been here? What’s your position?”
    “Four months, sir. I handle post-processing for most of the final compounds, prior to packaging. Same as Dural.” Apparently unsure of where this conversation was going, beads of sweat began to appear on his upper lip.
    “And Dural?” Santander asked Gurnett.
    “Two years. One of our best men,” he answered.
    Rechichi was now sweating profusely, wiping his brow with the sleeve of his shirt. “I’m not lying!”
    “No, I don’t think you are,” Santander replied evenly. “Wrong place at the wrong time, I suppose.”  
    He held his hand out to the security officer, who passed over the handgun. “Codes,” he said. The security officer flashed arming codes for the weapon to Santander’s neuretics, and the handgun powered up.  
    “Wait!” screamed Rechichi, holding his hands up, palms out, in protest. “You can’t do this!”
    Santander raised the