Free The Tin Man by Nina Mason

just as he reached his car—a sleek new Jaguar hybrid sports coupe. He barely noticed the airliner’s roaring engines; he was still too caught up in the unsettling conversation he’d just had with Milo Osbourne, his counterpart at Golden Age Media, Inc.
    “Some hot-shot take-over artist has snapped up a controlling bloc of shares,” Osbourne had blurted as soon as he returned his call. “Please, Quinn. I’m desperate. I need you and Titan to come in as my White Knight.”
    Pull his fat from the fire, in other words. The Black Knight, Osbourne claimed, was hell-bent on ruining him. He sounded distraught, which was understandable. It was common knowledge that Golden Age, a family legacy, was the unscrupulous old fart’s raison d’être .
    Davidson never cared much for Osbourne—or his tactics. It galled him no end the way Osbourne deliberately skewed the news to manipulate rather than inform public opinion. Still, perhaps this was opportunity knocking—a chance to set Osbourne on the path toward journalistic integrity. In the end, Davidson agreed to meet later to iron out the details of the deal, including how to clear the regulatory hurdles. Given the newspapers they owned between them, a merger would create a monopoly even the bribe-blinded attorney general couldn’t ignore.
    “Don’t worry about that,” Osbourne assured him. “The watchdogs are being muzzled.”
    Before the meeting, Davidson was heading home to take his kids trick-or-treating around the neighborhood, as he did every year. After putting them to bed, he and Diana—-his wife of twelve years —would enjoy a romantic dinner for two. The thought of her then, still so beautiful at fifty-three, filled him with warmth. They might be an old married couple now, but they were just as much in love today as they’d been on their honeymoon.  
    The parking deck, he noticed then, was darker than usual. Had some of the security lights burned out? Ever vigilant about safety and liability, he glanced around, noting with dismay that some of them had been broken. That was when he noticed the van parked several spaces away from his Jag. It was black and the windows were tinted, so he couldn’t see inside. There was an airbrushed image on the side of what looked like a bearded (and naked) Greek God —was it Zeus?—wielding a thunderbolt. There were words underneath. He strained to make them out. Tartarus Taxi. How odd. Tartarus, he knew from his Harvard days, was the purgatorial pit of torture reserved for the worst offenders in classical mythology.
    He felt a fleeting amusement. Some of the guys from the mailroom no doubt passing around a joint. He wasn’t going to bust them—he had toked his share back in the day—but why had the night guard let them into the executive lot?
    Scowling with disapproval, he glanced over his shoulder toward the booth, but his view was obscured by the sleet, now coming down in silver sheets. Damp and shivering, he moved more quickly toward his car, pulling his overcoat tighter around his body. He twirled at the sound of footsteps, freezing in fear when a figure emerged from the shadows. He had on a tan trench coat, hands buried deep in the pockets, and wore outdated sideburns and a shaggy, side-parted haircut. Davidson caught a whiff of something. Was the man wearing women’s perfume?
    The stranger stopped fewer than ten feet away, but said nothing.
    “Who are you?” the CEO demanded, meeting dark eyes. “What do you want?”
    “I am Mr. Wint,” the man said in an accent that sounded Russian or maybe Czech.
    “What do you want?” Davidson asked again, fear cracking his voice.
    Wint pulled a pistol from his coat pocket. Davidson staggered backward in mortal terror. He thought about running, but there was nowhere to take cover apart from his car, and something told him he’d never make it that far. Dissolving into panic, he shrank backward, put his hands out defensively, and started stammering. “Please. Don’t.