The Fifteen Minute Novel is a novel written fifteen minutes at a time with each week day’s section starting with the sentence from the previous day. At least it is attempting to be a novel. For now I am just aiming at one continuous story, worked on for fifteen minutes each day. Started Friday January 1st, 2021 (in case you want to search for the beginning. I can’t wait to see where it ends up. It could be good, or it could be a mess. We’ll have to see. For now, here is today’s fifteen minutes.
Day 111: It sounded like he was speaking more to himself.
It sounded like he was speaking more to himself. Tucker was quiet as they drove. James could tell he was thinking and thinking hard. James wondered if he was contemplating looking at his fine before asking more questions but didn’t feel it was his place to interrupt the agent’s thought processes. He did wonder what happened to the man he recognized. He wasn’t entirely certain he wanted to ask that either. Was it better not to know?
Finally Tucker glanced at him. “Where did you recognize him from?” Tucker finally asked.
“There were meetings,” James said. He snorted a derisive laugh. “There were always meetings. He was in some of the larger meetings. I don’t know who he was with and I was never introduced. He never asked questions or spoke when I was in the room.”
James shook his head. James recognized the man in the bar, his face jarring for its familiarity, but in the meetings he was just another person in a suit. He blended into the group. He was never at the smaller meetings and his suit, while expensive was not quite the caliber of the top execs. James always thought he was a junior executive. Someone at one of the firms they worked with who needed to hear what was going on, but was not senior enough to have any input.
While James had no problems with the people he brought to his meetings asking questions, there were several companies he dealt with where the chain of command was more rigidly enforced. If a question occurred in the mind of the junior it was passed to the senior and if he deemed it worthy, he would ask it himself. There were many in the room who never opened their mouths. The man tonight blended well with them. It his presence here hadn’t been so unexpected, James wouldn’t have been able to pick him out.
Tucker seemed content to let him think through the memories of the man and James spent the rest of the drive trying to figure out what company he might have come in with.
‘But that could be a ruse,’ James thought. ‘He could have slipped in and not been with any company.’ He didn’t want to accidentally point the finger at someone and have their company investigated for no reason. James realized they were heading towards the same safe house and relaxed a little. Instead of pairing the man with a company, he tried to recall what meetings he remembered seeing the man. It was hard because he was so forgettable.
“Maybe if I look at the notes,” James muttered to himself.
“Notes?” Tucker asked.
James flushed slightly at confessing his personal detective work. “It was an …idea I had.”
“And?” Tucker prompted.
“A person I used to know, wrote a book, A few things that related to my family and the company were mentioned and it seemed off…in a way that almost had a pattern.”
“And you are looking for a pattern?”
Ten til Midnight 