sam.writes.sometimes

· 22 Apr 2020

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Ginger: Part 2

#writing #shortstory
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Ginger sat with her arms crossed, impatiently waiting for this hulking man to begin his explanation. He was fairly intimidating at first glance, with broad shoulders, close-cropped, dark hair, bushy eyebrows and a sharp nose. Ginger supposed she should probably be more afraid of him, but she was more interested in finding out who he was and hopefully how he knew who she was.

“Well... for any of this to make sense I guess I need to introduce myself properly. My name is Vaughn Graham and I am the founder and owner of The Moving Agency, and -“
“Hang on. Those furniture transport whack-a-doos? You’re telling me I was abducted by some dudes who help people move house?” She couldn’t believe this. He had to be joking.
“Yes and no. The whole moving thing is a large part of my business but it’s more of a front for the real business - The Relocation Group - than anything else.”

Vaughn spent the next fifteen minutes telling her how he’d realized that there were many people who desperately needed to disappear. People that were too terrified by just as many horror stories of the failings of government-run programs to get the help they needed. How he’d started researching the flaws in these programs and had built a better system.

Ginger listened as he told her about when he’d figured out that one of the main issues was the ease of access to the information of these supposedly protected people. About the eighteen months he’d worked on an algorithm that protected his clients by splitting the extraction and relocation process up into a series of small tasks. Enough tasks that no one person ever had enough information about the client to be able to put them at risk.

He explained that each person had a specific role within the business. The mover that extracted the client under the ruse of moving away, knew only their original name and address and wouldn’t see them again after reaching HQ. The client would be given a mild makeover by a stylist who wouldn’t even know their name and told to steer clear of social media. A collection of stock photographs would be taken by a photographer -aware only of the client’s original first name - before the makeover; used by someone else to continue the client’s social media presence for a few months, before executing a believable scenario for the discontinuation of all media presence.

The person who would create the client’s new identity would not have any knowledge of their original identity and the person who purchased the new house wouldn’t know who it was for. Just like the person organizing travel wouldn’t know the final address and the movers on the other side wouldn’t have any knowledge of the client’s original identity or even whether or not the client was someone being relocated or just someone needing help moving house. It was the perfect system, with all its parts isolated.

Ginger had to admit she was impressed.
“But even so, how do you know you can trust all these people with all these lives?”
“Because I’d trust each and every one of them with my own life,” Vaughn said, “I hand picked my team from people I explicitly trust from my own interactions with them. I also vet each new hire extensively, even if I’ve known them my whole life, like Dave.”
“Even the movers? Even though they don’t only do relocations?” Ginger asked.
“Even the movers.”

“So how do you just whisk these people away without anyone getting suspicious?”
Vaughn chuckled and crossed his arms.
“Inquisitive thing, aren’t ya?”
Ginger huffed indignantly and threw up her arms.
“It’s a valid question!”
“It’s also a trade secret.”
She huffed again but decided it was not a point worth pushing.

“I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with me, or why I woke up in the trunk of a car, apparently abducted by your new hire.”
Vaughn smiled indulgently at her. “I was actually just getting around to that part.”
“Well, I’ll say it again,” she raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms, “get on with it then.”
“Well, I guess it all came about because your father called.”