“I hear you’re leaving us,” Cates said when Jess was close enough. Her tone was cool but professional. Her eyes raked Jess. Cates was notorious for hating it when the young female lawyers under her supervision did well and got promoted. Add in the fact that Jess had been involved for a while with a man Cates wanted, and Jess didn’t think she was being paranoid to think that she detected an extra dollop of animosity in Cates’s expression now.
“That’s right.” Knowing that Cates was no longer her boss went a long way toward easing the hard knot that had been lodged deep in her chest ever since that never-to-be-forgotten day Jess had seen her with Mark. She and Cates had never spoken of what Jess had seen—Jess at first had been too stunned, and then too proud—but that moment hung in the air between them whenever they crossed paths.
“Be sure to clean everything out of your space before you leave. Someone else will be in there, probably as soon as tomorrow.”
“Yes, I will.”
“Good luck.” Cates gave her another of those raking glances, then turned to leave.
“Tell me something.” The words were out before Jess could stop them.
Cates turned back to look at her. “Yes?”
“The day I walked in when you were kissing Mark Ryan. Did you initiate that?” Jess’s gaze held steady on the cold blue eyes.
They widened, as if Cates was surprised that Jess had the nerve to confront her so directly. Then they narrowed, then Cates smiled.
“Did he tell you that?” Her smile grew broader. “That’s right, you two were sort of an item then, weren’t you? If he told you I initiated what happened that morning, then I’m certainly not going to contradict him. Of course, that’s what he would say, though, isn’t it?”
Jess’s throat was suddenly dry. “Was that kiss the extent of it? Or was there more to it that I didn’t see?”
Cates looked her up and down. “That’s my business. And Mark’s.” Then she walked away, cool and confident as always.
Jess was left without an answer. But that wasn’t exactly true, she realized as she gathered up her few belongings. Something in Cates’s manner made her think Mark had been telling the truth.
She’d suspected it for some time, really. That was the unwelcome knowledge Jess faced as she rode the elevator up to the sixth floor, murmuring what she hoped were appropriate responses to the casual greetings and occasional congratulations that were thrown her way by assorted colleagues as she went. After the initial shock had faded, she realized she had leaned toward believing Mark’s version of events.
Still, she’d let the breakup stand. Had been determined to put him out of her life.
Why? Because the sense of betrayal had been bone-deep and shattering.
Had she overreacted?
“You’re so damn afraid you’re going to get hurt that you won’t let yourself love anybody outside your damned family.”
God, was it true? Was she really that much of a screwed-up mess?
The elevator pinged, and she was fresh out of time for soul-searching. She wasn’t the only person to get off on six, but everyone else seemed to know where they were going and be in a rush to get there. Although she’d been on this floor numerous times during the month she’d helped with the Phillips case, it had been on a dash-in, dash-out basis, without a chance to really get her bearings or be on the receiving end of any introductions. A glance at her watch told her it was already 8:24—she needed to hurry. Nervous anticipation tightened her stomach. As much as she’d ever wanted anything, she wanted this new job to go well. She’d thought finding Lenore might be difficult, but it wasn’t. Going right, the hall containing the elevators led into a large open space complete with onyx marble floors, lots of expensive-looking dark wood furniture, a wall of windows with a killer view of the building across the street, and, in front of the windows, an impressive desk, which she remembered from the times she’d darted past it running to do something for Christine. Behind that desk a woman talked on the phone. Fortyish maybe, she had medium brown hair cut chic and short, regular features, fair skin, and, Jess saw when the woman looked up, bright blue eyes. She was wearing a burgundy sweater set, probably because the air-conditioning on this floor was just this side of frigid. The nameplate on her desk read Lenore Beekman.
Bingo.
She greeted Jess with a gesture and a warm smile as Jess stopped in front of her desk.
“Mr. Collins will be there tomorrow at nine,” she chirped into the phone, then said good-bye and hung up, directing her attention to Jess. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting. You must be Jessica Dean.”
“Um, Jessica Ford, actually.” Jess had already decided that the newspaper article made the whole pretend-to-be-somebody-else thing a waste of time. She was going back to her real identity, and screw the consequences.
Besides, everybody who was interested clearly already knew who she was. Someone had even gone so far as to try to kill her.
So, to badly mangle Shakespeare, a Jessica Ford by any other name was in just as much danger, so what was the point of the subterfuge?
“Oh? I must have gotten it wrong.” Lenore got to her feet. She was wearing gray pants with her twin set, Jess saw as she came out from behind the desk, and was of medium height and lush, hourglass proportions. “I’m Lenore Beekman”—she gestured at the nameplate on her desk—“as you’ve probably guessed. Just call me Lenore. And I’ll call you Jess, if I may?” Jess nodded. “We’re all on first names, up here. Pearse told me you’d be coming. Follow me, and I’ll show you where to go.” Talking non-stop, she headed off to the left, turning down a long hall punctuated with a line of closed doors. Jess noted a doorplate reading conference room 6A at the top of the hall. Now at least she knew where she needed to be. “You’ll like this office. It’s a nice big one, with a good view. The previous occupant left on a business trip, fell in love with someone she met, got married right out of the blue, and resigned to go on an extended honeymoon.” She sighed. “So romantic. We all like to think that kind of thing can happen to us, but—”
“Lenore! Could you come here a minute?” It was Pearse’s voice, calling from somewhere out of sight. “I need you.”
“I’ll be right there,” she called back. Shaking her head, she said to Jess, “He really is helpless, that man. At least with the little things. Two doors down on the right is the one you want. The nameplate says Allison Howard. We’ll get you one made up, probably by next week. Just make yourself at home, it’s all yours now.”
“Lenore!”
“I’m coming.” With a quick, apologetic smile at Jess, she turned and hurried in the direction of Pearse’s voice. Jess was left to find her way alone. Which wasn’t difficult. As Lenore had said, a brass plate bearing the name Allison Howard etched in big block letters screwed into the door made it impossible to miss.
With only enough time left to drop her stuff in her new office and hotfoot it to the conference room, Jess opened the door and rushed inside, only to stop dead just over the threshold.
Her initial impression was of a spacious room with all the usual office accouterments: bookshelves, credenza, big desk in the middle, some chairs. Two floor-to-ceiling windows separated by about eight feet of wall space, outfitted with wide vertical blinds that were only partly open, making the space seem gloomy at first glance. Dark, patterned carpet. Richly paneled walls.
The whole thing reeked of success. Expensive success.
This is mine? was the thrilled thought that was just running through her head when she spotted a woman standing next to the window behind the desk and stopped in her tracks, confusion and embarrassment combining as she realized she somehow must have entered the wrong office by mistake.
The woman stood with her back to the door, looking out the window. She was a little on the thick-set side, with short, shaggy auburn hair, dressed in black pants and a black-and-white striped top.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Jess said as the woman, apparently a little slow to realize she had been i
ntruded upon, finally glanced around.
Jess had barely gotten the apology out before the woman vanished.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jess was still in shock as she sat all by herself on one side of the big oval table in conference room 6A some fifteen minutes later. It was a corner room, sunny and bright, with the blinds opened to a dazzling view of busy Massachusetts Avenue. The assembled group consisted of Pearse, herself, Hayley, and Andrew, and the space was almost ridiculously large for the four of them. The luxuriousness of the conference room thrilled her. The knowledge that she was now part of this elite group thrilled her more. Having announced at the beginning of the meeting that Jess was now a permanent member of their team, an announcement that appeared to come as a surprise to no one, although Hayley looked somewhat less than wowed by it, Pearse was still on his feet talking. Jess did her best to pay rapt attention as he scribbled things on a dry erase board. He was going over things that needed to be done, prioritizing schedules that had been blown to smithereens by the premature conclusion of the Phillips trial, giving out assignments that would keep them going forward until, as he put it, “we harpoon another whale.” As attentive as she was trying to be, though, Jess found that she wasn’t able to keep totally focused on what Pearse was saying, and she inwardly cursed the distraction.
She couldn’t get her mind around the fact that a woman had disappeared in front of her eyes. Poof, just like that. Gone.
Right after it had happened, Jess had rushed behind the desk to make sure the woman hadn’t had some kind of an attack and collapsed. Then she’d touched the blinds, the glass, and even looked out the window to make sure everything was solid and the woman hadn’t somehow silently fallen out to her death on the sidewalk below. Then she’d done a quick visual and physical search of the office. Conclusion: there simply wasn’t anywhere to hide.
Either the woman had been there and vanished, or Jess’s eyes were playing tricks on her and she had never been there at all.
Could what she had seen been some kind of trick of the light? A weird shadow? A hallucination conjured up by her now once again severely aching head? She’d banged it pretty hard last night, after all.
A knock on the conference room door pulled her back to the present. She was just in time to watch as the door opened and Mark walked into the room.
Jess blinked in surprise. Her gaze stuck to him like fuzz to Velcro. He didn’t afford her any more than the same passing glance he gave the others, which told her that he’d known she would be present in that room. It would have been nice if he’d given her a heads-up that he was going to be there, too.
“… have a consultant working with us on this one.” Wearing a broad smile, Pearse offered his hand as Mark joined him in the front of the room. “Ryan.”
“Collins.”
They shook hands. Pearse turned to the rest of them.
“People, this is Special Agent Mark Ryan. He’s the Secret Service liaison who’s been going over the Whitney tapes for us. Since we’re getting close to trial, he’ll be here on the premises acting as a consultant for us for the next few weeks. The information he’s uncovered may just be enough to keep our client from being indicted for murder.” Pearse looked at Hayley. “Meet Hayley Marciano.” Mark came around the side of the table to shake hands with her. Jess noted sourly that Hayley eyed Mark with the happy surprise of a bird who’d unexpectedly stumbled across a fat, juicy worm. “Andrew Brisco.” Andrew looked a whole lot less thrilled than Hayley as he and Mark shook hands. “And Jessica Ford. But I think you know Jess.”
“We’ve met,” Mark confirmed. Jess recovered enough presence of mind to offer him a tight smile as they shook hands.
“Ford?” Andrew frowned at Jess. “What’d you do, get married last night? Yesterday your last name was Dean.”
“Obviously you haven’t read the paper this morning.” Hayley produced the section containing the feature on Jess from somewhere beneath the table—Jess presumed her briefcase—and slid it over to Andrew. It was folded so that the two side-by-side pictures of Jess were uppermost. Hayley glanced at Jess as Andrew took the paper. “Nice makeover, by the way,” she added under her breath with a not-so-subtle smirk. Then she looked at Mark, employing the full power of her thick-lashed, coffee-colored eyes. With her seal-black hair slicked back in a long ponytail and a sea-foam silk blouse to play up their color, her eyes looked amazing. Hell, all of her looked amazing. “I was impressed that you were able to lift all that information through the background noise on that tape. Our guys couldn’t come up with anything.”
“Better equipment.” Sounding becomingly modest, Mark smiled at her. Jess kept her face carefully neutral, but she didn’t have to be a mind reader to pick up on Hayley’s reaction to that smile: Jess had been there herself.
Her reaction to Hayley’s reaction reminded her of just why she was better off without Mark in her life.
“Okay, everybody knows what they’re supposed to do.” Pearse’s brisk announcement signaled the breakup of the meeting. “Jess, you’re to assist Ryan for the morning. He’ll fill you in on the details.”
Mark looked at Jess.
“I’ll meet you in the lobby at ten,” he said. “In front of the revolving door. Does that suit?”
Jess nodded. What else could she do? Mark’s appearance was a curveball she hadn’t expected, and she was terrified that having him in the office would affect Pearse’s opinion of her ability to handle the job. The very last thing she wanted to do was protest, and thus make Mark’s presence seem personal. Anything like that would simply draw more attention to that which she hoped to conceal.
“Great. Don’t forget that the party at Mr. Dunn’s on Friday is formal. Andrew, that means a tux. A black one. With a white shirt and black tie. Nothing funky, not like last time.” Pearse shot Andrew a warning look. Andrew grinned. “Meeting’s adjourned. Get to work, people. You want to keep your jobs, we got hours to bill here.” Pearse turned to Mark, beginning a low-voiced conversation that he clearly meant to be private.
“I hate those damned parties,” Andrew muttered as he, Hayley, and Jess headed down the hall together. Jess had already learned from the nameplates on the doors that his office was next door to hers and Hayley’s was next door to his. Pearse’s was the first office in line, which, from the space allotted to it, appeared to be the size of all three of theirs put together and then some. Proving once again that rank had its privileges.
“I like them.” Hayley wasn’t bothering to flirt with Andrew. Her tone was flat.
“Another instance in which we’re clearly incompatible. Gee, I was beginning to think we’d exhausted them all.”
“If you hate Mr. Dunn’s parties so much, don’t go.”
“I wouldn’t, except, oh, I don’t know, they’re mandatory.”
“Mandatory?” Jess piped up. This party was something else she’d known nothing about. If they’d talked about it early in the meeting, she’d missed it.
“The whole firm is expected to put in an appearance,” Andrew explained. “That means everybody.”
“Even where you were before, you should have received an invitation.” Hayley’s tone left no doubt in Jess’s mind about what Hayley thought about the third floor, aka where Jess was before. Contempt iced every syllable.
Jess rallied. She’d already learned that showing weakness to Hayley was kind of like dripping blood in front of a shark.
“I’ve been busy,” she said with a shrug.
“We’re always busy. Deal or die.” With that bit of encouragement, Hayley lifted a hand and walked off.
“Hayley tends to get a little competitive. Don’t let it throw you.” Andrew’s grimace was faintly apologetic.
Jess went for a light note. “Her bark is worse than her bite, hmm?”
“Nah, I think her bite is definitely worse. Woman’s in it to win it. In fact, when I saw your face this morning, I half expected to hear she’d pulled a Tonya Harding on you. Take out the rival and a
ll that.”
“My face?” Jess had been hoping nobody had noticed. But apparently foundation, powder, and artfully arranged hair could only hide so much.
“You look like somebody played Whac-A-Mole with the side of your head.”
Jess sighed and went for a version of the truth. After all, Andrew, not being her mother or Mark, would hardly mount his own round-the-clock protection operation. “I got mugged last night.”
“Mugged?”
“In front of my apartment. Man grabbed me, punched me in the head, then got scared off by the timely arrival of a friend. I was hoping the bruise wasn’t all that noticeable. Nobody else has mentioned it.”
“I would cop to being the tactless one, but the truth is, the rest of the gang is just completely self-centered.”
That made Jess smile. Then she changed the subject. “So tell me about this party. When and where?”
“Friday. It’s a schmooze-fest with the major clients. Everybody meets here at the office at eight, and Mr. Dunn has us driven out to his place by limousine. There’s a fleet of them, as you can imagine. First class all the way, baby.” Andrew grinned at her. “Boring as all hell, but first class. Kind of like the swankiest funeral you ever saw. We do it three times a year, end of April, August, and December. December is the big one. Wait till you see it. Christmas and New Year’s rolled into one.” They reached his office, and he said, “That’s it, off to the salt mines,” and went inside with a wave.
Which left Jess alone. Given that four different groups—two other criminal defense teams, Christine’s operation, plus a small army of support staff—occupied the sixth floor, there was constant activity. Right at that moment was no exception. People scurried hither and yon, coming toward her, going past her, flitting around corners. A young woman with an armload of files shouldered her way into Christine’s sanctuary, which was at the far end of the hall. Interns—you could spot them by their youth and dress—raced from office to office. A uniformed security guard trundled a dolly loaded with sealed boxes toward the freight elevator. An expensively dressed couple with the tentative expression of new clients walked toward her, reading nameplates as they came. Jess was surrounded, but, stopping in front of her new office with her hand on the knob, she felt totally isolated. She realized she was not quite okay with the idea of walking inside. Apparently vanishing women had that effect on her.
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