He nodded.
“That explains a lot.”
“Sit.”
Too tired to argue, I plopped down on the closed toilet lid while he riffled through the medicine cabinet for bandages and ointment. Ever the magpie, my eye riveted on the glint of silver protruding from the towel at my feet. I leaned down and picked up what turned out to be the shower door handle.
I allowed myself to dip into a fantasy of Shepard naked and making a screwdriver out of soap or some other MacGyver shit before deciding the bathroom was entirely too small to be entertaining such lines of thought.
“I’m sorry about this,” I said, placing the handle on the sink. “That was a dick move on my part.”
“Was that an apology?” Shepard turned to me, hands full of boxes and tubes. “Somehow I didn’t figure you for the apology type.”
“Just because I’m a vexatious nuisance doesn’t mean I can’t also be self-aware. The two are not mutually exclusive, you know.”
“You are a strange human being.” He set his wound-dressing accoutrements down on the counter and, as he sank to one knee, I realized with dawning horror what he was planning.
“No!” I insisted, catching him by the obscenely rounded shoulders. “Don’t help me. I can do this myself.”
“Are you physically incapable of accepting assistance?”
“No. Well, yes. But it’s not about that. I’ve been such a pain in the ass. I can’t let you do this for me, or the guilt would crush me.”
Lie.
“I’m willing to risk it.”
He grabbed me behind the knees and scooted me to the edge of the toilet, at which point I both squawked and grabbed a towel from the nearby rack to cover my lap.
“Relax, would you? It’s not like I’m gonna look—”
“I’m not wearing any panties!”
The changes in Shepard’s face were so subtle, anyone not trained from toddlerhood to read faces might have missed them.
Dilation of pupils. Incremental lowering of brows. Subtle expansion of nostrils. Predatory instincts all and relics of a time when an animal nature was not only useful, but also necessary. The hunt.
I felt each of his eight fingers on the backs of my calves, his thumbs on the outside of my knees. One swift movement, and he could have my legs apart. Knowing this, knowing I couldn’t stop him, sent a skittering pleasure from my neck to the base of my spine.
“You went commando to go see Valentine?”
“Of course not.”
A measure of tension seemed to ease from Shepard’s hulking shoulders.
“I traded him my panties for information.”
I’d have given my best pair of stretchy pants to know precisely which emotion caused Shepard’s eyes to darken. Anger at my recklessness? Jealousy? Irritation? Some potent mix of all three?
“You what?” His fingers dug into my calves in a manner not altogether unpleasant, stiff and sore as they were from the day’s misadventures.
“In the limo this afternoon, Valentine claimed my mother was blackmailing him. I wanted to know why. He wouldn’t part with the information unless I parted with my panties, so . . . I parted.”
Shepard’s eyes narrowed at this revelation. “And what did he say?”
I briefly debated whether I should keep what I’d learned to myself, but the earnest concern radiating from the man kneeling before me unraveled what little resistance remained.
The whole transaction summarized surprisingly easily. “Trouble is,” I finished, “none of this really helps me, because I still don’t know which mistress she was investigating or what client paid her to do it.”
“Fuck.” Shepard relinquished his grip on my legs and sat back on his heels. My skin felt colder without the borrowed warmth of his fingers.
“My sentiments exactly.”
“No.” He drove a hand through his sandy hair, causing it to stick up in endearingly disheveled spikes and whorls. “I know who it is. The mistress.”
“You do? How?”
“I was helping your mother with daytime surveillance. She needed a point person who could stake out the someone-in-question’s place of employment.”
I sat there, face tingling like I’d been slapped.
“You’ve been working with my mother? Why didn’t you tell me?” It made no sense, but somehow this felt like even more of a betrayal than finding out my mother had a longtime fuckbuddy. Paul Gladstone, I could almost understand. Everyone had needs. That biological itch that needed scratching.
But how often had she preached the virtues of working alone? How loneliness was a virtue because it meant you were a sovereign creature, self-sufficient and self-governed. How friend was just a word for someone who hadn’t fucked you over yet.
“It was six months ago,” he said. “I didn’t think it was related.”
“Tell me.”
Shepard grabbed the box of bandages and antibiotic ointment and seated himself on the tile floor, his long legs folded one over the other in a pose decidedly yogic. His body loosened when he set to his task, relieved at having something to do with his hands while he talked.
I filed this information away for future use.
“She told me it was for a simple cheating case. The wife had been working late nights, going on extended business trips. We just needed proof that she wasn’t where she said she would be. Well, I get set up to watch her and, on the first fucking day, guess whose limo comes to pick my target up for a long lunch?”
“Valentine?” I asked, before hissing as a cotton ball soaked with hydrogen peroxide fizzed when it came into contact with the first blister, then the next, and the next. Comfort came in the heat that followed that sting. A sensation my body associated with care.
“Bingo,” he said.
With greater tenderness than I would have thought him capable, Shepard peeled open a bandage and smudged the center square with a daub of ointment before applying it to my heel.
He was a man who had dressed many wounds.
“Who was it?” I asked. “The woman my mother asked you to follow?”
“Kristin Flickner.”
I blinked at him, stunned. “Not Kristin Flickner of Dawes, Shook, and Flickner?”
“Affirmative.”
“But that’s the law firm where I interned. I’ll be a part-time associate there while I study for the bar. I start back the day after tomorrow.”
Shepard, already several steps ahead of me, only nodded. “I imagine that’s why your mother took the case. If something was going down in the firm where her daughter was working, she’d want to know about it.”
My mind sorted through its limited memories about Kristin Flickner. I had never worked with her directly because, as part of her bid to make partner, she’d been away taking depositions for a major pharmaceutical case the firm had been gearing up for at the time. Flying somewhere different every week, it seemed.
On the few occasions I had seen her, I’d not been able to keep myself from staring with a dopey, puppy-eyed wonder. Equally as striking in a pantsuit as she was in jeans and cardigan, Kristin was lovely in the kind of effortless, understated way that made everyone around her seem vulgar by comparison. Hair of burnished copper and eyes a startling green-gold, every pale freckle in the galaxy pinwheeling across her high cheekbones and nose looked like it had been painted by an artist’s hand.
It wasn’t difficult to see why a husband could become jealous enough to have her followed. Or even a man like Valentine smitten enough to take foolish risks.
“So you think the cheating case was bogus?” I asked. “Did my mother find Kristin because someone had hired her to dig up dirt on Valentine?”
“It’s the old chicken-or-the-egg question.” Shepard continued to hold my foot in his hand like a little bird. “Whether your mother discovered the whole Valentine angle while following Kristin Flickner or vice versa, it amounts to the same. At some point, she decided to do something about it.”
“And you think t
hat something is blackmailing Valentine?”
“That I can’t say. Alex Avery is a hard woman to read.”
“No fucking joke,” I said.
“Anyway, after the first day, your mom paid me off and told me she was going a different direction with the investigation. Whatever happened with the Flickner case after that, I don’t know.”
“Wait a minute!” I sat up straight as the idea hatched in my brain. “I could request Kristin as a mentor!”
“Absolutely not. It’s out of the question.” Shepard released my foot and looked me directly in the eye. “Whatever else your mother might have been trying to do, it’s clear that she didn’t want you getting involved.”
“And I’ll bet P-Ripple didn’t want you getting involved with my mother’s cases on the sly. Does he know you’ve been moonlighting?”
Shepard’s cheeks colored in a manner both boyish and charming. “No. And he’s not going to know.”
“Provided you tell me anything you find out about Valentine when you talk to P-Ripple.”
“Are you blackmailing me now?”
“Don’t think of it as blackmail,” I said. “Think of it as incentive to participate in a mutually beneficial exchange of information.”
“If we’re talking mutually beneficial, I think you owe me something in exchange for handcuffing me to the shower.” Shepard’s fingers tightened around my ankle. “I showed you mine.”
I swallowed around what felt like a gumball of broken glass. “Technically, you didn’t show me anything. Incidental nudity revealed in the course of an otherwise unrelated operation doesn’t guarantee animus contrahendi, i.e., an intent to enter into a contract that might obligate me to reciprocate.”
“I myself have always liked the sound of quid pro quo, i.e., tit for tat. And you’ve seen my tat.”
About this, he was correct. His tat and his tats.
“What we have here is an unintentional exchange inter vivos. I happened to be looking into the bathroom, and you happened to be naked where I was looking.” I was picking up steam now and adrenaline too. This had always been my favorite part. The bit when someone is rolling without brakes right into the trap they didn’t even know I had prepared for them.
“But I happened to be naked because you threw up on me.”
“And I happened to throw up because you drove like a maniac, thereby resulting in your need to take a shower and your subsequent nudity.”
Shepard exhaled a disgusted sigh and dragged himself to standing with the aid of the sink. “Jane Avery, you happen to be fucking exhausting.”
“It’s better that you’re learning this now. It’ll save us trouble in the future.” I helped myself up with the towel rack, testing my bandaged feet. They felt significantly better already. “Thanks for the first aid.”
“An apology and a thank-you in a fifteen-minute period. Slow down, Avery, I might just swoon.”
I found I liked him calling me Avery. It made me feel like part of some team I hadn’t known I wanted to belong to. “Yeah, well don’t get used to it. I’m still on a taco high.”
“And here I thought that thing about the quickest way to someone’s heart being through their stomach was just an expression.”
“Actually, the quickest way to anyone’s heart is between the ribs. Unless you have a seriously sharp blade, in which case—” Seeing the piqued look on Shepard’s face, I thought better of finishing my sentence. “Never mind.”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”
“Good call.”
I followed him to the living room, where he armed the security system with his back turned to me.
“I don’t suppose I have to tell you that I have guys stationed at every exit, so you might want to consider not taking off again.”
“I figured as much.” And I had. I also figured I’d spend what remained of the evening on my laptop, mining the interwebs for dirt on Kristin Flickner and Archard Everett Valentine.
He paused, turning around to face me. “That’s what you did wrong, you know.”
“Excuse me?” I could already feel my eyes begin to narrow at the unwelcome proximity of the words you and wrong in the same sentence.
“When you ran from me. You were doing okay until you ducked into that building. Never enter a building without knowing all the exits first.”
I forced a, “Good to know,” through gritted teeth.
“I’ll be back tomorrow morning. If you need anything before then, you have my cell.”
“Do I? I don’t remember you giving it to me.”
“Check your duffel bag.” He grinned as he shut the door behind him.
Oh, I did not like the sound of this.
On feet tentative from emotional and physical discomfort, I padded into the bedroom and knelt down next to my duffel bag.
Only it wasn’t my duffel bag.
Or it was, but the contents I’d hastily packed had been swapped for a pile of plain black T-shirts and boxer briefs. Shepard’s spare clothes.
I pawed to the bottom, already having a decent idea what I would find.
Handcuffs.
Handcuffs and a note.
On one side, Shepard’s number. On the other, two words.
Your turn.
Chapter Twelve
I wondered how far I could get the pen up Melanie Beidermeyer’s nose before anyone could stop me.
This wasn’t a new thing for me, fantasizing about injuring Melanie in some fantastic way. What was new was the setting—the cavernous executive boardroom at Dawes, Shook, and Flickner.
In the past, it had been in the lecture hall (decapitation by encyclopedia), or at study group (suffocation via cheese pizza slice), or at the holiday get-together at my favorite professor’s home (a mistletoe shank to the jugular). All richly provoked, I would have assured you.
As was my current homicidal daydream.
Over the course of the breakfast meet and greet with all the associates and partners both junior and senior, Melanie had managed to mention (a) my taking a leather folder to the eye during graduation, (b) her date with Valentine, (c) my missing mother—a fact I was pretty sure had come to her from item Valentine—(d) her new Hermes bag, and (e) my taking a folder to the eye during graduation. Apparently the story got enough laughs the first time to bear repeating.
Not only this, but Melanie had somehow welded herself to Kristin Flickner’s elbow. Asking her thoughtfully sycophantic questions about her recent promotion to partner. “Discovering” that they shared a hairstylist, a masseuse, and a penchant for Bentleys. Complimenting her on her Antonio Melani suit and heels even though the skirt/blouse combo Melanie wore probably cost twice as much and had most likely been hand-tailored by an army of child laborers housed in the capacious Beidermeyer basement.
Fueled by terrible coffee and stale bagels, I’d shuffled around the room, offering myself up like an hors d’oeuvre to any and every potential conversational partner but especially those whose proximity made it possible to eavesdrop on what Melanie and Kristin were saying.
Which is how I ended up in front of the bulging belly of Gary Dawes, who had never, not in the entire three months I had worked as a summer associate at the law firm he founded, managed to get my name right. And maybe I was off base here, but I felt I had extra cause to be insulted because my name was so damn common, it was literally the default moniker given to unidentified corpses.
Side note: thanks, Mom.
“Jennifer!” He pumped my hand up and down in his moist, fat palm. “Are you settling in okay?”
“Fine, sir,” I said. “And thank you for asking.”
“I sure am glad to have you aboard, Jennifer. Valedictorian of your class. I know you’ll be a real credit to our firm.”
“I was the salutatorian,” I said, noticing just how much Dawes’s nose, with its long, downturned tip and high-set round nostrils, resembled a penis.
“That’s right, that’s right. It’s Melanie I’m thinking o
f.” He glanced across the room, and he and the blonde show pony in question exchanged a nauseatingly fond little wave. “Still, if you have to come in second place to someone, you could do worse than Melanie Beidermeyer. Am I right?”
“Right you are, sir!” I gave him my biggest, toothiest smile. “In fact, it was such a pleasure losing to her that I wish she’d beaten me by three points instead of three-tenths of a point!”
Dawes waggled a Polish-sausage finger at me. “Valentine warned me about that rapier wit of yours.”
“He did?” I felt my face go all hot and flushed despite my best efforts to affect a tone of abject disinterest. “What did he say?”
“Just that you were the sharpest woman he’d met in some time. A real ‘wonder,’ if I remember correctly. That we ought to make sure someone else didn’t ‘lasso you up’ before you passed the bar exam.”
That son of a bitch.
“Well, I’m mighty flattered that he saw fit to call you up just to chat about me,” I said, sipping the last dregs of my terrible coffee.
“I’m afraid he didn’t.” Dawes gave me a pitying smile. “We were actually talking about Melanie, and Valentine mentioned he’d run into you at the same restaurant where they met for dinner.”
“Oh.” There was really no polite way to say, Level with me, Cocknose: Did Valentine tell you about the panties or what? So I went with the more mild but less specific, “Is that . . . all he mentioned about me?”
“Actually, no.”
In the time it took him to take a bite of bagel—heaped with a small avalanche of cream cheese—chew it, and swallow, I’d managed to have a panic attack and a minor cardiac incident.
“He also recommended that you not be paired with Kristin Flickner as a mentor.”
“What? Why?”
“Something to do with a clash of personalities. He has remarkable instincts.”
“But he’s not even a lawyer,” I protested.
“Precisely.” Dawes poked a finger in the air triumphantly. “That’s why I asked his opinion. I often find it helpful to get an outside party’s perspective when assigning mentorships.”
“Listen, before you arrive at a final decision, can I at least make my case for whom I’d prefer to be assigned to?” Of course, “my case” was mostly a giant pack of lies that conveniently made Kristin Flickner the only logical choice, but Dawes didn’t necessarily need to know this.
Private Lies (Jane Avery Mysteries Book 1) Page 11