Secrets that Simmer

by Ivy Sinclair

  “I took the liberty of letting Cal know your address as soon as I realized this was a business chat,” Tony said. He needed to have some time and space to think about everything that she had thrown at him.

  “Well, what if the business part of the exchange is over?” Maggie turned toward him, and he noticed that she had lifted her breasts up in his direction. Immediately, his wolf was awake again, even though he sensed that this was dangerous.

  “I didn’t realize that you were one to mix business with pleasure, Ms. O’Hara.”

  “I think you’ll find there are a lot of things that you would want to know about me, Mr. Atwood.” Maggie’s eyes batted in his direction.

  Tony had a sense that this was yet another game. He leaned across her and opened the door. Cal was there immediately to pull it the rest of the way open. Tony allowed himself to enjoy feeling her soft curves as he pulled his arm back across to her ample bosom. Although his fingers itched to touch her, he needed to maintain control of the situation. His mind was still reeling at the nature of her questions. As much as he wanted to, it would be dangerous now for him to do any mixing of business and pleasure.

  “I hope you got what you needed,” Tony said.

  He could see the frustration on Maggie’s face. He guessed right. She had tried pulling out the sex appeal in order to stay in his company for a little while longer. But it wasn’t for anything of the kind. She was still digging for intel.

  “I think you will hear from me again, Mr. Atwood.” She said the words confidently even as she lifted her chin.

  Despite the fact that she was potentially dangerous to his future, Tony knew that his wolf would not let him stay away from her for too long. He just needed to get his bearings again. “I look forward to it, Ms. O’Hara.”

  She gave him a small smile and a bow of her head. Then she exited the limo. As Cal closed the door, Tony whipped out his phone. He and the other Urban Dwellers had some talking to do.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Maggie had gotten under Tony’s skin, but unfortunately, he’d gotten under hers too. At work the following day, Maggie couldn’t help but continue to look at the mystery file. She combed through the bare-bones information that was there. This was going to be a tougher nut to crack than she expected. Of course, that was usually the way of it with cold cases.

  Daniel popped his head in her office door. “Heads up. Jack is on the warpath.”

  Maggie rubbed the bridge of her nose. Jack Pearson had been the DA for over a decade. He was also a complete hard ass that Maggie had to grudgingly admit that she admired without question. He held himself to a somewhat impossibly high standard and had a sterling code of ethics. He expected the same of everyone on his staff in the DA’s office. Over the years, that meant that he had also proved to be a big pain in the ass to a lot of officials and elected representatives of Copper City. He was good at his job, no doubt about it. Maggie and the others that worked underneath him called him the Iron Workhorse for a reason.

  “About what this time?”

  Daniel cocked his eyebrow at her. “I heard he got a call that somebody from the DA’s office was sniffing around the Urban Dwellers.”

  Now Maggie knew she was in deep shit. She should have gone to Jack with the report as soon as she realized what it was. She knew that. But still, there was something about it that she had wanted to find out on her own. She had wanted to be sure it was real before she broached the topic with Jack, because she knew he’d try to poke holes in it to determine if it was worthy of their attention.

  “So am I being summoned?”

  “What do you think?” Daniel opened her door further. It was a sign that regardless of what she was up to, it was time to go see Jack.

  Maggie dragged her feet as she was walked through the open cubicle farm of the DA’s office to the door on the other side of the room. She saw that Jack’s door was cocked slightly open. She pushed her fingertips against it to open it further but didn’t walk inside.

  Jack was on the phone, and he was clearly agitated. His face was flushed a bright red. He caught sight of her and waved her into his office before giving her a motion that indicated she was supposed to close the door behind her. That meant the conversation was not going to be good at all.

  Maggie moved reluctantly into the room and sat in the chair across from Jack. He was tapping his pencil on the top of his desk in a kind of frantic manner that drove her crazy. Where Maggie was calm, cool, and collected in the majority of her interactions despite what she felt inside, Jack wore his emotions on his sleeve. It made him one hell of a DA during his long tenure. His passionate, articulate speeches had proved to move juries through emotional journeys in a way that completely baffled her. Maggie preferred analytics and data to win her arguments. Jack was a man of action and passion. He infused emotion into his stories that could sway even the harshest critic.

  Today, Jack’s ruling emotion appeared to be agitation. He slammed down the phone and muttered a curse word that Maggie had never heard him say before. She raised her eyebrows at him. She wasn’t going to speak first. Not until she understood what the score was. She was either going to get epically chewed out, or she was going to get fired. Either way, she knew it wouldn’t help her case at all to be the first one to speak.

  “So I got an email bright and early this morning from one Eric Carmichael of Carmichael Industries.” Jack tapped his laptop screen. “Would you happen to have any idea what it was about?”

  “I haven’t ever spoken to Eric Carmichael,” Maggie said truthfully. “He’s that rich tech billionaire right? I mean, I see him in the papers in stories about the Urban Dwellers, but I’ve never met the guy.”

  “The funny thing about this email was that it doesn’t have to do with Eric Carmichael. He was reporting a disturbing incident to me that he felt I should know. He said there was somebody from the DA’s office that crashed some gala benefit bullshit they were having last night. Something about some funding for that new medical research wing for shifters that they’re building over at Copper City General,” Jack said. “You know anything about that?”

  Maggie was tempted to lie. She knew she was in deep shit. But she knew if she lied and got caught, that would be far worse. “I heard about the benefit from a friend of mine, and I wanted to go show my support.” Maggie shrugged as if this kind of thing happened all the time. She could be a socialite in her spare time. It wasn’t as if she and Jack were close. “I have a lot of friends who can benefit from the research being done at that facility. It sounded fun, so I figured out a way to get onto the list. I might have used the fact that I was part of the DA’s office as a way to get in, but it’s not like nobody else has ever done that before.” So she was telling a half-truth at that point. She felt pretty confident with that.

  Then she saw Jack cross his arms and look at her with an expression that told her he wasn’t buying a single thing she was saying. Now, this was going to get bad.

  “I have talked to a couple of other people since I got this email, and they all said that my assistant DA Maggie O’Hara not only attended the event but left it in the company of one Anthony Atwood.”

  “He was kind enough to give me a ride home” Maggie said. Then she realized that if she didn’t spill her beans soon, based on how red Jack’s face was getting by the minute, there was a chance that he was going to blow. “Okay. You got me. Here’s the whole truth. A few days ago, I caught wind of a cold case that happened about eighteen years ago near the place where the Urban Dwellers went to school. All I wanted to do was ask him a couple of questions about it.”

  Jack leaned back in his chair and ran his hands over his face. “Maggie, you’ve been around here long enough to understand the politics of how things work in Copper City, right?” His voice was surprisingly calm.

  “Politicians run Copper City the same way they do in any other place in the world.” Maggie wasn’t going to be bullied on this particular topic. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She hadn’t out
and out accused Tony of anything anyways. The fact that he was calling in the dogs on her told her that she had wandered into territory where she wasn’t welcome. But that also meant that there was something there that he wanted to keep covered up. That was the thing that was keeping Maggie up at night.

  “That was the wrong answer.” Jack’s tone was more than familiar to her; she knew it well. He was winding up then for one hell of the tirade. She felt like she should buckle into her seat. “Things don’t work in Copper City the way they do in the rest the world. That was because we have some of the most volatile politicians in the entire country inside the city government’s walls as well as three of the most powerful men in the entire shifter community living on our doorsteps. The Urban Dwellers are not guys that you want fuck with, Maggie.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Maggie felt frustrated. Jack set such a high standard for ethics that it was disappointing that he appeared to be ready to buckle under the pressure of one silly email. “Just because they’re shifters, and just because they’ve got a lot of money, doesn’t mean they’re above the law. That applies to everybody, whether you’re human or shifter or whatever species. I was just trying to get a little bit of background to figure out if the case was one worth re-opening. So I asked him a couple of questions.”

  “This cold case- where did it come from?”

  Maggie decided it was best to skip that part, since she had no idea where it had come from and there was no way to determine if the source was credible. “The case was a suspected homicide in Croftsborrow, Virginia. It happened the same night as the declaration of shifter independence at a quarry near the school that all three of the Urban Dwellers were attending at the time. There was an indication that Tony might be involved in it.”

  “Jesus Christ, Maggie. Please tell me you have more than that. What was this indication that made you decide you needed to confront Tony Atwood yourself instead of coming to me?”

  Maggie realized now that outside of the fact that the timing was the same, there wasn’t anything else that directly tied Tony to the crime scene. “It was more of a hint. The information came with Tony’s picture.”

  Jack groaned loudly. “Are you kidding me, O’Hara? That is the flimsiest excuse for going in and sticking your hand in a hornets’ nest that I’ve ever heard. So somebody dug up some cold case and slapped a picture of Anthony Atwood on it. Do you have any idea how many enemies that guy has out there in the world? His testimony alone has put away or gotten off hundreds of people. Humans and shifters. He has got a big old bull’s-eye on his back for anybody who’s looking at trying to get some revenge, and you walked right into it. If you would’ve brought this information to me like you were supposed to, I would have set you straight before you did anything stupid. Since you didn’t do that, I have no choice but to reprimand you.”

  Maggie straightened in her seat. “Reprimand me? I didn’t do anything wrong, Jack. All I did was ask the guy a couple of questions.”

  “No, what you did was call into question the integrity of a man who is one of the most powerful men in the city. You’re lucky I’m not firing you. This goes beyond any code of ethics or conduct, and you know that. So at this point consider yourself on probation. You’re going to take a mandatory leave of absence for the next two weeks without pay. When you come back, everything, and I mean everything, will be filtered through me until I am confident you’re set straight.”

  Maggie stood up. She slammed her hands down on his desk, and for the first time in the entire exchange saw a look of surprise on Jack’s face. “No. I refuse to accept that. I have done everything for this office. I am one of the best assistant DAs you have, and That was because I trust my gut and my intuition, and something about this smells bad. I don’t care who is on the other end. We’re supposed to do what’s right. You can’t reprimand me because I didn’t do anything wrong, and if this is the kind of politics that this office plays, I don’t want to have anything to do with it anyways. I quit.” With that, Maggie stormed out of the room.

  Three hours later, Maggie found herself wallowing in her ineptitude of the situation and for allowing her emotions to get the better of her. Daniel sat next to her on a barstool. Ironically enough, she had finally let him drag her to the Urban Dwellers club. It was like she just couldn’t keep away from trouble. A pretty blonde stood behind the bar and had been serving her drinks with a look of pity on her face.

  Finally, it was as if she couldn’t keep it in anymore. She leaned on the bar in front of Maggie. “Man troubles?”

  Maggie downed the glass of whiskey. “You have no idea.”

  “Yeah. She got into a tangle with one of your bosses.” Daniel had been drinking far more than Maggie had. She wanted to hit him upside the back of his head for saying anything at all that indicated the Urban Dwellers were at the core of her problem.

  “One of my bosses, huh? Which one would that be? There’s a couple of them that can really get stuck in every woman’s craw,” the blonde said confidently. She started to dry the glassware in front of her, but it was clear that she was still listening intently.

  “Anthony Atwood,” Daniel said in a singsong type of voice. Maggie hit him hard in the knee underneath the bar, and Daniel squealed. “Ouch. What was that for?”

  The blonde’s look of pity deepened. “Oh honey, don’t you worry your head about Tony Atwood. He’s just like Eric. They don’t respect women in the way that they should, and you will eventually forget him. When it comes to relationships, neither one of them is worth the tears you spill on them.”

  “It’s not anything like that,” Maggie argued, although now she had to wonder about Tony’s dating history. It didn’t sound good at all, not that she cared, of course. She was starting to feel a little bit fuzzy in her mind. The liquor was clearly taking effect.

  “I’m Sophie, by the way,” the blonde said as she stuck her hand out to Maggie. “I’m the manager here. I go way back with those three knuckleheads, so I know what I’m talking about.”

  Maggie shook her hand automatically. “Maggie O’Hara,” she said before she wondered if she should have given a fake name. Sophie didn’t bat an eye at it, though, and Maggie was relieved.

  If she was a little less confident in her own appearance, she probably would be jealous of Sophie. She was tall and athletically built in a way that Maggie knew attracted most men. It made her wonder then if Sophie had ever had a thing with Tony, and so she was talking from experience.

  It was as if Sophie read the expression on her face and guessed the question in her mind. Sophie laughed. “Oh no, I don’t mix business and pleasure ever. Tony and I are business colleagues, and That was it.”

  Maggie remembered Tony’s comments in the car about mixing business with pleasure. His kiss at the benefit had certainly called that rule into question. She blushed despite herself. “That was a good rule in theory, but I think That was part of the reason I’m probably sitting on this stool right now.”

  Sophie looked intrigued, but then she was called to the other end of the bar by one of the waiters. “I’ll be back,” she said with a small wave.

  “So you’re saying if had you slept with him, he might not have gotten you fired?” Daniel asked, clearly trying to keep up with the conversation.

  Maggie sighed. She didn’t know why she had let Daniel talk her into this sad sack of a happy hour anyways. “I wasn’t fired. I quit, remember?”

  “Potato potatoe,” Daniel said with a shrug.

  “There is a difference,” Maggie insisted. “Jack told me that I was going to be reprimanded and sent me on probation without pay for two weeks. And then after I come back I’d have to have a babysitter when it came to any one of my cases moving forward. That was bullshit.”

  Daniel held up his glass in a mock salute. “Bullshit,” he agreed wholeheartedly.

  Maggie was starting to wonder if she should take Daniel home when a shadow appeared next to her. She found herself looking up into Tony’s dark blue
eyes. Her heart started to race. It was as if she had drawn up his image from out of her memory. She hated how good he looked.

  “Well, hello again. Drinks are on me.” Tony looked smug.

  Daniel hiccupped. The movement sent him off-balance, and he almost fell off his stool. Maggie wanted to slide underneath the bar in embarrassment. “I am pretty sure That was my signal to leave,” she said.

  “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” Tony said as he reached across the bar toward Daniel, who had somehow managed to resettle on his stool.

  Daniel looked at the hand stretched out at him. “Daniel Jenkins.” He took Tony’s hand and started to shake it vigorously. Maggie knew why. Daniel was intrigued now with Tony. It was because he was attracted to Tony, but she figured that was something that Tony had to be used to encountering. She hid her smile behind her hand as she saw the gears in Tony’s head begin to work, and then the slight widening of his eyes when he realized Daniel was gay.

  “Nice to meet you, Daniel,” Tony said with a short nod. Then he turned his full attention back to Maggie. “Of all the joints in all the world you had to walk into mine.”

  Maggie raised an eyebrow. “That is so lame. Does that really get you any girls?”

  “I’m sure it gets you more than a few guys, if That was what you’re into,” Daniel said with a lewd wink as he leaned in Tony’s direction. Then he almost fell off his stool again.

  Both Maggie and Tony looked at Daniel now. “I do think it’s probably time for you to go home,” Maggie said. She got to her feet and hauled Daniel up onto his. “I actually think it’s time for both of us to go.”

  “Don’t leave on my account,” Tony said.

  “No, I don’t drink with people who get me in trouble.”

  Tony’s facial expression turned to one of surprise. “What you mean get you in trouble?”

  Daniel covered his face with his hands and moaned as if he thought that some kind of horrible scene was about to unfold in front of him. She wanted to smack him again, but there was no way that she could do that without Tony seeing her do it.