Lost in Deception

by Anita DeVito

  Not her. She’d have to rethink her opinion of past lovers.

  She dug into her bag for Poppy’s sleeping pills, putting two in her hand. Decision point: truth or lie. She froze, torn between what her head and her heart said. What mattered? Poppy. Definitely. Rico. Absolutely. Tom?

  His heavy hand knocked on the door. “Catalina? We have to wait twenty minutes for room service.”

  She jumped and hurried to crushed the pills to a fine powder and scooped it into the full glass. Twirling to dissolve the white powder, she committed to returning his generosity before getting back to work.

  She turned on the shower, made sure everything was safely stowed away in her zipped purse, and opened the door. “I know how you feel about waiting. Come here. Let me show you how to savor the passing of time.”

  An hour later, she rolled to her stomach and used both hands to lift her upper body off the floor. The man was a machine. He had to be part cyborg, part marathon runner, part rutting buck. He just would not wear out. It had been tomorrow for a few hours, and still they were going strong. And he wouldn’t drink the damn water. He’d ordered champagne with strawberries. And whipped cream. Oh, and chocolate sauce.

  She was tempted to see if they could make it until dawn—or at least through the chocolate sauce—but she was on a deadline. Taking control of the matter, she rolled on top of him.

  “What are you going to do to me?”

  “I am going to torture you. I am going to bring you to the edge of heaven and leave you hanging until you are in a glorious hell. I will own your very breath, and only when you beg me will I grant you release.” Straddling Tom, she ran her hands over his chest, fingering the straining muscles to find his taut nipples. She bowed her head and caught the nub in her teeth. His big body convulsed, and thus began the torture.

  Twenty minutes passed. Another lamp had been broken, the dessert dishes rolled over, the couch was moved and table was askew, and yes, he was begging.

  “Anything! I will give you anything!” he promised as she denied him yet again.

  “I want everything,” she said softly.

  “I’ll give it to you. I will. I will. I just need…”

  His large body shook as she took his rigid cock and rolled the condom into place. She took him inside her again and began moving with the strength and dexterity of a belly dancer. Her hips undulated, rolling until his heavy body arched, and then she took him to the promise land. Tom jackknifed, his strong arms locking around her while his body was emptied of every sane thought. His thick chest heaved, struggling to contain those pumping lungs. At once, his strength waned, and he fell back to the floor, taking her with him.

  The hands fell heavily from her back, and she lifted her head.

  He was out.

  She kissed his jaw and snuggled.

  No reaction.

  She lifted her hips and separated them for the last time. The loss of his body heat left her cold. She scrambled to her feet and wrapped him like a burrito in the blankets on which he lay, not wanting the chill of the air to wake him. She pulled his shirt from the floor and slid it on as she ran into the bathroom. She retrieved her gear, came back into the room quietly, confidently, and got down to work.

  Chapter Five

  Monday, April 10 seven-thirty a.m.

  Tom woke to a morning that was far too bright and much too early. He rolled his head left, then right, blinking rapidly. The room was wrecked. Not just messed. Not just trashed.

  Wrecked.

  The only thing in its right place was the round table with his computer and cameras. He sat up, bracing himself on rigid arms. “Catalina?”

  No answer.

  He hadn’t really expected one. Still, it would have been nice. Morning sex wasn’t a treat he often indulged in. He ran a hand through his hair and laughed. How many times had he pulled a disappearing act in the middle of the night? It wasn’t that he was opposed to staying. It was just easier not to. Fewer questions. No mistakes about what the night did and did not mean.

  His body deciphered something sticky against his leg. He flung away the blanket wrapped around him. Confused and then amused. “Chocolate.”

  The clock gave him time for a leisurely shower and shave. He dressed in fresh clothes but rummaged through last night’s mess for his shoes. His clothes were thrown everywhere. He found everything but his shirt. Then he smiled. Peeling that dress off that hot, tight body? Definitely in his top ten.

  He checked his email, found nothing that couldn’t wait, and stowed the computer in its bag. Next was his voicemail. The old contractor was there, and he didn’t run deep on patience. He hoisted his computer bag to his shoulder, put the cameras and notebook in a courier’s bag, and opened the door. A glance back at the room brought another smile, and then he hung the privacy sign. He would deal with that later.

  Business people starting the first meeting of the day and retirees hanging out filled the neighborhood restaurant. Fabrini waited at a corner table. Jim Stinson sat on his right. A younger copy of Fabrini brooded on his left.

  “You’re late,” Fabrini said.

  He ignored the remark, holding out his hand to the stranger. “Dr. Thomas Riley.”

  The man stayed seated and took his hand, looking him hard in the eyes. “Michael Fabrini. I’m here to protect my father’s interests.”

  “You didn’t call last night,” Fabrini said.

  “I emailed.” Tom unrolled the paper napkin wound around the utensils and spread the thin paper on his lap.

  “I called you.”

  “Ten times,” he said, recalling the missed calls. There was a fine line between having someone as a customer and as a client. His services were not a commodity. If he let Fabrini minimize his role, he’d be answering the old man’s calls at two in the morning. Drawing a line was important. Not moving it was just as important. “I gave you an overview in the email. You ready to move on?” The waitress stopped with a pot of coffee and a smile. He nodded and moved the mug toward the woman.

  “You son of a bitch,” Michael said quickly.

  Tom chuckled at the whole set up. Fabrini brought his money man and his muscle? What had changed since Saturday night? What did he think would happen today? Stunts like this one had stopped getting his attention before he turned thirty. “This is a family restaurant. Watch your language.”

  Michael snarled, a lion cub ready to pounce in defense of his father. Said father raised a hand and leashed the beast.

  “What did you learn?” Fabrini said quietly.

  The quiet got to Tom. Somewhere beneath the bravado was the man he sat with Saturday night. “Nothing definitive.”

  Stinson leaned in. “But?”

  “There are some things that don’t make sense.”

  “Sabotage?” Stinson looked like someone just told him Santa Claus wasn’t real.

  Michael tugged at the end of his leash again. “Why you no good…if you’re insinuating that my father—”

  Fabrini gripped his son’s forearm, stymieing the building rant. He didn’t speak but had lost the little color he had.

  “I’m not using that word,” Tom said, responding to Stinson. “Way too early in the investigation.”

  “Quit pussyfooting around the facts,” the younger Fabrini snapped.

  “The facts are a willful intent finding by OSHA turns this into a criminal investigation for the Cleveland Police, so I advise you be careful of your words. It can take months to finalize a finding.” Tom stared pointedly at his client. “I will not put my name to an opinion based on twelve hours of photos and measurements.”

  “Who?” Fabrini spoke in a voice that was more a growl. “Who and why.”

  Tom shook his head. “I’m the ‘how’ guy. Whos and whys are for the police.”

  “The hell I’m going to let an OSHA finding fuel lawsuits trying to dismantle my company.” He pounded his ham hock-sized fist on the table. The glasses and silverware jumped, landing with a crash. “You find me who, what,
where, when, why, and how. That’s your fucking job.”

  Tom pressed his tongue into his cheek, considering. Growing up on construction sites, in a family of contractors, it was a daily occurrence for some guy to want to prove he had balls. He was guilty of doing it himself. Hell, even Katie did it, and she didn’t have balls. The thing was to figure out what reaction would get you what you wanted.

  So, he asked, what did he want? He wanted to stay on the job and unravel the puzzle of what happened first to cause the chain of events. If this accident was an accident, unraveling how it happened could prevent it from happening again. It was work worth doing. He had no intention of becoming Fabrini’s private investigator…but now was not the time to argue.

  “I need to finish doing what I’m doing, then we’ll see what it tells us. I need a better idea of who was where, and I need to interview the men on the site. Get me what I need, and I’ll do what I can to get you what you need.”

  With that, Tom stood and walked out. Michael’s curses followed him. He felt bad for the old contractor. The apple hadn’t just fallen far from the tree. It had fallen in another state.

  He returned to the loaner truck and left the small parking lot. The thing with the excellent exit was it didn’t come with breakfast. He ignored the GPS and turned away from the highway, aiming for a set of golden arches. A quick run through the drive-thru and he sat in the parking lot, swallowing down the fast, warm food. He thumbed through his notebook, reviewing his notes from yesterday. “There. It started there.” He had sketched the body of the tower. He pointed to a spot about one third up from the earth. “It had to start around here.”

  He pulled the digital camera out of the bag and went into the photo library. “Holy shit!” He wiped the grease from his fingers and pressed the buttons to move the pictures back…and forth…and back…and forth. There were ten images, and when he ran them forward in quick succession…Catalina danced for him. Her breasts played peek-a-boo from behind the shirt he couldn’t find. He stretched out his legs and pulled at his jeans, swearing.

  He needed to find that woman again.

  He played the sequence through one more time and then forced his hand to put the camera back in the bag. He started the truck and, in a few minutes, was back on the highway, barreling toward downtown Cleveland.

  His mind was everywhere but in that truck. It was back at the table with Fabrini and his entourage. It was at the site with the crane carcass. It was in his hotel room. On the bed. On the floor. In the shower.

  “In a quarter mile, use the right lane to exit.”

  The calm voice of the GPS startled him back to the here and now. For the next twelve hours, there was only one thing to think about: what could cause a three hundred-foot crane to topple?

  He glanced at his mirrors. An SUV sliced from the high-speed lane toward the right-hand lane where he drove. Instantly, he understood that the two vehicles would be occupying the same space at the same time—a phenomenon forbidden by the laws of physics. He braced himself and stood on the brake. The tools and crates in the bed, the bags and garbage on the seat all plastered itself against the front of the truck. The truck slowed enough that the SUV sailed past. It cut through the lanes like a hot knife through butter then bounced off the parapet. The noise of metal on concrete was assaulting, then the SUV swerved back into the driving lane, leaving streaks of black on the wall. It didn’t exit but raced forward, putting distance between them.

  Tom’s hand shook as he reached for his cell phone, his heart racing with the near miss. If he hadn’t looked in the mirror, if he’d been even a second slower…he called 9-1-1 and reported the menace, unwilling to be the reason for somebody else’s bad day.

  The site was locked up tight when he finally reached it. His legs were a little shaky, but after a good talking to, they carried him to the gate where he disabled the security system and opened the lock. He drove through and took care to lock up behind him. He was surprised to have it to himself. At the very least, he expected an OSHA investigator to be working.

  Quickly enough, the left side of his brain kicked in. Logic, reason, and math left no room for nerves, anxiety, or trepidation. He set up in the trailer and then went to the crane skeleton. The ground had dried, leaving hard cast footprints. It looked as though an army had marched across. He knew just what he wanted to see. A coupling about a third of the way up looked wrong. He searched the ground. Walking at three-foot offsets, he looked for anything that would give him a clue as to why the sections had come apart.

  He found things that could be something. He couldn’t collect them—they were evidence that would be needed in the official investigation. Instead, he used orange cones from the trailer to set out like evidence markers, then photographed the hell out of them. He took a dozen shots of each with the film camera and then digital.

  The next two hours he worked in the heated trailer, immersed in a computer program that allowed him to build the structure and then knock it down. He wasn’t satisfied with the results. “The simulations indicate the crane should have fallen southwest, based on the position of the load. But it didn’t. It pivoted to the north, clipping the support crane before bending over the steel skeleton. Why?”

  Wind was a variable. He needed the data on the wind gusts and direction. He stood and stretched, his back aching from the punishing hunched position. Putting his hard hat back on, he went out to take a closer look. He climbed the ladder that was tied to the stable side of the structure, crossed a thick beam, and made his way to the damaged end.

  The structure leaned over the water. Inch by inch, he noted any signs of damage along the steel beams. A shadow flickered by that he dismissed as a bird. He eased out to the very end of the beam. Directly over his head was the pivot point. The two large supports on the bottom had bent—yielded—just above a connection to the section below. The connection itself was in place, bolts the size of his arm holding the two section together. The connection at the top gapped open. There was no deformation of the connection or the supports. None at all.

  He set his notebook and cameras down on the wide beam, needing to move freely. Stretching to his tallest height, his fingers probed the intact bolts. Something moved in his peripheral vision; his head snapped toward the motion. Pain crashed across his shoulder. His fingers slipped under a second blow. He frantically fought falling, swinging out widely to grab onto something, anything. A hand pressed on the middle of his back, and he fell.

  Monday, April 10 eleven a.m.

  Peach stood behind outcropping of scrub brush and watched the man silhouetted on the damaged building. The late morning sun was screened by clouds but was bright enough to blacken features. She knew who the man was by the way he moved, so maybe it was more than curiosity that kept the binoculars pressed to her eyes. After their night together, it was nearly two in the morning when she parked the Beast in her grandfather’s driveway. She set her alarm for seven and fell into bed, fully dressed.

  Morning brought anticipation. Her mind sharp again, she attacked the copies she’d made of his investigation. The notebook gave the easiest understanding of where Dr. Thomas Riley was headed. There were notes related to the weight of the lift and the wind speed and direction. He noted the capacity of the crane was greater than the lift weight with the added wind. A heading of operator error was crossed out. “He knows Tío didn’t do it.” A wave of thankfulness overcame her, and she was glad she had decided not to take the equipment with her.

  Watching him work, knowing what she did, she considered offering to help. Her skillset could be useful on the non-science part of the investigation. She excelled at finding things people wanted to keep hidden. He examined the large truss that made up the crane tower when a second silhouette stepped into the fame. This new man was not sure-footed, carefully setting one foot in front of the other as he crossed the downward sloping beam. Tom hadn’t acknowledged his visitor. The new man bent down, and when he stood, he had a long, thin rod in his hand. With the sun behind th
em, the weapon was barely visible.

  “Turn around, Tomas. Turn around, turn around.” She screamed as the man raised the rod, holding it like a baseball bat. He didn’t hear her; he didn’t turn. Then the man struck, hitting Tom from behind and sending him into the water.

  She held her place. She had no choice until the assailant descended from the structure and disappeared into the trailer. Then she moved. Up the breakwall, across the top, down the other side. The large rocks gave way until it was sand under her feet. She began swimming. For an instant, the cold water stole everything—her breath, her coordination—but she fought through. Tom thrashed just a few yards away, bobbing up and down, not sinking but not making progress. She dove under with the thought of keeping him afloat. If she could get him to the rocks, he could climb out easily. Her hands locked on his hips, which only amplified the thrashing. He kicked and fought until she turned him around and grabbed his face.

  His eyes locked on hers, and he froze.

  She held her finger to her lips. When he nodded, she kicked the short distance to the surface, bringing them close to the rocks, sheltered from the man above. She squeezed his arm to let him know she wasn’t leaving him and then crawled up the rocks to look for the other man. Hopefully, he had seen Tom fall into the water and left to let cold water do his dirty work.

  Camouflaged by the trusses, she broached the horizon. Her hands were tense, her knuckles white and rigid, but she forced them to move until she could see across the site. The door to the trailer opened, and the man walked out with his arms loaded. He went to a black SUV parked next to the trailer, fumbled with the back door, and dumped everything in. He rounded the truck and drove off the site, leaving the gate open behind him.

  “He’s gone,” she said, as much to convince herself as to inform Tom. “We need to get you dry and warm. Are you hurt? Can you climb?”

  “Yeah. Yeah,” he said but stayed where he was wedged against the rocks.

  She climbed back down the trusses and crouched next to him. His lips were blue, and he trembled. She ran her hands through his hair and down his neck and shoulders. There was no blood, no discernable swelling, but she expected that would change once he warmed. “We’ll do this together.” She wasn’t sure how. He outweighed her by at least fifty pounds, but she wasn’t leaving him here to get help. No, he needed to come with her. Now.