by Carol Caiton
"Financial records. She doesn't know it, but I'm checking out Nina's family."
"Financial records aren't a problem. You got some names for me?"
"Four people. Robert Paul Millering, Marion Jean, Lydia Rae, and Nina Lucille."
"Lucille, huh?"
"Yeah, Lucille." He smiled, looked over at the deli and decided on a sub for lunch.
"How's she doing?"
There was something in Michael's tone that stopped him from giving the usual superficial response. His inquiry had carried a tone of concern.
Hesitantly Ethan answered. "She's doing okay."
Michael hesitated as well. "Ya know, if she withdraws from her link with Simon, our clients are gonna question the accuracy of the linking program."
"Jesus, Michael, do you have a network of spies working for you?" He stared at the couple four tables away and quietly swore. "How the hell do you always know what's going on?"
At the conference table that question would have elicited a cocky grin and an equally cocky comeback. But there was no mockery in Michael's voice when he answered. "I had a conversation with our masked witness."
The other woman. "She told you what happened?"
"Yeah."
"Have you told anyone else?"
"Hell, no." He sounded affronted.
"Sorry. It's been a rough weekend."
"Yeah, I get that. She was honest about it, though. Said she purposely enticed him. —Stupid fuck."
"Hmmph. She told you that part too?"
"Yeah. Did you guys square everything away?"
"For the most part."
"Okay. So how far back do you want me to go with these financial records?"
"Ten years."
"Ten? Okay. You by chance got some social security numbers for me?"
"As a matter of fact I do."
"Yeah? I didn't expect that."
Ethan took a swallow of his coffee. "I started a man working on this already, but he was called out of town." He removed a notepad from his jacket pocket and gave Michael the information he wanted. "I'm particularly interested in Lydia Millering's medical bills."
"She the mother?"
"No. Sister. In fact, can you get employment histories too?"
"No problem. But this is gonna take more than five minutes."
"I'll wait."
Another slight pause. "I take it this isn't for Simon."
"No. My eyes only. Something Nina said stirred my curiosity."
"Okay, I'll get back to you."
"Thanks, Michael."
Ethan disconnected and slid the phone back into his pocket. He stared across the food court at a palm tree.
He'd dry fucked her. Dry fucked her for Christ's sake.
And he couldn't stop thinking about it.
All it had taken was having her in his arms and hearing her cry out his name. He hadn't had so powerful an orgasm in a long time.
Stretching the tension out of his shoulders, he pushed that thought away. He needed some sleep. He needed a good, solid eight hours without keeping an ear out for the garage door, without coming unhinged every other night, and without climbing into bed only to stare up at the ceiling because his conscience wouldn't give him any peace.
He shouldn't have touched her, not only for all the reasons he already knew, but because now, more than ever, he wanted more from her. He wanted to laugh with her again. Flirt with her. Tease her. Take her out to dinner and learn more about her over drinks at a quiet club. He wanted to show her a different side of himself . . . friend, lover . . . significant other. Yes, he wanted to secure a place for himself at her side. He wanted to make love to her every night. In his bed. And he wanted to fall asleep knowing she'd still be there in the morning.
Michael had probably guessed most of that right about now. Why else would Ethan ask for in-depth financial information on a woman linked to Simon? If she'd been on the lookout for a wealthy husband, the linking system would have picked up on that. It would never have paired her with Simon in a status-2 blue. And the fact that she wouldn't turn a blind eye to that little scene on the floor with the auburn-haired witness only confirmed that. Simon's money didn't hold rank against the trust he'd broken.
But it occurred to him as he took a swallow of coffee that his phone call had placed Michael in an awkward position. The friendship between him and Simon was firmly rooted despite their contrasting personalities and polar opposite backgrounds. For all that the two men appeared to have little in common, there was some sort of affinity between them that baffled the rest of them. Too late, Ethan regretted the decision to use Michael's expertise.
With a fresh cup of coffee and a foot-long sub in hand, he headed back to Security Central and hoped for a calm afternoon. He wanted no more applicant difficulties at Member Services, no friction between male clients, and no borderline stress levels to monitor.
It was after three o'clock when Michael strolled into his office and plopped down on the chair in front of his desk. Long legs stretched out in front of him, he reached over and slid a flash drive across the blotter.
Ethan glanced at it, then back at Michael. "I won't put you in a position like this again. I didn't think it through first. I'm sorry."
Michael grunted and leaned back in his seat. "I just hope you know what you're doing, man. I know Simon screwed up but shit . . . it's a status-2 blue." He scowled, thought for a minute, then said, "I didn't want to like Nina, but it turns out I do. I'll tell you what though, I knew she was gonna be trouble. I knew she was gonna shake things up here real bad. And the weird thing is, she's not doing a damned thing to make it happen. Shit's just going on all around her and I don't think she even knows she's involved in half of it."
"I agree, she doesn't. She's just trying to live her life and RUSH keeps interfering. We keep interfering." He held up the flash drive between thumb and index finger as an example.
Michael snorted. "Yeah. So, you gonna tell me what got you so curious you couldn't wait for your man to get back in town?"
Ethan considered how much to say. He slid the flash drive into his top drawer and eyed Michael across the desk. "Doesn't it bother the hell out of you that a virginal young woman would join RUSH as an R-link?"
"Sure. Hell, yeah. That's the question of the year. You think the answer's in her family's financial background?"
"No. Not necessarily. I don't know what I'm going to find there. But it's been coming together little by little as I've gotten to know her. Enough that I want the full picture."
"You gonna tell the rest of us when you figure it out?"
Ethan reclined in his chair and sighed. "I don't know. I want to say yes, but I guess it depends on Nina and how personal it turns out to be."
"Maybe we should just come right out and ask her."
"Good luck. She'll raise that little chin in the air and tell us to mind our own business."
Michael eyed him thoughtfully. "You have gotten to know her, haven't you."
He responded with caution. "She's living in my house."
"Yeah, I hear ya." But the intelligence in Michael's eyes said he wasn't fooled.
Ethan gave him a reluctant nod. "All right, I'm—" He shook his head. "I don't know what the hell I am. It's like a force of nature. I want her for myself, Michael. And the harder I fight it . . . . You don't need to hear this."
Michael's mouth twisted in a humorless smile. "Actually, I did." He glanced at his watch and pushed to his feet. "But I gotta get back."
Ethan stood as well. "Hectic day?"
"No, it's been slow for a change. But I need to test-run the Moon Orchid Spa scheduling program."
Ethan walked with him to the door. "Everything else check out?"
"Up and running."
"Why did I even ask?"
"Hey, I'm good."
And what an understatement that was. "How many job offers did you get last week?"
Michael shrugged. "A couple. I was busy all weekend so I didn't get to them yet."
"Don't forget to send me your bill," Ethan reminded him.
"Yeah, yeah."
With a hand raised in casual farewell, Michael headed toward the stairwell and Ethan watched from his office doorway. He'd often wondered about Michael's past. He knew his mother had died when Michael was nine or ten and that he'd grown up on the streets. Which explained the gaps in his background check.
But what had those formative years been like? How had he escaped Pennsylvania's social services? And why did he go out of his way to avoid elevators, the underground tunnels, and specific areas of the training center? He'd told them he was claustrophobic, but he could seek professional help to move past that. Money certainly wasn't an obstacle. But Michael was content with his demons, avoiding enclosed areas then building a house that sparkled with so much glass, it was almost like being out in the open with nature. One of these days Ethan was going to check into claustrophobia and look for what caused it.
Presently, however, he had other things to check into. For the next hour and a half he closed himself in his office and reviewed the information on Michael's flash drive. He took notes and compared dates, but nothing seemed to point him in a specific direction. Still, he was closing in on something. He could sense it. He just didn't know what that something was.
At four-fifteen he stood up, stretched, and walked over to stare at the grove of trees that hid Wardrobe from view. Well placed palms, bottlebrush trees, and shrubbery provided both buildings with the same illusion of isolation and privacy that every venue at RUSH enjoyed.
Sliding his hands into his pants pockets, he watched the moving shadow of an overhead cloud travel across the ground and considered what he'd learned so far. The Millering family, it seemed, had been walking a fine line between scraping by and sinking altogether for a very long time. By a horrific stroke of bad timing, the accident that landed Lydia in the emergency room had occurred just after her father had changed jobs—thirty days too soon for his medical coverage to kick in. The family had struggled. Insurance policies were dropped or reduced to the minimum required by law, cutbacks and no frills became the norm, and utility bills were crunched.
Nina's father was an engineer working in upper management and drew a decent paycheck. But he wasn't enrolled in the company's -01K plan, owned no stock, and had no retirement savings. As a salaried employee he often worked more than a forty-hour workweek but without additional overtime pay. Mrs. Millering worked one full-time job and another part-time, three evenings per week. And Lydia had done her part in what Ethan was coming to think of as her customary flamboyance. After the accident, as soon as she'd become mobile, she'd done some hustling to get a job as a clay trapper. A clay trapper . . . he'd had to Google the term to learn that she set the clay disks for target practice. Shooting skeet. And the hustling part? She'd implied a discrimination lawsuit might be brought with regard to her age, gender, and/or disability.
She'd worked at that job five days a week, took night classes toward an associate degree, and sold tickets at a fairground ticket booth on weekends. Nothing conventional about Lydia. Even now, she was judicial assistant to the zaniest judge in Orange County, widely known for the cartoon-inspired neckties he wore beneath his sober black robe and for debating hot issues, taking either side, for the sole pleasure of the challenge.
And then there was Nina. How the hell had Michael discovered she babysat after school until she was old enough to join the work force? The day after her birthday, she'd gotten a job cashiering at the mall—the same one where she'd been attacked, he noted. She'd continued working throughout high school, attended college on scholarship, and interned on weekends at the real estate firm where she was eventually hired on as their bookkeeper.
It had taken the collective efforts of the entire family to meet their monthly bills without losing their house or declaring bankruptcy. All evidence pointed toward a tight-knit group, dedicated to one another and to the family unit as a whole.
But if that was the case, why had Nina suddenly decided to check out and walk away? As someone intimately familiar with numbers and budgets, she would have known the loss of her income would lead to disaster for the rest of the family.
Could that have been the reason she'd arrived at RUSH with one side of her face swollen? Had she been struck for deserting the family? Or could it have been because the baby of the family, Daddy's little girl, had joined a sex club?
Removing one hand from his pocket, he ran it over the five o'clock shadow along his jaw. Nina's departure had been felt. Her mother had taken on that part-time job and Lydia had picked up another oddball weekend job at a pet hotel. What the hell was a pet hotel? Still, the added amount she and her mother brought in didn't cover the loss of Nina's contribution. Her father had used a credit card to make the latest payment on their second mortgage and the family was looking at financial suicide.
So what had been the catalyst that compelled Nina to flee the nest? She didn't just wake up one day and decide to leave her family on the brink of ruin. She wouldn't have abandoned a sister whose disability she felt responsible for causing. It didn't fit. And it was out of character for any virginal woman to join a sex club and take a walk on the wild side. Why on earth had she even thought of it? Becoming an R-link seemed more like something her hellion of a sister would do, not Nina.
He paused. Then he frowned. Her sister?
An army of chills marched up his spine.
Her hellion of a sister.
Once that thought took hold, he couldn't shake it. In a twisted, macabre sort of way, this had Lydia's name all over it. But how? And why? Revenge?
He stood for long minutes and considered what few details he'd learned about Lydia Millering. He jingled the change in his pocket. What if it wasn't revenge? What if Lydia's inventive mind had come up with the idea that RUSH was the only way of setting free a sister who had surrendered her own life to compensate for something that could have happened to anyone?
Maybe.
But he vacillated on that one.
More likely, it was some sort of God complex. Lydia Millering might be so desperate for a thrill that she manipulated the lives of other people. That wasn't an unreasonable possibility.
Still, joining RUSH had provided Nina with food, clothing, and living accommodations in a style nothing short of luxurious. And if Lydia hadn't known Nina was a virgin, urging her to join a sex club would have seemed adventurous, not disastrous. It was very possible Lydia Millering was the same wild thing at heart that she'd been at seventeen. And Nina had walked into a den of wolves only to leave in a fur coat. Almost literally.
He picked up a pen and tapped it on his notepad with nervous energy.
So maybe it wasn't vengeance. Maybe it was the former. If the sisters were close, Lydia would have known Nina was as trapped in their situation as she herself was in a wheelchair.
In a bizarre manner of thinking it made sense. So, was his theory right on the money, or had he landed somewhere on Mars? Either way, it still didn't account for the financial catastrophe waiting to happen. Unless . . . .
Nina might have been told about modeling for Juliette of Orlando during her first visit to Member Services. If Lydia had talked her into checking out RUSH, the talented team at Member Services would have done the rest. It was possible she'd planned to send money to her parents and, had Simon not intervened, she would already have done a couple of photo shoots for VEx Magazine.
He tossed the pen aside and stood up. He thought about the day she'd moved into the R-link complex. Curiosity had spurred him to drive in on a Saturday morning, to sit up in Security Central and watch the monitors for her arrival. She was Simon's perfect match—a twenty-two-year-old virgin who had applied for an R-link membership. He couldn't have resisted that if he'd wanted to.
He'd watched her pull into her designated parking slot then waited for her to open the car door and step out. When she did, he'd stared . . . at her clothes, at her short stature, at a lopsided ponytail, and the obvious evidence of tears. She looked nothing like the cosmopolitan sophisticate he'd expected, not until Marguerite had worked her magic.
He'd watched as she made her way through the parking garage to the restroom then waited for her to come back out. It was the ponytail, he'd decided. Off-center and unassuming, she hadn't been concerned with appearances. It was moving day. Ironically, after that surprising once-over, the ponytail had captured Simon's attention as well. It seems, she'd caught them both off guard.
She hadn't merely shaken things up at RUSH as Michael suggested. She'd rocked the very foundation and continued to do so, first with her marriageable status as a blue link, and now as the single underlying cause of tension between two of its partners—two men who had become good friends through daily interaction, shared viewpoints, and mutual respect.
Who would have thought, considering the nature of their business interests, that a woman would come between them?
On the other side of the coin, if not for Nina, Serena Mandek's murder might have been the beginning of the end for RUSH. All the expense invested in security, the exhaustive screening, would have been mocked as ineffective by the media. And without that assurance of safety, what woman in her right mind would join a men's sex club? Matching Nina's drawing to the image on video had been crucial.
She'd come through for them a second time as well.
He scowled. She had a spectacular talent for finding trouble, whether landing in the thick of it herself or pulling someone else out of it. There was no doubt the officer questioning Michael had planned to haul him down to 33rd Street on a charge of vehicular homicide. But Nina had provided an alibi tight enough to send the cops on their way, inadvertently keeping RUSH out of the spotlight once again.
He reached down for his notes and looked at the figures he'd written down. Both Nina and her sister earned a decent income. The parents as well. But there had been two more surgeries on Lydia's crushed legs, the last one two years ago, and the accumulation of medical bills amounted to the monthly cost of a hefty mortgage payment.