Paid Companion

by Nia Forrester

  Paid Companion

  Nia Forrester

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without express permission of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

  Copyright © 2017 Stiletto Press, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  No risk, no reward.

  This one is for the risk-takers.

  ~1~

  Washington, DC, Sunday, 2:13 p.m.

  “Tell me you’re not actually doing this.”

  “Damn right I am. I’m not in a position to pass up that kind of money,”

  “You’d be a hooker, Lia. I don’t care what they call it—you’d be a hooker.”

  Lia laughed and tossed the last of her clothing into the small weekend bag and zipped it shut, setting it on the floor next to her unmade bed. Stephanie was her best friend and she generally followed her advice, because it was basically sound. In this instance, though, she couldn’t afford to listen to her.

  “It’s a lot of money. More than I’ve ever had at one time in my life. And for what? To stand around and look cute for a week with a man who’s pretty damned cute himself? Tell me honestly that you’d pass that up.”

  Stephanie said nothing for a few moments then sighed. “Okay, fine. So, I would probably do precisely what you’re doing. But we need to make a plan before you get on that plane.”

  “A plan?”

  “Yes, a plan. You’re getting on a private jet to meet a complete stranger and be his ‘paid companion’ for a weekend.” Stephanie made air quotes with her fingers, and rolled her eyes. “That sounds like the beginning of a bad novel, or an episode of Dateline Mysteries. So we need to have a plan for if you get in trouble and need me to come get you, or send in the cavalry, or the Miami PD.”

  At that, Lia paid closer attention. Steph was right. She didn’t know Blake Morgan except as someone whose pictures got taken in magazines a lot. He could be a homicidal maniac who because of his wealth and influence could easily disappear foolish young women like her, with no consequences at all. But that was part of the thrill—not knowing what awaited her at the other end of that plane ride. Surely not death. Based on Blake Morgan’s photos, a girl was much more likely to lose her heart than her life.

  “Okay, Steph. Let’s come up with my escape plan. Just in case.”

  “Thank you,” her friend said. “I always feel much better when I have a plan. Especially when I’m sending my best friend off to become a prostitute.”

  “But can we do it while you’re driving me to the airport? I’m supposed to meet his assistant there in like, forty-five minutes.”

  “Well, let’s start there. What’s the assistant’s name?”

  “Kevin Taylor,” Lia said zipping her bag shut.

  “Kevin Taylor?” Stephanie sat on the edge of the bed and pulled out her phone. “Hang on a sec, I think we should use voice recorder. So like if anything happened …”

  Lia laughed, but Stephanie’s precautions were actually starting to make her wonder a little bit.

  What if she was being stupid?

  What if they recorded her voice and it wound up on one of those television shows? Steph would be sitting under a light, opposite a 20/20 anchor on whose face would be a studious mask of faux-sympathy, and they would play the recording back, while Steph wept quietly. And the entire viewing audience would think—‘That Lia chick almost deserves to be dead. Who goes off with a strange man just because he says he’s the assistant of one of the most recognizable names in Black America?’

  “Okay, so say it again,” Steph held up her phone like a reporter interviewing an accident witness for the six o’clock news. “What’s this guy’s name and how did you hear about this job? And then tell us how the whole thing went down.”

  “Who’s ‘us’, Steph? Don’t get carried away?”

  “Will you just tell the story?” Stephanie asked.

  Lia studied her friend’s face—she was serious!

  “It was on the dark list at work, and …”

  “What’s the dark list?” Stephanie looked horrified.

  Lia sighed. “It doesn’t have anything to do with race, silly. It’s … How much background do you need, Steph?”

  “As much as would make someone who doesn’t know you at all understand.”

  “I work for a modeling agency. I am, however, not a model. Occasionally, special jobs come in, from high-profile clients. Like performing artists who want pretty girls at their party, or sometimes even politicians who just want beautiful girls at their cocktail reception for visiting dignitaries. It’s more common than you …”

  “Okay, okay, so the list is …”

  “When those special requests come in, not everyone sees the list, hence, it’s ‘dark’ to most of the agency. I see it, because all I do is field booking requests. The do the background checking, make sure the requests are legit, and then I pass it on to Debbie—my boss—who then decides which girls or guys might be good for the job.”

  “Okay, so you heard about this job on the dark list.”

  “Yes,” Lia confirmed. “Can we continue this while we walk to your car? I don’t want to be late.”

  “Is that all you’re taking?” Steph indicated her small bag.

  “Yeah, they said I would get suitable clothing once I got there.”

  “Are you serious? This is sounding fishier and fishier. They don’t need you to bring clothes? Lia. For real now …”

  “Can we go already? You have the entire ride to National Airport to talk me out of it. Which you won’t be able to do, but you have my permission to try …”

  Lia walked through her small apartment one last time, making sure the windows were secure, taking special care with the one in her bedroom which worried her a little sometimes because it was difficult to shut, and then never remained that way. She had been complaining to the management for weeks, but it was such a crappy building in the crappiest part of Adams Morgan, that it was practically in the lease that one should expect complaints to fall on deaf ears.

  Lia didn’t want to pretend like ten thousand dollars was a bottomless supply of cash or anything, but there was part of her that hoped she’d be able to use some of it to move. Closer to one of the Circles—Dupont, Thomas, she didn’t care. She was through with all this artsy shit. She wanted to live well for a change.

  Stephanie had parked her beat-up Jetta about a half-block away, so the walk was brief, and once they were inside and on their way, she turned on the voice recorder again.

  “Okay, so pick up where you left off … you stole the dark list, and then what?”

  “I didn’t steal the list. I just … removed this particular item from it. The rest of the list I gave to Debbie as usual,” Lia clarified.

  “So no one else at the agency even knows the request came in?” Stephanie turned to look at her, eyes wide. “Do you even have proof?”

  Lia rolled her eyes. “Oh, I forgot. We need to catalog the evidence. Yeah, I have emails. I forwarded them to my home computer. I’ll forward them to you too, if it makes you feel better.”

  “It does. Now go on …”

  “So, I took the item, and I answered the request myself. I called the contact …”

  “Kevin Taylor?”

  “Yup. I called him, pretended to be the receptionist from the agency … well I am the recep
tionist, but you know what I mean. So, I told him I was sending over a girl, and that we only had one who was perfect. And that she was very discreet. And voila.”

  “What d’you mean? You went to get interviewed and they gave you the job just like that?”

  “Don’t sound so surprised, Steph. I clean up well. As you know.”

  “No, but I mean, they called a modeling agency. And you’re cute and all but …”

  “Thanks a lot!”

  “No, I just mean …”

  “I know what you mean. God. But as it turns out, part of the reason I took the booking request is because of the type they were asking for: attractive but not ostentatiously so, about five-foot five, of athletic rather than overly-slender build, poised …” Stephanie snorted. “I can do poised! Anyway, they asked for a regular girl. Specifically.”

  “And how was the job described?”

  “As the paid companion for Mr. Blake Morgan, during a family gathering on a small private island off the Florida coast. “

  “And you knew it was the Blake Morgan how?”

  “Because of the email address and the channels through which the request was made. Dark list requests only come through this particular portal. It’s not available to just anyone. It’s a referral system, for top-drawer clients, or Debbie herself gave them access,” Lia explained. “I’m telling you. There are a dozen fail-safes to prevent the crazies from getting access.”

  Stephanie sighed. “Okay, so you’ve met this Kevin Taylor person then. At the interview?”

  “No.”

  “Lia.”

  “He set it up, I talked to him, but the person who interviewed me was a woman. And here’s how I know this is legit.”

  “Tell me”

  “I think she was Blake Morgan’s sister.”

  Stephanie looked at her, eyes narrowed, before tearing them away to pay attention to the road again. “You think?”

  “She looked like him. You know, he has those lips and those big, white teeth like a toothpaste model. She had that too, and the same wavy dark hair that looks all shiny and jet-black like someone in a comic book.”

  Stephanie rolled her eyes. “Did she tell you her name? And where did you meet her?”

  “At the Hamilton, downtown, and she introduced herself as Nicki. I looked it up, Blake Morgan’s sister’s name is Nicolette.”

  “But you didn’t see a picture of her online anywhere.”

  “Only from when they were kids. Apparently, she isn’t as in the eye as he is. So, there were no current pictures of her that I could find.”

  “So, you really don’t know that she’s his sister, this Nicki woman.”

  “No,” Lia acknowledged, sighing. “I don’t know for a fact, but …”

  “And she didn’t give you her last name when you met her at the Hamilton. Lia! C’mon! You don’t think this is all weird and suspicious? Like who …”

  “She introduced herself as Nicki, that’s all. And she was dressed simply, but in super-expensive stuff. You could just smell the wealth. I’m sure she was his sister.”

  “Okay. Traffic’s not that bad, so we’re going to be at the airport in about ten minutes. So, tell me the rest real quick.”

  “She asked me a few questions about myself. Asked what I do besides model, I told her I didn’t do much modeling, only special jobs like this one, and that I’m an artist … that much is true … and then the rest of the time we just talked about general stuff. I thought she’d have more questions, but at the end of lunch, she just said she liked me and thought I was perfect for the job, then she asked if I could be discreet, whether I would mind signing a non-disclosure agreement … and said someone would be in touch.”

  “And that’s when you heard from the Taylor guy again.”

  “Yes, a couple days later. He told me I had the job, needed me to fill out some forms, and send them back. I did … and that was it. He told me to meet him at National today at 4 p.m.”

  Stephanie reached over and switched off the voice recorder. “When we get to the airport, I’m parking and following you in. I’m taking a picture of this guy and then you make sure you email me the stuff you got from him.”

  “Don’t take the picture of him so he can see you do it, though.”

  “It’s better if he does see me do it, Lia. Then he’s less likely to do something like decapitate you and dump you in the Anacostia River.”

  “Or, he’s more likely to fire me on the spot because I’m violating the NDA. So don’t take it so he can see you. I mean it.”

  “Fine. You walk in ahead of me. I pretend I don’t know you, and take the picture. And you text me once you get to Miami, and then email me the stuff. Okay?”

  “Yup.” Lia looked down at her manicure. She’d spent sixty dollars on it. A French manicure to mask her coal-darkened and short, ragged, pathetic real fingernails. She couldn’t understand women who did this kind of thing on a regular basis. It took way more effort than she had to expend on something like … nails. And besides, long nails would make it tough for her to sketch.

  “Focus, Lia.” Stephanie snapped her fingers in front of her face. “You’re to text me as soon as you land, email me the messages you got from Taylor, and then for every single day of the ten days you’re there, you text me first thing in the morning. Like let’s say nine a.m.”

  “Uh huh …” Lia wondered what the sleeping arrangements would be. She thought Blake Morgan was cute, no doubt. But she definitely didn’t want to wind up in some weird scene where they had a share quarters and have him run into her as she came out of the shower or something.

  “If you for any reason do not text me, I’m turning this information over to the authorities. Like immediately.”

  “What? No! What if I’m in a place where’s there’s bad service, or my phone dies? Let’s not overreact, Steph.”

  “Okay, so let’s say this. You have to text me at least once for every twenty-four-hour period that you’re away. And call me at least once every other day. Anyone could use your phone and pretend to be you with just texting.”

  Lia took a breath. “Fine.” Then she glanced over at Stephanie and smothered a smile at her friend’s overprotectiveness.

  Lia had been friends with Steph since the tenth grade. Lia was the strange, shy, somewhat overweight girl who liked to hang out in the art room during lunch helping to wash paintbrushes rather than hanging out with other kids; and Steph was the tomboyish Army brat who was having a hard time adjusting to being stationary after being on the move with her family her entire life.

  Together, they were the last chosen for every team, overlooked when their classmates were choosing study partners, and invisible when it came time for school dances. By default, more than choice, they had been thrown together, but by the time they graduated, they were as thick as thieves, and their decade-long friendship had gone on, through moves out of state to different colleges, jobs in other cities, the death of Steph’s mother, Lia’s father, and life’s various mini-calamities. Steph had siblings, but only brothers; so Lia had become like the little sister she never had, though they were only months apart in age.

  As they pulled into the Ronald Reagan National Airport, Lia felt the butterflies begin. She was always game for an adventure, but this would be of epic proportions compared to anything she had ever done before. First, she was traveling by private jet. Private jet. The Morgan family were a select few for whom the recession of 2008 seemed to have been nothing more than a blip on the radar screen of their very solid, multi-generational wealth.

  According to the information Lia had dug up on them, the Morgan patriarch’s lineage, and wealth came from having been Black Seminole, a mix of African, Spanish, and Native American blood. The Morgan family, as part of that community, had been freedmen long before Emancipation and had amassed wealth from way back in a time when very few people of color were allowed that freedom. They built their fortune on the safe transportation of goods through Indian country, back when it wa
s called that.

  Now, the bulk of the Morgan family interests in transportation were focused on contracting with the Department of Defense to provide those services in some of the most war-torn regions in the world. In the States, they were known more for their technological interests, and had helped develop and bring lower-cost technology to urban communities. The Morgans were among the first to broach and later implement the idea of free public Wi-Fi in some inner-city neighborhoods, and often appeared in the papers for having donated computers, tablets, and computer labs to underfunded schools.

  The parents, Edward and Jessica Morgan were still the faces of the family, but increasingly, it was Blake. Rumored to be somewhat of a playboy, Blake was a Harvard graduate who had been a senior aide to a revered United States Senator before he left his position to assume a leadership role in his family’s company. Though he had left Washington DC for Florida, he was still a familiar and regular face in the Sunday society pages, and had a target on his back for all the young women of ‘good-breeding’ and means looking to snare a husband.

  “So, I’m going to park and walk in with you. But like, a few feet behind so I can get this guy’s picture, okay?”

  “Sure, Steph. Whatever makes you feel better.”

  “The one thing I’m not completely comfortable with is that we don’t actually have a way for you to leave if you want to leave. Like …”

  “I’ll drop a pin and send it to you. How about that?” Lia asked, playing along. “Wherever I wind up, I’ll just drop a pin.”

  Stephanie nodded, just as they pulled into the short-term parking edifice. “Yeah, that’ll work. Do you have any cash on you?”

  “No. Who carries actual cash these days?” Lia asked, sliding her sunglasses atop her head.

  “Well get some. When you get inside the terminal, take out like, three hundred dollars from your checking account and …”

  “Steph, I don’t have three-hundred dollars in my checking account, just sitting around. Do you?”