by Leigh James
The prognosis for this particular irrational hope wasn’t good.
“Have you heard from Levi?” I asked Walker. He was still scrolling through documents on the screen.
“No,” Walker said.
“Can we call Alexa or April again yet?” I asked.
“No,” Walker said.
We couldn’t go for a walk, it was too light outside and too dangerous to go check out the boat, and I had my stupid period so we couldn’t have sex.
“Want to make a list?” I asked. I went to him and I wrapped my arms around him from the back.
“Sounds like a good time,” Walker said, turning towards me and hugging me back.
I grabbed my notebook and a pen and dragged him over to the couch next to me. “Watch TV while I do this,” I said, and I turned it on for him. Even in Florida, the Red Sox were on, and he gave a happy sigh. A few minutes later, he got up and went into the kitchen, returning with two beers and some chips and salsa.
“Thanks,” I said, grabbing a chip. An image of Mike suddenly came back to me, of him sitting on the couch in my old apartment, while I fumed that he was getting crumbs all over the place. Walker can get crumbs wherever the hell he wants, I thought and laughed. Walker could somehow get away with a lot more than pale, puffy Mike the Spike.
“What’s so funny?” Walker asked.
“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. I kissed him lightly on the cheek and grabbed my notebook. Walker grabbed his beer, leaned back against the couch and rubbed my back.
“You make everything better, Nic,” he said. “Thank you for buying these chips — the blue corn ones are the best. I fucking love you. And I fucking hate David Proctor.”
“I’m on the fence about David, but I love you, too,” I said, laughing, but when I looked at him his eyes were dark and flashing. “What?” I asked. “What is up with you?”
“On your list,” he said, still looking at me with electricity in his eyes. It made my nether-regions clench. “Put down running away to the Caribbean with me, having someone wire us all of my money, buying a house on the beach and having four kids. Just as an option.”
My jaw dropped, probably to the floor. “Four kids?”
He looked at me and shrugged, a trace of that pout back.
“Is that what you meant before? About my other family?” I asked. My heart was pounding for so many reasons I couldn’t even keep track.
“Yeah,” he said, and he sounded positively gloomy now. He turned back to the game. “Don’t sound so excited about it.”
“Walker,” I said. “You have to understand — you can’t just throw stuff like that at me. I’m an analyzer and a planner. You dangle a big-ticket item like that in front of me without warning, and with everything else that’s going on, my hardwired brain is going to short-circuit.” I searched his face, which was studiously avoiding mine. “But wait — are you serious? Is that really what you want?”
“You mean, do I want you forever?” Walker looked at me very seriously. “That is absolutely what I want. I want to keep you safe. I want to live the rest of our lives in a calm and happy manner. Without explosions. Without people following us and embezzling my money. With your debts paid off, with your family taken care of. With absolutely no drama. Is that too much for you?”
For once in my life, I didn’t even wait to think it through. I threw myself into his lap and almost knocked his beer over. “No,” I said. “It’s absolutely not too much for me.” It would be a dream come true — it was just a dream I’d never had. I’d always pictured myself in a suit, with a briefcase and a plan, charging off to organize something and keeping track of my billable hours. Putting my younger brothers through college. Making sure I got my dad into a condo at some point so he wouldn’t have to climb a ladder and shovel snow off the roof.
“We’d have to do something, though,” I said, and nuzzled his neck. “We can’t just lie on a beach all day, every day.”
“You mean, do something besides having the four kids? I think we’d be pretty busy,” Walker said.
I looked at him, my brow furrowed. “That’s sort of a lot of kids.”
“One at a time, Nic, we’ll take it one at a time.” He smiled at me, but it was intense; he traced the outline of my lips with his finger. “I’ve just been thinking about it — about what’s important to me. I worked for so many years, building my company, building my empire, and now I realize that no matter what I did, I couldn’t keep it safe. People will always want something from you. Something you’ve got, something you’ve made, some piece of you. I’ve lived long enough and hard enough to know what’s important to me now: you. And I just want us to circle the wagons.” He wrapped his arms around me. “I want us to focus on what’s important — family. Loyalty. Being good people.”
“You are a good person, and you’re very good to me,” I said. “Just because this happened to you doesn’t mean it’s your fault. It also doesn’t mean that you have to turn your back on the world.”
“What if I wanted to?” he asked. I could see it in his face: this was something he was really struggling with. He was thinking it all through, weighing what he was giving up against what he might be gaining.
“What if I’m not ready to?” I asked. “I never pictured myself as a housewife, Walker. I can’t even imagine what life would be like without working.”
“I know — I can’t either,” Walker said. “We can get creative about what we do with the future. I’m not asking you to give up your whole life. You’d be too restless. It wouldn’t be fair. I’m just asking you to consider whether it would be the worst thing. To leave the past behind.”
“No,” I answered him. He raised his eyebrows at me. “I mean — no, it wouldn’t be the worst thing.” I pulled him to me. “There a lots of things that could be worse.”
“Just think about it,” he said.
I promised him I would. I communicated that to him in the form of a long, lengthy kiss.
* * *
We were still waiting. No news from Levi, no news from April.
I went back to making a list.
Things to Do.
(1) Get information from Levi re: Adrian, my dad and brothers, Alexa, Tammy.
(2) Call Alexa and have her log onto server and cc Advent docs to me ASAP.
(3) Call April and remind her to pack sexy underwear, in case she needs to seduce Lester Max to get us intel.
(4) Get printer and paper — start making hard copies of Advent and related docs.
(5) Find an overnight carrier nearby.
(6) Discuss options for how to access Walker’s money.
(7) Find out a way to send word to Richie and Adrian that we’re okay.
(8) Think about the future. Maybe watch YouTube videos about the Bahamas and raising four kids. Or something.
It was funny, but even though my list contained some unusual things, it made me feel saner to write it. This was my life, now. My life post-associate, post-conventional, post-normal.
That’s what I was thinking when Walker’s TracFone rang.
“Levi,” he said. “Tell me everything.”
* * *
They were on the phone for a long time. Rather than sit and try to listen in, while I watched Walker pace, I made a late dinner. Pasta Bolognese, one of the three things I could cook. I had my mother’s recipe memorized; I found it comforting to go through the motions of making it. I’d pretty much stopped cooking since I’d started working at Proctor. I ate dinner at my desk so often, I’d had all the local takeout places in my contacts. I called them every night on a rotating basis; I’d had a schedule, of course. And I always ordered the same things because the routine of it comforted me.
Oh boy, was that routine out the window.
Walker came into the kitchen, a tight look on his face. My heart plummeted and he held up his hand to calm me down, reading my expression instantly. “Everything is okay,” he said. “Your dad and your brothers are fine — the boys are still going t
o school, Levi said he followed your dad home from work, and everything looked normal.”
I exhaled in relief and felt my shoulders relax. “He said that Adrian is back — which really pisses me off, because I told her before we left that she needed to stay out of town for a while.”
“She’s not at your house, is she?” I asked. That seemed too dangerous.
“No, she’s at her stupid boyfriend’s house,” Walker said. “Levi followed her after class.”
“Did he talk to any of them?” I asked. I could hear the near-hope in my voice.
Walker shook his head at me. “No, I told you and I told him — it’s too dangerous,” he said. “And he found Tammy.”
I just looked at him, unable to speak.
“She’s alive,” Walker said, rubbing my arms. “But he said that she was at home, with the TV set on, wrapped up in a blanket in the middle of the day.”
“He got that close?” I asked, feeling guilty all of a sudden. Tammy was my friend, and I’d sent a complete stranger, possibly a crazy one, to go spy on her.
“He could tell someone was there. He wanted to see who was in the house.”
I nodded at him, slowly, and went back to stirring the sauce before it bubbled over onto the stove. “She could help us, you know. She was amazing on the system. She probably knows where everything is. A hell of a lot better than Alexa does.”
“We’d be putting her in danger,” Walker said.
“She’s already in danger,” I said back. “If we could get her out of her house, and someplace safe, she might be able to get us exactly what we need. She can work with Alexa. They could get us the documents we need to show that my firm and Lester Max were conspiring against you and stealing your money.”
Walker exhaled and stalked around the kitchen.
“We need money,” I said, putting the spaghetti into the large pot of water I’d brought to a boil. I added sea salt and olive oil, stirring it gently, careful not to splash boiling water over the edge. “Lots of it. Because then we can do everything we need. And we can take care of the people who take care of us. It would help buy us some time,” I said, even though I meant it figuratively; I knew time was one of those precious few things that actually couldn’t be bought.
“I know,” Walker said, still pacing. “I just don’t know how to get it.”
“I have an idea,” I said. “Do you still have Louise’s phone number at The Majestic? I think some of her friends could help us out….”
Chapter 15
Walker called April late that night; I called Alexa a little afterwards. Neither of them was happy to hear from us.
I couldn’t blame them.
“I need you to get in touch with Tammy. From your private cellphone,” I said.
“I don’t have a private cellphone,” Alexa said.
“Then go get one, like I told you. Tomorrow,” I hissed.
“I liked you a lot better when you were mousy. Not like you are now, all getting regularly, properly fucked by a billionaire, thinking you’re hot,” Alexa said. “You’re so bossy now.”
I sighed and counted backwards from ten, so I didn’t call her the litany of nasty names that I had queuing in my head. “I’m being bossy because we don’t have much time, and what I’m asking you to do is extremely important.” I paused for a beat and pressed my hands against my eyes. “You miss Mandy, don’t you?” I asked. “Neither one of us wanted her to get hurt. But they killed her, Alexa. And we’re close to figuring out who did it and why. I need you to get a phone and call Tammy tomorrow. We’re going to find a space for you to work. Someplace safe.
“Tell Tammy I got her note and that she was right. Tell her it won’t be safe until we do something and catch the people who did this,” I said.
“Of course I miss Mandy,” Alexa said. “It’s a fucking horror show. But I don’t want to get involved, Nicole. Do you understand that? It’s not that I want you and Walker to get hurt — I don’t. It’s not that I want guilty people to go free. It’s just that I don’t want to be caught in the middle of this. I like my life. I like it normal, without people trying to hurt me. It’s like the military — I believe in protecting our country, but I’m not gonna go out there and volunteer. I’m a keep-your-hands-clean kind of girl. Sorry.”
I stood there, gripping the phone. I could feel a headache coming on.
I understood what she was saying. Of course I did. But if Alexa didn’t help us, we were going to have a very difficult time closing the loop between Lester Max and my firm. It sounded like Tammy wasn’t working there anymore; her passwords would have been pulled. She would have no security clearance and she wouldn’t be able to access the system.
Walker came into the room and could tell I was upset. He strode over to me. “Alexa?” he whispered, and I nodded.
He grabbed the phone from my hand. “Hello there, Senator Blake’s daughter,” he said, smoothly, like he was seeing her at a cocktail party. If she could see him right now, she’d faint: he was wearing a tight, white tank top, which showed off his ripped pectoral muscles and enormous biceps, along with his new, striking tattoo. He looked dangerous, like he was about to grab someone and hold them down — and I couldn’t help hoping that person was me.
If my hair had still been long, I would have twirled it.
“Listen to me,” he said, and there was an urgency to his tone that he’d been keeping below the surface. “Nicole and I have reason to believe that someone from my company has been colluding with someone from your firm — or possibly more than one person — for some time. They’ve been embezzling funds from me. I don’t know what else they’re up to.
“We have records from my company to back this up. But in order to find out what’s really going on, we need the records from Proctor. You could be the key here, Alexa. The person who turns this around. I know you were close to Mandy. If you help us, we might be able to bring the real killers to justice.
“And think about how that would look for your father,” he continued. “If his daughter was directly responsible for bringing down embezzling corporate terrorists….”
“All right, all right. I’ll do it,” Alexa snapped. I could hear her from where I stood. Walker smiled and handed the phone back to me without saying another word to her. “But you’re going to have to pay me, too,” she continued. “This can’t just be about my goodwill. If I get caught, I’m going to lose my job.”
“If you get caught,” I said, and I heard her sigh indignantly at the sound of my voice again, “losing your job is going to be the least of your worries. But we’ll compensate you. Walker’s got enough money to make this worth your while. You might even be able to fund your father’s next campaign.”
Alexa sighed again, but this one sounded more enthusiastically resigned. “What do you need me to do,” she asked, flatly.
“Go buy a new laptop tonight. And a wireless utility network thingy. Get two TracFones — actually, get six, ‘cause we might want you to throw them out on a regular basis. You need a scanner. And a printer.
“We’re going to get you a secure place to work, probably in Southie, near downtown.”
“Southie?” she practically screeched.
“You might want to pack a bag, too. A big one,” I said. “Go get that stuff tonight. And Alexa….”
“What?” she snapped again, all traces of enthusiastic resignation gone.
“Be careful.”
* * *
April was probably even more upset with us, and that was saying something.
“I need you to check in at The Majestic tomorrow,” Walker said to her, patiently. “Do it while Lester is asleep, or at work, or on the phone. You need a room there for tomorrow night. Yes,” he said, and I could hear him getting exasperated, “I know that Lester has reservations for you at that other hotel. It doesn’t matter, you won’t be staying there.”
He sighed, squeezed his eyes shut and held out the phone to me. “You deal with her,” he said. “She’s a pain
in the ass.”
“April,” I cooed.
“Oh, great,” she said. “If this is good cop-bad cop, you guys seriously need to work on your routine.”
“Remember when you were with us last?” I asked. She grunted her assent. “Remember what we said to you — about your eyes? About waking up dead?”
“Yes,” she mumbled.
“We weren’t fucking around, April,” I said, suddenly seething. Seriously, these people. We were dealing with life and death and it was like they were worried about chipping their nail polish. “I hate to threaten you — again,” I continued, “but let me remind you that you are back out in civilization per Mr. Walker’s good graces. We need you to be loyal, and polite, and efficient. Do you think you can do that? ‘Cause my patience is really wearing thin.”
I almost called her ‘Red’ again, but then I thought better of it. When I was done with all of this, I was just going to vote Alexa and April off the island, together. They deserved each other.
“I’ve made arrangements, through the lobby manager at The Majestic, to get you some roofies,” I said. I watched as Walker’s jaw almost hit the floor; he’d been in the shower when I’d spoken to Louise earlier. “You need to go there tomorrow afternoon, check in, get the package from Louise, and then spend the afternoon at the office with Lester Max. Afterwards, I want you to take him out for a drink. Don’t drug him then, even though he’ll probably start pawing you. Take him back to The Majestic — tell him you have a thing for seedy hotels, or something — and once you get him upstairs, give him the drug. Louise said these are pretty heavy, so he should pass out quickly. Do not, under any circumstances, give him so much that you kill him. Do you understand?” I asked.