He stepped from the enclosure and moved to her side. “Hi. Fancy running into you here.” He kissed her cheek and trailed his fingers down her arm to tangle their hands together.
Goddess, she loved how tactile he was. “I interviewed Scott Peltier about the merger.”
“Really? I’m on my way to see him. My boss told me his boss wanted to see me pronto.”
Polly held a fast debate with herself. She studied his face as she chose her words. “He didn’t seem himself. He barely gave us five minutes, and then didn’t seem tuned into the questions I asked.”
“I’m sure he’s overwhelmed with the new venture and breaking in a new assistant.”
“New assistant?”
Ian nodded, his brows drawn together. “His old secretary, Beverly, disappeared one day about two weeks ago. Didn’t show up for work. The office scuttlebutt is that she was worn out by the constant tug of war over the merger. Her replacement started the very next day. And no one has seen or heard from Beverly since. I tried to call her, but her voicemail was full. As if she hadn’t picked up messages for a few weeks.” He scanned the lobby. “Too bad. Beverly was well liked. The new woman, Ms. Cronin…not so much.”
“So negotiations weren’t as smooth or harmonious as the public has been led to believe?”
His long hair brushed his shoulders as he shook his head. “Scott vacillated back and forth. He’d come back from his meetings vowing it wouldn’t happen, and then the next day, everything would be rosy again. Beverly constantly mumbled about unusual influences in the process.”
Polly’s phone chirped with an incoming text. She checked the screen, not surprised to see Bill had become impatient. “Hey, I have to scoot.”
Ian tightened his grip when she tried to leave. “Change your mind about tonight.” He arched a brow. “Have dinner with me.”
“I don’t know.” She did a mental check of her calendar.
“You do know. I’m channeling all of my persuasive powers into this one single thought: You want to go to dinner with me tonight. You, me, a nice Italian restaurant…a bottle of the best Chianti.” He leaned in and his breath stroked her cheek as he whispered, “Say yes. Please?”
She laughed and threw her hands in the air, resting one on his broad shoulder. “Yes.”
Ian jammed his fist in the air and grinned. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”
Chapter 6
When she returned to the station, she found a reply from Sybil Lawrence. The accountant suggested a face-to-face appointment, so they had agreed to meet at the steps of Achilleion, near the elaborate water spillway. Since Polly loved the park it wasn’t a hardship to leave the office by four for the meeting.
Polly arrived early and chose a bench in the shade of a large sycamore tree. The whitish trunk reminded her of the columns of the Parthenon, before the roof collapsed. She eased down on the wooden slats and closed her eyes, letting the peaceful setting calm her. Birds chirped in the bushes and the stream babbled as it flowed down the flat steps of the waterfall. She roused herself after a few minutes of the quiet and grabbed her briefcase, preparing to get into work mode.
After finding her recorder in the bag, she rested it atop the Eos financial report and a pad of paper. She’d record on her phone as well, but she couldn’t give up the miniature machine she’d used since she started her job.
Questions were scrawled over the page in her special brand of shorthand. Scratches that prevented interviewees from figuring out what questions she’d be asking before she could utter them. She could almost guarantee she received honest responses that way.
She picked up her phone and scanned her newsfeed as she waited. By the time she’d answered four emails, and texted with Bill about a timing issue for her commentary on the Eos story, she began to wonder if Sybil was going to stand her up.
She looked up when she heard footsteps racing along the sidewalk bordering the waterfall. She instantly recognized the woman approaching. She’d forgotten how envious she’d been with Sybil’s lustrous honey blond hair and athletic build. The woman wore casual pants and a long, open-weave sweater.
Smiling, Polly greeted her. “Nice to see you again, Sybil.”
“Sorry I’m late.” Sybil tucked her hair behind an ear as she claimed a seat on Polly’s bench. “Seems like my office is practicing a LIFO system for accountants today. My office mate is always last in and first out. I had to handle a couple of minor emergencies for him.”
“Find a busy woman, right?” Polly lifted her eyebrow.
“For real. I was going to leave early and pick up a couple of iced teas. Sorry.”
“No worries. Thanks for meeting me.”
Sybil twisted until she faced Polly, and drew a knee up and rested her foot on the bench. She had on an adorable pair of Tory Burch flats Polly instantly wanted.
Wrapping an arm around her knee, Sybil cocked her head. “You mentioned accounting questions you had.”
“Yes. Do you mind if I record our conversation? It’s all background at this point and not for publication. This is actually…” Polly hesitated. She felt bad for not telling the woman the true purpose of her questions, but feared revealing too much of her personal story. “It’s not a project I’m working on for Channel Seven.”
“Color me intrigued.” Sybil gestured to the recorder. “Go for it. I’ll tell you if I want to go off record.”
Polly depressed a button on the recorder. “Thanks.” She drew a deep breath. “I’m curious about how an accountant can tell if a company’s books have been cooked.”
“Okay, totally not what I was expecting.” Sybil laughed. “Hmm, where to begin. Is this a public or privately held company?”
“Public.”
Sybil drummed her fingers on her shin. “First I’d look at sales reporting and accelerating revenues. Is the company reporting long-term contractual sales all in the same period as the initial sale? Most reputable companies will report sales as they actually occur, not as a promise of future income.”
From what she could tell from the Eos report, that wasn’t the case. “What else?”
“Occasionally, a company will accelerate expenses prior to a merger. The idea is to boost earnings per share. Or they’ll take non-recurring expenses.”
Polly paused from scratching out her notes. “How does that work?”
“They’ll discover at some point in the future that they reserved too much and put it back on the books as income.” Sybil raised her eyebrows, mimicking a surprised look.
Shaking her head, Polly stopped taking notes. She mumbled, “None of these fit.”
Sybil laid her hand on Polly’s recorder. “Off the record?”
“Sure.”
The recorder clicked as Sybil snapped it off. “They don’t fit because these aren’t the things you need to look at.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Sybil trained an earnest gaze on Polly and leaned forward, pulling the Eos report from under the recorder. She tapped the cover with her index finger. “With Eos, and their merger with Argran, you should consider the profits before proof option.”
“I’m not looking into that merger.” Alarm blazed a path through Polly’s chest. She scanned the trees for any magpie monsters, but found the branches empty. She’d worked with Sybil before, but she already had her suspicions about Peltier. What if Pierus was masquerading as the woman? She tensed, prepared to clash with the bastard, in case it was him seated across from her.
Oh goddess, she was losing it.
“Relax. I know what you’re thinking. But you couldn’t be further from the truth.” Sybil swept a glance at their surroundings, as if she was looking for someone. She faced Polly again, the light in her blue eyes gleaming. “I’m going to get into so much trouble for this. He’ll never understand my reasoning.”
“Who?”
“Mars. He is a stickler for the rules.”
Polly reared back against the bench and squinted at the woman. “How do you know Ma
rs?”
“He’s my boss.”
Jumping from her seat, Polly stumbled backward. “What the Hades?”
Sybil shot a hand to her arm, steadying her. “I can see the pragmatic reporter in you coming out. You want proof. Very well.” Sybil dropped her arm and stood. She lifted her chin and closed her eyes.
Cobalt colored mist floated around the woman’s body, and where her heart should be, vibrant yellow pulsed. The air shimmered around her, a sign that her demonstration was being masked from mortal eyes, not that there were any present at the moment.
With a wave of her hand, Sybil banished the mist, and shut down the cloaking she’d put in place for her performance. She beamed a huge smile at Polly. “I’m your partisan. I know all you Muses know about us now. Mars himself placed me on your service. But please don’t tell him I told you. I could come back in the next life as a chair if he knew.”
Polly crashed back to the bench. It made sense that she had a god protector. When Nia and Clio had faced Pierus, they’d each had one standing by their side. But Zeke and Ken never revealed their presence until absolutely necessary. Hell, none of the Muses had ever known they’d had partisans, yet in each of their lifetimes there had always been someone there to watch over them.
If Sybil was revealing herself as Polly’s partisan now, this challenge escalated faster than the last two had. “This is bad,” she muttered.
Sybil’s laugh was high and clear. “No, it isn’t.”
“How long do I have to defeat Greed?”
A frown accompanied Sybil’s shrug. “I don’t know. But outing myself to you isn’t because I think the timetable is speeding up over what Nia and Clio experienced. It’s because I think all the Muses should have help in preparing. It’s a point Mars and I disagree on.”
“But if he finds out you’ve told me, he’ll fire you. Then I’ll be without a protective detail.”
“Never gonna happen.” The confidence in Sybil’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. She settled on the bench next to Polly. “He loves me. Or at least, my work ethic.”
And that wasn’t at all encouraging. But she kind of liked that a woman was assigned as her protector. “Have you always been a woman? I mean, in any of our past lifetimes, have you been a man?”
“About fifty-fifty. I know Zeke was incredibly naughty once and came back as a Great Dane, but up until now I’ve been spared that.”
“I’m utterly fascinated.”
“You should be utterly focused,” Sybil scolded as she laid a hand on Polly’s arm again.
The partisan’s resolve sifted through Polly’s muscles, angling up her neck. “You’re right. You mentioned profits over proof. What did you mean?”
“We should be looking at Argran. The company snatches up smaller companies and dismantles them for the sake of pursuing the money. You already know they sell off some entities. But with others they take as much money from the coffers as possible.” She puckered her lips as if the words left a bad taste in her mouth. “When they’ve robbed all they can, they shut the business down. They’ve been doing it quietly for a long time, leaving mortals and entire communities below the poverty level. Mortality rates in those towns are skyrocketing.”
“I knew they were a corporate raider, but I didn’t realize how bad.” Pierus had threatened to dismantle Olympus in a similar manner. Cold anger washed over her.
“It gets worse. In the past two years, they’ve made a run at pharmaceutical companies, buying up ten smaller labs. They’ve rushed medications to the market—drugs aimed at solving disease in third world countries. And they are doing it without proper testing. Once they release the drug for consumption, they charge thousands of dollars for pills that cost pennies to manufacture. Over the past two years, the medicines they’ve shipped have killed over a million people.”
“What? How is it possible I haven’t heard of this before?”
An angry frown creased Sybil’s forehead. “Argran pays hush money to the governments of the countries. It’s pennies on the dollar, but the governments are happy to accept any funds they can get their hands on. Ultimately, fewer people equates to reduced expenses to provide necessary services for them. The money the greedy governments save lines the pockets of a few corrupt officials.”
Greedy bastards. “What about the FDA? How are they approving the medications before they’re fully vetted?”
“The FDA has no jurisdiction over other countries.”
“Sybil, this makes no sense. Why hasn’t the media picked up this trend? Normally, they’d be all over it.”
“Because that bitch, Apate, is the Chief Information Officer for Argran.”
The goddess of deception was running a communications department? “Argran is another company run by immortals?”
“I don’t think so. I think there are a few players there, but my research points to it being mortal-run.”
“Damn!” Polly exclaimed. “Next thing you know, Apate will convince the world that the worst cesspools in Africa smell like roses.”
“She kind of has already done that.” Sybil kicked at a tuft of grass near the bench leg.
“So to win this challenge I’m going to have to prove Argran is up to no good. I’ll have to figure out how to expose their nefarious ways.” Polly dropped her chin to her chest. “And Eos is tied in, somehow. I bet that’s why Scott Peltier behaved so oddly. I suspect someone, probably Pierus, has the man under their control.”
“We need an in with Eos.”
“I think I have a handle on that. One of their scientists is a friend.”
“Will he help?”
“Yeah, I think he will. I’m beginning to think he’s the man I’m supposed to team up with on this challenge.”
“Good, that should make your job simpler.”
“You mean our job.”
Sybil shook her head. “Sorry, sister. I’m just here to protect. You’re here to solve.”
Polly wrestled the sense of defeat settling on her shoulders. Ian didn’t seem to doubt magic, but he was a scientist. He’d look at things pragmatically, and then disprove theories, much like Thomas did with myths.
From overhead, a feather drifted downward on the breeze. Squawking flared to life in the branches of the hundred year-old sycamore. Almost too afraid to look, Polly dragged her gaze up. As she spied Greed squatting on the limb above her head, dread battled defeat for a spot on her body.
She couldn’t let Pierus win this challenge. Her life, the lives of her sisters and the fate of humanity rested on her ability to conquer this shitty bird and the son of a bitch who’d sired her.
Squeezing one eye closed, she summoned an image of a lynx from deep in her subconscious and pulled it forward. When the image fully formed, she hurled it toward the magpie.
Feathers scattered as the mental image collided with the physical bird. Greed screeched a loud complaint, wildly flapping her wings to escape Polly’s nudge.
The bird swooped from the tree, dive-bombing directly at the bench where Polly was seated. Sybil waved her arms in front of the bird then ducked under the onslaught of beating wings.
Polly leaped off the bench, drew from her core until energy pulsed through her arm. Imagining a narrow burst of electricity, she aimed it at the bird. Sparks flared from her fingertips as she let it fly. She prayed she wouldn’t need to call Mnemosyne to erase any unsuspecting mortals’ memories. But there was no time to mask her efforts. Greed screeched one final time, then flew away, disappearing from the blue sky as if she’d never been there.
Sybil straightened and pulled a feather from her hair. “What the fuck?”
“Exactly.” Polly twitched another feather from the open weave of Sybil’s sweater. “Why did she attack you and not me?”
“Because I’m helping. I guess that isn’t allowed.” She tugged her sweater into place then shook her fist at the sky.
“Ha! If Pierus’s silent partners aren’t considered helping I don’t know what is.”
�
�Nice touch with the nudge, by the way. Was that a bobcat?”
“It was a lynx. Wait! You saw that?”
“Yeah, I come with extra special gifts.”
“Sweet. Nice skill set to have. Now, how can we turn that to our advantage?”
“Good question, for which I have no answer. Hey, shouldn’t you go get ready for your date?”
“You know about my date?”
“Sweetie, I know about everything.” Sybil gathered up the recorder and papers from the bench and rose. She handed Polly the materials. “I’m going to do a little research and see if I can figure out what Argran’s plan is for Eos. I’ll text you if I come up with anything.”
Sybil turned in a circle until she faced Polly again. “Coast is clear. I’ll be in touch.”
The air shimmered again, and the cobalt mist rose from the ground until Sybil was enveloped in it. She waved at Polly as she blinked out of view.
Polly shoved her gear in the messenger bag, and then snapped the closures with a click. She would have loved to enter the Hollow and travel home in order to avoid the rush hour traffic. But she’d settle for putting the top down on her Mustang and enjoying the later summer sunshine.
Ian would be at her condo in less than two hours. She shrugged away the dread waffling around in her soul and made room for anticipation of an evening with a man who kissed better than any mortal she’d ever encountered.
Chapter 7
Thanks to a meeting running overtime at Eos, Jax was behind schedule. Because the corporate headquarters was on the same side of town, he’d already texted Polly to ask her if she could meet him at the restaurant. She’d agreed and was probably already there, waiting for him.
He hated being late for anything. But, it was completely unacceptable to run behind for his first date with the woman who intrigued him more than anyone ever had. Not to mention meeting her there instead of picking her up from home pretty much ruined his plans for a good night kiss at her door. Fuckety-fuck.
Not only was he unhappy about being late, he was angered by the direction the meeting had taken. His idea for an organic option on his project had been shot down before he could fully lay it out. He’d been instructed to approve the chemical option for production, despite having proved that using the proposed compound would result in toxicity in the soil.
Greed: Goddess of Delphi (Goddesses of Delphi Book 3) Page 6