Dixie stared at her, confusion in her features.
“Kane Curtis,” Tori said. “We had dinner.”
Dixie’s face went from a healthy pink to deathly white to a furious red in a single moment. “No!” she roared. “I forbid it! I forbid it, do you hear me, young lady?”
“Nana?”
Ben’s whimper cut at Tori’s heart. Dixie didn’t seem to have heard it, which kind of scared Tori. She looked at her sister. “Take him to the kitchen,” she muttered between clenched teeth.
Both satisfaction and dismay washed over Lexie’s features. She picked up the highchair, toddler and all, and fled to the kitchen.
Danny put his hand over Dixie’s fist, a bold move as she was still clutching her fork. “Honey, let’s discuss this after dinner.”
“No! We will not discuss this!” Dixie screamed. “We are not having this conversation! Victoria Joy Lewis, you will not see him again! Are we clear?”
It had been over fifteen years since Kane’s name had been mentioned in this house. Tori suddenly remembered why. Her mother turned into…someone else…when she talked about her ex-husband. The maternal family organizer disappeared, replaced by an angry, bitter ogre bent under a load of hatred.
“Are we clear?”
Tori stared at her plate. She loved her mother, and she wanted to make her happy. But agreeing with her now wouldn’t make Dixie happy. It would simply end this conversation. Whether or not Tori agreed not to see Kane again, Dixie would never look at her the same. So why not be a grown-up and make her own decision, stop letting her mother tell her what to do?
Without looking at anyone at the table, Tori picked up her plate and headed for the kitchen.
“Answer me, young lady!”
“Tori,” Danny called, “come back here, please.”
Tori kept walking. She hated every step, but she kept going. She wanted to tell Dad that it had nothing to do with him. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she knew she was cutting his heart out. She wanted to tell him that no one could ever replace him. But she kept walking.
In the kitchen, Lexie stood still as stone, a stricken expression on her face. “Tori, I – I didn’t – I forgot how–”
Tori shook her head. At the movement, she noticed her eyes were full of water. Her mascara would run if she cried. She put her plate on the counter and gently blotted the corners of her eyes. Her appetite was gone. She laid the napkin on the counter and turned to leave.
“Tori, wait!” Lexie jumped and opened a cupboard. Taking out a plastic container, she scraped Tori’s dinner into it, snapped the lid on, and pressed it into Tori’s hand.
Lexie hated to be compared to her mother, but the food was such a Dixie thing. As if somehow it would help if everyone had enough to eat.
Tori kissed the top of Ben’s head and walked out without looking at her sister. No sound came from the dining room. She wondered if no one thought she would leave. Had she never asserted herself before? Slipping on her boots, she thought about it. No. She didn’t think she had. She grabbed her coat and walked out.
Why did standing up for herself have to be so difficult?
And so lonely?
TORI saved the file, printed it, and emailed it to Joe. Then she took the printed spreadsheet to his office. She knocked and opened the door.
“Here’s the annualized–” She stopped and frowned as she watched Joe jump up from under the desk and sit down.
“Is this a bad time?” she asked. “I can come back.”
“No, it’s fine. You startled me.” Joe reached for the spreadsheet. “I was just…” His voice trailed off as he looked over the numbers. “This can’t be right.”
Tori walked to the side of his desk and looked over his shoulder. “What can’t be right?” She tried not to be upset with him. He’d warned her he’d be working long hours on this case. But she hadn’t seen him all weekend, and he’d left early this morning. Now she had to pretend she didn’t know him.
She stared at his profile. Strong jaw, clean-shaven cheeks, thick hair – though with too much hair gel. He said he tried to look different when he went undercover so no one in his real life would recognize him. Apparently the hair gel and tie were the extent of his disguise. Wasn’t too much hair gel a villainous faux pas? She should look around the office for someone with hair from the 1960s. And a thick mustache.
Or maybe she should do some non-prime-time-TV research on bad guys. It’d be nice to know if her life was in danger, or just her sanity. She turned her attention back to Joe’s computer.
Joe clicked over to his email and brought up the file she’d just sent. Opening it, he clicked on various cells, checking her formulas. Tori set her teeth. She’d done exactly as he’d asked. She bet he was going to say this is not what he’d asked for. She bet he was going to ask her to re-do it another way. This undercover finance work sucked.
“The formulas look okay, but there’s something wrong with this number.” He opened a file on his desk and pulled out a different spreadsheet.
Tori went to stand next to him and looked over his shoulder. He smelled so good. She wanted to put her hand on his shoulder, run her fingers through his hair, kiss his neck. But she’d left the door open. Grr.
“Yeah, look, here is the number from the original spreadsheet. It’s different than this one.” Joe pointed to the paper, then to his screen.
“The nine rule,” Tori said. Why hadn’t she closed the door? She could’ve at least gotten a quick hug. Or put her hand on his back as she leaned closer. That probably wouldn’t help people continue to believe their charade though.
“What?” Joe turned his whole body to face her, his eyes boring into hers. “What did you say?” he whispered fiercely.
If she didn’t love and trust him, Joe would almost scare her right now. What was the problem? All accountants knew about the nine rule. “The nine rule,” she said again. He must have his mind someplace else that he didn’t remember it.
“Evan emailed me about it that last day. He was always reminding me of the obvious. I don’t know what kind of temps he had before…” Tori choked. She hadn’t known Evan very well, but it still brought tears to her eyes that he was dead. Violently dead.
Joe grabbed her forearm. “Show me the email. Now. Please.”
Tori pulled her arm away, trying to understand what Joe was really asking. “I don’t have it. I deleted it. Everyone knows that rule. If a number doesn’t add up properly, you divide the difference by nine to see if it’s a transposition error. I didn’t have to be reminded,” she said with a more attitude than was necessary. Maybe if anyone around here thought she was smart and good at her job, she wouldn’t feel the need to prove it.
Joe’s gaze became unfocused. He didn’t look like he was thinking about the spreadsheet anymore.
“Joe?” Tori whispered. “What?”
He blinked and met her gaze again. “Tori, I looked through all of his outgoing emails. I didn’t find one to you or anyone else reminding you of a transposition issue. Can you remember exactly what it said? It could be important.”
Tori thought about it for a moment. Yeah, it was only one line. There was no more to it than that. “He’d sent me another email just before, late Wednesday. Then this one was dated about midnight Wednesday. It said, ‘If I’m not here tomorrow, remember the nine.’ That’s all.”
Joe took a deep breath. He pulled a notebook from his pocket and wrote down what she said. “Do you remember if he used the word nine or the number nine?”
“The word,” Tori replied. “I remember thinking it’s weird when a numbers person spells out a number.”
He looked at her, his mouth open a little, his face pale.
“This is important,” Tori whispered. “Why?”
Joe shook himself out of his headspace. “I’ve got to call IT.”
“Tell me.” Tori tried not to beg. “I want to help.” I want to help more than working on stupid spreadsheets.
Joe shook his
head at her. He started to say something else, but IT picked up on the other end. “I need to access some emails sent last Wednesday,” he said. They must’ve put him on hold because he looked up and said, “I just got an email from Mark that they also want to see last year’s information on the reality show deals. You only used this year’s information. I’ll forward it to you.”
Tori started to tell him Mark only asked for this year’s information, but Joe interrupted with, “Yeah, I’m still here.”
Tori ground her teeth. Why had she agreed to stay and work for these nincompoops? She closed her eyes. They were going to be the death of her. Her eyes popped open. Don’t even think that! Someone around here really was a killer.
Joe was busy talking to IT, so Tori figured she’d been dismissed. Yup, today it was going to be easy to pretend she disliked him. She’d think of the people above him who were filtering down information in bits and pieces, and point her dislike of them Joe’s way.
She had to pretend to dislike him. It was the only way she’d get through the day without throwing herself in his arms and begging him to kiss her. She wanted to hug him and tell him about yesterday’s terrible family dinner. She wanted to be held and soothed and reassured that it would all turn out okay. She wanted Joe to be the husband he was on their honeymoon.
Tori walked out and closed the door. Heads turned. Okay, so maybe that was a little more like a slam. She marched to her desk. She didn’t care what the others thought. They didn’t like her anyway. As far as she could tell, none of her co-workers showed even the slightest hint that might indicate killing instincts. She didn’t particularly care what they thought of her if they weren’t planning on taking her to lunch. Or taking her out.
“Being an idiot, is he?” Joanie asked. She paused at Tori’s desk with a fresh cup of coffee.
Tori growled in her throat. She threw the papers down on her desk and slammed her body into the chair.
Joanie chuckled. “I don’t know why they hired him. I guess they had to do something, but still. It irks me that he’s a temp and he can tell me what to do. I’ve been here nineteen years. I’m old enough to be his mother!”
Tori swiveled in her chair and let her frustration out. “I’m telling you, if he doesn’t figure out what he wants, there’s going to be another murder around here! How difficult is it to decide how you want to see the numbers? Maybe I should just ask him what he needs to know and I’ll decide how they should be presented.” Her fingers twisted into fists. She needed to control her anger. Especially until she knew how her power worked. She only knew it happened sometimes when she was angry, but she couldn’t seem to make it work on command.
Destiny, in the next cube over, snickered. “Trust me, girl, I’ve been here long enough to know where they hide the bodies. I can help you get rid of one.”
Joanie laughed, but Tori was too wound up. “Does anyone know if this is a capital punishment state? If it is, I’ll have to lure him away somewhere where I won’t get the electric chair.” Come to think of it, luring him away sounded wonderful.
“I’ll Google it for you,” Destiny said.
Jennifer, two cubicles away, stood up with her hands on her hips. “You guys are sick. Someone just died around here and you’re making jokes about killing people!”
“Who’s joking?” Destiny said with a straight face.
That finally broke through the tension Tori was feeling. She laughed. Good. Much better. She was really beginning to like Destiny.
“Ugh!” Jennifer huffed. “I can’t believe you animals! I’m going to HR and complain about each of you. You better hope they don’t call the police.” Jennifer strode off to the elevator.
“Oh great,” Joanie groaned. “We’re in for it now. I’d rather have three Joe’s than one Jennifer. At least he tries to be nice. Even if he is an idiot.” She walked back to her desk.
Tori turned to her computer and leaned her head on one hand. Maybe she should quit. She wasn’t herself. She wasn’t normally hard to get along with or mean-hearted. Was this the best she could behave, stressful situation or no?
She sighed. God, please help me to be more understanding, more helpful, and to see what I’m not seeing.
Opening the last spreadsheet, she started reformatting it to get ready to dump in last year’s information. She didn’t hate her job. What she hated was feeling like she was wasting her time, that she was just being kept busy for eight hours a day, just collecting a paycheck.
She wanted more from her life. She wanted to achieve something, be good at something she enjoyed that had meaning. But what? That was the million dollar question. She’d thought this super power thing would be the “something,” but she didn’t know who to talk to about it, or how to use it. She was afraid to talk to Casey and Art yet. Maybe she should make an appointment with Owen. Privately. As a pastor, he should know all about the meaning of life.
Her phone rang twenty minutes later. Pam in HR needed to speak with her. As she walked down the stairs, Tori wondered how much meaning she could derive out of making license plates.
LEXIE hadn’t talked to Tori since yesterday’s mealtime fiasco. She knew she needed to apologize, but convincing Tori to listen to her was more important. She shoved her homework into her backpack with an apple and a bottle of water. If it were anyone else, she might worry that Tori was too upset with her to come over tonight. But Lexie had class on Monday nights and Tori babysat. That was the deal. They’d lived together raising Ben long enough to do what needed to be done regardless of whether they were happy with each other.
So when Tori walked in at the usual time, Lexie didn’t even let her take off her coat before she thrust a sheaf of papers at her sister’s face. “Read these,” she demanded.
Tori ignored the papers while she took off her boots. “Geez, Lex, let me get my coat off, will ya?”
“I told you he was trouble, didn’t I?” Lexie continued. “I knew it. But no, you wouldn’t believe me.” She rattled the papers at Tori’s head. “But now I’ve got proof! Read these and promise me you’ll stay away from him, Tor.”
“I’m not going to be able to read them if you give me a paper cut on my cornea.”
Lexie backed up a step and waited for her sister to hang up her coat. She didn’t know much about Kane Curtis as a man except that something about him frightened her, had since she was a little girl. She could feel things about people. She couldn’t explain it, but sometimes she seemed to know things about them that she couldn’t know.
She’d spent all yesterday afternoon on the Internet researching Kane Curtis the businessman. She printed all of it so she could prove to Tori that it wasn’t just a feeling. Kane was not a good man. Her sister believed the best about people, and normally Lexie found that to be an endearing quality. But in this case, it was dangerous.
Tori rolled her eyes before she finally took the papers. She scanned the first page and put her hand on her hip. “Gosh, Lex, you hate our father. Not exactly breaking news. Doesn’t mean I have to.” She headed for the kitchen.
Lexie took her sister’s arm and pushed her into a chair in front of a cup of hot chocolate. “Drink and read.” She knew how much Tori loved the way Lexie made hot chocolate, so she’d made Tori a mug that was extra rich with extra marshmallows.
Tori heaved a dramatic sigh and read the first page. “Curtis Enterprises Investigated by SEC. They aren’t the only ones.” She flipped the page face down on the wooden table and took a sip of her cocoa.
“Whistleblower at Curtis Enterprises Murdered,” she read. She pointed a glare at Lexie. “Sorry, but murders are losing their shock value.”
Pretend all you want, little sis, but that one hit you. I can see it in your face. Lexie waited for Tori to read the next one, one of the worst of the stories she’d found.
“Genetic Experimentation on Children Shut Down.” Tori looked up and shifted in her seat. She took a big swallow of the hot chocolate and shot a surreptitious glance toward Ben’s room.
“Alpha Genetics had recently been purchased by Curtis Enterprises of Double Bay, Michigan.” Tori met her gaze again, fear creeping in around the edges this time. She turned back to the papers, flipping through them, reading headline after headline, and highlights of what Curtis Enterprises was accused of being involved in.
Lexie felt a shiver go down her back as she saw Tori turn to the last page. “That’s a printout from my bank account. See the highlighted part?”
“Fifty thousand dollars? What’s that from?”
“Exactly what I asked my bank this morning. Blood money? Drug money? Bribery? I don’t know. It happened last week. After he visited here. Here! My home! Ben’s home!” Lexie’s hands cut through the air as she spoke faster and faster. She could feel her emotions spilling out like a bucket of snakes. She tried to hold them in as she continued.
“I called the bank,” she told Tori, “and you know who they say the deposit came from? Guess! One guess!”
Tori grabbed one of her hands and held it between them on the table. Lexie could feel her sister focus on calmer emotions, reflecting them back to Lexie. She felt a little better.
“Curtis Enterprises!” Lexie squeezed Tori’s hand, trying to physically hang onto the peace. “I asked them how someone can deposit money into my private account without my permission, without me giving them my bank account number, and they said they don’t know. I told them to take it out and they said they can’t, that it’s a bona fide transaction. They told me I have to accept it!”
Lexie’s other arm knocked her mug. Hot cocoa spilled across the table. She jumped up to get some paper towels. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to accept or not accept!” she fumed. “That is my account and I will not accept his dirty money! Regardless of what the bank says.”
She scrubbed furiously at the hot cocoa. Tori moved back to keep from being hit with chocolatey paper towel bits. “So you know what I did, Tori? You know what I did with that scoundrel’s money?”
Unexpected Superhero (Adventures of Lewis and Clarke Book 1) Page 16