The Golden Girl

by Erica Orloff

  “What about her father?”

  “Her own father attacked his daughter? Jack Pruitt? You’ve got to be kidding me, man.”

  “Stranger things have happened in our line of work.”

  “No. You don’t think she’d recognize him, even with a ski mask?”

  “Then he could have hired someone.”

  Maddie listened to all this with an ice pack pressed to her neck. “Look, gentlemen, this is all preposterous. I interrupted a thief. Do you have any idea what the art in this apartment is worth? In the millions. That painting—” she swept her hand toward a Picasso “—is worth over a million itself. I inherited it from my grandmother, who was an avid Picasso lover.”

  Ordinarily, Maddie would never flaunt her wealth like that, but the two cops were irritating her with their insinuations. And she did think it had to do with Pruitt & Pruitt, but no sense giving the police any idea about her father—he was under a big enough cloud of suspicion already.

  Marcus said, “I’m going to post a security detail outside your apartment until we redo the system tomorrow.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  Marcus, with the chiseled features of a roman statue and the sculpted body to match, shook his head. “Look, Ms. Pruitt, your father’s company pays me a lot of money to keep its valuables safe. And I’d say, if you excuse the expression, you’re his most precious possession. You can’t talk me out of it, so know our guys are there and then put it from your mind. And I still think you should go to the hospital.”

  “Dr. Halloway is coming over.” He was the Pruitt family’s personal physician. She and her father were in superb shape, but Jack Pruitt couldn’t tolerate the thought of ever wasting even ten seconds in a doctor’s waiting room. So Halloway played a lot of golf and was kept on a retainer basis. He had gone to prep school with Jack Pruitt and her father was extremely loyal to old friends.

  Hours later, Maddie was mentally—and physically—exhausted. The police hadn’t seemed as interested in catching Claire’s killer as in nailing her father. She was used to it in a way. People loved to take down the wealthy, to be able to think, “See, money can’t buy you happiness.” Maddie knew that was a thousand percent true. Her childhood, for instance, hadn’t been a particularly happy one. But she also knew relishing the downfall of another person wasn’t right either. By the end of the interview, Detective Briggs had begun zeroing in on Maddie herself—her resentment over her father’s affair with Claire. Luckily, Maddie had an airtight alibi. She had been at the office when Claire was killed. After that, she was in the club—and had been seen there by hundreds of people, not to mention she had gotten a playful mention in Rubi’s column.

  Briggs even went so far as to insinuate that Maddie herself had staged the break-in. Maddie had risen from the dining-room table, and with all the iciness she could muster, and with a look in her eyes that would instill panic in even the toughest lawyers negotiating with her over a piece of property, she said, “The mayor will be hearing from me about this ridiculous line of questioning as my friend’s body lies in the morgue. You can leave now, gentlemen, and don’t come back. If you do, you’ll find my attorneys will make you wish you’d never joined the force. If, after my call to the mayor, you even stay detectives instead of being reassigned to the K–9 unit.”

  After they had left, Halloway had arrived and given her a prescription for an anti-inflammatory and a painkiller. She intended to fill neither. Her father called.

  “Marcus filled me in. What the hell happened?”

  “If he filled you in, then you know, Dad. Look, I’m wiped out.”

  “Dammit, Madison, I hate it when you don’t keep me informed.”

  “Hmm…Imagine how I felt about you and Claire. Uninformed, lied to. I’m going to bed. Good night.” She hung up. Then Maddie had poured herself a stiff drink and tried to think.

  Claire had been an absolute tigress in the courtroom—but she was proud of her reputation. There wasn’t any way she had been involved in anything illegal. So who was the traitor at Pruitt & Pruitt? And who was so powerful to have been able to access her building and her apartment?

  Maddie sipped her scotch—a single malt that would go for two hundred dollars a shot at any high-end restaurant. She remembered being twenty-three the first time she had scotch. She had thought it was the single most vile drink on the planet, but again, her father had taught her well. The “big boys” she negotiated with and against drank it to celebrate closing a deal—and she learned to drink it, too. Now she enjoyed a smooth scotch—and she needed it to steady her nerves in light of all that had happened in the previous twenty-four hours.

  She gazed out on the skyline, and Renee’s words rang in her ears. All her life, Madison had wanted to build skyscrapers, to leave her mark in history—on the skyline of Manhattan. She wanted to look out on spires and soaring glass buildings and know she was responsible for making these hundred-million-dollar projects a reality. But as a member of the Gotham Roses undercover organization, she could do so much more. So in the wee hours, as Manhattan spread like a shining jewel in front of her, Madison Taylor-Pruitt decided she would work undercover. She would be a government agent. And she would see that justice was done. For Claire.

  Bam!

  Madison was flung through the air and to the mat by her trainer. She’d hit the mat so hard, she thought she’d broken a tooth.

  Jimmy Valentine gave her a grin and reached a hand down to help her up. Madison actually felt for the mat beneath her. She felt as if she’d hit solid floor, not mat, but no…the mat was still there.

  “Man, you are one well-trained lady.” Jimmy smiled. “You may be my best agent yet.”

  Maddie accepted his proffered hand and rose, slowly, from her prone position. “Well trained? You’re kicking my ass.”

  “Look at me. I’m six foot one, a good two hundred twenty-five first thing in the morning before I’ve eaten my way through one of my wife, Linda’s, breakfasts. I should be kicking your ass. I’d be kicked out of the CIA if I couldn’t. Now let’s try that move one more time.”

  Jimmy was teaching her to do leg sweeps, whereby she literally tried to sweep an opponent’s legs out from under him or her. This was after a half hour on a heavy bag, twenty minutes of jump rope, four miles on a treadmill set for steep uphill, and a firearms lesson, which she had passed, Jimmy said, “like you were a born sniper.”

  Maddie tried to focus, but she was still absorbing the fact that beneath Renee’s glamorous home and the Gotham Roses elegant club was a labyrinth of rooms and tunnels. Feeling as if she was in a James Bond movie, after she was processed and prodded and poked by a doctor, and after her irises were scanned into some high-tech security equipment, which made even what Pruitt & Pruitt had look amateurish, she was ushered downstairs into a whole new world.

  Maddie decided the best metaphor for it was an anthill. There may have been a whole world, busy and bustling upstairs in the Club. There were always teas, events, planning meetings and lunches being held to benefit their charities. On the second and third floors were Renee’s private residence—just she and her daughter with Preston still in prison. But beneath the world of the hill above was another world. Madison saw two or three fellow Roses turned agents ushered in and out of high-tech rooms, and she discovered, when Renee gave her the tour, that everything from computer equipment to sophisticated listening devices, to a firing range and training center, even to a dressing room with a stylist who helped women when they went under deeper cover, were all housed here.

  Most amusing, to Maddie at least, were the people like Jimmy Valentine, who was their trainer. She had seen him before. In a painter’s outfit, splattered with the color of Renee’s sitting room. Another man she saw tending to an immense computer she had always believed was one of Renee’s personal accountants.

  “You ready, Pruitt?” Jimmy grinned at her. He was certainly gorgeous, with classic Italian sexiness, but behind that smile was a deadly serious trainer. He showed no mercy
because, he said, “The bad guys won’t either.”

  They squared off against each other. Maddie stayed out of the range of his reach—which was the tricky part. He so seriously outsized her that in order for her to attack him, she had to get close to him, which meant he could grab her and send her sailing across the room.

  She inhaled deeply through her nostrils. Belly breathing would show him she was tired, which she sure as heck was. But she wasn’t about to let Jimmy Valentine know. This was day two of training, and she was determined to take him down.

  Get him off guard, she told herself. When she’d trained with her father’s Black Ops guys they constantly stressed that hand-to-hand combat was as much a mental game as a physical game.

  She suddenly dropped to the floor, slid in close to Jimmy, and with one vicious and fast side-sweep of her long leg, flattened him. Before he could grab her, she’d rolled three times, was up on her feet, and drew her gun—which was unloaded for practice.

  “Freeze!”

  Jimmy Valentine stared up at the ceiling. She thought she’d really hurt him and dashed over to him.

  “You okay?”

  He smiled a huge grin, ran his hands through his thick black hair and sat up. “My leg hurts like a son of a bitch, but I’m more than okay. Honey, you are going to surprise a helluva lot of people. Most especially, some bad guys.”

  “You think?”

  “Look, some of the women who are undercover, they’re gorgeous. Who am I kidding? They’re all knockouts—Vanessa Dawson? She’s a goddess. And they’re smart, sophisticated. And they can shoot, now that they’ve been trained. They all have talent. But you have it inbred in you. I read your file. Your father being paranoid about kidnapping and all.”

  “Yeah. I was already training in my teens, and then got more intense training when I went off to college.”

  “That’s the key. They got you when you were young. It’s like second nature. Great drop to the floor. I wasn’t expecting it.”

  He lifted the leg of his black tracksuit. “I’m gonna have a terrific bruise. Good for sympathy from Linda.”

  “What does she think of your job?”

  He shrugged. “As long as I’m safe and come home to my girls at night, she’s cool with it. I have two daughters—Mia and Sienna. Apples of my eye.”

  “Let’s try that choke-hold routine again.”

  “They warned me about you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The amazing type-A competitive streak. You’re so driven, they say your blood is type A.”

  “Oh, aren’t we clever.”

  “Always, Park Avenue Princess, always,” he said, his brown eyes making clear he meant it affectionately.

  Jimmy finally stood and said, “You’re sure you want to go another round?”

  She nodded.

  The choke hold involved him facing her and placing his hands around her neck—he didn’t apply much pressure, but enough that she had to be cautious to fight panic. Then her move was to jam her forearms up between his two arms and force his arms outward with as strong a motion as she could. The fact that Jimmy’s forearms were the size of her thighs made things tricky.

  They each readied their stance, and Jimmy pretended to choke her.

  Maddie fought against the tide of panic. It’s a mental game, she told herself, just like staring down the piranhas who wanted to force the sale of Pruitt’s hotel holdings last year.

  In an instant, she flashed back to the masked intruder reaching for her throat. Fear mixed with anger, and she brought her arms up in a swift motion and slammed them against the inner forearms of Jimmy. He grunted, but released her neck, and she took four steps back and pulled her weapon.

  “Freeze!”

  “Thumbs up! You fight like a champ.”

  “Thanks.” She beamed. He was right. She couldn’t help it, but she was competitive to a fault, and knowing she was better than most filled her with pride. Like being valedictorian of her elite private high school—only better. She liked knowing she was trained to do combat. It stirred something inside her.

  After she finished with Jimmy, she was brought to the dressing room, which had an adjoining medical room with a massage table and whirlpool spa and other delights for sore muscles. She had no time for a rubdown, though. She showered and changed and was brought to a briefing room. There, she met with Troy Carter, who was assigned to be her handler.

  “Hi, Madison,” he said, reaching out and giving her a firm handshake.

  “Hi.” She smiled and sized him up—just as she was sure he had. She had noticed the two-way mirrors in the training room when she and Jimmy had been fighting.

  Troy Carter was, like Jimmy, tall and extremely well built. Whereas Jimmy’s Italian good looks and New York accent made him seem like an “ordinary guy,” Troy looked former military to Madison. He had close-cropped hair, a soft wheat color, and gray eyes, and his jaw was square. He wore khakis and a golf shirt. His bearing though, his posture, was anything but relaxed. He stood ramrod straight, and she noticed how his eyes moved from one corner of the room to the other, as if he was always on his guard, assessing his surroundings. They were completely safe in the conference room, she knew, but she guessed that because of his background, he had ingrained habits.

  “Sit down,” he said, sweeping his hand to a chair.

  “Thanks.” She sat and watched as he opened a case file and sat down to her left—even seated he was stiff.

  “After your attack, we sped everything up, Madison. Ordinarily, we’d still be training a month from now, but if your life is in jeopardy, we surmise you’re not the only one. On the one hand, we’re extremely fortunate. You had a background, frankly, we’d kill for, if you’ll pardon the expression. Harvard, MBA from Wharton, multiple languages, fluency especially in French, given your mother’s from Paris. And then this little oddity of having been trained by Frank Killian and his boys.”

  “You know Frank?”

  Troy looked up at her. “There’s no one in this business who doesn’t. But only someone like your father could afford him. Most people only hire Frank and his people to guard them—he’s had teams guarding everyone from Shaq to Brad Pitt after his separation, to a few Middle Eastern members of various royal families. The former Shah of Iran’s family. But your father is nothing if not controlling.”

  Madison smiled and nodded.

  “For your father, it wasn’t enough to have guards. He wanted you to be able to handle any situation that might arise. To keep your wits about you. My understanding is they even put you through three different mock-kidnapping scenarios, and you came through them all with flying colors.”

  “You’re certainly thorough.”

  “That’s my job.” He shifted some papers around. “Anyway, Madison, because of this acceleration, I’m going to be with you pretty closely, just to be sure you’re ready. In fact, as of Wednesday, I’ll be working at Pruitt & Pruitt in the management-training program—real-estate division, of course. You’ll be seeing quite a lot of me as an assistant.”

  “How did you manage that? I mean, Claire was just…well, this is the weekend and this is all, as you said, lightning fast.”

  “We’ve been planning this for some time, actually, just hadn’t counted on you being part of it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Madison, I’m about to tell you a few things that are going to be really startling, so brace yourself.”

  “I don’t know how it could be worse than the last couple of days.”

  “Madison,” he sighed, “Claire was working with us already.”

  “What? She’s not a Gotham Rose—wasn’t a Gotham Rose.”

  “I didn’t mean that. My fault for not being more clear. I meant she was working with the FBI. She was a whistle-blower, Madison. She was gathering evidence that Pruitt & Pruitt was money laundering for the mob. More specifically, that Pruitt & Pruitt was laundering vast amounts of drug money and that the mob was investing in some of you
r holdings. We even wondered if it might have ties with the Duke.”

  “That’s the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard of. We’re a corporation. We’re not some cover for illegal elements of society. We don’t even know mobsters. And who’s the Duke?”

  “Someone we’ve been after a long time. We think he’s got his hand in nearly everything—prostitution, money laundering, drugs. And we’re convinced he’s someone in your social sphere.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “Might seem so…but Claire was onto something. She had files and banking papers to prove it.”

  “But…” Madison looked down at the table, steeling herself for these new revelations. “I had nothing to do with it. And my father…I mean, I was so angry with them, but I believe he loved her. So does this mean she was planning on turning against him?”

  “We don’t know. She was supposed to meet her contact in the agency the night she was killed. She didn’t show up at the meeting point and instead turned up dead in the warehouse.”

  “Who was her contact?”

  Troy looked her directly in the eye. “Me.”

  “And you had no idea what she was going to say? What she had found as far as proof?”

  He shook his head. “She only said it was irrefutable. That Pruitt & Pruitt was into some stuff that would make the Enron boys look like Boy Scouts. She was scared. Terrified, actually.”

  “Did she implicate my father?”

  He shook his head. “She wouldn’t say on the telephone. She was getting nervous, jumpy. That’s when I secured a job in the management-training program.”

  “So I’m supposed to find out what my own company is into.”

  He nodded solemnly. “Even if that means it goes right to the top.”

  “It won’t,” Madison said. But now, even she was starting to have doubts. She felt as if she had entered a hall of mirrors—and nothing in her world was what it once seemed.

  Chapter 5

  There was no use in hiding forever. When Monday morning came, Madison went to the office. The photographers had eased off quite a bit, but around the office some people were crying. A few, who’d been away for the weekend, hadn’t even heard until they arrived for work.