“Einstein couldn’t do this math,” he assured her. “Jessa, if you asked, I think I’d set myself on fire for you. So would Angie and everyone else.” He reached across the desk.
Jessa flinched, jerking out of reach before she could stop herself.
“Why does a warmhearted woman like you avoid being touched?” he asked.
Her temper wanted to answer him, because a month after hiring him she had accidentally touched him. A brush of her fingers against him when exchanging a form had pushed her into the shadowlight, where she’d discovered his secret lust for Angela. She’d seen into his most private fantasies, most of which revolved around scenarios where he seduced and dominated the girl into adoring submission. Caleb’s secret bondage fetish was not the only shadow on his soul. When he had sex with other women, he always turned out the lights. His partners never knew it was so he could better pretend they were Angela.
“Shit. That’s it, isn’t it?” she heard him say. “Touching them. You always shake hands with the ones you don’t trust.”
The intercom light flashed, and with relief she answered it.
“Jessa, a Mr. Bradford Lawson from GenHance, Inc., is on line three for you,” her switchboard operator said.
She had no idea who Bradford Lawson was, but she’d heard of his company. Everyone who did business in Atlanta had.
“Thanks, Karen, I’ll take it.” She looked at Caleb. He smiled. “Am I fired now?”
“No.” She’d come very close to revealing something she’d guarded for ten years, and while she thought she could trust Cal, she needed to regroup. “Let’s talk about this again another time.” As he rose to leave, she added, “Caleb, I do appreciate your concern.”
“No, you don’t. But you have it anyway.” Still grinning, he left.
She let out the breath she’d been holding before she picked up the phone. “Good morning, this is Jessa Bellamy.”
“Ms. Bellamy, Bradford Lawson from GenHance,” a pleasant tenor voice said. “Tim Baker from Nolan, Hill, and Suskin referred me to your company.”
“That was very kind of him.” Jessa recalled the work she’d done for Tim Baker on three different paralegals he’d been interviewing for hire; one had turned out to be a plant from a rival law firm. “How can I help you, Mr. Lawson?”
“GenHance is expanding its research operations in the Southeast,” he said. “That will create about forty new biotech-related jobs here in the city, and another two hundred support positions in our satellite operations over the next three months. The nature of our business has always required thorough background checks and credential verifications on all new hires, which until now was handled in-house. This new phase of our operations, however, is quite sensitive. To keep from having our research compromised, our CEO has decided to hire an independent firm like Phoenix, Inc., to screen our applicants.”
“I’d be delighted to have the business, but I have to be realistic,” Jessa advised him. “We’re a small company, and two hundred and forty screenings can’t be done overnight. My people will need at least two weeks, maybe three, depending on the availability of the applicants for interviews as well as the specific information you’d like verified.”
“Your candor is appreciated,” he said. “But what we’re looking for is a more permanent arrangement. If we can agree on terms, GenHance will contract Phoenix to screen all of our new hires. I have the projected figures here …”
Paper rustled in the background. “About five thousand or so new positions over the next two years. Would you and your people be up to that kind of challenge?”
Jessa thought quickly. She would have to hire more investigators, at least ten, to handle that much work. But this was what she had been working toward, and with the right contract, GenHance’s business would enable hers to grow exponentially. “I believe we are, Mr. Lawson.”
“Excellent. I’d like to get together with you to discuss more of the details in person. What are you doing for lunch tomorrow?”
She glanced at her calendar, but the day remained blessedly free of midday appointments. “It looks like I’m meeting with you.”
He chuckled. “How does one o’clock at Cecile’s suit you?”
He’d picked the best French restaurant in the city, where reservations were usually required months in advance. “That’s fine. I’ll see you there tomorrow afternoon.”
“I’m looking forward to it.”Rowan Dietrich took off her headset as soon as Jessa Bellamy ended her latest call, uttered the filthiest words she knew, and then dialed Drew’s private number.
“Mom,” he answered in a mocking, childish whine, “I told you not to call me at work anymore.”
“Just wait till your father comes home,” she said, keeping up the joke with her best stern-parent tone. “He’s gonna kick your ass.”
“Lovely.” A brief crackle of static came over the line as Drew switched on his encryption unit. “We’re clear, little mama. Is it her?”
She could have lied and said no, and Drew would have believed her. She wanted to. But the thing was out of her hands now. “Yeah, it’s her. She’s scheduled to be taken at Cecile’s tomorrow afternoon. One o’clock.”
“That soon?” He sucked in a breath. “Maybe we should reconsider this one.”
“It isn’t up for a vote, Andrew,” she snapped. “They want her, we take her. It’s what we do. It’s what you do, when you’re not jerking off.”
His tone flattened. “Anything else for me?”
“Besides a spot right next to me when we burn in hell for this? Not really.” She slammed down the phone.
She went upstairs, more to get away from the communications center than anything, and wandered through the dark corridors On a good day she could spend hours going through the rooms, looking at all the beautiful old stuff in them, and imagining what it must have been like to live in the place. When Matthias was out of town, she sometimes dressed in one of the old gowns she’d found in the attic, and served herself tea in the Dove Room.
There, with the sunlight streaming through the blue, white, and green bits of stained glass framing the windows, she could forget who she was. There she played the lady, one who didn’t know what it was to sleep on a park bench, or wash in the sink of a public restroom, or beg for handouts at the back door of a restaurant kitchen. No one looking at her could see the tats under the long, fragile satin sleeves, or the scars everywhere else. They’d never guess she was trash.
Rowan checked the windows and doors out of habit before walking out into the garage. She wasn’t supposed to leave when she manned the fort by herself, but she couldn’t stand the silence, and she knew she wouldn’t sleep, not after making that call. She got into her Jeep and drove out onto the narrow back road behind the house. From there it was fifteen minutes to her favorite watering hole, Weeping William’s, where she sat in the shadows and watched some tubby tourists shoot lousy pool.
The bartender, an old stretch of skinny bones and dark coffee-colored skin, brought her Cherry Coke and a small bowl of pretzels. He had a long, thin birthmark on his left cheek that looked as if he were crying black tears. “Where you been, girl?”
“Working.” She took a sip of the soda to ease her dry throat before glancing over at the football game being shown on the small color TV above the bar. “How’s the team look this year?”
“Falcons? Shit.” He drew out the last word with much-relished disgust. “I can’t even bring myself to bet against ’em, though I’d likely clean up nicely. Where’s your man tonight?”
“Out of town.” She felt a twinge of guilt. “You know he’s my boss, not my man.”
He leaned on his elbow. “Honey, I seen you looking at him. That’s not the way my waitresses look at me.”
She moved her shoulders. “They’re just afraid of your wife.”
“Baby, everyone is.” He gave the framed picture of his wife, hung strategically over the cash register, a respectful nod. “That reminds me, Sally’s been chewing my ear about having you over for supper again. She wants you to show her how to make that chocolate silk pie you brought for our Fourth of July barbecue.”
Rowan loved visiting William and Sally. Their comfortable old house, set back on twenty-two acres of pine trees and marsh, was always filled with kids, grandkids, dogs, cats, and any other critter the boys could smuggle in. Sally would drag her into the kitchen the minute she arrived, and feed her bits of whatever she was cooking as they fiercely argued over every aspect of Southern versus Northern cooking.
“You might be a damn Yankee who doesn’t know kale from collard greens,” Sally said once, “but you the best natural cook I ever met. You should be seriously thinking about opening your own place, sugar.”
The praise had embarrassed Rowan, but the pleasure of it had stayed with her for a long time. She did love to cook, and sometimes daydreamed about having a little café somewhere. But it would never happen, not in this lifetime. Reality had eaten up all the delicious dreams of her youth, and spit out only what it couldn’t grind down and swallow: her spine, her hard head, and her battle-scarred heart.
“Hey, how ’bout you stay over this weekend and come fishing with me and the boys in the morning?” William was asking. “Found us a sweet little spot out by north side of the island. Coulda filled my cooler three times over by daybreak.”
If everything went according to plan, Rowan wasn’t going anywhere until the end of October. “I’ve got to haul some stuff up north for my boss,” she told him. “I’ll be gone for a couple weeks. Maybe when I get back.”
“Who you talking to, Willie?” One of the lousy pool players came over and peered at Rowan. “Your girlfriend?”