Revenge: A Bad Boy Romance (18 page)

Lois considered my suggestion for a few seconds, but then shook her head. “No, that’s not possible. We’re too far along in this operation, and besides, Denton’s dad is just as bad as Roddy Barton, if not worse. Roddy Barton is a mystery. Our files on him are practically empty. We need to stick with the plan. This way, we can get Denton and his dad. That’s a big win.”

I sank back in my chair disappointed. I shouldn’t have even suggested it, but I had to at least try. 

“Anyway,” Lois continued, “Roddy Barton didn’t kill Kara. Not personally anyway. Denton’s wrong about that.”

“He is? How do you know?” 

“Roddy Barton wasn’t even in the country on the day Kara was killed. I checked the records. No doubt Barton ordered the killing and had one of his men do it, but he didn’t get his hands dirty. He rarely does.”

“Then why let word get round that he did?” I asked. 

“To start a war, I expect. Between him and Denton’s dad. Those two meatheads have been at each other’s throats for years just waiting for an excuse to attack. Barton wants Denton to come after him.”

Lois frowned and looked at me intently. I hadn’t noticed I was doing it, but a smile had spread across my face.

“You seem pleased by this news,” Lois said suspiciously. 

I was delighted with the news, but I could hardly tell Lois that. If Barton didn’t kill Kara, then Denton might not go after him. That meant he’d stay out of jail and perhaps somehow we could both get out of this mess.

I stopped smiling, although it was probably too late by that point. “Like you said, Barton probably just wants to start a war. If Denton finds out that Barton didn’t kill Kara then there’s no need for a war and no one has to die. That’s good news in my book.”

Lois was too experienced with interviewing criminals to be taken in by my lies. I couldn’t even lie to my mom, let alone an FBI agent with twenty years on the job. She knew something was up, but she decided not to press the matter.

“Denton will still kill Barton,” Lois said confidently. “Or someone else. Either way, he’ll kill whoever he deems responsible, because that’s the way he is. Denton Russell takes the law into his own hands, and that will be his undoing.”

I wanted to blurt out ‘he’s not like that,’ but I would have sounded like a naive child. If I was going to win Lois round, then I needed to remain cool and collected.

“I’m still not convinced Denton’s as involved in all this as you think,” I said calmly, trying to sound impartial. “I’ve spent a lot of time with him, and he just seems like a normal CEO running a company. We shouldn’t blame him for the sins of his father.”

“I’m not blaming him for the sins of his father,” Lois replied. “I’m judging him by what he’s done, and that’s plenty bad enough.”

I thought back to the file the FBI had on Denton. It was full of alleged activity, but most of it was speculation. The only crimes the FBI had evidence for were those of his father. Sure, there was a lot of smoke around Denton, and I couldn’t blame Lois for being suspicious, but she sounded certain, as if she knew Denton was a bad person.

“He’s a womanizer,” I said, almost choking on the words as I said them. I’d been doing my best not to think about that for the past forty-eight hours. “And I’m sure he’s no stranger to fights. But is that really enough for the FBI to worry about.”

“He’s killed, Chloe,” Lois said sternly. “You need to understand that. I know you’re getting close to him. Don’t deny it,” she added, as I opened my mouth to do just that. “It’s completely natural for you to feel close to him when you spend so much time together, but you have to appreciate how dangerous he is. He’s a murderer.”

“Those deaths in the file looked like self-defense,” I argued. “That wouldn’t be murder.”

“You haven’t seen the latest additions to the file,” Lois responded. She leaned down and pulled a thin beige file out of her bag, before placing it on the table and sliding it across. 

I opened the file, and saw a picture of a dead man lying in a pool of his own blood. It looked like he was on an office floor, shoved under a desk. I could see at least three separate stab wounds on the picture, but there was so much blood it was hard to tell exactly how many there were.

“We went to the factory you mentioned last week,” Lois said. “The one you stopped by before that little weekend away.” The way she referred to the weekend made it clear she still wasn’t best pleased with me over that little incident. “We found him lying there. He’d only been dead a few hours.”

“Denton couldn’t have done this,” I pleaded. I didn’t sound even remotely impartial, but I couldn’t help it. I needed Lois to be wrong. 

“Did he have any blood on his hands when you saw him?” Lois asked.

I thought back to Denton falling into the car. His hands were covered in blood, but he’d told me it was his own.

“Yes,” I admitted. “But that was because a wound on his stomach came open.” 

“How convenient. Come on Chloe, you know this doesn’t feel right. He sneaks out, gets back to the car covered in blood, and then insists on getting out of town for a few days. I’m just surprised he didn’t leave the country, but then I suppose he’s too cocky. Probably thinks we’ll never catch him.”

Denton had told me he’d killed in self-defense before. That’s what must have happened here. It had to be self-defense. Otherwise he’d be a murderer. And he’d have lied to me. Just like I had lied to him. 

Yolanda came back with the necklace, but much to my relief, she said the data had already been recorded over and was irretrievable. 

Lois warned me to be careful. She wanted to have agents start following Denton and me when we were out and about, but I managed to convince her that it was a bad idea. I told her Denton was the suspicious type and always kept an eye out for people following him.

I jumped on the bus back to work, but spent the entire day in a daze. I’d been so obsessed with stopping Denton killing Barton, that it never occurred to me that he might already be a murderer.

I could turn a blind eye to a lot of the shit Denton had done over the years--with his upbringing, it was a miracle he had turned out as well as he had--but I couldn’t ignore murder. That was too much.

If Denton had killed that man, I wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye, let alone do anything else with him. 

I’d give anything for it not to be true. 

I trusted Denton, and I thought he’d trusted me. But what could I really expect from all this. Our relationship was based entirely on lies; mainly mine. 

Now we were both as bad as each other. This could never work.

Chloe didn’t speak to me much at work. You didn’t need to be a genius to figure out why. Good thing really, because as we’d established, I was certainly no genius.

Chloe had the brains, and right now, her brains were telling her to have as little to do with me as possible. She should have known by now that I didn’t give up easily. I wanted her, and I was going to get her.  

I considered asking her to come by my apartment, but she would just think of an excuse to get out of it. She’d be washing her hair, or talking to her mom, or something equally trivial.  

Despite keeping her distance, she never failed to do what was required of her in the office. All I all I had to do was appeal to her work ethic.

I had a dinner meeting tonight with one of our major customers, but the guy was boring as hell and ate like a pig, which given how expensive the restaurant was, always ended up costing me a fortune.  

I closed the door to my office and gave him a call to postpone the dinner. He sounded genuinely disappointed, but I knew that was only because the guy liked a free meal. I left the diary entry in the calendar, and called Chloe into my office.

“How can I help?” she asked, without looking at me. She stared down at her pen and paper as if there were something interesting on it. No more jokes, no more cute smiles, no more insults. This was going to be hard work.

“I have a dinner tonight at the restaurant on the Italian place near the north end of Douglas park.”

“Yes, with Mr. Young.”  

“I’d like you to come along.”  

“Me? Why?”

“I got a call from him while you were at the dentist. He isn’t too happy with our prices and wants to talk numbers. He’s going to make me hammer out a deal over dinner, so I want you there to make a note of what’s agreed.”

“I’m sure he’ll follow up with an email the next day,” Chloe replied.  

I’d never had to work so hard to convince a woman to let me buy her dinner before.  

“I plan to get him drunk, so I wouldn’t count on it. He’s always a soft touch when he’s on the booze. Can you make it?”

“Sure,” Chloe said reluctantly. You’d have thought I’d just ask her to miss her own wedding. “Do you want me to go home and get changed first? That restaurant is rather formal I think.”

“It is, but don’t worry, you’re just perfect as you are. Your attire, I mean. It’s fine.”

Chloe nodded and left the room. I had my work cut out for me with this one. This must be how normal men felt when trying to impress someone they liked.  

Well, it was fun to have a challenge for once. And Chloe was worth it.

-*-

The restaurant manager knew me well at this point, so he gave me the large, circular table in the corner with plenty of privacy. It wasn’t particularly intimate, but I preferred it to the other small tables crammed together in the middle.  

My business often required sensitive conversations, and I wanted to talk to Chloe tonight without worrying about everyone else listening in as well.

“I feel a bit underdressed,” Chloe said, as she looked around at the other women here who were nearly all wearing elegant dresses and expensive necklaces.  

Chloe had on a knee length skirt and a tight fitting white blouse. No ugly necklace tonight though. Can’t say I missed it. I’d love to see her in a dress, but even like this she was still the best looking woman in the place by a mile.  

“You look great,” I insisted. “I’m hardly in my finest suit either.”

We sat down, but Chloe left a lot of space between us. If Anders were coming, he’d need all that space for his fat ass, but it was just the two of us now, so I had hoped to sit a little closer.

“When is Mr. Young arriving?” Chloe asked.  

“Ah, well, he’s not actually.”  

“He’s not?”

“No, I called and canceled this morning.”  

“Okay. You know, if you cancel a meeting, there’s not much point then showing up for it.”

There’s the cheeky Chloe I’d been missing these last few days. Perhaps tonight wouldn’t be too bad after all.

“I canceled the meeting so that we could spend some time together,” I explained.  

“Like a date?”

“Yes. Like a date.”

Chloe considered it for a moment, but then put down her menu and picked up her purse. “We should leave. We can’t do this. I can’t do this.”

“Because we work together? I’m not denying it could be awkward, but the way I look at it, we’ve already done the part we aren’t supposed to. This is simple in comparison.”

Chloe shook her head. She didn’t put down her purse, but she hadn’t stood up yet either. I still had a chance.

“It’s not because we work together. I’m just not interested in a relationship with you.”

So
that’s
what it felt like to hear those words. Like someone had taken a knife and very slowly slid it between my ribs and directly into my heart. After this dinner, I had some apologies to make. Many, many apologies.

“How will you know until you try?” I asked. I don’t know why I thought that would work. It never had when women said it to me.

“I… I’m just not that into you,” she said. “There’s no chemistry.”

This time her words didn’t hurt. They couldn’t. It was such an obvious lie. No chemistry. Bullshit. There was more chemistry than either of us could handle. Why was shy lying?  

“You don’t need to worry about what happened the other night,” I said. “What we do is no one else’s business.”

“It’s not that,” she replied. “I just don’t think we’re a good match. We’re very different people.”

“Is this about Roddy? I haven’t acted on that information yet. If it wasn’t for you, he would be dead already, but I’m doing what you said. I’m thinking about it.”