Shadowlight (7 page)

“Linda McMann called for you thirty seconds after Cal and I came in, and then when I said you weren’t in yet she told me,” Angela told her, so agitated that she tripped over her own feet and righted herself without pausing for breath. “She didn’t have a lot of the details, but the detective who talked to her said Ellen and this guy she was with are wanted for running this scam and swindling a big New York corporation. Linda says her boss wants a sit-down so he can do a personal thank-you and all that.” Out of breath, she gulped air. “I think she’s sending you flowers, too.”

Jessa saw Cal standing in the doorway of his office and watching them. He didn’t look unhappy or disturbed, but something was wrong.

“Ms. B?”

She focused on Angela. “Everyone is innocent until they’re proven guilty, so let’s not jump to conclusions. Finish up the file and make sure all the reports are complete. Then whatever happens with the charges against Ms. Farley, she won’t be able to sue North and Company for discriminatory hiring practices.” She turned to Cal. “Got a minute?”

He nodded and followed her upstairs. Jessa stopped along the way at their small employee lounge to start the coffee, only to find it already made.

“Angela needed something to do besides squeal and bounce off the walls,” Cal explained as he filled and handed her a cup. “I didn’t supervise, so it’s probably undrinkable.”

“It’s hot, which is all that matters at this hour.” Jessa led him into her office and closed the door before skimming through the messages left on her desk. “You have something on your mind?”

“Ellen Farley, what else?” Cal took his coffee to the window to watch the downtown traffic streaming below them. “She didn’t look like the con artist type.”

“Good ones never do.” She separated the callbacks she needed to make from the message slips. “The FBI will likely want copies of everything we have on her. Give them whatever they want, including the original forms she filled out if they ask.”

“You didn’t seem surprised to hear the news,” Cal said, his tone casual.

“I’ve dug up a lot of dirty little secrets since I began this company,” she reminded him. “I guess it’s harder to shock me.” She glanced over and found he was watching her intently. She set down the message slips. “Something else bothering you, Cal?”

“Ever since Linda called, I’ve been thinking about some things. For example”—he held up one finger—“you pegged Farley as a fake because she was wearing cheap shoes.” He raised another. “You saw through her phony identity, which was good enough to fool North and Company and the rest of us.”

“I notice little details, put things together.” She shrugged. “It’s mostly luck.”

“There’s one detail you forgot.” He lifted a third finger. “You know that the FBI will be calling on us.”

“Of course they will. They’ll be investigating everything she’s done recently—”

“Angela didn’t say anything about the FBI being involved,” he finished gently. “She said only that Farley had been arrested.”

Jessa waited a beat too long before she said, “The woman just moved from New York to Atlanta. It’s only logical to assume that she was wanted by the FBI for out-of-state crimes.”

“Nice comeback.” He nodded his approval. “Only I’m not buying it this time. You knew about this yesterday.” He gave her a measuring look. “You knew, and I’ll bet you’re the one who called and reported her to the feds.”

No one knew what Jessa could do, and as much as she liked people who worked for her, neither could they.

“Sit down, Cal.” She waited until he did. “I’m aware Angela and some of the younger staff believe that I’m some sort of psychic. It’s flattering, I suppose, but I’m not and this has to stop now. I’ve built Phoenix on solid, ethical investigative work. If people spread rumors that I can see the future or the past or whatever, it will get around, and soon every quack in Atlanta will flood through our doors.”

“Would it be so bad?” he asked. “To let people know just how good you are at spotting fakes?”

“If they think mystical mental powers are involved? Yes,” she said. “It would be
very
bad for business. That kind of thing chases away the legitimate clients. Once the quacks find out that I can’t actually tell them which stocks to buy or investments to make, they’ll go, too. Things like this—Farley getting arrested the day after I flag her—are merely coincidences.”

“Is that right.” He stroked his jaw with his thumb and forefinger. “I wonder how many of the people Phoenix has investigated have—by coincidence—been arrested a short time after for crimes they thought they’d gotten away with.”

He was too damn smart. Jessa had known that from the moment she’d met him. “I couldn’t say. But you and Angela and the rest of the staff work for me. I can’t have this kind of talk going around about me, Cal. Not even in fun.”

“Then you’d better make some changes from here on out,” he told her. “Delegate. Use me to initiate some of the searches. If you have to report something to the authorities, wait a week or two before you make the call.”

He didn’t believe her, and she was running out of lies and patience. “Maybe I should just fire you.”

“You could,” he agreed. “But I’m on your side, and I don’t have to know everything. You’re the best goddamn boss I’ve ever worked for, and that includes my father when he gave me a summer job teaching tennis to the nubile young rich things at the country club he managed.”

“Caleb.” She rested her cheek against her palm. “You’re not helping.”

“You know how we feel about you,” he continued. “You hired me after I’d been blackballed by every decent company in this town. You persuaded the girls in accounting to leave that bookie they worked for only a week before he got busted.”

She made a dismissive gesture. “A friend told me about them. I just gave them a chance to get legal jobs.”

“Karen told me you cornered her in a grocery store and offered her a job she had no training for, and then you gave her an advance on her first paycheck. She said it’s as if God knew she’d gone there to steal some food for her kids and sent you like a guardian angel to stop her. And then there’s poor Angie.” He leaned forward. “After her mom died, which roof was she planning to jump from downtown? Bank of America?”

She straightened. “Angela didn’t tell you that.”

“Someone made a joke about that gorgeous twenty-year-old supermodel who jumped in New York last year,” he said. “Angie blew a fuse. Later I asked her about it, and she said no one can understand how miserable and desperate that girl must have been. Ange made it pretty obvious that she does know.”

“I like to help people, especially when someone is in trouble,” she said in her firmest tone. “That doesn’t make me a psychic.”

“Then why hire me? No one believed that female sales director who accused me of groping her was actually the one harassing me.” He spread his hands. “No one but you.”

“You’re an attractive young man with good taste. She was a desperate older woman with bad teeth.” She smiled a little. “Workplace sexual predators don’t happen spontaneously. You had no history of harassing other women. She insisted on hiring only male assistants. I did the math, Cal.”

“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.”

“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?”

“Nah.” William tossed his bar rag over his shoulder. “She my bouncer.”

The pool player laughed. “This cute little thing?”

Rowan could tolerate being called a lot of things—even a whore, since she’d almost been one—but little?
Cute?
She might look as if she were still in high school, but she was damned if she’d be treated as if she were.

She slid off the barstool, startling the laughing man when he saw she stood a head taller than him. “You wanna play me a game?” She rolled up her sleeves, showing the twin black-and-red dragon tattoos scrolled around her forearms. “Fifty bucks.”

The man glanced back at his friends before he inspected her, from her short, shaggy mop of brown curls to her scuffed sneakers. “Sure, kid.” He eyed her small breasts and long torso, but it was her arm art that made him lick his lips. “I’ll even let you break.”

William glared at Rowan. “You ain’t playing him, Ro.”

“It’s all right, old man,” the player assured him. “I’ll take it easy on her.” He leered at Rowan. “Unless you like it rough, sweetie pie.”

She dug her wallet out of her back pocket, pulled out two twenties and a ten, and slapped them on the bar, watching her opponent until he did the same.

William put an empty shot glass over the bills. “I can’t watch this again.” He retreated to the far end of the bar.

Rowan chose a cue from the wall case, racked the billiard balls at the end of the table, and chalked the tip of her cue. Her opponent and his friends gathered around behind her, and when she bent over she heard a low murmur and snickering sounds.

“If you’re going to admire my fine ass, boys,” she said as she set up the shot, “first you’d best get out the way of my stick.”

The first ball she sank was an easy one; they actually cheered her on. The second she dropped with a bank shot quieted them down. They fell silent when the third and fourth balls knocked each other into opposing corner pockets. As she took each shot, the red eyes and scales of her dragon tats caught the light and gleamed beneath the fine sheen of sweat that formed on her skin. Beneath the ink covering her right arm, however, something else gave off a different glow, and when she saw the glimmer of blue through the black she jerked down her sleeve.

Five minutes later she had cleared the table and finished the job by tapping the eight ball so gently that it drifted into the side pocket.

“Good game.” Rowan walked past the gaping men, replaced the cue, and went to the bar to collect her winnings. Her opponent reached her in time to grab her wrist and hold the folded bills in her fist between them.

“You ain’t hustling me, jailbait,” he said in a low, ugly voice. “You put the money back down and we’ll do this two outta three. And I’ll break this time.”

Rowan stared down at his sweaty face. “The bet was one game, fifty bucks. I won. Let go.”

“Boy, you pushing it.” William called from the other end of the bar. “You turn her loose afore things get outta hand.”

The loser gave him an impatient look. “What are you gonna do, old man? Jump on over here and kick my ass?”

“No.” Rowan dropped the bills, which fluttered to the floor. When he looked down, she grabbed the back of his hair and rammed his face into the knee she lifted. “I am.”

He toppled over, clutching his bleeding nose and uttering muffled, hoarse sounds. Rowan faced his friends, who did the wise thing and backed away. She bent down to check his injury and the amount of blood he was leaking onto the floor before she picked up the money.

“I haven’t been jailbait for a good three years,” she told him before she straightened and addressed his friends. “His nose is gonna be sore, but it’s not broken. Wrap some ice in a washcloth and hold it on; that should keep the swelling down.”

Before she left the bar, she handed William a twenty. “See you when I get back. Give Sally a kiss for me.” She glanced back at the tourists. “Sorry about the blood.”

“Uh-huh.” He pocketed the tip. “Next time, you mopping it up.”