Silence.
“You want me to lay out your business for you?” He went on to describe the accounts, giving amounts, transaction histories. It was such a sweet, tight insider scam. The father, Don, started the scheme in the eighties, building the business with his secrecy and his cache and his aura of invincibility, while Charles, the eldest son, the new man with new ideas, streamlined and improved the technology and accounting. “I found the hidden accounts no one but you used for transactions. The accounting files, the real ones, not the bullshit mock-ups for investors and the SEC. You were smart. You skipped the little investors and went right for the whales. Foundations. Rich people who are unlikely to need the money to buy a house, unless they decide to buy a Van Gogh or something. I brought Daria Russell to this party. I can bring you Hollywood money.”
This time he let the silence stretch. His heart was racing, one beat indistinguishable from the other. He thanked God he’d never been a sweater. Charles was sweating, though. One single bead trickled down his temple.
“Look, I’m not going to screw you. I want in. I work for what I make. I can get more like her. I can help you hide it. You need fresh money, new blood, or this all falls apart.”
At that Charles’s eyes brightened just a little, and Ryan knew he had him, but Daria appeared in the doorway. Charles gave not a hint of acknowledgement, and Ryan thought of the recording device in his pocket, whirring away to capture nothing but his own windbag self.
“Enjoy yourselves,” Charles said to Daria when he reached the door, then he disappeared back down the hall.
“Are you all right?” Daria asked.
Ryan thumbed off the recorder. “Why? Don’t I look all right?”
“I’ve seen deer in headlights who look less terrified than you.”
“It’s that bad?”
“No. On the surface, you look like everyone else at this party. I’m pretty good at looking underneath. Actors lie for a living. To stay sane you either believe everyone’s fiction, or you learn to pick out the liars at twenty paces.”
“And you pick out the liars.”
She crossed the room, body swaying in the column of cream fabric, and stopped in front of him. He could smell good whiskey on her breath, see the sheen of expensive spa care on her shoulders and the upper curves of her breasts. “Truth is the only thing that matters. Telling it, hearing it, living it.”
Unbidden, an image of Simone in her jeans and a shirt open to reveal her throat rose in his mind. “Got any tricks for living the truth?” he asked.
Her lips curved, then she tipped her mouth up to his and kissed him.
The woman he wanted to try that particular trick with wasn’t the woman standing in front of him. “Let’s don’t and tell everyone we did,” he said.
She turned and locked the door. “Let’s do and tell everyone we didn’t,” she said. Her palm glided along the fabric of his cummerbund, unconsciously mirroring Simone’s challenge. Every straight man at the party would give his bonus check to have Daria’s hand on his hip, and all Ryan could think of was how Simone had touched him the same way, purposefully, with intent, knowing exactly what she was doing, how it would affect him.
You can’t have her. Focus on the woman at hand, on the task at hand. His breath shallowed as Daria kept her eyes on his face and worked her hand into the layers of clothing at his waist. He cupped her nape with his palm, and massaged until her shoulders slumped with pleasure. “Let’s do whatever we goddamn feel like and tell everyone to fuck off.”
***
Even when he got called out of bed to meet a skittish whistleblower, Agent Logan looked like nothing would faze him. Dressed in jeans, sneakers, and an NYU T-shirt, he leaned against an SUV in the parking garage off Seventh Avenue and held a cup of street vendor coffee. Ryan had sent the audio file from the meeting to Logan’s cell and gotten a call five minutes later.
“It’s four in the morning,” Ryan said. He was so tired his eyes burned, and his skin had a grimy, sleep-deprived feel. “You have some kind of special alert for my emails?”
“Yes,” Logan said, completely serious. He sipped from the coffee and studied Ryan, his blue eyes calm but obviously searching for signs of drugs or liquor.
“I’m sober,” Ryan said resignedly. “I wish I wasn’t, but I am. Do you have any idea how difficult it is not to get drunk in front of people who expect me to get drunk?”