“Just taking off now,” Jack answered. “I didn’t realize you were here, too.”
“Yeah, I was cleaning up the mountain of shit on my desk.” Dean sighed. “Gillian keeps ragging me about how messy I am, and don’t you ever fucking repeat this—but she’s right. My phone got buried under the pile and it took me ten minutes to find it.” A curse slipped out when the phone beeped. “God. I should’ve left it buried. This creep is driving me crazy. You won’t believe the texts he’s been sending.”
Jack cocked a brow. “You got yourself a stalker, bro? And it’s a he?”
Dean made a disparaging noise. “It’s a client. One we will never, ever work with again, I might add. He’s turned out to be a slimy, demanding loser who needs to be removed from the dating pool because no woman should ever have to touch him. Check this out—” Dean recited from his phone. “‘This date better get me laid, dude. Tired of yanking it every night.’”
Jack blanched. “Gross.”
“I know, right? And listen to this one—‘Glad you set us up at a place with a fancy dress code. Hope whatever she’s wearing is tight and low-cut.’”
“Grosser.”
“I feel like I arranged a date for one of those fuckers on To Catch A Predator. But this last message— ‘I’ll text you tomorrow with all the dirty deets. Definitely gonna get some tonight.’” Dean gagged. “Um, how about you don’t text me tomorrow, asshole? I’d rather wax off all my body hair than hear about this creep’s sex life.”
Jack shook his head in amazement, unable to believe guys that sleazy actually existed. He and the boys were known to joke around about sex, even have serious convos about it every now and then, but to brag about bagging a chick to a total stranger? That was just wrong.
“Who is this guy?” he asked Dean. “Is he one of the clients you and I interviewed last week?”
His partner shook his head. “Gillian and I met with him. Name’s Billy something-or-other. Billy Taylor. Yeah, Taylor.”
Jack froze. “Billy?”
“Yup.” Dean held up the stack of papers in his free hand. “His file is in here somewhere.”
An uneasy feeling trickled down Jack’s spine as he grabbed the files from Dean’s outstretched hand. He was probably being paranoid. There were tons of Billys and Bills and Williams in the world, thousands in San Francisco alone. No way was this the same Billy who Pepper had been talking about at the barbecue.
With an impressive feat of speed, Jack shuffled through the files. Names, dates, and data flashed in front of his eyes until he finally found what he was looking for.
There. Billy Taylor.
Place of employment?
SFPD
“Shit,” Jack mumbled, before his gaze snagged on something even more disturbing. The name of Billy Taylor’s date—Penny Wilson.
Jack stared at those eleven letters for what felt like an eternity.
And then he exploded.
“What the fuck were you thinking?”
The tornado of fury inside him homed in on Dean, who blinked in confusion. “What?”
“You set up a date for Parker’s sister?” Jack shouted. “With this asshole? Jesus Christ, Dean! Parker’s going to kill you for letting this creep get anywhere near Pepper—”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Dean cut in, genuinely flabbergasted. He leaned in and tapped the top of the page. “Her name is Penny. P-E-N-N-Y. Penny.”
“That’s Pepper’s goddamn alias! I can’t believe—”
“Why the fuckity-fuck does Parker’s sister have an alias?!”
“—you didn’t vet his date before you took the job!”
“It wasn’t necessary!” Dean yelled back. “Because he obviously doesn’t want to get to know her! He just wanted us to set up a romantic date so he could bang her—”
“Gonna be hard for him to do that after I murder him!”
“Who has an alias, for fuck’s sake? How was I supposed to know it was Pepper?”
The two of them abruptly stopped shouting, breathing hard as they stared each other down. Dean still looked confused, so much so that Jack’s anger dissolved. He couldn’t blame his friend for not knowing about Pepper’s ridiculous habit of using another name when she met new people. Jack had grown up with the Wilsons, but Dean had only joined the fold a few years ago. Pepper had gone off to school by then, which meant that Dean had never even met her.
“Shit. I’m sorry for flipping out on you,” Jack said, guilt and disgust at having lost his temper warring with fury that Billy was out with Pepper. “You couldn’t have known.”
Dean shook his head in bewilderment. “I had no clue he was trying to get with Parker’s sister. I mean—she’s a redhead, isn’t she? The file said Penny had black hair, and…oh, fuck. You’re right. Parker is gonna kill me.”
Another wave of blind rage obstructed Jack’s vision, except this time it had nothing to do with Dean’s inadvertent screw-up and everything to do with Pepper’s sleazy date.
Definitely gonna get some tonight.