“The weather?” he repeated.
“Yes. Can we agree that there appears to be weather outside?”
“Yes, Sloane. We can agree that there is weather.”
His tone was so condescending I wanted to take the ketchup squeeze bottle from the stainless-steel carrier and empty it all over him.
“Your turn,” I said.
“Fine. I’m sure we can agree that you dress like a deranged teenager.”
“Better than a moody undertaker,” I shot back.
His lips quirked, and then his expression smoothed into its baseline of irritated boredom.
The bell on the diner door jingled, and Wylie Ogden lumbered in.
Conversations cut off as gazes swung away from us to Wylie.
Lucian didn’t move a muscle, but I still felt a chill descend on the table.
I hadn’t seen much of the former police chief since the incident when Tate Dilton, an ex-cop gone rogue, teamed up with Duncan Hugo, the mobster’s son, to shoot Nash Morgan. Wylie, whose long reign as chief of police was marked with good ol’ boy cronyism, had been friends with the disgraced officer but redeemed himself when he shot and killed Dilton. My opinion of Wylie had risen several points after that. I’d even almost smiled at him the one time I’d seen him in the grocery store.
The former police chief’s gaze landed on our table. He froze, except for the toothpick in the corner of his mouth, which moved up and down, then he made an abrupt about-face to find a seat at the opposite end of the diner counter.
Lucian’s cool gaze remained glued to the man.
I felt something. Something that seemed suspiciously like guilt, which made me defensive.
“You know, if you had told me everything, I wouldn’t have—”
“Don’t,” he interrupted as if he were telling a toddler to stop trying to put their finger in an electrical outlet.
“I’m just saying—”
“Leave it alone, Sloane.”
That was what we did. We left things alone. The only acknowledgment of our shared past was the bitter aftertaste that colored every interaction.
Neither one of us was going to forgive or forget. We would just continue pretending it didn’t still eat away at us.
“Here’s your breakfast,” Bean said loudly. He slid steaming plates onto the table with forced cheer and then oh so casually slid both butter knives into his apron pocket.
7
The Evil Corporate Empire
Lucian
Rollins Consulting offices occupied the top floor of a postmodern building on G Street in DC’s central business district. The proximity to the White House meant that the street in front of the building was regularly closed for the motorcades of visiting dignitaries.
The elevator doors opened to sleek marble, stately gold lettering, and a dragon.
Petula “Thou Shalt Not Pass” Reubena took her role as gatekeeper seriously. No one got past her unless expressly authorized. I’d once found her performing a bag search on my own mother when she’d come to meet me for a rare lunch.
“Good afternoon, sir,” Petula said, rising from her chair to stand at attention. She’d had a long, decorated army career and after one month of retirement had decided she wasn’t cut out for a life of leisure.
She dressed like someone’s wealthy grandmother, and while she did indeed have three grandchildren of her own, Petula spent her spare time rock climbing. This information was gleaned from the extensive background check all employees were subject to. She had never once commented on her personal life and had a low tolerance for anyone else who did.
“Good afternoon, Petula. Any emergencies while I was gone?”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” she said briskly.
I held the glass door for her, and Petula marched ahead of me, rattling off the day’s schedule.
“You’re expected to sit in on a conference call at 2:15. You have Trip Armistead at 3:00 and Sheila Chandra scheduled for 3:15. I assume this is either another diabolical power move, or you finally made your first mistake.”
Trip was a Georgia congressman and a client who was not going to enjoy our fifteen minutes together. “I never make mistakes,” I said, nodding to the associate in the gray suit whose name I couldn’t remember.
Petula gave me a bland look. “I’ll alert security. The cleaners won’t be pleased if they have to get bloodstains out of the rug again.”
“I’ll do my best to keep the bloodshed to a minimum,” I promised.
We headed into the busy field of cubicles where phones rang and employees diligently did whatever it was I paid them to do. The starting salary at Rollins Consulting was $80,000 a year. It wasn’t that I was generous. It was that I didn’t want to waste time constantly filling low-paying positions. The money also helped compensate for the fact that I was a demanding boss, an asshole as it was probably whispered around the watercooler. If I paid my team members less, I’d have to be nicer. And that didn’t interest me.