AT A FEW MINUTES AFTER two o’clock, Peter Ash picked up the phone at his desk. His secretary had told him that the caller had given her name and said it was a personal matter, that she and Peter were friends. But he was deep in the transcript of a deposition he’d conducted in the middle of the previous week, and he couldn’t place the name Kate Jameson, although it sounded vaguely familiar.
“I’m sorry,” he replied after the woman had come on and said hello. “Theresa said it was a personal matter, but I’m afraid I’m blanking on where we know each other.”
“Last weekend, at the Cookes’? Geoff and Bina’s. Me and my husband Ron?”
“Oh yes, of course, I remember now. How can I help you?”
“Well, this is a little awkward, I admit, since we barely know each other. But I’d like to talk to you privately, about a legal matter, if you could spare me an hour or two.”
Peter hesitated. “Not to jump to conclusions,” he said, “but I don’t do much private legal stuff. My work is pretty much all corporate. I don’t do divorce, although if that’s the issue, I could suggest you get in touch with one of my partners.”
“It’s not divorce,” she said. “Ron and I are fine. I don’t mean to be mysterious, but I don’t want to go to Ron or even Geoff or anyone else in their firm. It’s more in the line of a secret that I’d like some advice with from a legal perspective.”
Another silence. Then, finally. “Mrs. Jameson . . .”
“Kate, please.”
“Kate, then. I must say that this is one of the rather more intriguing phone calls I’ve ever received in all my years in the law. How much of my time are you talking about?”
“What I said earlier. Not much more than a couple of hours, I shouldn’t think.”
“More mysterious all the time.”
“I don’t mean to sound like that. I’m just trying to keep something more or less private, and all the other lawyers I know, and I know lots of them . . . well, they all know each other, too. So I thought I’d reach out to you as someone a bit out of our personal loop, that is, if you can spare the time. If it’s not too much of an imposition.”
“There’s no question of that. I’m flattered you thought to call me. I’m sure I could block out an hour or two. When would you like to come in?”
“That’s the other thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I’d just as soon avoid coming down to your office, if you wouldn’t mind. You’re at Embarcadero Two, aren’t you?”
“Home, sweet home,” he said.
“Well, if I came by there, there’s a fairly decent chance I’ll run across somebody I know, and I’d rather avoid that.”
“This is starting to sound really cloak and dagger. So where would you like to meet?”
She drew a breath. “I’ve got a room at the Meridien.” On Battery Street, the hotel was less than two hundred yards from Peter’s office. “Eight twelve.”
“You mean right now? This minute?”
“I hope so. I thought I’d take the chance. It’s really quite important. If you could please just come by.” After about ten seconds of silence, she spoke up. “Peter?”
“You’re scaring me a little, I must say.”
“There’s no danger. I promise you. I just don’t want to be seen.”
“Okay. Give me a few minutes to wind things up here. Room eight twelve, you say?”
“Yes.”
“All right.” A last hesitation. “I’ll see you in ten.”
Whatever this was all about, it was fascinating, Peter was thinking. And even if it were a total waste of his time, it had to be better than the deposition work in which he’d been immersed. Better than all the other work he did, too. Something out of the boring ordinary at last, saving the remnants of his day. If for no other reason than that, he thought, it was worth walking over and finding out what was going on.
Closing the folder on his transcript, he pushed himself back from his desk and stood up.
Kate Jameson had promised him that there was no danger associated with her unorthodox request, but he spent a minute or two considering whether in fact there might be the possibility that he was walking into some kind of trap, some desperate situation.
Try as he might, he simply couldn’t imagine it.
He had no trouble remembering Kate Jameson from Saturday night, but his memory of her, his sense of her, did not include anything sinister. Although it did include beauty. He remembered that well enough. She was a fucking doll, the absolute complete package. But as a person, she came across as what she was—a happily married, well-adjusted mother of two.
She was, he told himself, not a CIA spy or an FBI agent. And he had no secrets and no hidden agenda with a foreign power or terrorist organization. Kate Jameson was not going to have henchmen in the Meridien with her who would drug him or hold him for ransom.
But still, even though he was smiling at these absurd scenarios, he stopped at his office door, telling himself that no matter how intriguing this whole situation was, if he were smart he would stop right here and go back to his regular work.
What was he thinking? He couldn’t just get up and leave the office for a hotel assignation in the middle of the day with a woman he barely knew.
He should call her back, and if she wanted, he would tell her that there was still time for her to walk over to his office and have a regular business interview with him, or she could find herself another lawyer. Of which, she admitted, she knew several.
He asked himself again: was he only going over to Le Méridien because she was so attractive? No, he told himself. That had nothing to do with it. She was a damsel in some kind of distress and for whatever reason, she’d come to him to help her out. She was probably—in fact, obviously—a bit frightened herself.
Of something.
He’d just swing over to the Meridien, hold her hand, give her whatever legal advice she needed, send her on her way.
There was certainly nothing for him to worry about.
Theresa looked up from her desk expectantly as he came out of his office.
“I’m just going out to get some sunshine and clear my head,” he told her. “I ought to be back in an hour, maybe two.”
His secretary’s face clouded with concern. “You’re going out? Are you all right? You never go out.”
“Today I am,” he said. “I’ve got the deposition transcript blues. If I don’t take a break, I’m going to kill somebody and that would be bad luck, wouldn’t it?”
Only on the way down in the elevator did he realize that he’d lied to Theresa.
Why had he done that?
By the time he got to the door to room 812, his heart was a jackhammer in his ears. He felt so dizzy with the rush of adrenaline that he found he needed to hold himself up, his hand against the door jamb.
What he was doing was not just unusual, he was thinking. It was—somehow—wrong. He shouldn’t be here. It made no sense.
Taking a deep breath, for another moment he considered simply walking away, but then, almost as though he were watching himself from some distance above, he saw his hand come off the jamb and rap twice sharply on the door.
He heard her steps approaching, then her voice through the door. “Peter?”
“Yes. It’s me.”
She pulled the door open, inward toward her. “Thank you so much for coming over. Sorry for all the secrecy.” Standing in the short, dark hall that led back into the suite and backlit by the room’s windows along the far wall behind her, she wasn’t much more than a very shapely silhouette. Her face was mostly hidden in shadow, even as she backed away, holding the door. “Come in. Please.”
He closed the door behind him.
The unlit hallway passed a similarly dark bathroom to his right as he followed her further into the suite, past the king bed and the large bureau that held the television set that separated the bedroom from the seating area—on the right, a small desk with two chrome and leather chairs, and on the left, a glass table with two more chairs.
On the table sat an unopened bottle with a corkscrew and a couple of wineglasses. At a glance Peter recognized it as a Napa Valley Silver Oak, perhaps half a step below cult status but by any standard a superb bottle of wine, although what it was doing here at this meeting was another mystery.
Though perhaps it had become less so.
Peter couldn’t seem to stop himself, putting one foot down after the other, following a couple of steps behind her.
With the floor-to-ceiling shades open, the bright sunshine out the windows lit up this back half of the suite. He could not fail to notice how sensational she looked from behind. At the Cookes’ on Saturday, she’d worn jeans and flat shoes and a bulky, nearly formless sweater, looking good because of her natural attractiveness, but not so good that she’d stop traffic. Today, her two-inch heels accented a pair of very shapely legs that disappeared into a black leather miniskirt, above which she had tucked an emerald-green silk blouse.
But the view from behind her as she walked through the suite, seductive as it was, did not adequately prepare him for when she turned around just beyond the table. She wore no bra and the outline of her breasts pushed at the fabric of the blouse. She’d undone the top two buttons.
Mesmerized by the look of her, he couldn’t move.
She now had turned all the way to face him, and she broke a smile, her green eyes sparkling and playful. “Before we get down to what I’ve asked you here for, I thought we might start with some wine, if you’d do the honors. Is the oh seven a good year?”
“Silver Oak,” he said. “They’re all good years.”
“That’s what I thought, too.” She held the corkscrew out for him. “Do you mind?”
And suddenly he was holding the corkscrew, reaching for the bottle. “I’m afraid this is a little out of the ordinary for me. I don’t usually drink in the afternoon. It puts me to sleep.”
“I’ll cut you off at a half glass.” Her smile urged him on. “Though I might have a whole one. Or even two. Really.” She touched his hand. “It’s all right. Promise.”
For Peter, it did not feel all right. It felt at this one moment like the end of something, of the constant awareness of the existence of Jill and the twin boys in his life—the life he’d chosen and committed to—while at the same moment he was plunging the sharp end of the corkscrew into the cork and beginning to twist it down.
“Oh, while you’re getting that,” she said, brushing by him—touching his shoulder, the lightest of contacts—heading back past the king bed, down the short hallway to the door. “Excuse me one minute.”
He heard the room’s door open, then close. Then she was coming back toward him.
He popped the cork.
“That sounded perfect,” she said.
He held the cork to his nose. “Smells right,” he said. He held it out to her.
She took it and gave it a sniff. “That’ll do,” she said.
“Where did you just go?” he asked.
“I put the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door,” she said. “You can take off your jacket, you know. Get comfortable. Here.”
She helped him out of it, draped it over the chair in front of him, then turned and put her right palm flat against his chest.
“Your heart is going crazy,” she said.
Then, “Mine is, too.” She lifted his hand up and held it against her breast. “See?”