After a long, sleepless night, I get a text reply from Caroline’s burner.
555-451-1765: Coffee before work? Usual place.
555-788-2119: See you there.
We meet at a busy cafe down the street.
Even though we live just a block apart from each other, it’s been hard to coordinate time for more than passing drinks. She’s swamped in a case she can’t talk about. Something has changed since she told me to come for a visit—and I ended up staying, surprising us both.
“You paged me on the bat signal devices,” she teases when we get a table. “It must be urgent.”
I start with the easier to talk about question. “Do you know Detective Kendra Browning?”
Caroline gives me a sidelong glance. “Yeah. How do you know her?”
“She emailed me last night. My writer account. She has questions about what I’ve written recently.” I hesitate. “I know her from before, too.”
Caro nods. She’s the only person in the world who knows these two parts of my life. “She was married to Tag Browning.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think she knows Melinda Gray is…you?”
“No?” Then I take a shaky breath and dive into the deep end. “I saw Jason last night.”
Caroline’s eyes bug out. I know, any normal girlfriend would have led with that. “What?”
I don’t want to tell her about the moonlighting with the catering company. “At a party. I got out of there immediately, but he recognized me across the crowd.”
“Well, this town isn’t that big. Is it the end of the world?”
“No?” I sigh. “I’m not sure. I ran like hell. So at least on some level, I don’t want to deal with him.”
“Of course not. But if a story…was it a story that led you to cross paths?”
“Yeah.” And by giving up that catering cover story, now my way into the Canadian Embassy party is going to be that much harder.
“Then you’ll probably see him again. Next time, don’t run. Remember, you didn’t do anything wrong. I’m a lawyer. I’m advising you of your rights.”
I laugh. “My right to ghost a man?”
“It’s enshrined in our Constitution.”
“I’m not sure it is.”
“Which one of us went to law school?”
My retort dies on my tongue as her phone goes off.
She chews on her bottom lip. “Look, I don’t want to change the subject, but—” Her phone rings again, and she glances at the screen. “Damn it. I need to get to the office. But I wanted to ask you—”
We both laugh when her phone lights up a third time.
“Later,” I promise her. “Drinks this weekend.”
She nods, then hurriedly gathers her stuff back together. “Coffee to go, I guess. And Mel—for my two cents, I like and trust Kendra. If she wants to talk, reach out to her. Hear her out. You don’t need to say anything.”
“Good plan.”
I decide to take a chance on Detective Browning and send her an email before I finish my coffee. She replies within five minutes.
We agree to meet an hour later for my second coffee of the morning.
I’m waiting outside, in my finest sweatpants and a fitted tank top, when she arrives. She, on the other hand, is wearing a fitted black suit and looks like a supermodel. Not much has changed.
She slows down, gives me the once over, and I introduce myself—again. “I’m Melinda,” I say. “I’m Ellie, the new receptionist.”
She doesn’t recognize me. “Kendra Browning. Thank you for meeting with me.” “Detective Browning. I’m here to see Tag. We’re not married any longer, no matter what he says.” She smiled back then. Today, her face is pulled tight. Whatever it is she wants to talk to me about, it’s serious.
I take a deep breath. “Detective, I need to tell you that we’ve met before in another setting.”
“Oh?”
“Five years ago, I worked as the receptionist at The Horus Group.”
She frowns, thinking. Her keen gaze rakes my face. “Ellie?”
“One and the same. Well, not exactly.” I pause. “So I took a bit of a gamble meeting you. I want you to know that I’m trusting you with my identity. I don’t like to keep secrets from my sources.”
“I’m not a source.” She lifts her chin.
The whole exchange is cagey, but not unfriendly. We’re sizing each other up, and that’s okay. These are strange, unprecedented times. One can never be too careful.
“So if you are not a source, does that mean that you are hoping I can be a source for you?” I ask once we have lattes and have found a quiet bench.
She doesn’t answer me directly. “What do you know about Jeff Mayfair?”
I choose my words carefully. “His space program is getting a lot of attention.”
“I don’t investigate that.”
No, she doesn’t. “You want to know if he came up in my research for Private Jet?”
“Yes.”
“I couldn’t find anything conclusive that connected him to Lively. Only some Dark Web chatter that sounded a lot like unfounded rumors.”
“It’s getting harder to separate fact from fiction,” she says quietly.
“Have you heard of a single source of incriminating documents? A lot of them?”
A treasure trove of guilty consciences, one source called it. Hackers are circling like sharks looking for blood, but every lead has turned into a dead end.
There’s a long, pregnant pause before Kendra replies quietly. “I’ve heard talk.”
“Anything to suggest Mayfair is implicated in those documents?”
Another pause. “Off the record?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what I’ve heard.”
Interesting. I take a sip of coffee and mull that over. “If I find something more concrete, will you go on the record?”
“If you find something more concrete, I’ll find a way to press charges.” She stands up. “And then I’ll go on the record.”
“I’m not a personal investigator,” I remind her.
“I know that.” She searches my face. “But I think we have a common goal here. You trusted me, I’ll trust you not to expose me here. Or Caroline.”
I nod silently, and she strides away as elegantly as she arrived.
Then I take a deep breath, pull out my phone, and start to dig into everyone’s favorite space billionaire.
Fourteen hours and a quick eyebrow wax plus shopping trip later, I jump out of a hired town car in front of Jeff Mayfair’s D.C. residence. After last week’s rumors that he might be running for office, he’s hosting a fundraiser tonight for the former Secretary of State—who actually is running, against the incumbent President for the nomination of their own party.
I had been vaguely aware of Mayfair’s support for her before, but while I was at the salon this afternoon, I did a deep dive.
If he ends up being outed as another Lively, this support will absolutely backfire for her. Either he’s confident in his innocence, or his ego is unchecked. Both could be true at the same time.
As I suspect, there is security at the door, checking invitations. As I hoped, some people have paper cards, but most are showing the invites on their phones. Now I just need to figure out a name that might be on the list as a backup to plan A…
I fall into step behind a slow moving group. “It’s a shame Elaine couldn’t join us,” one says.
What are the chances Elaine can be a thirty-something in a dress with no back? I’m going to find out. Stopping to ostensibly dig my phone out of my purse, I let them get ahead, then climb the stairs to the front door.
I listen to the conversation as each guest checks in.
As the person in front of me gets the all clear to move ahead, I curse politely. “I’m so sorry,” I say to the security guard, showing him the black screen of my phone. “I drained the battery watching TikToks on the car ride over. Can you believe it?”
Laughing, I lean forward, trying to see if I can spot an Elaine on his list. No such luck.
“Name?”
I ignore the question. “Do you think I could just plug my phone in here? I have a charger with me.” I glance around. No plugs. Excellent. “I’ll just…”
I move to slide past him.
A solid arm stops me. “Ma’am, this is a private party—”
“I know! I told you, the invite is on my phone, which is dead, so I just need to plug it in.” Come on, buddy, look at my tits. But he doesn’t. Damn it. “Right. Okay, look up my name. It’s Elaine…”
“Elaine!” My heart sinks at the too-cheery familiar voice. Jason is never cheery. And it’s a sharp kind of cheery that I absolutely recognize as furious underneath.
Of all the billionaire fundraisers, of course he had to be at this one.
He steps into view and slides his arm around my shoulders, a heavy shackle locking me in place next to his body. “She’s with me.” He beams at me as I tense up. “Glad you could make it, Elaine.” He provides the security guard with a last name that apparently works, and with a dangerously reassuring squeeze on my shoulder, he ushers me inside.
He ducks his head so his mouth is right next to my ear. “Don’t make a scene.”
It’s a silky threat, a promise that this will get so much worse if I don’t play along. What’s the worst that could happen in a crowded party full of business and political elite?
I know the answer to that, but we’ll pretend I don’t. Despite the fact I ran last night, and I’ve shown up right in front of him once again—God damn it—there is a very slim possibility Jason still thinks I’m the secretary who just didn’t show up for work one day.
“Hey,” I say casually. “Thanks. My phone—”
“Is dead, I heard.” He steers me to the top of the staircase.
My heart pounds in my chest as we pause there, overlooking the party. There’s only one way to play this, and it’s light as air. “Small world, bumping into you twice in as many days.”
His fingers tighten again on my shoulder. If I don’t have bruises, I’ll be lucky. Once upon a time, I quite liked the bruises he left on my skin…
“We didn’t get a chance to talk yesterday,” Jason says, his voice heavy with irony.
But I don’t have any other choice. I keep brassing it out. “We don’t really have anything to talk about…”
“Of course we do. It’s been a long time, and you disappeared. I was worried about you.” Was. Past tense. No longer worried about me, now worried about what I’m doing here.
I don’t respond, because all the pieces have clicked together in my brain.
Mayfair.
Incriminating evidence.
An unexpected redirection of gossip in the press.
This party.
It all has Jason’s fingerprints on it, a classic Horus Group blueprint plan to avoid a PR disaster.
My stomach clenches.
Once upon a time, I promised myself he would never be the subject of a story. It wouldn’t be right. But his clients are fair game whether he likes it or not.
“What’s your plan here?” He gestures at the party. A couple moves around us and descends the staircase, but Jason keeps me rooted where I am. Removed from the hustle below.
“I don’t have a plan,” I whisper.
“You sure about that?” He growls and pivots us both, moving me away from the party whether I like it or not.
My pulse jacks up as he opens a door and shoves me into a quiet library. So much for the safety of a crowd.
We’re all alone now, for the first time in a long time, and this can’t be the man I once knew. Though, to be fair, I’m definitely not the woman he thought he once knew. Never was, which is…well, this is a mess of my own making.
As he crowds me up against the wall just inside the door, I catch the faintest whiff of his spicy sweet scent, so subtle that it’s only noticeable when mere inches apart. The familiarity still slams into me like a freight train. I shove the recognition away. It doesn’t matter.
Nor does it matter how good he looks, again, in a suit. I didn’t appreciate the eye-candy enough when I had a right to ogle him.
Even angry, he’s painfully attractive. The man eats danger for breakfast, and doesn’t seem to have a soul…and yet there’s a dark, captivating depth to him. I always did want more than was safe.
His face tightens as he looks me over. “I thought you might skip town after last night.”
I jerk my chin up. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m planning on it right after you let me go.”
“Why? What are you running from this time, Ellie?”
“You.”
“Am I that scary?” He looks like that pleases him, like he’s happy to have me cornered in the dark.
I glance past him, taking stock of the room in a split second before blinking back in his direction. “You know you are.”
He’s not, though. Not to me, not now. Never had been. I brace myself for a volley of questions I cannot answer. It’s too complicated, too messy, and this is not the time for it. There will never be a right time for that conversation.
“Who are you?”
“None of your business.”
“You aren’t an employee of the catering company.”
“Am I not?”
“Not under the social security number you conned your way into my firm with, no you’re not.”
“Maybe the paperwork is still on someone’s desk,” I say dryly, hanging on to faint hope that he falls for the obvious explanation.
“You haven’t done any work since you left The Horus Group.” Crap. Of course he checked up on me. But if that’s what he thinks he knows, he doesn’t have much.
“I’ve been unemployed.”
“For five years?” He laughs. “Give me some credit.”
“I’m talking to you, aren’t I? That’s your credit given.”
He doesn’t point out that I’m caged against the wall by a man who easily has sixty pounds on me. We both know I’m not having this conversation entirely willingly. “Why did you run last night?”
That trips me up, but only for a second. “Oh, come on. I saw an ex-lover who I didn’t want to see ever again? And yet, despite my best efforts to evade you, here you are. Imprisoning me.”
His jaw flexes hard. “Ellie, we need to talk.”
I roll my eyes. “We do not. I’m back in town and I would rather not see you again—”
“I know you’re a hacker.”
Well, that is an unexpected statement. Also, wrong. I laugh, giddy with relief, because he just showed his hand. “You know that, do you?”
“There’s no good reason for you to be play-acting as wait staff at that party. And then to show up here, dressed like that, eager to get inside these walls…” He moves in close again, this time so close I can feel the ghost impression of his mouth against mine. Five years should have been long enough to forget the scent of a man, the weight of his body, the taste of his lips…it should be, but it’s not. “I don’t know who you really are or what your game is, but I’m here to warn you off. You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”
“Sounds like a threat.”
“Not from me. Is that what you think? That I might hurt you?”
I shiver as he lifts his hand, and he freezes, his touch just barely grazing my cheek.
“You weren’t expecting that.” He grimaces as I shake my head. “Ah, Ellie.” He rubs his thumb against the corner of my mouth. “I never stopped caring. It’s been a long, lonely five years. We have a lot to catch up on.”
Well, fuck me. That’s going to make the disappearing act I do next super fucking awkward.
Can’t be helped, though.
Because I’m not his Ellie. I never was. She doesn’t exist, and if Jason starts digging into Melinda the journalist, that won’t end well for me, either. “Not here,” I whisper. “Tomorrow. Or later tonight. We can talk, I promise.”
He laughs and drops his hand, but just for a second. “You’ll run again.” He steps to the side, curving his fingers around the back of my upper arm like they’re a steel manacle. “You don’t like it here? I can leave. Let’s go back to my place.”
I dig in my heels, dropping my weight just enough to test the strength of his grip. “I don’t want to make a scene, but I will if I have to.”
He tightens his hold. “Ellie—”
“I’m not a hacker,” I whisper fiercely. “I’m a journalist.”