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“So can I go?” A second after I said it, I wondered if I even needed to ask permission. Maybe I could just get up, walk out, and start putting some distance between myself and this whole horrible situation. Could she actually stop me?
“One last thing.” She flipped through her papers, then slid something across the table to me, followed a second later by a pen. “I’m just going to need you to sign that.”
“What is it?” Russell asked as I picked up the paper. NONDISCLOSURE AGREEMENT was printed at the top. My name and address had already been filled in, and there was a little yellow sticky flag on the bottom of the page pointing to where I should sign.
“Standard NDA,” C.J. said, her eyes on me. “If Darcy really has no ulterior motive here, she won’t mind signing it.”
“She doesn’t need to do that,” Russell protested.
“I mean, you’re right,” C.J. said with a small shrug. “It’s totally her choice. Absolutely. But. If she decides not to sign, all the strings we pulled to get you two out of trouble at the Silver Standard would no longer apply to her.”
I looked up at C.J. sharply. “What?”
“We’re happy to help as long as we’re all on the same team. But if we’re not…” She spread her hands, like there was nothing she could do.
“Fine,” I muttered as I picked up the pen and uncapped it with shaky hands. Not telling anyone about this seemed like a great idea, frankly.
“You don’t have to do that, Darcy,” Russell said, looking from C.J. to the phone, like somehow Sarah could help him from her apartment in New York. “If Darcy says she’s not going to talk about it…”
“That’s sweet,” C.J. said. “But we don’t take people’s word for it in my line of work. And I mean, let’s be logical. You two have known each other for—what, four hours? Five?”
I looked across the table at Russell, then away again. Even though it was basically what I’d thought to myself on the helicopter, it somehow sounded worse coming from C.J. Like I’d been stupid to think anything different.
“Four hours isn’t enough to know a basset hound,” she said, “let alone a person. So I think it’s better for everyone to just get it into a legally binding document.”
I shook my head and scrawled my signature on the bottom of the paper. I pushed the paper and the pen back across the table to her and stood up. “I can go,” I said, not exactly phrasing it as a question.
C.J. nodded. “We’ll be in touch if anything comes up.” I was about to ask how, when I realized that she probably had all the information on me that she needed. After all, she’d known my address and my dad’s name and who I’d done ninth-grade community service with. My cell phone number was probably already in one of her files somewhere.
I unplugged my phone, then shoved the charger across the table at Russell. “Darcy—” he started, but I just shook my head.
I grabbed my bag and walked down the conference room hallway, the way we’d come in. I no longer wanted to stop and look at every single thing in the trophy cases and on the walls. I felt like I’d just seen behind the curtain—the machinations of how someone got to stay this successful, this long. They hired lawyers who were available late on Sunday nights to make problems go away. And who cares how it made people feel? This—this empire, everything hanging on the walls—was what needed to be protected. Not something as insignificant as someone’s feelings.
I reached the lobby area, and saw the elevator where we’d come in. I looked around, then spotted a door a little farther down. I hurried toward it, pushed through into the cool night air, and took a deep, shaky breath.
My feeling of relief to be out of there only lasted a second, though, as I looked around and realized I didn’t know what to do next. I was on a flagstone path, with gravel in between the paving stones. There were small, subtle lights lining the walkway. Toward the right, I could see the main house, the one I’d spotted from the top of the helipad.
I glanced to the left and took a few steps in that direction. There was what looked like a small parking lot and a long driveway that presumably led out to a road that would finally get me out of here. Could I just go? I didn’t have my stuff, but my phone was at least a little charged now. Maybe I could just leave my duffel behind. I wasn’t sure if there was anything in it that I desperately needed, or that couldn’t be replaced. If it meant I didn’t have to stay here any longer, I was willing to give it all up.
But I’d only gone a few steps before I remembered the tent—the one I’d borrowed from Didi and Katy. It was somewhere in the house, and I couldn’t go back to Raven Rock without it.
I turned and began to walk in the direction of the main house. I wasn’t thrilled about knocking on Wylie Sanders’s door and demanding my stuff back, but I was also just done. I’d been insulted and humiliated and pressured into signing a legally binding document. If there was one more embarrassing thing to get through tonight, so be it. Anything to get me out of here, so I never had to see—or think about—any of these people ever again.
“Darcy.”
I turned around and saw Russell standing behind me. “I’m so sorry about that.” He shook his head. “I didn’t know… I thought it was just going to be about the hotel. I never thought that she… she would…”
“Well, she did.” I hated that my voice was shaking again, that I felt like I was going to cry.
“But I don’t think that,” Russell said quickly. “And I’m sure my dad doesn’t, either. He just pays her to do stuff like that.”
“Oh, well in that case, it’s fine. That makes it all better.” I walked a few steps away, fighting back the tears that were threatening to spill over, then turned back to him. “So you live in Ojai, huh? Only child? Structural engineering?”
He stared down at his feet. “We used to live in Ojai. And my dad always wanted to be a structural engineer. He still talks about it sometimes. Says he’s still building bridges—just the musical kind.”
I shook my head, not about to be charmed by any of this. “You could have told me the truth, you know. Even if you didn’t want to tell me about your dad, you didn’t have to make up the rest of it. What was even the point of that? Just to mess with me?”
“I’m so sorry, Darcy—”
