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The devil is certainly in my details there.
***
The next morning, there are three files on my desk: the background check on Leontine, which is as thick as my wrist and must have taken Tuija all night; a preliminary report on Montgomery, from Harvey Bell; and a biography proposal from the agents.
I put Leontine's file aside initially because it requires my undivided attention. I want an hour with hot black coffee and zero interruptions, and I want to soak in her, absorb everything. The Bell report is nothing I don't know already—given that it's been less than a day since I commissioned him to dig up the dirt on my competitor—so it goes straight through the shredder.
God, I love the shredder. It's my happy place.
For a moment, I'm about to put the proposal straight through the shredder too, but then curiosity gets the better of me and I peel it open to scan the document. I want to see what their pitch is, what their angle would be. These unauthorized pieces can go one of two ways: either they lick you all the way from your balls to your butt crack, or rip you to shreds.
I should have guessed that it would be the latter.
Whoever these assholes are, they're more interested in my childhood than my career. There are chapters planned on my mother. How the hell did they get a hold of this? The more I read, the louder my pulse in my ears; they've even got a section on my father's death. The investigation, the theories surrounding it. This is bullshit.
Being the creature I am, I smell blackmail a mile off. It's distinctive: sweat, old flesh. Blood rusted to iron salt. They're showing me the dirt in the hope that I'll co-operate. That I'll trust them. And they know what I do, that to see the dirt on a pristine persona, you have to look close. Get right down on the nano level where the real beasts crawl.
They have no idea who they're dealing with. If they think they can manipulate me, they're going to be unpleasantly surprised.
I shove the file through the shredder, my eyes watering as it demolishes the white paper and brown card. Normally, the buzz of metallic teeth is comforting, but not today. Carson explained that we can't stop them from publishing information already in public domain, but if they as much as hint at anything else, I'll string them up by their dicks.
I'm about to buzz through to Tuija when there's a strong, familiar rap at my door.
"Hitler!" she shouts from behind the wood and glass. "We've got a live one!"
"Come in." I'm still pissed, and it sharpens the edges of my words.
Tuija hurries up to my desk, a can of Red Bull clutched in one hand.
"You're wearing too much perfume," I tell her, without looking up.
She brings her wrist to her nose and sniffs, dejected. "Huh. Well—"
"What were you saying? A live what?"
"Oh." All at once, her entire face lights up: eyes like bonfires, cheeks like apples. Mouth stretched like a Jack 'o' Lantern. "A bomb, Aeron. Somebody dumped a fucking bomb in a bag at JFK. Kasha's en-route as we speak."
"But it hasn't gone off?" I ask.
"Not yet. Not—"
Somewhere down the hall, there's a shriek, followed by an assault of loud curses about planes.
Tuija winces. "Guess it just went off."
"Fuck's sake." I haul myself up from behind the desk and grab the suit jacket from my chair. "Okay. Control room. And get all the managing editors on a conference call in thirty." I pause, swallowing dry air. "Coffee on the way."
"Yes, sir." She mock salutes.
Another shriek sounds in the hall: Fliss, my secretary, screeching something about her mother being on a flight. Her mother is a wasp-faced lizard—she usually comes in for lunch once a month. Not any more, it seems.
"Picture this," I tell Tuija as we head into the corridor, my voice raised over the fuss from the control room and Fliss's incessant wail. "All those headless chickens at the airport, running around with their SilentWitn3ss on, streaming directly to my site. Nobody else does that, firecracker. Live crews have nothing on that kind of raw shit."
"Stop it," she says dryly. "You're turning me on."
My fists clench as we pass Fliss's desk. She's spotted me, has quietened; is trying to blot her red eyes and running makeup with a tissue.
"Buck up, sweetie." I reach over to the tissue box, grab a handful and shove them at her face. She recoils into the chair, spluttering. "It's going to be a long fucking day."
***
It's past midnight when I finally get in; not because they really needed me at the office, but because I like to make them think they do. The bomb, it turns out, went off in a car park east of the airport lobby; eight people were killed, a further forty seven injured, and most of the cars were DOA. No suspects as of yet, but my night shift team will no doubt have something in the morning. It'll be an individual; the MO is all wrong for extremists. A terrorist sect would have claimed it by now.
In the lobby of my apartment building, the concierge doesn't speak to me as I drift past. Instead, he offers a nod of respect, which I return with the best grateful half-smile I can muster. I've spent way too long today trying to feign horror when all I felt was irritation. Empathy. Jeez. Too much and you're just an annoyance; too little and you're suddenly dangerous.
Well.
The doors of my private elevator peel back to reveal a dark, silent apartment. Ash will have been asleep for hours by now. Ethan has gone to bed in the guest room. He left me dinner in the microwave, which I promptly scrape into the bin before fixing myself a sandwich.
A file waits in my bag. Leontine's background check. I've been waiting all day to get her alone. When I had to sit through another fucking Skype call from Phil at the White House with all his fake agenda bullshit, I ran my fingers over the highlighter tabs Tuija had left peeking from the top of the folder. I plucked at them softly. Thought of plucking other things. The paper tore a little; I smiled and soothed it with the pad of my thumb.
I have time for her now. And even as I sit in the shadows of my sparse living area, the unopened file a pleasing weight on my half-stiff cock, I can feel the sparks. The adrenaline whispering. This is how obsession creeps in—past blunt synapses, through dark doors.
It's all here. Black type on white pages. Everything from her credit card bills to a full report on her social media accounts. Leontine Melissa Reeves: twenty-four years old. American mother, British father. Lives alone in an apartment on the East Side. Grew up in Dorset, England, and came to New York at seventeen when her parents divorced. Took a gap year to travel Asia. Entered Harvard School of Engineering at nineteen.
A lot of it is dull and repetitive. Nobody could be turned on reading a grocery receipt, or a list of previous addresses, or the endless tech discussion the girl likes to have in her Facebook comments. But there are other things. Personal things. Things a man like me shouldn't see...which Tuija, considerate as she is, has highlighted and annotated.
Photographs of Leontine as a teenager, wearing a navy school blazer and short pleated skirt. Fresh face, pouty smile, a hand braced on her cocked hip to a backdrop of jagged mountains. I think she might actually be legal here, writes Tuija. A man can dream.
Paperwork for a hand gun permit. Turns out she's hiding some balls in those tight little skirts. Hahaaaa
Login details for her email accounts. All clean and work-related. Srsly, either they only make prissy choir girls in England, or she's in the habit of deleting shit
Medical files. Not much here b/c most of it hasn't arrived from UK yet. But I got you the good stuff anyways ;)
Notes from the gynaecologist's office; God, I love those. Leontine has only been twice, but these are words written by a doctor whose fingers have been inside her. Whose hands have examined her breasts with enough pressure to feel right into the tissue. I wonder if she liked that, my little lion? Whether she lay still and wet and open, or shifted about, uncomfortable and tight.
It's near enough pitch black in here. I'm reading in a thin gauze of street light, squinting to make out the dirty words. But the photographs speak for themselves, and my cock understands this language. Before popping the button on my pants, I glance about, just make sure I'm alone. Silence. And so out comes my cock, solid and hot in my palm. The head is slick and sticky. It bobs at my touch.
The photo I like best is from a year ago. Looks like it was taken outside after a run. Her hair is a touch shorter, falling around her shoulders in streaks of honey blond, and she's smiling at the camera with flushed cheeks and lips. White teeth. Not a stitch of makeup, and more than a lick of sweat. It shimmers in her cupid's bow and along the peachy dips of her collarbone. My tongue twitches as if she's close enough to taste—close enough for me to peel away her tight black vest and yoga pants. She's marked with sweat there as well, damp fabric clinging to her round, soft breasts and flaring out at her hips. I like that she's proud of her body. I like that she knows how to show it off. And I love that when she stood beside me in that elevator, it all fell away to reveal a nervous girl who smelled like the best fuck I haven't had yet.
