Page 18 of Total Exposure

She stands up and looks down at me. I don’t want to look her in the face, but I force myself. Because she’s right. I’m the only one who can cure me now. I am my own last resort.

I swallow down the self-loathing all this self-assessment brings up, raise my chin, and square my shoulders. “OK. Let’s do it.”

Chapter Four - Ixion

I sit up straight and stare at the largest of the monitors I’ve got set up in the basement control room. Someone is at the front gate. A woman.

I push away from the panel of screens, jog to the door and yank it open, then sprint across the obscenely large basement to the stairs. I take them three at a time, see my shoes over near the kitchen, slide across the hardwood floors in my socks, grabbing them by the shoelaces as I slip past, and then duck around the corner of one wall, just as the front door opens and the alarm sings in protest.

The woman—tall, long, dark hair, wearing a long winter coat, and carrying a brown paper grocery bag—pushes all the right numbers of the alarm keypad to make it stop screaming, and walks towards the kitchen.

This is not Evangeline Rolaine. I know that for sure. Because this woman is pregnant. Very pregnant. “Excuse me,” I say, coming out from behind the wall. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

She doesn’t jump at my voice or anything stupid like that. Just smiles and sets her bag down on the dark soapstone countertop. “You must be Ixion,” she says.

“It’s just Ix,” I say, annoyed. “And you are?”

“Oh.” She laughs. “Sorry.” She extends her hand for a handshake. I take it as she says, “You don’t remember me, do you? I remember you though. Who could forget that name, right?” She’s still smiling. And I still have no fucking clue who she is. “Jordan reminded me, so I cheated, I guess. But our parents were friends. Marcella Walcott. Ring any bells?”

I squint my eyes at her. I have no clue.

“Well, it’s Baldwin now.” She wiggles the fingers on her left hand to flash her diamonds at me.

“Baldwin?” I say.

“Smith. You know him, right?”

“Not really,” I say. “But your name…” I think back.

“My father is the senator?” she adds, trying to be helpful.

I point at her. “Oh, fuck yeah. I know you.”

She makes a gesture with her hands that says, Of course you do. “Lucinda had an emergency, so she asked me to bring groceries over before her patient checks in tomorrow. So.” She turns back to her grocery bag. “That’s what I’m doing.”

“Got it,” I say.

“So you and Jordan have been friends all this time?” She looks over her shoulder as she loads vegetables into the fridge.

“Sorta,” I say, fascinated by her. And a little weirded out that two childhood friends have reappeared in my life lately. “We go way back, as I’m sure you’re aware. But we don’t talk much now.”

“Ah,” she says, closing the fridge with her hip and walking over to the subzero freezer on the opposite wall. “So he conned you into doing this job, huh?” She laughs a little. Like she knows him pretty well and this is just… one of those cute things we can count on Jordan doing.

“Are you and Jordan friends?” I ask.

“Sorta,” she says. And then she winks at me. “He went to the Club a lot when I first met the guys.”

Mmmmm-hmmm. Interesting. The Club denotes a place called Turning Point. Been around for decades. Jordan wanted to be part of that place in the worst way back in college. But they have an age requirement, and then he went to UCLA for law school, and I was there, and we did… with… yeah. Fuckin’ club. Sex is what they do there. “So that place is still rollin’, huh?”

“No,” she says. “Bric sold it about a year ago and I understand that someone is turning it into a hotel.”

“Ah.” I point to her belly. “And that’s Baldwin’s baby?”

“Of course,” she says.

“Uh-huh,” I say. I have a lot of details I could fill in just based on what she’s told me already. None of them come from her and all of them come from that statement about meeting Jordan at Turning Point Club.

I wonder if she fucked him?