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L?ATER, WITH THE KIDS DOWNfor brief naps, Gibson grabbed a quick shower, unlocked the door of her home office, and hurried inside. She had a cup of peppermint tea in one hand and an oatmeal almond cookie in the other. Her dirty clothes had been replaced with green gym shorts and a T-shirt and ankle socks. Until she did the next load of laundry this was mostly it for clean garments. The slinky dress would definitely have to wait since she didn’t have one, or the time to “paint the town red,” whatever the hell that meant. And with the tea and cookie, she was holding the mommy version of champagne and caviar.
At least this mommy.
The baby monitor was on the shelf. All she could hear right now was gentle breathing, and a series of small snores that she knew came from Tommy. She let out her own long breath and wondered if their usual one-hour nap timeline would hold today. The one predictable component of motherhood, she had found, was that no two days were ever alike.
Then she glanced at herself in the drab reflection of her twin computer screens.
Gibson was five seven if she stood absolutely erect, which she had never once managed to do since having kids. She figured her right hip was stuck out about four inches further than her left, and she had no idea if it would ever return to its original alignment. She didn’t want to even think what her spine looked like. But if it reflected her chronic back pain, it was a real anatomical horror show. She still carried stubborn pounds of baby weight in her hips, buttocks, and belly, and they might be permanent for all she knew. Her dark hair was cut short because who had time to deal with long tresses? Her face was puffy, her skin blotchy—her OB-GYN had blamed postpartum hormone releases—which was something they hadn’t covered all that thoroughly in the pregnancy books she’d read. The slender, dynamic athlete she had once been in high school and college was no longer readily apparent.
As a tough, feisty, ball-hawking, elbows-throwing point guard with a wickedly accurate midrange jump shot, impressive passing skills, and great court awareness, she could run all day. Later, first as a crime scene tech and then a street cop and after that a detective, she had won the 10K competition for the entire department six years in a row, besting both the men and the women. The guys had been initially faster than she, but their endurance had petered out around the 5K mark. She had tried not to smile too broadly as she blew past them at that point.
Now the stairs were a bitch.
She’d gone to Temple University in Philly and been coached by the legendary Dawn Staley. Gibson had also been a theater major, and had been cast as the lead in a number of student productions at Temple. People thought she might make it to Broadway one day.
After college she had actually contemplated dabbling in a career on the stage, but quickly found out that half-ass wouldn’t cut it, because she would be competing against legions of immensely talented and driven people who were dead certain that Broadway was their destiny.
Gibson had been a computer nerd growing up as well as a serious gamer. She had taken college courses to enhance those skills because with that she knew she would almost always be employable. She had once also had visions of trying out for pro basketball, but quickly realized that she had neither the necessary athleticism nor the true game to play in the WNBA.
She had instead opted to follow in her father’s footsteps and joined the police force. He had been thrilled, her mother not so much. She had worked her way up to being a criminal investigator, and then found who she thought had been the love of her life.
His name was Peter Gibson, and he was tall and handsome and gregarious and funny. And, she had come to find out too late, he was also the world’s biggest prick. He’d told her that he wanted a large family, but as soon as one baby was out of the oven he had been a changed man, chafing at not being able to go out with his friends, or having his weekends “ruined” by the daddy do list. When she was pregnant with Darby, he had cleaned out their bank accounts and run out on her with his secretary, leaving Gibson with an infant and another baby on the way, and a mortgage and bills that could not be paid on her salary alone.
She had searched for him, but Gibson had vanished so thoroughly that she wondered if he had had some professional help in doing so. She had lost the house and had to leave her job with the force, and then she moved to Williamsburg, Virginia, where her retired parents lived. She had lucked out by joining ProEye, a global private investigation agency that did most of its sleuthing online. It paid well and allowed her to use her computer skills, and work from home pretty much full-time. And she had her mom and dad as a support group and free childcare.
Gibson was getting back on her feet, but the single-parent thing was a challenge, even with her mother and father nearby. They both had some health issues and were more apt to be twiddling their thumbs in a doctor’s waiting room than be available to assist her. But Gibson was making it work because she didn’t have a choice, and she loved her kids. Even when they were puking on her.
She now used her computer skills working for ProEye. The company specialized in hunting down the assets of rich delinquents who continued to live notoriously in the lap of luxury while blowing raspberries at both courts and creditors as they hid behind a wall of snarky lawyers, scheming accountants, and PR mudslingers. And there were so many of these monied deadbeats that ProEye and thus Gibson were flooded with work.
Some rich people obviously did not like to pay their debts, as though they were somehow exempt from the obligation. While positions like a car mechanic, grocery store cashier, or warehouse worker were routinely audited by the IRS for a few thousand bucks as low-hanging fruit, the zillionaires scared off the revenue man with their prodigious legal and accounting muscle.
She’d attended one deposition where a billionaire defendant had argued that his businesses created thousands of jobs andthosepeople paid taxes, that he had very little actual income since most of his billion-dollar fortune was in stocks—which he got loans against to pay for his extravagant lifestyle, effectively bypassing the tax man—and that he gave to charity. When the counsel for the government had pointed out that that was not a defense to paying no tax at all on his actual taxable income, the billionaire hadn’t told him to fuck off. He’d just said, “Wait untilweofficiallymakeit the law. It won’t be long now.” Andthenhe’d told the lawyer to fuck off.
Gibson took a sip of tea and a bite of her cookie, put on her headset, and started clicking computer keys. What she did now could never compare to the adrenaline rush of working cases on the street. But life was full of trade-offs. And this was one she had made. For the good of her family, something every mother would understand.
She might eventually find someone else to spend her life with, but right now that did not seem likely at all. Why? Because what Peter Gibson had robbed her most of, and it was a lengthy list, was trust. Trust in men and, even worse, trust in herself.
Gibson prepared to get to work chasing down a rogue businessman who had $2 billion in assets somewhere, but unfortunately also had $4 billion in debt. Just another world-class punk fraudster in a sea of them. Twenty years ago there were fewer than five hundred billionaires in the world. Now there were nearly three thousand. That was an enormous amount of wealth creation. For a very select few.
Everybody else, not so much, she mused.
But then her phone rang.
And everything in Mickey Gibson’s suburban, single-mom life was about to get blown straight to hell.
CHAPTER3
M?S. GIBSON, THIS IS ARLENE ROBINSONfrom ProEye, I work with Zeb Brown. I know you were on the phone with him earlier.”
“That’s right. Is there a problem getting the funds locked down?”
“No, that’s all going very well. They’re acting on Bermuda, and they’ll get Zurich and Chad done as soon as they open. You did great work as always.”
“Thanks. I don’t believe we’ve spoken before,” said Gibson as she bit into her cookie and took another sip of her tea.
“We haven’t. I’ve been with ProEye for eighteen months, but I was just transferred to Mr. Brown’s division three weeks ago. He’s always spoken highly of you.” Then she chuckled.
“What?” said Gibson.
