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A different server, another graceful woman in a cheongsam, rolled a cart up to their table and started offloading small plates of amazing food. As expected, Emma was ace at wielding chopsticks, but he was okay too, courtesy of a two-month deployment on a mission to South Korea. They’d eaten in holes in the wall where a fork and knife were unavailable and would have been frowned upon anyway.
The food was so good that conversation stopped. It wasn’t at all an awkward silence, they were too busy stuffing their faces.
“Mm,” Emma moaned as she put a dim sum in her mouth. “The reviews were right. This is absolutely fantastic.”
Raul nodded enthusiastically, mouth too full to say anything. He scooped up more shredded Peking duck from a small plate. Oh God. So good, it should be illegal.
A young man dressed in black opened a bottle of Chardonnay – from something called Broken Bridge Winery – and made to pour in Raul’s glass. Raul shook his head and pointed with his chopsticks at Emma. She’d chosen the wine, she should taste it. Without blinking, the server pivoted and poured a finger into Emma’s glass. She sniffed, took a sip and closed her eyes.
Good. With her eyes closed, Raul could study her face. Such a fascinating face. She was beautiful, yes, with amazing colors. But the world was full of beautiful women. The last woman Raul bedded back in – January was it? – had been beautiful, too, but she’d also been deeply weird in bed. She’d screamed and scratched his back up, hotter than hot, and five minutes after they’d both come, she was up and out of bed, then she dressed and left without another word. He didn’t even have her number and was a little hazy on her name. He was left feeling like a male prostitute, grateful she hadn’t left money on the dresser.
Even dinner beforehand had been awkward, because she was more interested in real estate than in him, had tried to sell him a property in Hillsboro and hadn’t even noticed the food.
The whole scene had been a massive downer and he hadn’t dated anyone since. So, this evening was a real treat, even if it wasn’t a date. Not technically, anyway.
Raul leaned forward. “Tell me more about Toby. Do you have any theories at all as to where he might be? Go over it again. When was the last time you saw him?”
She was quiet a moment. Felicity and Hope did that, too. You asked them a question and they took their time and when they answered the computers in their heads had run through a billion possibilities and what came out was cogent and organized and smart.
“I last saw him four days ago. We finished an internal report on commodity futures which was pretty comprehensive and detailed. He’s domestic and I’m foreign. We’re supposed to kick it upstairs on Monday, but that’s off the cards now. We’d been working on it for a month. It was complex and we’d spent the previous week checking the details. Toby checked the math and I edited for clarity. It was a big report and was going to establish company protocol for the next semester. Toby was hoping it would secure him a promotion.”
“And you?” Raul asked.
“And me, what?”
“Was it going to get you a promotion, too?”
“Oh. Well, no. I’m not looking for a promotion the way Toby is. Toby is really ambitious and has his eye on a promotion eventually to upper management. Being in management to me sounds like the fourth circle of hell where the greedy and materialistic spend eternity scratching each other’s eyes out. The next step up wouldn’t be that big a jump in pay and I really don’t care. I’m not –” She stopped.
Raul studied her face, trying to read her. He was pretty good at it but he couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Only that she was in the grip of strong emotions.
“You’re not?” he prodded gently. Any information she could give him about Toby would help. Raul was convinced that whatever was happening that might have Emma in danger ran through Toby, so all of this was necessary to paint a picture of the situation. What ASI would call intel.
But more than that … he wanted to know what Emma thought. Why she went from being happy with the restaurant and the meal and the wine and maybe even with him, to being disturbed. Because that was definitely a frown now, one she couldn’t hide.
He wanted to know more abouther.Hope and Felicity were very tight-mouthed about their time at the NSA. The ASI guys respected that. Everyone at the company had seen or done or learned things in the military they could never talk about, ever. But even though they never ever discussed specifics, he got the impression of four young women tightly bonded, who helped each other and had as much fun as the job would allow, which wasn’t much, given the boss from hell.
“I’m not ambitious that way. I already earn way more than I can justify spending. I plan on buying my own place, but not quite yet. I’m not wildly happy at PIB, but it’s ok for now. I sure don’t want to rise there. But Toby did. Oh God, does.”
She turned stricken eyes to Raul. “What does it say that I’d use the past tense when talking about him?”
Raul put his hand over hers. “Not that he’s dead. Just that you’re worried that he’s missing.”
“Here we go.” Yet another server put two steaming platters in front of them. “Who has the Angry Lobster?”
Emma smiled and lifted her hand. The server slid a platter with cracked lobster legs and lobster meat artfully arranged. It smelled amazing.
“Drunk Lobster?”
Raul lifted a finger and he got another platter. It smelled just as amazing, only different.
They dug in. Raul was pleased to notice that though Emma ate neatly, she wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. There were bowls of lukewarm water with rose petals floating on the surface and they both used them frequently because opening cracked lobster legs was dirty work. Satisfying, but dirty.
“So,” he said, leaning back for a moment. “Toby is really ambitious?” Raul carefully used the present tense. He wanted to get a sense of whether Toby was a victim here or might possibly have had a hand in what was going on. Clearly, that hadn’t even occurred to Emma, but it had to Raul, who was professionally paranoid.
Bad actors disguised as good guys were all over the world. The question was – was Toby one of them? Had he done something in cahoots with his boss, say? Something that was illegal or immoral – Raul was sure that that was a fine line in the world of finance – and it was going south so he had quietly disappeared?
Possible.
