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“What are you saying, boss? You think I’m on the take?”
The thought crossed my mind.
But Asher’s not done yet. “I spent forty-two years on the fucking Philadelphia PD. I know what bad guys look like.Youaren’t gonna blow my head off if you catch me double-dipping, but these guys’d feed me my own dick, soon as get my PI license pulled. They’re bad shit. And I’ve already gotten closer to ’em than I should’ve. Any of this blows back their way, and I’m as good as dead.”
He’s wrong about one thing. Imightblow his head off if he sold me out. Or I’d hire Best to do it.
But beneath the tough-guy bluster, I see something else: Fear. Asher’s fucking terrified of Jonas and Ansel Herzog.
He wraps up his self-defense: “I told you these cocksuckers have corporations wrapped in partnerships wrapped in private holding companies. The Long Island estate is right smack in the middle of all that crap. Wouldn’t surprise me if New York State doesn’t even know the place exists, for tax purposes.”
“Okay, okay,” I soothe him. “Hold your fucking horses. Got anything else?”
He doesn’t, not anything major. I tell him to invoice me, and I send him on his way.
After he’s left, I go through the photos, one by one. I’m looking for a back door, a secret way in so I can fuck over the Herzog brothers, once and for all. But there’s nothing in the paperwork that gives me a shred of hope.
I’m working through Asher’s report a third time, when I get a call on the intercom from Susan Richards. She’s my new assistant, the one I hired after Pete Miller walked out on my sorry ass. She’s good, applying all the skills that helped her succeed as a single mother raising three sons to adulthood. She’s able to juggle a dozen different projects at once, and she has a fine-tuned sense of when to avoid looking in the shadows.
I’m doing my best not to piss her off, so I answer promptly. “What’s up, Susan?”
“Just wanted to make sure you haven’t forgotten your eleven thirty.”
I glance at my computer screen. There’s the calendar notice, in the red Susan uses when something’s important. I was supposed to be in the boardroom seven minutes ago.
“Haven’t forgotten it,” I lie. “What’s the meeting about?”
“Freeport security staff. They want increased staffing, or they’re walking off the job at noon.”
“Tell ’em an emergency came up.”
“I told them that last week. And the week before that.”
Well last week, and the week before that, I didn’t have a fucking snuff video hanging over my head. I didn’t have to worry about the entire freeport being shut down when the goddamn world finds out what happened to Herzog.
I don’t have time for this shit.
But I don’t have a freeport if I don’t have security. So, swearing, I hang up on Susan and head down to the boardroom, loaded for bear.
9
ALIX
* * *
My phone rings, dragging me out of nineteenth-century French countrysides. I thought I’d just take a moment to look at a catalog of Cezanne landscapes, but I was sucked in by the color and the compositions, by the freedom of a painter depicting the world around him almost a hundred and fifty years ago, and I’ve lost a couple of hours.
Blinking hard to come back to reality, I answer on the third ring. “Susan?”
“Alix.” She sounds uncertain. That’s a first for Trap’s new executive assistant. Judging from the way she handles day-to-day disasters at the freeport, I’ve assumed she has antifreeze in her veins.
“Is everything okay?”
“I’m sure it is, but…”
“Is Trap all right?” My nerves make the question harsher than I intend.
“He’s fine!” she reassures me quickly. “It’s just that he’s in a meeting with the security guards. The guards are threatening to walk out at noon, and I’m afraid Trap might lose his temper and say something he regrets.”
