Scandal in Seattle
Great Exploitations (Scandal in Seattle)
Copyright © 2013 Nicole Williams
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events of persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical without express permission from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.
Cover Design by Sarah Hansen of
Okay Creations
Editing by Cassie Robertson
Formatting by
JT Formatting
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIFE IS CHANGE. Or is it, change is life?
For me, it’s the latter. Change has been the essence of my life. It is the origin of my present and the promise of my immediate future. One day, that’s going to change. One day, I’ll live a simple life where routine and normalcy are the agenda of my day. One day, change will by the exception, not the standard.
One day . . . isn’t today.
Last night I was in Miami. Tonight I’m in Seattle. Yesterday I was on the Silva Errand. Today I’m on the Callahan Errand. Twenty-four hours ago, my job was all business. Now, my job is all personal.
Because I’m in the business of Great Exploitations. And business is good.
“ARE YOU HERE for business or pleasure, ma’am?” the woman checking me in at the Four Seasons asked.
I clutched my briefcase a bit tighter and smiled. “Pleasure.
All
pleasure.”
She gave me that standard hospitality-industry smile. “Enjoy your stay.”
“Guaranteed,” I said as I headed for the elevators. There was nothing about my stay that I couldn’t enjoy. A five star hotel and a hefty dose of revenge? Nothing, not even the gray, constantly leaking skies, could tarnish that Errand.
Henry Callahan. Billionaire. IT business mogul. My Ten. My Errand.
My ex.
The man who’d upended my whole world.
The man I was going to repay in turn.
Of course, G could never know about Henry’s and my history. She would reassign an Errand if she knew the Eve had gone to preschool with the Target, let alone been engaged five years ago to the Target. So G would have to be left in the dark. Other than intermittent check-ins, I’d keep progress reports to a minimum. If the Errand was a normal Seven or Eight, check-ins would have been nothing more than a few one-lettered texts, but it was our Ten. That Errand was as much G’s baby as it was mine. She’d already warned me she’d expect regular status updates and would be less laissez-faire than she typically was.
I didn’t want to lie to G, but even more, I didn’t want to give up the Callahan Errand. I was good at keeping secrets. Obviously. That would translate into keeping some from G, I hoped.
After reading Mrs. Callahan’s file front to back,
twice,
on the plane, I’d started plotting how I’d go about the actual seduction and taking down of Henry Carter Callahan. As I made my way down the hall, I planned out how I’d orchestrate Henry’s and my happenstance meeting.
Other than being a hardcore workaholic, Henry’s file gave away nothing about vices. My personal experience with him knew better. The
once a cheater, always a cheater
proverb was true most of the time. Henry Callahan had been a cheater with me, so I could almost guarantee he was with his wife. That he had her fooled was a testimony to how sneaky he must have been.
That was okay. I was a pro at fleshing out a cheater.
I was still smiling when I stepped inside my room. After flipping on the lights, my smile stretched higher. G had gotten me a sprawling suite. Since I’d left Miami in such a rush, I didn’t have a suitcase to be carted up, so after dropping my purse and briefcase on the hall table, I wandered into the sitting area. From the corner of my eye, a flash of red caught my attention.
“Holy—” I hollered, freezing in my tracks.
“Why, yes. Yes, I am holy,” a familiar voice said. “Nice of you to finally recognize it.”
After restarting my heart, I shot the woman reclining in a chair in the corner a half-hearted glare. “Thanks for the mini-heart attack, G.”
She arched that sharp eyebrow of hers.
“Sorry . . . G
the Holy
,” I corrected, making a showy bow. She pursed her lips to keep from smiling. “How am I supposed to annihilate a Ten if I’m dead?”
“Your job isn’t to annihilate anything. Your job is to seduce.” G crossed her legs and gave me a look. “Annihilation is too personal. I thought I made that clear years ago.”
G had caught me by surprise, and I’d made a slip. It wouldn’t happen again. It
couldn’t
because G rarely missed a thing. If I didn’t act like the Errand was no more special than any other Errand, I would get pulled from it—best case. Worst case would be an immediate dismissal followed by rotting away in some nameless alley.
“Sorry. I’m just a little excited about this one,” I said, coming around the couch to sit across from her.
“What? You? Excited?” she said. “Can’t be.”
“Don’t tell.”
“I won’t if you won’t tell on me . . . but I might just be a little bit excited, too.” G’s green eyes flashed, and she almost,
almost
, smiled. I’d seen her smile a few times, but it had always been a bit more menacing. This smile was almost joyful. I guessed I’d been in my line of business too long when a joyful smile was more disturbing than a menacing one.
“So, other than to share in the once-every-few-years whim of excitement, to what do I owe the honor of a personal meeting?”
G only did private meetings with her Eves at the start of an Errand as the exception. In the course of a year, I might see her once or twice, and whenever I did, it was never to go grab a drink and catch up. G’s meetings were always important and always about business. She didn’t know anything about her Eves’ pasts, and we didn’t know anything about hers. None of us had families, or at least ones we kept in touch with; we didn’t have time for things like hobbies. All of that added up to make casual conversation a bit of a problem.
“There’s been a change in plans,” she started.
I stopped breathing. Did she know?
How
could she have figured it out?
“Mr. Ten is a bit of a world traveler. He’s out of the country half of the year from the sounds of it. A piece of information the Client forgot to mention.” G made that face that crippled me every time it was directed at me. To get a face as beautiful as hers to look so ugly must have taken years to perfect. “The Target’s in Seoul for the next week. Then he’s back for a week, then leaves for Bangkok for another week. So on and so forth.”
“O-kay.” I wondered why that was such a big deal she had to meet me in person. So he was gone a lot. Plenty of Targets were . . . so we did one of the things we Eves did best and adapted. I’d earned my patch in adaptation years ago.
“Since the Target’s out of the country as much as or more than he’s in it, and this Errand is going to take significantly longer to close, I don’t want one of my best Eves to get bored.”
Ah. I got it. When trying to understand where G’s train of thought was going, always think dollars and cents. “Or go to waste when she could be working an Errand within an Errand, right?”
G nodded. “Precisely. You have the fastest start to completion time of all of my Eves, so I’m sure you’ll have no problem juggling a few other Errands along the way. I won’t throw you anything too complex. A rock-and-roller here, a pro-basketball player there. Errands you could close in twenty-four hours if need be.”
If I thought arguing would have gotten me anywhere, I would have. I didn’t want to work an Errand within an Errand. I wanted to keep my focus and attention on Callahan. I wanted to bring him to his knees before he saw it coming. I wanted him to curse the day he’d met me. I wanted him to curse my name until his dying day.
I wanted all of that, but I had to play nice. Especially when it came to G.
“And because you have that little glimmer in your eye, I’m guessing you already have an Errand for me to work while Mr. Callahan is away.” Saying his name was hard. I felt like I was giving away everything in my tone or expression. If I was, G seemed none the wiser.
“That glimmer always gives me away, doesn’t it?” She smiled again, her typical menacing one, and not a single wrinkle lined her skin. The Botox was good, or she’d found the fountain of youth somewhere along the way. Judging from the jaded look in G’s eyes, I’d say she was in her sixties, but judging from everything else, she looked twenty-eight. G was beautiful in a Venus flytrap kind of way. Admire her from afar, but don’t mess with her. “And the answer is yes. I’ve got a new Client here in Seattle and, gauging from what she told me on the phone, this Errand is your bread-and-butter variety.”
“My bread and butter?” I repeated. “Aren’t all of our Errands rich, cheating bastards?”
“They are,” G replied, “but some are bigger bastards than the rest. And you, my girl, have a special gift when it comes to the big bastards of the world.”
Was that a skill set I could list on my resume? It felt as much like a compliment as it felt like an insult. “When and where am I meeting the Client of this biggest bastard of the bunch?”
“Tomorrow morning, nine o’clock, at the Pike Street Gym. Ask for Mrs. Hendrik at the front desk.”