A Good Kind of Trouble (A Trouble in Twin Rivers Novel Book 1) (6 page)

Well, that meant he’d have to see her again.
 

How strange that he’d want to see her again. He hadn’t been exaggerating when he told Lindsey their date was the worst he’d ever been on. The pain from the pepper spray was excruciating and it wasn’t helped by the humiliation that followed when she explained to the police and paramedics what happened. He couldn’t see their smirks since his eyes were swollen nearly shut by the harsh chemical spray. But he could hear it in their voices, the suppressed laughter at the man who had been accidentally assaulted by his pretty date.
 

He’d been too angry and embarrassed to take her calls over the next few days, and then he felt like a jerk for not calling her back. She seemed sincere in her apologies on his voicemail. He really should have called her, but the longer he waited, the more he felt like a jerk. It was easier to just cut off contact and move on. In the months since then, every time her name came up in conversation with Dave and Kathleen, he had the sinking feeling of guilt in his gut. The Hogans caught on and the mentions of Lindsey became more rare, but he still saw her name in the newspaper at least once a week. Each time, that regret nagged at him.
 

Ben sat in the leather chair and leaned back, flipping idly through the papers he’d taken from Lindsey.
 

It was a shame, though. She was gorgeous. And smart and fun. And sexy. Jesus, when they were making out in his car… His heart rate picked up a little. Wow, there had been something there. Something he hadn’t experienced before or since.
 

Maybe it was worth another try. He’d know to stay on his guard this time, not make any sudden moves around her. Sure, they had gotten off to a bad start, but nothing insurmountable, right?

He opened one of the unfamiliar manila folders and stared for a full minute at the documents inside. What had she been working on? The arena proposal?
 

Ben scanned the papers quickly, then went back to the top of the page and read the contract carefully. His shoulders grew tense as the meaning of the words sank in.
 

“You might be on to something here, sweetheart,” he said. “But it’s not what you think.”

Chapter Five

Lindsey settled into the cushioned wicker sofa, put her feet on the ottoman and for the third time read the dense block of legalese in the contract in front of her. There was no way she was going to decipher these stupid bond proposals, not without professional help.
 

She rolled her head and felt the twinge in her shoulder where she had fallen against the sidewalk earlier. That was going to leave a mark—again. In the last few months, she’d suffered several bumps and bruises from two attempted muggings. But between the bruise on her shoulder and the bump on her head, this latest one was going to take the cake.
 

Unfortunately, it wasn’t only physical injuries she’d endured in her six-month run of bad luck. There was also the humiliation of her coworkers believing she was paranoid, crazy, or lying about the weird incidents surrounding her.
 

Even worse was the sickening feeling deep down in her stomach whenever Dave or Kathleen dropped Ben’s name in passing. Her friends were careful to avoid any mention of Ben after the disastrous date, but Dave was close to him, so his name was bound to come up once in a while. It never got any easier to hear about him. The sound of his name still caused her to flush hot with embarrassment.
 

Steve jumped up next to her and lay down, his head in her lap. She absently stroked his ears and he sighed and closed his eyes. Getting a dog was the best decision she’d made recently. If she couldn’t meet a nice guy, at least she had Steve to keep her company.
 

Well, she had met a nice guy. But then she Maced him.
 

Her cell phone buzzed from the depths of her messenger bag. Pulling it out, she saw that the number was blocked.
 

“Hello?”

“Ms. Fox?” a nervous male voice asked.
 

“Yes.”

“Did you get the contracts I mailed you?”

Lindsey’s heart leapt. She’d been receiving fat envelopes full of legal documents for several weeks, but they arrived with no explanation and no indication about who had been sending them. Maybe her anonymous pen-pal was ready to tell her why he was sending her the indecipherable contracts.
 

“Yes, I think so,” she said. “We need to meet. I have a lot of questions for you.”
 

There was a long pause. “I don’t know about that. I can’t let anyone know I’ve been talking to you.”
 

“You haven’t been talking to me. We can meet somewhere private.”

As soon as the words fell out of her mouth, she wanted to take them back. Given her recent string of accidents and suspicious incidents, she should not be meeting strangers in secluded areas. Bad, bad idea.
 

“The library,” the man said. “Fourth floor, east side. Near the windows, there’s a sitting area. Meet me there in thirty minutes.”

The call disconnected abruptly. Lindsey stared at the phone in her hand. At least the library was a public space, which would be safer than her suggestion. She shoved the documents back in the bag and stood, displacing the dog. Steve followed her to the door.
 

“Sorry, Steve,” she said, leaning down to scratch his ears. “You need to stay here.”
 

Lindsey pulled her hair into a ponytail and took a baseball cap out of her overnight bag. She wrote a note to Dave and Kathleen, leaving it on the kitchen counter where they’d find it. She grabbed Kathleen’s car keys from the hook by the garage door. She had always appreciated Kathleen’s open-closet policy with her friends, but this was the first time Lindsey had taken Kath up on her standing offer to borrow the sporty little BMW in the garage. Kathleen preferred to walk the half-mile to her boutique and as a result, the car was in pristine condition.
 

She tossed her messenger bag into the passenger seat and backed out of the garage, a frisson of excitement in her stomach. Finally, she was going to learn what her anonymous source was trying to tell her.
 

Forty-five minutes later, Lindsey’s excitement had turned to disappointment. She arrived early and found the seating area her source had suggested. The east side of the fourth floor was empty. In fact, she hadn’t seen anyone anywhere on the fourth floor. Lindsey heard the elevator ding softly and craned her neck to look down the row of European history and Ancient Mythology tomes, only to see a librarian pushing a cart full of books to be reshelved.
 

Another fifteen minutes passed with no sign of anyone who might be her source. She pulled a book off the shelf and tried to act like she was reading it, but kept looking at her watch.

She had been stood up.
 

Lindsey stared out the window and watched the traffic below slowly increase as the afternoon rush hour got off to its inevitable start. The library sat across the street from City Hall and was only a few blocks from the courthouse where Lindsey had started her day.
 

She wasn’t even supposed to have been at the courthouse. Sam thought she was at City Hall, looking up the plans for the sewer plant retrofit. It was an assignment that could only be described as punitive. She was being punished for pushing too hard on the arena story. Too many complaints about the critical coverage and her editors got nervous. She’d started looking into the actual construction costs, and the likely contractor, ValCorp. ValCorp had a terrible reputation for running costs up and shoddy quality. She wrote one article about the dozens of lawsuits against the company and ValCorp threatened to sue the newspaper. That threat was enough to get her yanked from the story and replaced with Jeff Edwards, a sportswriter, even though her stories were completely accurate.

But she wasn’t about to drop the arena story. Jeff wasn’t going to follow up on the leads she’d developed, but someone had to. And the envelopes with the bond information were addressed to her, so there was someone out there who wanted her to keep working this story.

She had amassed a huge dossier on ValCorp, Inc. and was investigating whether the company’s founder, Teddy “Bear” O’Bannion, was also behind the sudden purchase of most of the property surrounding the proposed arena site. Those blocks had seen a remarkable boom just before the site was announced. Bear, as he preferred to be called, came across as cuddly as his name would imply. But according to Lindsey’s research, Bear was a shrewd businessman who had cultivated allies in city government that helped him get the high-paying contracts. He had also left a wake of bankruptcies and lawsuits behind him.
 

Which was how Lindsey ended up at the courthouse this morning. A small window manufacturer was suing ValCorp, alleging corruption and interference with a business relationship. The window company’s owner alleged that after he signed a contract with Bear to install the windows on a high-rise project, Bear bought a competing window company and breached the contract, deciding that he could make more profit if his subsidiary did the work.
 

These weren’t new allegations. Lindsey had heard of several lawsuits that were similar in nature. Many had hinted at payoffs to city officials, primarily building inspectors, but all the other suits had been settled with confidentiality agreements, so no one who had sued Bear O'Bannion would talk to her. This suit, though, hadn’t settled before trial, so she decided to watch as much of the testimony as she could.
 

She had been sitting in the audience of the trial, the only person attending who wasn’t an interested party, when she heard one of the several defense lawyers call her name.
 

“Huh?” She had raised her head to find everyone in the courtroom staring at her, including Bear O'Bannion, who was flanked at counsel table by a half-dozen lawyers. One of those high-priced suits was standing and looking at her with a smug look on his face.
 

Judge Chinn had stared at Lindsey over his half-glasses. “Are you Ms. Fox?”

She had stood, unsure of what to do. “Yes.”

“Come up and be sworn in, Ms. Fox,” he said.
 

“No.”

The judge looked confused. “What?”

“I’m not here to testify,” she said.
 

“Why are you here?”

“I’m a reporter,” Lindsey said. There was a script reporters could use to object when judges tried to close courtrooms to the public. But she had never needed to object before and the script wouldn’t exactly apply here.
 

“Your honor,” the smarmy suit in the middle of the courtroom said. “Ms. Fox is under subpoena. She has vital information about the dispute.”
 

“No,” Lindsey said.
 

“Did you receive a subpoena?” Judge Chinn asked.
 

“No!” She definitely would have remembered that.
 

“Mr. Derry, have you a record of serving the subpoena?” the judge asked the suit.
 

“I’m sure we have that, your honor,” Frank Derry said. At this, the other ValCorp attorneys at his table started frantically thumbing through stacks of papers and boxes of documents. “The fact that she’s here today indicates that she expected to be called to testify.”

“That’s not true,” Lindsey said.
 

“Uh, can we have a sidebar?” The plaintiff’s lawyer stood, looking confused.
 

“I won’t testify,” Lindsey said.
 

“You will if you’ve been subpoenaed, Ms. Fox,” Judge Chinn said.
 

“No, I won’t.”

“Are you refusing to testify?” the judge asked.

“Yes.”

And that’s about the time that things had gotten weird.
 

The lawyers gathered at the bench and Lindsey couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she figured it was a good time to exit. She headed for the door.
 

“Ms. Fox, you are not free to leave yet,” the judge said.
 

She was about ten feet from the door and hesitated for only an instant. If they wanted her testimony, they could serve a subpoena and let the newspaper fight it. She ran for the door.
 

“Bailiff!”
 

The door was just within her grasp when she found herself weightless, lifted up by the bailiff in a bear hug. She kicked at him, but he had the advantage of size and strength over her and she found herself with her feet still dangling a few inches off the ground as she faced the court and an angry judge.
 

“Put Ms. Fox in the holding cell while the defense finds the proof of service for the subpoena,” Judge Chinn said. “I’m holding you in contempt for disobeying my order to stop and for your refusal to testify in the face of a subpoena.”
 

“That’s not fair,” Lindsey said, realizing she had no idea if that was a legal defense or not. But by then, she was being dragged off through a side door in the courtroom, and then locked in a holding cell.
 

“I want a lawyer!” she yelled at the retreating back of the bailiff.

And that’s when Ben Gillespie walked back into her life.
 

Yes, this was the worst day ever. And now her source was standing her up.

Lindsey checked her watch again. She had waited over an hour and there was no sign of him. She gathered her bag and shelved the book on ancient mythology, then made her way to the parking garage. She paid the parking fee, then pulled onto the busy street and into the stalled traffic as the downtown business district started to empty out.
 

As she sat in the BMW, she saw a motorcycle pull out behind her. Rather than cut between the cars, as most motorcycles would have done, this one stayed right behind her. There was something that made her keep an eye on him in her rearview mirror.