Fidelity Files (23 page)

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lonely Guy #3 get out his wallet and place a twenty-dollar bill on the table next to the check. He was getting ready to leave. I had to move fast and figure out if the man sitting in front of me was Jason Trotting or just some random guy with bad pick-up lines.

"Are
you
waiting for someone?" he asked me.

I started to turn back to answer his question when a flashy white object caught my eye from across the room. Lonely Man #3 had picked up a glossy white folder and was tucking it under his arm as he stood up. I tilted my head and squinted my eyes to get a glimpse of the logo on the front.

Fiztech.net.

Bingo.

Flustered, my eyes darted back and forth between Lonely Guy #3 and the door. I had about twenty paces to stop him from walking out.

"Yes. And I think that's him," I said to the man in front of me, and then quickly darted to the other side of the room.

Keeping the flustered look on my face, I stepped directly in front of the man with the white folder who was now pulling a computer bag over his shoulder. "Hi, sorry I'm late! You must be Charlie."

He looked at me, completely confused. Had he missed something? Was Vartan really a woman? Or had he simply sent this woman to do business in his place? But why did she think his name was Charlie?

"No, I'm Jason," he clarified, half hoping the woman would slap herself on the forehead and say, "Oh, right. Sorry. My mistake."

But I didn't.

Instead, my shoulders dropped and my face fell into a disappointed frown. "Oh," I began. "Damn. You're cute, too."

This made him nervous. And clearly even more confused. "Excuse me?"

I giggled. "Sorry. I'm supposed to be meeting a blind date. And I don't know what he looks like. I was kind of hoping it was you. But it appears I got stood up." I twisted my mouth to the side, expressing not only my disappointment but now also my crushed ego.

His eyes were sympathetic. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, I got stood up, too."

"Blind date?"

He shook his head. "No. Blind business meeting. Potentially
huge
client. Looks like I'll be eating at Carl's Jr. for another eight months."

I laughed. "Good one. So how about a drink to nurse our shattered egos?"

I figured that since this wasn't a normal assignment and Jason wasn't anyone's husband, boyfriend, or fiancé – from what I could tell – there was no harm in me initiating the action for once. And this was a subject I simply couldn't afford to let walk out that door. Not when he held such valuable information in that vault of a brain of his.

By our second drink I finally felt ready to go for the kill. Jason had told me all about his Web-hosting company and how it barely paid the bills, and if he didn't land a client like Vartan sometime soon, he'd have to go back to working in a tiny cubicle writing code sixty hours a week.

"C'mon," I attempted to cheer him up. "You have to have at least
one
big client that keeps you afloat."

He shrugged and took a sip of his beer. "Yeah, I guess," he said nonchalantly. "I just signed a pretty big account. Some local hotshot who rented out a few hundred gigs of space. Although I don't think he's going to keep his contract for very long. He didn't sound like he needed anything permanent when we spoke on the phone."

This
had
to be it. Local, recent, short-term. How could it not be?

"Well, that sounds promising," I encouraged. "What's his story?"

He shrugged again. "Not sure really. He refused to give me his name. Some type of top-secret operation, I guess. So what about you? What's
your
story?"

"He didn't tell you anything about himself?" I blurted back, desperation seeping into my voice. I quickly covered it with a flirty smile. "I mean, that just seems really weird."

Jason looked at me somewhat strangely. "Yeah," he began warily. "I guess I could've looked it up from the name of his company, but it didn't really matter to me." He attempted to change the subject again. "So you were waiting for a blind date, huh? I guess that means you're single?"

I laughed and took a sip of my drink. "Yeah. Single. Gotta love the single life."

"Well, I'd love to get your number and maybe take you out sometime. I hope you like Carl's Jr."

I laughed again...on the outside. But inside I was screaming. "Maybe I know him," I suggested casually.

"Maybe you know who?" he asked.

"The guy...your client. If you tell me the company's name, I might be able to tell you the guy who owns it. I'm in PR. I work with a lot of companies."

Jason shot me another strange look. I'm sure he was beginning to have second thoughts about his invitation to eat fast food. But at this point I didn't care what he thought. He obviously hadn't recognized me through my disguise, or maybe he just never even bothered to look at the Web site his client put up. But I knew one thing: I wasn't leaving without a name.

"Um, Kelen Industries, I think," Jason finally surrendered.

The hand that was vainly running through my artificial hair froze in its place and then slowly dropped down to my side. As I let his words sink in, I couldn't for the life of me think of any of my own. Did he just say what I think he said?

"So, do you know him?" Jason practically patronized me.

I nodded slowly, somewhat in a trance.

"Really?" He raised his eyebrows. "Impressive."

Of course, there was no reason why I
shouldn't
know him. I had read at least twenty news articles about all the wonderful changes his company was making in the world of car engines. I had seen the inside of his suite in a random hotel in Denver. I had stroked his wife's hair as she cried on my shoulder. He even attempted to bribe me into staying quiet. Oh, yes. I certainly
knew
him.

I marveled at how right on the money John had been from the very beginning. I now realized that if I had to make a mental list of all the men who would attempt something like this, this man would most definitely be at the top.

I took a deep breath as the lost sensation slowly returned to my tongue, and I was finally able to speak. "His name is Raymond Jacobs."

AFTER THANKING Jason Trotting for the drinks and leaving him with a fake phone number, I disappeared into the night with just the information I had come for.

I don't know why, but I guess I somehow thought that once I knew who was responsible for the Web site, I would suddenly feel better, that all the anxiety would simply melt away. I guess I failed to realize that once I knew the identity of my evil nemesis, I would actually have to come up with a plan to stop him. And unfortunately, I hadn't thought that far ahead.

Of all people. Why'd it have to be him?

Raymond Jacobs. The vodka gimlet drinker who, two weeks ago, had gobbled up my impressive knowledge of car engines without even a single reservation. I had to hand it to him, though; he'd definitely pulled this stunt together fast. My trip to Denver felt like two days ago. And standing in Anne Jacobs's entry hall, hugging her, telling her she'd done the right thing, felt like yesterday. Suddenly I found myself wondering if
I'd
done the right thing by even taking on the assignment. Raymond Jacobs was clearly not the kind of man to get run over by a truck and then wait in the road to die. Oh, no. He got right back up and ran out to buy an even bigger truck.

As I drove home the feeling of anxiety started to consume me. I wanted to crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head, and never come out.

I wearily dragged myself up the stairs of my building and through my front door. I collapsed onto the bed like a ton of bricks. The walls felt like they were closing in on me. And the only person I really wanted to talk to was still not talking to me.

It was always times like these when I would call Sophie, make up some bogus story about something that upset me at work, and she would calm me down. She would soothe me with her words and her comforting voice. It was the voice of someone who's known me forever and has been there for me through everything...well, almost everything. Because even though the solutions she came up with only applied to a make-believe problem, and the words she used usually had nothing to do with what was really going on in my life, it didn't matter. It was the fact that she was there for me. To listen and to respond.

And I knew that I had to call her.

I knew that I couldn't continue to
not
have her in my life. She was too important to me.

"Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone?"

I reached over to my nightstand and grabbed the phone off its charger. I started dialing.

But before I hit the last number I was stopped by the sound of a different phone ringing. It was my business line. I hung up my home phone, picked up my bag from the edge of the bed, and fished out the ringing cell phone. "No Caller ID" was plastered on the screen of my Treo. Nothing new. Most people block this kind of call. Hell, most people block this whole section of their life.

I pressed the green
Talk
button and held the phone up to my ear. "Hello?"

There was a muffled voice on the other end, and I couldn't make out a single word the person was saying.

"Hello?" I repeated into the phone.

More static.

"Hello? I can't hear you. Can you hear me?" I paused and waited. Still nothing. "Bad connection. I think you should call back."

And just as I was about to hang up, the static cleared, and a soft and very confused voice came through the line. "Jen?"

I sat very still on my white cotton comforter. And then, convinced that I had simply picked up the wrong cell phone, I pulled the phone away from my ear and held it in front of my face, double-checking that this
was
in fact my business line.

The word
Treo
was blatantly plastered on the top of the phone. My personal cell phone was the pink Razr. I suppose the simple night and day difference in weight would have been sufficient enough to distinguish the two, but I had to see it for myself. With my own eyes.

"Jen, is that you?"

I knew the voice. I'd known the voice for years.

There was no more interference. The connection was crystal clear and the voice... was unmistakable. The irony was thicker than liquid chocolate and not nearly as sweet. It was the very same voice I had been hoping to hear on the other end of the phone for over a week now.

But what do you know? It was coming through the wrong fucking phone.

"Hello?" The voice demanded an acknowledgment. And before long, it would undoubtedly be demanding an explanation as well.

I cleared my throat and attempted to impersonate an eighty-year
-old woman who had fought a lifetime, losing battle with Virginia Slims. "Yes?
How can I help you?"

I should have just hung up. Right then and there. I should have just put down the phone, not answered for the rest of the night, or the rest of my life perhaps, and just left it at that.

I should have done a lot of things.

But I didn't. And now the voice knew.

"Jen, is that you?" it repeated, slightly more aggravated and a lot more insistent.

I sighed and surrendered to it. "Yes, Sophie. It's me."

There was a long silence, followed by a short but very distinct
click.

I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at the screen. "Call Ended," it informed me.

The phone slowly slipped from my sweaty fingers and I watched it disappear into a sea of white cotton and down. I held my forehead in the palm of my hand and closed my eyes. Because I knew. I knew for sure. The call wasn't the only thing that had just ended.

I bit my lip and waited. Waited for the inevitable callback.

If I knew Sophie at all, she needed that extra moment for everything to sink in. For the information to process and the world to start making sense again. She was like a slow desktop computer, one of those older models that required just the slightest bit more time to perform the simpler tasks, like opening up a Word document or transferring between applications. I could almost see the frustratingly slow hourglass icon hovering above her head.

But this time the task wasn't simple. And this time, after the extra moment had passed, and even the extra few after that, the world still wouldn't make sense. The program still wouldn't run. And the hard drive would inevitably crash.

My house had never felt so silent in the entire eighteen months that I'd lived there.

And then the phone rang. Not my business cell phone, not my personal cell phone. But my landline. My
home
phone. And it felt all too appropriate.

The number was no longer blocked. The caller was definitely ID'ed.

"Hi," I said softly into the cordless receiver.

There was more silence. She had dialed my number before she had finished processing. There would be silence. And I would wait.

"Hi," she finally said back.

I could almost hear her gears turning. The questions were popping up faster than she could sort through and prioritize them. The looming "illegal operations" were threatening to shut down the whole system if the answers didn't start coming – and fast.

And then somehow, remarkably, Sophie managed to sort through all of the streaming data and effectively generate one simple question that summed up every query struggling to run at once.

"It's you?" she asked faintly.

I nodded, knowing full well that she couldn't see me. But also somewhat thankful for it at the same time. I wasn't ready for her to know. I wasn't ready to stop coming up with bogus stories about work and having her console me on them.

And I certainly wasn't prepared for her to find out like this.

So much for my successful skills of dissuasion. Sophie had gone right back to that woman at her office and asked for the phone number again.
My
phone number. I should have known. Me of all people should have been the first one to remind myself that a woman on a quest for knowledge is as unstoppable as a man on a quest for sex.

"Yes, it's me," I confirmed, shamefully. I knew the reaction I was going to get. I knew the judgment I was going to have to endure. And so I took a deep breath and prepared myself for the blow.

"You're... Ashlyn?" She was still waiting for me to break out into laughter and tell her it was a huge joke. That I had told her colleague to give out my number so that I could teach her a lesson. That there never even
was
an Ashlyn. That I made it all up. Surprise! You've been punk'd!

And I suppose I certainly could have. But instead, all I said was, "Yes."

"How could that be? You work for an investment bank!"

"Work
ed
for a bank," I explained. "I haven't worked at Stanley Marshall for about two years."

More silence. More careful computations.

"Remember that promotion I got? A little over two years ago? A bigger office? A new cell phone?"

The deciphering key was finally starting to take shape, and it was suddenly no longer just illegible lines of code. It was an entire story. An entire life that she knew nothing about, but now suddenly couldn't believe that she had missed.

"Yah..." she said hesitantly.

"Well, it wasn't a promotion."

"But how many? And why didn't you tell me? And—"

"I couldn't tell you!" I insisted. "I couldn't tell anyone. Nobody knows. It was just a decision I made on my own. Something I had to do for me. Plus, I didn't think you'd approve."

"Of course I wouldn't have approved! Married men, Jen!
Married!
And you kiss them?"

I bowed my head. "Uh-huh."

"And let them touch you?"

I could hear the disgust hanging between the syllables of her words. The images in her head were projecting onto the empty white walls of my bedroom, like a giant movie screen.

And at that moment...we were one. One mind. One thought. One vision.

I saw me as she saw me.

And I didn't like it.

"Uh-huh," I managed to get out, blinking back tears.

"I...I don't even know what to say."

I closed my eyes. "Sophie. Why don't I come over? We'll open a bottle of wine and we'll talk about this. I'll tell you everything. I'll start from the beginning and I won't stop until you understand where I'm coming from. All my motivations. All my reasons. They're in there, I promise. And they're good. I can prove it to you."

"I can't see you right now." Her words were fast and her tone was distant. Sophie may have only lived five minutes away from me by car, at almost any time of the day, but tonight she was a million miles from here.

And that was finally a distance
this
Southern Californian could understand.

"Okay," I said softly, the first tear successfully fighting its way from beneath my tightly shut eyelid and triumphantly making its slow victory parade down my cheek.

"I feel like I don't even know you."

I opened my eyes and several more tears followed closely behind. "But it's still me, Soph! I'm still the same person. I didn't change over the past two years; I shouldn't have to change over the past two minutes!"

"But you
did
change!" she fought back. "You're not even who you say you are. You're an entirely different person. With an entirely different name even!"

I sniffled. "It's just a stage name," I offered hopefully. "Like a character in a play. Or a TV show. Ellen Pompeo plays Meredith on
Grey's Anatomy
. Evangeline Lilly plays Kate on
Lost
. I play Ashlyn...in a weekly TV show about a girl whose job it is to expose cheating men to the women who love them!"

But Sophie wasn't convinced. "Those are TV shows! They're not real. This is real, Jen! These are real people! It's not pretend. It's not like when we were little, playing with my dad's psychology books or playing house." She paused. "Although I never thought you'd grow up to play the home wrecker."

"You wanted to hire me!" I shot back, wiping my running nose with the back of my hand. "You were going to call that home wrecker and hire her to wreck
your
home!"

"That's when it wasn't you!"

"What difference does it make whether it's me or the girl next door or Marilyn Fucking Monroe? You wanted the same thing that all my clients want. You wanted something that
I
give. Peace of mind." My voice softened and I stroked the white duvet cover underneath my knee. "And now you're going to hate me for giving it to other people?"

Sophie didn't respond right away. I could hear her breathing. Her breaths always got shorter and louder when she was upset. "I just need some time to think."

"Okay," I murmured. Because who was I to argue? There was nothing more I could say to convince her not to hate me. And there was definitely nothing I could add to convince her to accept me. Or accept what I did.

But as I hung up the phone I felt a small ounce of comfort in knowing that despite everything else, at least I could finally be certain that I had convinced her not to go through with it. She would never again even think about hiring anyone to seduce her fiancé. And it took the longest, bumpiest, most un-traveled road to get there. But I was finally there. In the clear. Sophie knew. There would be no more secrets. No more excuses. No more lies.

And even though I'd never felt such an unsettling hollowness in all my life, somewhere deep inside, beneath the frustration, beneath the horrific fear of losing my best friend, I felt my very first taste of serenity.

Until thirty minutes later, when I heard a knock at my door.

I peered through the peephole at Sophie's un-brushed hair, unmade-up face, and unadorned pink sweatpants. I attempted to paint a courageous smile on my face as I swung the door open wide.

She stood on my doormat, completely still, her mind clearly not made up yet as to whether or not she was actually going to come inside. As if MapQuest would only take her this far. What came next, she still wasn't sure.

So I rested my head against the side of the door and looked at her with pleading eyes. Not pleading for forgiveness, but pleading for understanding. Support. Unconditional friendship.

But what I didn't know at that very moment was that what she came here to say was ultimately not going to be a testament of her friendship... but a testament of mine.