Wish Her Well (8 page)

Just when Mary Beth was beginning to grind her pelvis against Amanda’s forceful intrusion and begin to tense in earnest, Ben stepped out onto the balcony.

Their client froze, caught with her legs spread, breasts bare, and another woman banging and eating her. There was no way to hide what they’d been doing, and Ben didn’t let Mary Beth so much as try. He clamped a hand onto the client’s raised knee so she couldn’t lower it again. With this other hand, he gently pressed against the back of Amanda’s head, directing her to carry on.

Mary Beth surprised her, then. Amanda would have been busy coming for an hour or so, but the client went straight for the buttons on Ben’s shirt. On his part, he changed course and gave Amanda a pat, signaling her dismissal. Their client had something in mind and he wanted to let her steer.

Now free to leave, Amanda cleared off, righting her dress, smoothing her hair, and fighting to ignore unrelieved arousal. One of these days, she’d talk to Eric about Thomas’s pressure valve policy, but there was no time for that tonight. She had to get cleaned up and pay Thomas a visit at the branch office.

After a shower and a judicious change of clothes into a blue business suit, simple white button-down shirt plus brown ankle-boots, she figured she could pay Thomas a visit without turning too many heads.

The branch office was some distance away and she made it there to find the place quiet at that time of night. After an equally quiet word with a duty officer, she was directed to Thomas’s office on the second floor.

Not a soul in sight, not a sound to be heard. Not at all what she had expected.

She located Thomas’s door and could hardly believe how peaceful the scene when she peered inside. Thomas was not alone. Scott Milazzo had an elbow propped on Thomas’s desk, one hand clenched at his hairline, looking bored as could be, staring at a laptop computer screen.

Thomas, on the other hand, was leaned way back in a wooden chair teetering on its back legs. He had his own legs and arms held out for balance, and a water bottle sat upright on his forehead.

She missed bursting out laughing at the unguarded scene by a hair’s breadth. It was agony to stay quiet and she would have walked in to announce her presence if Scott hadn’t started to talk.

He glanced over at Thomas, apparently finding nothing unusual about his balancing act. “I wonder if anyone has ever lost their shit, waiting for something to break.”

“I lost it over paperwork, once,” Thomas told him.

“You ever lose it at the other job? You’re on set what… Four days a week?”

“Used to be. More like two, these days.”

“But don’t you ever get bored doing the same fantasies over and over again?”

Thomas corrected his balance, one hand reflexively jerking as the bottle wobbled. “Sometimes.”

“So do you have a girlfriend on the side or anything? I mean, how does that work? Doesn’t it ruin sex? And don’t women freak out if they find out about the Fantasy Heights gig?”

“Right, ’cuz I have a personal life.”

“So, what about when you want something different? Do you ever book your own fantasies?”

“I used to, back in the day.”

“What about now?”

He scoffed. “After three years at that place, my idea of sexual fantasy involves pizza, watching a movie and falling asleep on the couch.”

“Dude. That’s tragic. Especially when you work with Amanda. I would be four hours early for every booking.”

Thomas’s feet lifted and his arms twitched, and for a second she feared he’d go over backward. When he’d steadied himself, a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I wonder what she likes on her pizza.”

When she stepped forward and walked through the doorway to say, “Pepperoni and mushrooms,” the inevitable happened. She scooted behind Thomas in time to get her hands under his shoulders and stop him from cracking his skull on the floor.

He caught the bottle when it toppled over.

Scott never moved from his hunched position. “This is my embarrassed face.”

Thomas came around the chair. He looked trapped and concerned at once. Also surprised and uncertain before shutting down any hint of emotion on his features. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head. “Sorry to drop in like this. I needed to talk to you.”

He continued to stare, his eyes narrowing. “How did you find this place?”

“I had help.” Finally, she greeted Scott. “Hey. How’ve you been?”

He looked at Thomas first, as if for permission to speak. Then he shrugged a shoulder. “I’d be better if there was pizza.”

She managed a smile, even while she could feel Thomas’s eyes examining every tiny gesture, every millimeter of her face and body. She withstood the suspicious inspection, feeling a swell of resentment. How dare he distrust her when he was keeping so many secrets? Why had he been with Gail Warnous? Why had he prepared for Steph’s coup against Andrew West? Why had he stopped talking to Josh and above all, was it possible that Wade was right, and someone had gotten to him?

He looked no different. White shirt open at the collar. Undershirt. Jeans, combat boots again. Shadowed jawline, hair going every which way, and inky black eyes sharp and alert.

All in all, delectable. But she was learning to see him as more than the savage or the agent. There was a person in there. A slippery, cagey, distrustful person, sure, but human. The man was tired. No doubt edgy and anxious and worried like everyone else. He was just better at ignoring it. And maybe she was a fool to believe in him, but he wouldn’t betray Josh or his old partner by allowing himself to fall under someone else’s influence, would he?

He reached out to lift her chin so she was forced to make eye contact, and that, she couldn’t withstand. She wanted to blurt out the questions. Hide nothing.

His smartphone made sure she wouldn’t get the chance. The singsong ringtone went off. He tensed up. Regardless, for a moment it appeared he didn’t want to take his eyes off hers long enough to answer.

Behind them, Scott complained, “You been checking that phone every ten seconds for the last ten hours and now you’re gonna ignore it? Dude.”

Thomas’s brow let a flicker of frown through before he finally pulled the phone from his pocket to glance at the display. Quick inhale. Shift of his shoulders. Very obvious this was a call he’d been waiting for.

His, “I gotta take this,” was completely unnecessary. Then he made a miniscule motion with his chin and eyes toward Scott.

She wasn’t sure exactly what Thomas wanted. Watch Scott? Entertain him? Easily done, either way. She went to sit beside Scott at the desk, relieved and maybe even a little flattered that he could be so relaxed around her. “What are you guys waiting on?”

“Bunch of stuff. How come you’re here?”

“I missed Thomas’s sunny disposition. Nothing major.”

“You sure? No offense, but you look kinda stressed out compared to last time.”

Last time they’d been together had been the boat ride around the lake. God, what a lot had happened since then.

She sighed and looked down at the mess on Thomas’s desk. Files, mostly. Lots of printer paper. Reports of some kind, with pictures. One of them showed Brent, the guy with the three-day-long interrogation fantasy. Why the report? Part of his background check maybe? Wasn’t it a little late for that, since he was already a client?

She reached for the stack of papers to take a look and maybe discern what the reports were about. Flipping to the next and examining another single sheet, her eyes centered on a grainy inkjet-printed picture of Andrew West.

What the heck? Frowning now, she fanned to the next report. Another familiar face on this one: the guy who’d gotten fired from Fantasy Heights in the recent purge for blowing a blood alcohol level higher than the legal driving limit.

Scott, with his cheek mushed up from the way it lay propped on his fist, warned her. “Better not mess with that stuff.”

She nodded, but flipped to the next page anyhow, and the face she found there peaked her interest: Observer. The one who’d been on duty while she’d been with her mystery client.

A devious thought burst to life. This guy could identify her mystery client. If she could find this observer, talk to him, play things cool enough, she could find out who Thomas was protecting.

Hoping for a phone number or address, she took a closer look at the report, and soon discerned the connection between them all. They were internal Fantasy Heights documents generated upon termination of employment. The observer had been fired in the last purge, too.

Great. She clicked her tongue and set down the reports, leaning back against Thomas’s chair until she realized Brent’s photo didn’t fit. He was a client. They didn’t terminate clients, they banned them.

Sitting up once more, she scanned his report. Brent Johnson was not just a client. He had worked at the resort. He was the IT guy, the computer tech fired for mishandling resources and breaching confidentiality.

Weird. The ten code thing had been an awfully elaborate fantasy for a staffer, but she supposed the premise made sense. Brent was into programming, after all, and the fantasy centered around computers.

Odd coincidence, however. This was the fantasy that made Ridley file a complaint.

“Hmph,” she grunted.

“What?” Scott asked.

“Nothing. I didn’t realize Brent was staff, is all. Derek and I did a fantasy with him, once.”

Scott tilted his head to look at her, mashing his face up even more. “Huh?”

“Yeah. A couple weeks ago. Maybe a month.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Did too. It was the fantasy that got me and Derek reported.”

Scott sat up and began to rifle through other piles of reports, irritated. “What the fuck, man? Are you sure it was him? Do you remember the date?”

She thought back and did her best to guess-timate. “Why is this a big deal?”

“Because there’s no fantasy on the books, is why. Which means someone’s been screwing around in the database even more than we thought.” He leaned sideways, and hollered into the hallway. “Thomas!”

Amanda cringed and reared back as Scott tossed things around, digging, shoving, trying to find something.

She clicked her tongue again when a photocopy of Derek’s list of codes, the one that had been taped to the wall, rode the top of a wave of paper in her direction. It wasn’t the complete version. Their photocopy had only those first three codes filled in, the ones Brent had given up so easily.

“See?” she told him. “That’s from the fantasy.”

“What? Where? Show me.”

She picked up the list and held it out. “It’s an earlier version, anyway. Only three of the codes are filled in. I figured out the pattern later and wrote them all in order.”

Scott snatched the paper from her, and immediately began to swear in such depth and variety, and at such great volume and length, that she raised her brows at him. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Do you remember the rest of the code?”

She looked at the first three codes, and remembered the first half was a list of states in the order they’d been ratified, starting with New Hampshire. The last half was an infamous computer game cheat code.

She wrote it all down for him, he stared at it for a few seconds, then leaned forward to rest his forehead on the edge of his laptop.

“What? What’s the matter with you?” she asked.

His voice was muffled from the way he was sitting. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been working on this? How many resources I’ve used, trying to parse that damned code?”

“Why? It was made up. Part of a fantasy.”

Scott leaned forward and began to type on his laptop. “No, it’s not. It’s passwords and answers to security questions. Oh, God. If this works… Cheat codes as passwords? Really? Mother-fu…”

He typed for a minute, paused to stare at the screen, then leaned back in his chair, sinking his fingers into his hair, and making fists. “You have got to be shitting me. You have got to be fucking kidding me. Thomas! Get in here!”

Thomas leaned in, smartphone still pressed to his ear. He made a ‘what the hell is the matter with you?’ face. Scott gestured at the laptop screen, then gave him two thumbs up.

Thomas’s shoulders sagged. Into the phone he said, “Hang tight. I’m on my way.”

Then he hung up, and Scott explained what happened. Next, he said, “That clinches it. There are three distinct users accessing DriveRate servers from Fantasy Heights.”

What?

Thomas looked as if the entire world had stomped his last nerve, but there was no swearing, no theatrics. He simply picked up the phone, dialed the resort, and asked for Jerod Hughes. “Stand down, Jerod. I think we got what we need. Pick up Derek and hold him. Then find Ridley and lock her ass in the holding cell until further notice.”

While Thomas set the receiver back down, Scott frowned at him. “Why go after Ridley?”

“Because she filed a complaint. She watched Derek interrogate Brent from an observation booth with a client, so she knew Derek was after those codes. And we need to find out who her client was.”