Evening Storm (6 page)

“Bill me,” Ryan said distantly from the opposite side of the workroom. He was studying the bolts of fabric and half-finished pieces waiting on worktables and mannequins.

Daria's eyebrows rose, but she seemed to take it in stride. She changed back into her simple sundress, and waited while Simone folded her selection into tissue and then into a shopping bag. “Do you have a stylist I could contact when I bring out new collections?” Simone said.

“I should, but I haven't been somebody long enough to get organized about these appearances. What I do have is a publicist who suggested it might be a good idea to be seen with Ryan Hamilton,” she said, flicking a glance at Ryan, still occupied with fabric at the opposite end of the room. “He seems nice enough. Does he come here often?”

“Not often,” Simone said. It wouldn't do for Daria to think she was the latest in a long line of conquests Ryan had brought to his favorite lingerie shop. And she wasn't. She was only the second. But it was typical of the trouble with Ryan, who would bring woman after woman to her atelier.

“You have an admirer,” Daria said, lifting her hand to the petals. “It's gorgeous. Matches your eyes.”

“Thank you,” Simone said.

The workroom door swung open to admit Lorrie, the cordless phone in her hand. “For you,” she said.

It was unusual for Lorrie to not recognize a priority client. “Take a message, please,” Simone said.

“It's Stéphane.”

But the call's timing confirmed her suspicions about who sent the orchid—Stéphane Roussel, a fellow émigré from France's unfriendly entrepreneurial business environment, her brother's school friend, her on-again, off-again lover. He'd helped arrange financing for Irresistible, and they were currently off-again as lovers, but always on as friends. “Bonjour,” she said, automatically switching to French.

“Bonjour,” he replied, his voice lazy, amused.

“Thank you very much for the orchid,” she said, still in French. “It's gorgeous.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about, chérie,” he replied.

That was Stéphane to a T, playing the superficial game of love. “Stéphane, may I call you back? I'm a little busy at the moment.”

“Of course. Look at your calendar first. We're overdue for dinner,” he said. His lazy, rich voice managed to convey dinner and all the after-dinner possibilities they'd enjoyed previously.

“I will. Au revoir,” she said, then disconnected the call and set the phone down. Irritation flashed along her nerves. She was tired of hints and subtlety, at guessing games and secrets and stories. “My apologies,” she said to Daria.

“A friend from home?” The question came not from Daria but from Ryan, whose smile didn't quite mask the razor-sharp look in his eyes.

“Yes,” she said. Humming under the question was the one he'd asked her the last time they saw each other.
What do I have to do to get you to speak French to me?
Ryan would have heard the general tone of the conversation, the male voice, the casual familiarity in the language he didn't speak. But he didn't need to be fluent in French to hear all the layers in Stéphane's invitation. Men the world over spoke the same language of possession and intimacy with voices and looks and touches. Stéphane was tactile, loved to touch and stroke and caress. God help her if Ryan saw them together, even when they weren't on-again.

Daria was watching the two of them in the drawn-out silence. “Ryan, I need to call my agent about an interview tonight. I'll meet you downstairs?”

“If you'd like you can take the side door leading to the street and avoid the showroom. Please do come back and see me again,” Simone said. In her peripheral vision she watched Ryan stroll towards her, his jaw set.

“I will,” Daria said. “Thanks so much. Say hello to your brother for me.”

She waited until the door closed behind Daria before rounding on Ryan. “Possessively inquiring into my personal conversations is rather curious, given that you just bought six hundred dollars of lingerie for her.”

He gave a dismissive snort, as if the money, and the relationship, were no object at all. Simone felt a flare of indignation for a fellow woman. “So you just won't for me?” Ryan said.

“Why would I? It's not your native language, or your second language. I'm here to sell you intimate apparel, not seduce you, or be seduced by you. You never come here alone. You come with other women.” She should have sounded indignant, but instead she sounded pained. Hurt. She had no right to sound that way, either.

“I came alone last time,” he said.

She was having none of his sophistry. “To brag of your conquest.”

“You think that's why I came?” he said, after a long, tense moment.

“I can't answer that question,” she said, clinging to her temper. “From minute to minute, you're two different men, one who appears in my showroom with women to dress for his pleasure, and another who shows up afterward, to tell me a story,” she said, choosing to ignore the flashes of another man, quiet, honest, self-deprecating.

In deference to the busy showroom on the other side of the swinging red door, they were speaking in hushed undertones, the hard lines of consonants and the occasional sharp word for emphasis. Ryan stepped close, his breath raising the hairs on her cheek. “Maybe you'll have a story to tell next time.”

Her redhead's temper flared, breathing hot earth lust into her core. “We could take turns. Would you like that? We'll meet on the stoop. I'll touch you. Tease you. Perhaps . . . here,” she said, and slipped her hand under his untucked shirt. Her hand came to rest on his hip bone, and she stroked her thumb along the crest of his hip, just above his waistband. Forbidden territory, an impulse she should deny, but she and Ryan didn't just have chemistry. Their responses were more along the lines of nuclear fusion.

His body tensed, his abdominals quivering under her touch. “He's a very good lover. I'd tell you a story to fever your dreams. In French. Would you like that?”

“No.”

Blunt. The shark, wolf, predator was back. “Two can play your game,” she murmured, and traced the arc of his hip bone one more time. Satisfied, Simone stepped back, smoothed down her skirt. “Think carefully before you show up on my doorstep again. May I carry this downstairs for you, sir?”

“I've got it,” Ryan said.

Simone held the bag out to him as she would with any other customer, steeling herself not to react when his fingers brushed against hers during the exchange. The touch, laden with longing, weighed far more than the bag of lingerie.

First there was the gala at MoMA: Gowns, tuxedoes, some patrons dressed in white waistcoats and white tie, paparazzi leaning over the barricades calling names, begging for a shot. There was dinner, drinking, networking. He had Daria Russell on his arm, so everyone wanted to talk to him, take his picture. Perfect. Adopt the lips-parted, vacant-eyed, zombie-pleasant smile of the famous actor preceding them up the red carpet.

Then there was the after-gala party, more drinking, recreational drugs done in the club's bathrooms.

Now they were at the after-after-party. His head pounding, his stomach churning, Ryan looked around while two thoughts warred in his brain: he wished he could pinpoint the moment when his pursuit of success turned into a skid down a slippery slope to the bottom, and how much Simone would hate the current scene.

Daria, however, seemed remarkably sanguine about it, the drugs, the music, the noise, studying the people in the room with a private, amused smile playing about her lips. Ryan straightened his shoulders. Time to set his harebrained, stupid-ass plan in motion and do what the SEC and the FBI hadn't been able to do for a decade: prove MacCarren was a shell for a massive Ponzi scheme.

He didn't know more than a quarter of the people crammed into Charles MacCarren's apartment in Battery Park City. One of the second-year associates at MacCarren had taken over the sound system and had massive headphones on as he nodded to the beat and curated a steady stream of angry rap that sent bile crawling up Ryan's throat. He pulled the antacids from his pocket and chewed two. His stomach, filled with only a few bites of pan-seared Arctic char and a chocolate mousse that was sure-as-shit a mistake, settled a little, but the Tums wouldn't do anything to slow his racing heart.

Looking out over the living room from the kitchen, he revised his estimate downward. He didn't know a tenth of them. The MacCarren employees not yet able to buy a table at the Met gala wore button-downs over jeans and covetous expressions as they eyed Ryan in his tux with his “date.” They masked their awe by looking around the apartment to see what the standard was for apartment, furniture, view, and decorating, not understanding that Charles came from family money, the kind of wealth managers protected for future generations. Charles had Degas on the wall, a couple of Picasso's sketches, the obligatory hand-me-down painting of the great-great-great-grandfather MacCarren, who started the family on the road to superwealth, an Audi R8 and a motorcycle in the garage downstairs, and he'd just bought the house next to his family's home in the Hamptons for twenty million dollars. Rumor was he intended to tear it down and build a temple to modern architecture. That was the standard these days. Forget that bullshit about buying a piece of history. Flaunt your wealth by bulldozing history to the fucking ground and building a monument to yourself.

Ryan's mother was a teacher. His father sold plumbing supplies before he died. If his dad could see this party, he'd be speechless with shock. There were the requisite women, some from the firm, some girlfriends who'd brought their friends, and another set who were quite clearly “hired” to “entertain.” Because this was an equal opportunity era, there were also some men from the same occupational class, some chatting up the women, others chatting up men.

Daria stopped beside him, and sipped from her glass of champagne. “This is interesting,” she said. She'd raised her voice to be heard over the music, but her tone, similar to the one his mother used when one of the kids in her class had done something completely outside the social order, came through loud and clear.

“Sorry,” he said.

“No, it's fine,” she said without taking her gaze from the crowd. “If I'm asked to be in the sequel to the
Wolf of Wall Street
, I'll be set for research.”

He laughed. “Are they making one?”

“It made over three hundred million dollars,” she said pragmatically. “I'm sure the studio's considering it.”

“Greed never gets old, never goes out of style,” he said.

The crowd parted for a moment as Charles, the managing director of MacCarren, his father's right-hand man and enforcer, made his way through the crowd, heading straight for Ryan. Charles extended his hand, most people too cowed to actually say hello or strike up a conversation. He held out his hand to Ryan, giving him a hearty handshake, but Ryan knew better than to think Charles had crossed the room for him. Charles didn't cross a room for anyone, but Ryan was here with Daria Russell, still in the gown from the gala, and looking every inch the movie star. The way Charles transformed from an arrogant investment shark into a starstruck, posturing teenager was almost enough to make him laugh.

He introduced Charles to Daria, and stayed on the sidelines while Charles told her which performances he loved, and how she smoked her Oscar competition. Typical male chest-beating. Ryan knew that she felt her best work was in the theater, that she'd given performances to half-empty off-Broadway theaters that blew any film work she'd done straight out of the water. But she played the movie star well. Now it was his turn to play a role. This was why he'd brought Daria. Supermodels in New York were a dime a dozen, but an Oscar-winning actress? That would get Charles's attention.

“Can I have a minute?” he asked when the conversation lagged. “Your office?”

Charles couldn't turn him down without looking like an ass in front of Daria. “Sure,” he said.

He led Ryan down the hallway to the office Ryan had scoped out on a bathroom run earlier in the night, and evicted a couple with a single jerk of his head. The kid worked for one of Ryan's traders, and his face went white with terror when he saw Charles.
Don't worry
, Ryan thought.
You've got bigger problems than getting caught with a hooker's hand down your pants in the managing director's home office. If this goes according to plan, you're not going to have a job.

When the door closed behind the kid and his “date,” Ryan took a deep breath and reached in his pocket to thumb on the microrecorder. “I know what you guys are doing.”

Charles's expression didn't change. “You're going to have to be more specific.”

“The Ponzi scheme. I know what you're doing. I know how it works. I know the accounts, how the money flows, how you're covering it all up.”

Silence.

“You want me to lay out your business for you?” He went on to describe the accounts, giving amounts, transaction histories. It was such a sweet, tight insider scam. The father, Don, started the scheme in the eighties, building the business with his secrecy and his cache and his aura of invincibility, while Charles, the eldest son, the new man with new ideas, streamlined and improved the technology and accounting. “I found the hidden accounts no one but you used for transactions. The accounting files, the real ones, not the bullshit mock-ups for investors and the SEC. You were smart. You skipped the little investors and went right for the whales. Foundations. Rich people who are unlikely to need the money to buy a house, unless they decide to buy a Van Gogh or something. I brought Daria Russell to this party. I can bring you Hollywood money.”

This time he let the silence stretch. His heart was racing, one beat indistinguishable from the other. He thanked God he'd never been a sweater. Charles was sweating, though. One single bead trickled down his temple.

“Look, I'm not going to screw you. I want in. I work for what I make. I can get more like her. I can help you hide it. You need fresh money, new blood, or this all falls apart.”

At that Charles's eyes brightened just a little, and Ryan knew he had him, but Daria appeared in the doorway. Charles gave not a hint of acknowledgement, and Ryan thought of the recording device in his pocket, whirring away to capture nothing but his own windbag self.

“Enjoy yourselves,” Charles said to Daria when he reached the door, then he disappeared back down the hall.

“Are you all right?” Daria asked.

Ryan thumbed off the recorder. “Why? Don't I look all right?”

“I've seen deer in headlights who look less terrified than you.”

“It's that bad?”

“No. On the surface, you look like everyone else at this party. I'm pretty good at looking underneath. Actors lie for a living. To stay sane you either believe everyone's fiction, or you learn to pick out the liars at twenty paces.”

“And you pick out the liars.”

She crossed the room, body swaying in the column of cream fabric, and stopped in front of him. He could smell good whiskey on her breath, see the sheen of expensive spa care on her shoulders and the upper curves of her breasts. “Truth is the only thing that matters. Telling it, hearing it, living it.”

Unbidden, an image of Simone in her jeans and a shirt open to reveal her throat rose in his mind. “Got any tricks for living the truth?” he asked.

Her lips curved, then she tipped her mouth up to his and kissed him.

The woman he wanted to try that particular trick with wasn't the woman standing in front of him. “Let's don't and tell everyone we did,” he said.

She turned and locked the door. “Let's do and tell everyone we didn't,” she said. Her palm glided along the fabric of his cummerbund, unconsciously mirroring Simone's challenge. Every straight man at the party would give his bonus check to have Daria's hand on his hip, and all Ryan could think of was how Simone had touched him the same way, purposefully, with intent, knowing exactly what she was doing, how it would affect him.

You can't have her. Focus on the woman at hand, on the task at hand.
His breath shallowed as Daria kept her eyes on his face and worked her hand into the layers of clothing at his waist. He cupped her nape with his palm, and massaged until her shoulders slumped with pleasure. “Let's do whatever we goddamn feel like and tell everyone to fuck off.”

***

Even when he got called out of bed to meet a skittish whistleblower, Agent Logan looked like nothing would faze him. Dressed in jeans, sneakers, and an NYU T-shirt, he leaned against an SUV in the parking garage off Seventh Avenue and held a cup of street vendor coffee. Ryan had sent the audio file from the meeting to Logan's cell and gotten a call five minutes later.

“It's four in the morning,” Ryan said. He was so tired his eyes burned, and his skin had a grimy, sleep-deprived feel. “You have some kind of special alert for my emails?”

“Yes,” Logan said, completely serious. He sipped from the coffee and studied Ryan, his blue eyes calm but obviously searching for signs of drugs or liquor.

“I'm sober,” Ryan said resignedly. “I wish I wasn't, but I am. Do you have any idea how difficult it is not to get drunk in front of people who expect me to get drunk?”

“You blew it,” the Jock said, but the creases lining the right side of his face ruined the in-your-face tone. He wore tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt from a weight lifting competition. Ryan knew the type: never satisfied, never secure. Everything was a dick-measuring contest. “You got us jack.”

“I didn't fucking blow it,” Ryan snapped. “That's how they are. You think this is going to run like a movie? We'll get the scene where the main character explains everything and the sidekick nods along? Not going to happen. They've been investigated by the SEC too many times, and Don's paranoid as fuck. Charles doesn't do anything without asking his father first. They'll talk on their own schedule, in a place he feels safe.” Jesus. Would they make him strip to prove he wasn't wearing a wire? It almost made him laugh.

“You think this is fucking funny?” the Jock said.

Ryan dug the travel pack of Tums out of his tuxedo pocket and chewed two. The agents and the guys running MacCarren weren't all that different. Testosterone-driven, competitive, arrogant, all about winning, all about the thrill of the kill, not the chase. He used to love the chase, but somewhere, somehow, his soul had become about the kill. “No. I think this is a fucking tragedy for everyone involved. You included.”

The Jock bristled. Without looking at him, Logan held up a hand, and his partner shut his mouth. “What do you think will happen next?”

If he'd gotten anyone but Logan the day he'd walked into the FBI office, this would have gone nowhere. He would have quit MacCarren, found another job, and kept his mouth shut when the house of cards came tumbling down. But Logan somehow managed to frame telling the truth and seeking justice as this thing that mattered more than anything else in the world, all without saying a word. “I'm sorry about your wife's grandmother,” Ryan said, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “How's she doing?”

“She's devastated,” Logan said in his low rumble. Despite his uninflected tone, Ryan got the impression Logan was just as devastated. Shared grief. He tried to remember the last time he'd been close enough to a woman to share her grief. “Thanks for asking. What happens next?”

“Assuming some big scary guy from Jersey isn't waiting for me in my apartment with a semiautomatic, they'll think about what I said. What I know. They'll talk to me somewhere else. Somewhere quiet they think they're safe. Not the offices. Not a party like that one. Too many listening ears. The place was crawling with first- and second-year associates.”

“The MacCarrens are a flight risk,” the Jock said.

Ryan replied even as Logan was shaking his head to disagree. “They're not a flight risk. Charles has kids in private school, and his sister, Arden, runs the MacCarren Foundation. Charles coaches his son's little league team. They're not going anywhere because they don't believe they'll get caught.” He took a deep breath and shook the Tums bottle. His stomach was sloshing around in his chest. “Ever tried Zantac? These fucking things aren't working.”

“What about you?” the Jock said suspiciously. “On the tape you said you want in.”