Just One Night, Part 2: Exposed (4 page)

CHAPTER
4

A
S I STAND
there in my empty office, frustrated and unsatisfied. I wonder, should I have told him? What if I had? Would he have rescued me?

I break out into a bitter laugh. This isn’t a fairy tale. Robert can’t get on his white horse and permanently seal Dave’s lips. I walk around my desk and fall into my seat. The quiet of the room is taunting me, reminding me that I can’t even risk a scream.

I reach for my appointment calendar and flip through the pages. I’ve always been a good planner. I still believe that if given time, I can outsmart Dave. I can get out. But I can’t risk Robert confronting him, thereby giving Dave more ammunition for his plot. I’ll figure out why Dave wants to hold on to me and how he discovered my secrets. . . .

. . . And then I’ll discover his.

I’ll discover his secrets and I’ll gag him with them. I’ll find his lies and weave them into a rope to bind his hands and feet. I’ll make him every bit as helpless as he thinks I am now.

You betrayed him first.

It’s the voice of the little angel on my shoulder. She’s feeling neglected lately. And why should I start listening to her again? She wants me to stay where I am and ponder things back into stasis. My devil is more proactive.

For instance, right now my devil reminds me to find out how Dave got to the marina.

He didn’t drive there and there was simply no way Dave would use public transportation. Yesterday had started with him saying he had an early-morning meeting. But what if he didn’t? What if he had waited in someone else’s car, parked discreetly on the street, just waiting to follow me?

A cab? No, probably not. Los Angeles is not New York, where the yellow cabs stream through the city streets like so many migrating salmon. In LA cabs of any color stand out, and if one had been parked on my street as I pulled out of my driveway, I would have noticed.

So someone had driven him. One of his coworkers or friends? But Dave would not have allowed himself to be humiliated in front of someone whose opinion he cared about. A private detective? Could Dave have had a professional follow me?

I look down at my appointment calendar again. I have a meeting with my team in forty-five minutes. I idly read the names of those who are reporting to me for this project: Taci, Dameon, Nin, Asha. . . .

Asha.

The buzzer for my intercom goes off and Barbara’s voice breathes through the speakers, letting me know that the long list of menial tasks I heaped upon her this morning have been attended to.

“Come into my office, please,” I say and then sit back as the door opens and she tentatively approaches my desk.

Barbara has been my assistant for as long as I’ve been here. Before that she was the assistant to a man who worked here as a consultant for ten years. She claims to be content with her quiet place in the corporate world, saving her energy for her husband and children at home. I’ve overheard her waxing poetic about the joys of having free time and a rich family life. I don’t understand her enthusiasm. It’s within the unstructured mess that qualifies as my free time that I stumble and thoughtlessly submit to whims that will later come back to haunt me. I love my parents, but my family life has been rich only in tragedy and denial. Barbara’s view of the world is as foreign to me as that of a tribesman in the Brazilian rain forest. But while I may not be able to relate to her, I certainly respect her strengths, one of them being her keen powers of observation.

“Did Asha come to work yesterday?”

“Yes,” Barbara says with a definitive nod.

Ah, she did. So she couldn’t have been the one to ferry Dave about. I sigh and place my chin in my hand. “All right, my team will be meeting in here at the end of the hour. Just hold my calls until it’s over.”

Barbara nods again and starts to turn before stopping. “Does it matter that Asha showed up late?”

I lift my head. “Excuse me?”

“She wasn’t here in the morning. Apparently she had some kind of appointment. But she was here by noon, and I think she stayed late.”

“Noon,” I repeat.

“Is that important?”

As important as the timing of Judas’s departure from the Last Supper.

I sit back, measure the likelihood of the duplicity. “Two days ago, Dave called the office . . . he was planning a surprise party—”

“Oh, did that go well?” Barbara asks hopefully. “He called me but I couldn’t think of which of our colleagues to recommend as guests, since you really tend to keep your personal and professional lives separate.”

I wince at that. “Why did you tell him to invite Asha?” I ask.

Barbara gives me a funny look. “I told him no such thing. Asha came up to my desk just as I was hanging up. She had sent me some report that she wanted me to print out and have on your desk for the next morning. She asked me who had been on the phone and I told her. That’s all.”

“That’s all? She didn’t talk to him? He didn’t invite her to the party?”

“Not that I know of . . .” Barbara’s voice trails off. The rapid blinking of her eyes gives away her nervousness. “I did tell her about the party . . . and I mentioned that it was a surprise party. She didn’t spill the secret ahead of time, did she? I guess I shouldn’t have told her about it at all but it was such a grand romantic gesture . . . and Ma Poulette is supposed to be a fabulous restaurant. I just had to talk to
someone
about it. Did I make a mistake? If so I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”

I hold up my hand to stop her. “Barbara, you didn’t do anything that merits an apology.” And I’m beginning to suspect that what Asha has done is so extreme that all the apologies in the world won’t make a damn bit of difference.

“Let Asha know that I need to see her.”

“Before the meeting?”

“Now.”

A few minutes later Asha walks in, all grace and conceit. She’s been expecting my summons and it’s her anticipation that gives her away.

I stand at my desk and gesture to a chair. Carefully she takes it, her eyes scanning the room, looking for something she apparently isn’t finding.

“Did you hear I was leaving?” I ask.

Her mouth twitches, the slightest giveaway of the smile she’s suppressing. “I’ve heard nothing. Are you?”

I reclaim my seat, lace my fingers together. “So Dave didn’t tell you?”

Ah, there it is, a flash of worry. “Dave . . . your fiancé? Why would Dave tell me anything? I barely know him.”

“But you knew him enough to get him to invite you to our engagement party.”

She shrugs, suddenly bored. “Only because he called the office to see if there was anyone from here he should be inviting. I told him he should invite me. That was the first time I’ve ever spoken to him.” She leans forward; her dark eyes are pools of mystery and cynicism. “Are you leaving, Kasie?”

“He called the office,” I say, refusing to allow her to drive the conversation. “Did he call you specifically?”

“No, he called your assistant,” she says, now clearly exasperated. “Why does any of this matter? Have you been asked to leave or not?”

I smile. Asha’s off her game. Today she’s more impatient than devious. “I never said anyone
asked
me to leave. Why on earth would you come to that conclusion?”

She hesitates; her error was a stupid one. Unworthy of her. I watch as she gathers her thoughts, calms her mind, and draws herself up. “You would never leave of your own free will,” she says simply. “If you’re leaving, it’s because you’ve been asked to.”

“I’m good at my job, Asha. You acknowledged as much the other night. So again, why would I be asked to leave?”

Again a shrug, but this one more practiced. She’s thinking, perhaps wondering how far she can backpedal before I have her crashing into a brick wall. “Politics are funny” is the phrase she settles on. “Sometimes people . . . perfectly competent workers, are let go because they don’t fit within the structure as well as it was originally presumed they would. But I’m just speculating, Kasie. You’re the one who suggested you were leaving.”

“Did I suggest that?” I ask. I keep the sarcasm light, almost playful. “And here I thought I just asked a question,” I say with a smile. “I’m more than a competent worker, but let’s not spend time debating things we both know. In fact . . . now that I think about it, there’s a lot of things we both know, aren’t there?”

“I’m not following.”

“Well, let’s see.” I get up from my seat again. My anger is intense, but I like the way it feels. I like the way I’m able to give it shape, form it into a weapon of torture. It’s a slow torture, delicate and feminine . . . it has artistry. I imagine myself holding a pretty little scalpel and rubbing it gently against Asha’s throat. “We both know you shouldn’t have been at that party unless of course you came with someone else. I saw you hanging out with Mr. Freeland. Was he your date? Your way in?”

“Did I give Freeland my affection in exchange for a party invitation? No,” she says, and now it’s her turn to smile. “I don’t mix sex and commerce. Do you, Kasie?”

I stopped. This is more audacity than I expected, even from her. “Are you asking me if I’m a prostitute?”

Asha giggles. It’s a surprisingly appealing sound, almost seductive in it’s daintiness. “Don’t be silly,” she says. “You’re an honorable woman. You wear a rather expensive engagement ring to prove it.”

I glance down at the ring. It squeezes too tightly.

“Besides,” she continues, “prostitutes have sex for profit. Not you. Although after you started dating Dave, you did get a very profitable position here—”

“He got me an interview. I got the job.”

“And then you also got us a very profitable account, didn’t you?” Asha asks sweetly. Her voice is the spoonful of syrup used to mask the bitterness of a crushed pill. “You got that all by yourself. No help from Dave at all. Mr. Dade just handed it to you.”

I don’t answer. Instead I wait, to see how far she’ll push. Is her hatred enough to make her careless? Has she been spying on me, even before that day on the boat? Or is this all presumptions and speculations?

“What did you tell Tom Love?” she asks. “That you met Mr. Dade in the security line at the airport before flying home?”

“Yes,” I say. I have my back to the wall while she looks up at me from the chair I ushered her into. This is my office. I’m in the position of strength here. But the dynamic is unstable.

“It’s funny, because I’ve never gotten into a conversation with anyone I didn’t know while in those security lines. Everyone’s so focused on getting their keys out of their pockets, their watches unstrapped from their wrists, it’s not really a let’s-get-to-know-each-other kind of place, is it?”

“For every rule there are exceptions.”

“True,” Asha agrees with a nod. “And for every crime there is a criminal. When Mr. Dade called to tell Tom he wanted consultant Kasie Fitzgerald to head a team to help him prepare his company for a public offering, he had a different story of your first meeting. He said that the two of you had spoken at a blackjack table.”

I raise my chin as if the gesture could increase my height. I need to be above this, but I don’t manage it. Her words cut as they were meant to. Tom never told me that my tale contradicted the true story he had apparently already gotten from Robert.

What else had Robert told him? Had he told Tom that we had ended up in his room? No, he wouldn’t have shared any of those secrets. For a brief moment my mind betrays me, bringing me back to that night, forcing upon me the recalled feeling of when the man I only knew as Mr. Dade had taken a scotch-soaked ice cube, briefly touched it to my clitoris, and then licked the liquor off me with the flick of his tongue. Images of his hands on my hips, his head in my lap as I grabbed the back of my chair, my skirt up around my waist . . . I had never done anything like that before.

I was paying for that now.

I could try to convince Asha that Robert is the liar. I could tell her that he had made up a false tale of how we met to insinuate things that never happened, as some men are apt to do.

But I can’t do that. I can’t load my shame onto Robert’s shoulders. Yet the price of the truth exceeds my means.

“I didn’t feel the need to tell my boss that I occasionally dabble in gambling,” I say, hoping the excuse doesn’t sound as lame to her as it does to me. “Some people don’t approve.”

“Tom Love approves of anything that brings him business, and your time in Vegas definitely did that.”

“Asha, where were you yesterday morning?”

“I was in a car,” she says, leaning back in her chair. “With your fiancé.”

And now I see that I’ve approached this all wrong. I had assumed she wouldn’t want me to think of her as a snoop, as someone so desperate to undermine me she would scurry after me, looking for bread crumbs, clues that could lead her to greater sins. But I’m the only one here who cares what people think. I’m the only one looking to hide my flaws with layers of icing. Asha cares only about power.

And that one fact gives her all the power in the world.

Her lips spread into a Cheshire grin. “Do you think I fucked him? Dave, that is. Would that upset you? Or would it just even the playing field?”