10. Theo
Theo
Dating A Ballerina
I ’ve kept a low profile the past few days while taking a look around town. I’m still getting my time in at the gym, but since I know Libby is working day shift, I go while she’s on shift and leave her alone for that one hour that I know she needs to clear her head.
I’ll be damned if I’m the reason she’s working on no sleep and no therapy time at the gym. She works a dangerous job, and if she’s jittery because her whole world is being tossed, she might get hurt. No chance in hell will I be the reason she gets hurt.
So I leave her be.
My levels of self-control rival even that of the boy who refused to speak for a man that offered food in exchange for a word.
I was starving, but I would not be dehumanized, I would not be treated like a dog.
I would not sit, stay, or beg for a bone, and performing for a meal wasn’t on my list of shit to do.
Even though I was really, really hungry.
Libby sent a text on Monday afternoon that tested every piece of willpower I possessed.
No doubt she reconstructed the business card that she tore to a billion pieces in the grocery store.
She felt the need to lash out once more and demand I stay away, because that’s who she is, isn’t it?
She needs to have the last say. She demanded I take my ass and relocate it to Canada.
She promised she would be visiting Drake again that night – she didn’t – and she reiterated that I should go fuck myself.
Far away from her.
I took her request to disappear literally and, in the process of my radio silence, I probably sent her to the brink of insanity.
She would have expected an argument. She would have expected something , but I act like I don’t open my messages thirty times a day, or like the fact she reached out doesn’t make me feel weird things in my gut.
She sees me, she sees my eyes, and she feels something.
She knows deep down that something is there, which is precisely why I remain a free man and not in jail awaiting my court date for assault or attempted abduction.
It’s why the police – other police – haven’t knocked on my door. And it’s why the Bishops haven’t been made aware of my presence in town yet.
When she remembers, she’ll know why I’m here. And when that day comes, the true test will be set. If she goes to them, I’ll know where her loyalties lie.
But for now, I do my research in my hotel room.
I work, I eat food delivered via room service, or better yet, the food that Olly brings to me.
He’s been a part of my world for so long that he knows my daily habits almost as well as I do.
He knows I prefer to eat healthy; he knows I want egg whites for breakfast, but that I’d rather buy a carton of eggs from the store and cook them myself.
There’s nothing that can happen to me in my adult life, not a single dollar amount earned, stolen, or won, that could beat the frugality out of me. I have money, but I do not waste it.
So while Olly cooks and serves me, I research Bishops.
Turns out Kane is getting married, and word on the street is that he’s head over heels in love with a blonde lawyer whose boss is married to Libby’s chief.
Connections, connections, connections. Jessica Lenaghan, according to her records, is an identical twin whose sister is a school teacher, and whose older brother is an EMT.
She’s been studying since she was straight out of high school – first in business school, then she made the move to law and became a paralegal while she worked on the rest of her degree.
Her license to practice is shiny and new, but her employment by the firm she works in is not.
In fact, she’s been there longer than her boss, the chief’s wife.
According to sources, Jessica is pregnant and expecting her and Kane’s first children – children, as in multiple – any day now. None of the three Lenaghan siblings are married yet, but they’re all comfortably shacked up with someone of the opposite sex.
Jessica’s bank accounts are about as squeaky clean as Libby’s, though Jess earns twice as much.
That doesn’t mean it’s dirty – being a lawyer is good money, and her employer has swimming pools full of green bills.
Jessica’s shopping habits, before the past year, tended toward designer label.
Not often, considering she was merely a paralegal on a paralegal salary, but when she did spend money, the items came with exclusive labels.
She’d rather buy one pair of Louboutin than a hundred pairs from Walmart.
Again, that doesn’t indicate dirty; one pair of fancy shoes a year isn’t enough to raise flags.
It makes me smile when I find Griffin Industries charges on her card; she’d rather buy a brand-new Griffin laptop and phone over anything else on the market, which means my bank swells with her cash, for devices that cost a grand to manufacture, but are sold for five times that.
Thanks for your money, Bishop.
I take a fast glance at her siblings’ bank accounts, but there’s not a whole lot to see. They’re both sensible spenders, the guy more than the girl. He looks like he’s saving his pennies; no bought lunches, no fancy dinners, no extravagant jewelry purchases – bar one.
There will be another Lenaghan wedding soon.
The sister, though not a big spender, has a thing for meatball subs and shares her sister’s enjoyment for shoes.
Maybe it’s a twin thing.
I’ve tried, and moderately succeeded, in checking out Kane Bishop’s personal accounts – what I can see looks reasonably clean. Which implies I haven’t seen much of anything that’s truly happening beneath the surface. He hides his data almost as well as I do, so what I pull up looks pretty standard.
Shoes; his girl borrows his credit card . Meals, gas, and lately, baby store purchases.
I refuse to let my mind wander to the fact that those babies share my blood. If I were a more sentimental man, I would acknowledge they’re my nieces or nephews. I could possibly even share a small smile for the man that’ll soon become a father.
I wouldn’t know what that feels like, nor would I know what having a father feels like. Kane knows both, and my bitterness at what he has and what I didn’t builds the longer I search his files.
Jay’s accounts are more protected than Kane’s, which is kind of surprising.
I always assumed the oldest was the smarter one, the business-minded, while the youngest is the hotdog.
Their online presence would indicate that much.
But maybe Jay’s skill is putting on one front, while inside, he’s a machine with a computer-like brain.
Or maybe he knows someone with a computer-like brain.
Whatever it is, I’ll be watching both closely, and I won’t let Jay’s constant need to grin lull me into a sense of safety.
I have a company to run back home, an empire to maintain, walls to hold up to keep the trojans away, and no one besides Annaliese knows I’m not there.
My assistant might look a little… I guess high-maintenance and simple .
But she knows how to do her job, she knows how to guard my back in business, she has a spine no one would suspect, and a streak of loyalty that comforts me while I’m away from my office.
She continues doing her thing in my absence, sending me hourly updates, and I pass half a week in a small town, living in a hotel, living out of bags, and watching certain residents like my life depends on it.
My life does depend on it.
Wednesday comes and goes, and when my email dings at 11:58pm with the drawings from the door engineer, I stare at my screen and grin.
That motherfucker worked around the clock to make sure he delivered.
I check the drawings the minute they arrive, I make sure they at least look correct, though I can’t know for sure unless I re-calculate the whole job from scratch, and when it passes my inspection, I forward them to another engineer – because I do nothing without double-checking the numbers.
I send the final payment to Tasker, ask my other guy to take a look and make sure it’s all perfect, and then I send an email to my clients in Hong Kong to let them know their project is on time and almost ready for delivery.
My entire job can be done electronically, and because of how fucking perfect my own tech is, I can watch the Bishops and the cops, keep an extra eye on Libby, and watch the gym and little Frankston all at the same time.
I do all of my work while sipping my morning coffee, half paying attention to the news on the TV across the room.
This town is so small, it barely rates ten minutes of news, so the broadcasters split their thirty-minute segment into local and national.
The locals get the first ten minutes – the Girl Scouts are at it again, the local swim team made the state finals, the high school dance is coming, and the fighters are running a big brother program to help troubled youth.
But when the anchor makes way to national news, the Griffin Industries logo flashes on screen, and the guy who took a swing at my intellect last week cries about the shares he spent his life savings on plummeting in value.
“ How’d he know ?” he whines. “ How could he have known prices would collapse ?”