Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
Reese had lied to him. He didn’t know why. He wasn’t even entirely sure about what. But he just knew she had.
Her eyes opened a little too wide when she lied and a sort of cocky swagger sent her shoulders arching up, which is exactly what she had done in bed with him when he had asked her if she was leaving.
Derek nursed his tepid coffee, stretched his legs in front of him, and tried to focus on Nordstrom droning on and on in his ear.
It was Monday morning, nine A.M., and Reese was back in New York. Or so she said.
Derek felt cranky, on edge, and a little bit like he missed her. Sleeping on his couch alone last night while Claire slept in his bed had been a stark and lonely contrast to the night before, when he had slept with Reese snuggled up next to him, naked.
Neither one of them had mentioned going to the store for condoms again, but had simply gone to sleep after talking. Derek suspected that they both knew sex would be too much, too intimate, and that they might be facing regrets about Reese leaving if they took that step.
Not that he wasn’t facing regrets anyway, because he was.
And what they had done had been pretty damn intimate.
The way Reese’s mouth had wrapped around his cock, her tongue lapping him up…
Derek shifted in his chair and stuck his hand in his pocket. He was back to wearing a cheap suit this morning, his old gray one, and he had to admit he liked the new one better. He liked the look in Reese’s eye when she had caught sight of him. Lust. Heavy, wet, dripping, raging lust.
Christ. He shifted again.
“Are you listening to me?” Nordstrom said sharply, perched on the corner of his desk.
No. “Of course I am, sir.”
Special Agent Maddock, seated next to Derek, looked over at him curiously, his eyebrow quirking up in question. Derek shook his head a little and focused on Nordstrom, whose receding hairline was tinting a soft pink as his blood pressure shot up in anger.
“Then why the hell are you just staring at me? Can you get Markson to wear a wire or not?”
Derek knew the case was coming to this. He had delivered the documents to Nordstrom on Sunday and they had spent the better part of an hour this morning discussing the holes in the evidence.
Essentially, price-fixing was hinted at in the documents, which were various email transcripts and financial records of profits from the abnormally high-priced drugs in question.
But in order to prove their case, the Justice Department needed actual conversations between executives where they discussed slicing up the market share, deciding who would patent which drugs, and what each price would be.
The FBI, and Derek in particular, needed Markson to wear a wire anytime he was with other board members and hope he could coax admissions of guilt out of them.
And they especially needed him comfortable recording his coworkers before the big price-fixing meeting scheduled for two weeks down the road, in New Zealand, where the three companies in question would actually sit around a table and divvy up the market for the products in question.
“Markson is a skittish CW. It’s going to take some coaxing.” The chemist, who was also a products division executive, had made Derek nervous since day one when he had contacted the FBI on his own and claimed knowledge of illegal price-fixing.
In his fifteen years on the job, Derek had never seen that.
Witnesses don’t just stroll into the FBI field office and offer to bite the hand that feeds them.
It made him suspicious of Markson’s motives.
The man claimed he just wanted to do what was right, that the guilt of ripping off consumers in need of meds kept him up at night.
Derek had seen too much to avoid being a little bit cynical about Markson’s explanation.
But there was clearly illegal activity going on in Delco and Markson was their only in. He was the only way they had to get insider information and hopefully actual documented conversations between the executives making the price-fixing decisions.
“So coax him. Hold his damn hand for all I care, just get it done.” Nordstrom straightened his tie and dared Derek to defy him.
“Knight’s right,” Maddock said. “I’ve been there twice with him when he met with Markson and the guy is a loose cannon.”
Maddock was a nice guy, about five years younger than Derek, and always ready with a quick grin and a joke to defuse tension. The women around the office adored him, and the men all thought of him as a buddy, the kind of guy you want at your back.
Nordstrom was the only one unaffected by Maddock’s charming smile. “All the more reason to hurry. Knight, get an FD-473 ready. The minute the guy agrees, you can hand him the form and give him the recorder.”
Derek wasn’t sure that pressuring Markson was the way to go. “I don’t know. This guy is going to freak if we whip out an authorization form to carry a recorder on his body and then wire him up right on the spot. ”
It wasn’t the right thing to say. Nordstrom stood up and hovered over Derek. At six-three and two hundred and eighty pounds easy, he was old, cranky, and intimidating. Not to mention that prior to the FBI he’d been a marine.
“We don’t have time to dick around, Knight.
This meeting is taking place in two weeks and after that there won’t be another one until the next fiscal quarter.
I’ve got three agents on this case, and nothing happening.
We don’t have the goddamn budget for you to spend the next three months playing with yourself. ”
Well, when put like that.
Derek really didn’t know how he managed to piss Nordstrom off so regularly.
No one moved in the small airless room with government gray walls. As chairs squeaked and Nordstrom breathed hard, Derek was formulating a response, wishing Maddock or the other agent in the room, White, would rescue him.
They didn’t, but another agent popped his head in the door to Nordstrom’s office and said, “Reeder wants to see you, sir.”
Thank God.
Nordstrom started towards the door. “Get me something we can use, Knight. And don’t hang around my office all morning, I’m expecting someone at ten.”
Derek let out a sigh of relief as his boss left, and lifted his suit jacket a little to let his armpits air. He was sweating like a pig.
Maddock gave him a light clap on the shoulder.
“Hey, don’t worry about it, man. Nordstrom’s just got budget concerns and stuff that we don’t have to deal with.
You’ll be able to talk Markson into wearing a wire.
” He grinned and shot a look at White, a female agent who was as unaffected by Maddock’s charm as Nordstrom.
CJ White, a serious and quiet agent, always had her hair scraped back into a ponytail and her body covered in loose ill-fitting pants and sweaters. She never wore makeup or jewelry and looked like she could take down a hardened criminal just by piercing him with a cold stare.
For some inexplicable reason, Maddock seemed to pick on her, and Derek thought it was because she was the only woman under fifty who didn’t flirt with him. An ego blow for the charming Maddock.
“Well, if you can’t talk him into it, maybe White can do it. Come on, White, we’ll slap you in a dress and you can go come on to the guy. ”
Derek buried his face in his hand. Jesus. What the hell was Maddock doing? The guy wasn’t normally such an idiot.
He was about to reprimand him, when White spoke.
“I heard Markson was bisexual. So maybe we should send you, Maddock, since your only skill is flirting.”
Derek laughed as White left the room, a faint smile on her face. Maddock sat up straight, his mouth wide open. Then he scoffed and laughed along with Derek, but was obviously still annoyed.
“I think White has a thing for me, that’s why she’s such a bitch to me.”
Derek wasn’t about to feed that delusion. He said, “More like she thinks you’re a sexist asshole.”
Maddock sighed, gazing towards the door White had gone through. “Probably,” he agreed. “I don’t mean to be sexist. I need to work on that.”
“Agreed.”
They sat there for a minute, Derek’s mind wandering back to Reese. They had said good-bye Sunday morning, had exchanged phone numbers and she had left.
Just left. And he missed her. Her laugh, her feisty smile, her soft satin hair.
She hadn’t even suggested they keep in touch for any reason other than the case, and she hadn’t so much as mentioned ever seeing each other again.
It shouldn’t matter. It didn’t matter. It was two nights out of his life. She and her incredible legs had intruded into his job and personal life for less than two days, then popped back out. That’s all it was. A fun weekend.
Then why did he feel so damn depressed?
“I thought I understood women,” Maddock said into the brooding silence. “But it seems like there’s always one that turns everything you think you know upside down and makes you rethink everything you know about yourself.”
Maddock turned to him. “You know what I mean?”
Did he ever.