Chapter 41
Chapter
Forty-One
After Kate left, Thomas stared at the elevator doors.
It’s not your fault.
He drank the rest of his whiskey in a long glug, ignoring the flash burn of alcohol. Yagi appeared, like a ghost, his expression unruffled and unemotional. Considering Thomas’s conversation with Kate, he knew his own expression was probably the exact opposite. He felt like a big, raw wound.
Why did they have to bring up Elizabeth?
“Interesting press conference,” Yagi said mildly.
“That’s one word for it.”
“That sound byte about ‘banging the boss’ is going to be picked up nationally,” Yagi added. “If Victor Klauss isn’t under a rock, he’s going to see Kate’s face on every news media outlet available. Then, it’ll just be a matter of waiting for him to strike.”
“We’re going to need to prepare for that. Put extra guards on Kate. Subtle ones,” Thomas said. “She’s too observant, and if she sees security around, God knows what she’ll do.”
“The mind boggles,” Yagi agreed. “She’s very…unpredictable. But that’s not what’s upsetting you, I take it.”
Thomas put the glass down on the bar. “That reporter was prepped. You said it yourself. Our investigator’s paid a lot of money to do things like break a police seal. So that means either he sold that information to the news station—”
“He wouldn’t.” Yagi’s voice rang definitively. “I have a contract with him.”
A demon P.I.? No wonder the guy got information no one else seemed able to. “Then there’s only one other person who would’ve leaked it.”
Someone with a grudge, he thought, fury building. Someone who didn’t like Kate and who would love to see her embarrassed, possibly even fired.
Someone who happened to have called in sick.
Thomas picked up his phone.
“Hello?” Ginny answered, sounded chipper.
“You’re not in the office,” he said without preamble. “You missed the press conference.”
“Oh, I figured it was going to be so crowded and stressful, I’d work from my condo today,” Ginny said with a hint of a smirk in her voice. “But I caught some of it on the news. Kate surely did make an ass of herself, didn’t she?”
“I didn’t put Kate’s name on the press release,” Thomas said. “It just said my assistant. That reporter had done research. It was as if she’d gotten the private investigator’s write-up.”
“Well, you know those reporters. Nosy, all of them,” Ginny said with forced cheer, her voice speeding up. “I’ll bet she paid off somebody in the mail room or something for the information. There’s this one guy I think—”
“Do you really think you can bullshit me on this?” Acid burned in his chest. He’d felt he owed so much to Elizabeth, including taking care of her little sister.
He now felt the debt was more than paid.
Ginny must have sensed his resolve. “Thomas, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I didn’t say anything! I swear!”
“You’re a shitty liar. Yes, the reporters would’ve brought up Elizabeth,” Thomas said, over her spluttering protests.
“Everybody thinks Elizabeth died of cancer. Everyone knows I haven’t hired a secretary since her death.
But the reporter wouldn’t have drawn on the suspicion that I was involved with Kate without some help. ”
“So you are involved with Kate!” Ginny accused, trying to shift the direction of the conversation. Trying to put him on the defensive.
It was his own fault for letting it go for so long. His guilt, his promise to Elizabeth. Wanting to ignore the stress of her and the confrontations as he focused on his own problems. If he couldn’t handle this, how could he handle the hard thing to come?
She was more than a distraction. She was a liability he couldn’t afford.
“Ginny, you’ve crossed the line and then some.” He was too exhausted to even yell at her. “This is it. I already told you, if you’ve got a problem with my hiring Kate, you don’t have to come into the office. Now I’m telling you: you can’t come in anymore. You are officially fired.”
“You can’t fire me!” Ginny sounded scandalized. “You promised Elizabeth—”
“I promised Elizabeth I’d take care of you,” Thomas corrected. “I can take care of you and your bills and your bullshit from three thousand miles away. Be grateful I’m doing that much, or you’ll lose that, too.”
“Three thousand miles?” she repeated, aghast. “You’re…you’re getting rid of me?”
“I’m sending you back to North Carolina. You won’t starve and you won’t be homeless. But I am tired of your fucking around, Ginny.”
Ginny was silent—for all of about two seconds. “You don’t mean that.”
“I promise, I do,” he said, feeling numb. “Don’t test me. And don’t make me tell security to throw you out, either.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“I would.” He gritted his teeth. “I will.”
She was quiet for another long moment. Then he heard her sniffling. Apparently, it was finally sinking in.
“You are the cruelest bastard alive, Thomas,” she said, her voice breaking. “You know that? I’ve wasted so much time on you.”
“I have to go.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry I’m inconveniencing you!” she snapped. “Maybe you don’t want to pay for my bills, either. Maybe you just wish I was dead!”
“Don’t,” he snarled, the trigger hitting before he could stop himself. “Don’t you even try to make a comparison with Elizabeth here.”
“Why not? Maybe that kind of weakness runs in our family,” she taunted. “Maybe you’ll be responsible for two deaths. Am I still inconveniencing you now?”
“Damn you, Ginny,” he said. Then, resolutely, he shut off the phone.
“She’s got quite the vocal range,” Yagi noted. “And a flair for emotional blackmail.”
“She’s just winding up,” Thomas said. “The tantrum she’s about to throw will probably make most operas look like a sitcom, but too damned bad.”
His cell phone started ringing frantically. He saw her name on the display, and then ignored it, and blocked it.
Then he picked up his office phone, and hit Kate’s extension.
After a few rings, she finally picked up. “Kate O’Hara,” she said, crisp as a new dollar.
“Settling in?”
“Oh, hey, Thomas. Need something?”
“Got a pen?” He waited a beat, then continued. “Good. I want you to call building security and tell them that Ginny Stimson is no longer allowed in the building. Then I want you to call the management at my condo complex, The Havens. Tell them I need a team to pack all Ms. Stimson’s things.”
“Oh?” He heard the scratch of pen across paper. “Um, okay.”
“Then there’s a file of real-estate holdings—it might be in Ginny’s office, or in her shared drive on the computer network.
At any rate, I own a condo complex in Asheville, North Carolina.
I want you to call the building and have a condo set up.
Then I want you to call a moving company to take the packed belongings from the Havens to the new location in North Carolina. ”
“Okay.”
“And I want it done by today.”
Kate paused for a second. “Today. You got it.”
See? he thought as he hung up the phone and shut it off, ignoring Ginny’s continual calls. No tantrums, no shenanigans, no bullshit. He said what he needed done, and with a quick today-you-got-it, Kate was on it.
He should have fired Ginny years ago.
If I’d met Kate sooner, maybe I would have.
He wasn’t sure if it was Kate’s no-nonsense aura of competence, her impulse control issues, or her fearlessness in the face of… well, anything. Whatever it was, for better or worse, it seemed to be inspiring him.
“I still want Ginny’s North Carolina condo to have top security,” he told Yagi, who was already on his cell phone, nodding. “I don’t want her near me, but I don’t want Cyril trying to hurt her to get at me.”
Yagi snapped his phone shut. “Taken care of.”
“And make sure somebody keeps an eye on her behavior, as well.” Thomas sighed heavily. “I want to make sure she doesn’t do something stupid, like torch the building or go after Kate.”
“Of course,” Yagi said. There was a faint tone of approval. “This is a step in the right direction. These are the decisions you’ll have to make.”
“I know.” Thomas felt more relieved than he thought he would.
Actually, he was feeling somewhat ebullient.
Ginny had been a millstone of guilt around his neck, playing on all of his weakness, hitting him in all his sore spots.
But Yagi had been right. He needed to stop playing into those weaknesses.
When Yagi left, Thomas managed to get in a few good hours of work done, until the manager of The Havens called. When he saw who it was, he sighed.
No. He was staying strong. He was not falling into the trap again.
“Mr. Kestrel,” the manager, Ronald Parker, said in a quavering voice. “You might want to get here. There’s been…an incident.”
Two hours, Thomas thought. He’d managed to avoid Ginny drama for two hours. Just think how peaceful it’ll be when she’s finally gone. “Don’t tell me. Ginny Stimson’s caused some sort of trouble, right?”
There was a shocked pause. “I, ah, wouldn’t put it that way e-exactly,” he stammered. “How did you know it was her?”
“She’s upset because she’s not going to be working at the company anymore,” Thomas said. “Also, she’ll be moving back to North Carolina. Did you get a call from my assistant?”
“She left a message, yes,” the man said, still sounding agitated. “But, given the circumstances…”
“I promise, I’ll pay for any damage Ginny might have incurred.”
The man cleared his throat. “Sir,” he said, his voice more firm. “There’s been…an accident.”
Thomas felt a little twist of alarm in his gut. He turned his phone back on.
There were five messages from Ginny, he noticed. Then one text.
You can’t throw me away.
“Fuck,” Thomas said, his skin going clammy. His stomach twisted hard. “What accident, Ronald?”
“Ms. Ginny jumped from her balcony.” Ronald swallowed audibly. “The EMTs said she died on impact.”
Thomas barely heard anything else the man said. “I’ll be there directly,” he said, his own voice sounding distant. He hung up the phone, staring at it. He glanced over at Yagi. “We have to go. Now.”
Yagi must have taken in Thomas’s grave expression. “What happened?”
“Ginny.” The word was hollow, just a faint echo, muffled by numbness. Thomas swallowed bile. “Looks like she had a bright idea after all.”