36. June
36
JUNE
L ooking up at the big building, I feel a little intimidated. “You’re sure about this?”
“As sure as I can be about anything,” Anderson says. He’d set up this meeting, saying Dana Horowitz was like an aunt to him as a child. Dana is one of the best. That's probably why she and Pym don’t get along.”
“But you said she and your mom had a falling out. Why was that?”
He laughs under his breath as he opens the lobby door for me. We stroll to the building directory before going to the elevators. “The summer when I was thirteen, Mom thought Dana had a thing for Dad, but she couldn’t say anything outright without proof. By that point, they’d been friends for years, so saying something out of pocket would have been an embarrassment. She waited, invited her to the big Fourth of July thing they do yearly, and the trap was set.”
“Huh?”
“Mom thinks Dad looks great in swim trunks,” he cringes as he says, “and I don’t wanna talk about it. Summer means they’re off like rabbits and is, therefore, the season I need the most therapy.”
I giggle at him. “Go on.”
“Dana’s there, and Dad shows off, pulling some big jump on the diving board. Mom is distracted, but Dana sees it. She also sees he’s not coming back up from under the water. She dives in, pulling him out. Turns out he’d cracked his head on the pool bottom. Dana does rescue breathing, which Mom sees at a distance, and she storms out there, assuming they’re making out. She screams at Dana—not listening to anyone who is trying to tell her what’s happening—but then the ambulances arrive and cart Dad off. He recovered just fine, but their friendship never did.”
“Oh, god. Your mom had to be humiliated. And poor Dana.”
He sighs as we enter the elevator. “Yeah. She’s a great lady. I still get birthday cards from her, but I haven’t seen her in a few years.”
“And she’s a defense attorney who Pym doesn’t like?”
“I don’t know all the details, but I doubt he likes anyone who is in the same line of work as he is, especially not one with her reputation. She threatens to outshine him. And anyone Pym doesn’t like is good by me because he is on my shit list right now.”
“Because he wants to use me as a scapegoat?”
Anderson squeezes my hand. “No one is using you for a scapegoat, June. I won’t allow it.”
That is as reassuring as I can ask for. The doors open into another lobby for her law office. It’s posh, with gold and silver accents and streamlined pale wood décor. Pretty, but not overpowering. The attendant seats us in the waiting area, and I can’t help but tap my foot impatiently.
Anderson plants his hand on my knee. “It’s going to be okay.”
“We only got this short-notice appointment because you know her. If she can’t fix this, then who will? How many other high-powered defense attorneys do you keep in your back pocket?”
“More than most. Remember who my family is.”
“Okay, yeah, but that’s good and bad, and I’m just freaking out?—"
“Breathe,” he says calmly as he takes my hands. “And please stop destroying yourself.”
“What?”
“You were picking at your cuticles again.”
I look down, and there’s a bit of blood at the corner of my thumbnail. “What the hell?”
He tips his head to the side. “You didn’t know you do that?”
“No, I just thought … I thought I had crummy cuticles.”
He smiles. “Your whole life you never noticed you pick at your cuticles when you’re nervous? And no one else pointed it out?”
I shrug. “No one pays attention to me like you do.”
“That doesn’t seem possible, but I’m glad for it. I like keeping you all to myself.”
Aw. The big lug. Just as I start to speak, a handsome assistant fetches us. “Ms. Horowitz is ready for you now.” He leads us to her office, and I am as nervous as possible. What if Anderson has overestimated her? What if she’s secretly on the take and working for his father? What if she won’t take our case?
What if I’m so full of anxiety that I actually explode and ruin her pretty office?
As the tall wooden door opens, I gulp. Inside, the place is even nicer than the lobby area but carries the same color palette. But I can’t take any of it in because the woman behind the desk is something else, and when she stands, I am in awe. I don’t usually get taken in by someone’s attractiveness. Having tended bar, I became used to seeing all kinds of people. Pretty, ugly, in between, none of it fazes me. But Dana Horowitz breaks my brain.
She has long, dark, wavy hair with a stylishly gray streak at her forehead and sparkling green eyes. Her red dress is business chic-meets-the runway, all polished modern lines that hug her ample curves. Her rich olive skin is perfect. Not a blemish or a line out of place.
In my mind, I can hear that old Sesame Street song, “One of These Things is Not Like the Other.” I have never felt like Anderson and I match on any level. We are so different from each other. But now I stand before a woman who I reckon is out of his league, and I am staggered by her presence.
Until she smiles. It’s warm, inviting, and a little crooked, like God had to give her an imperfection to keep people from hating her. She swings around her desk on impossibly high heels and locks me into a hug. “You must be June. I am so happy to meet you!”
“Uh, you too.”
She holds me at arm’s length. “Well, you two sit, and we will figure out what the fuck is going on.” Then she tools back around her desk and pops her intercom on. “Mujo, coffee, and lunch.” She turns her attention to us. “First of all, June, please call me Dana. As much as I’d love to hear how you two met, Andy tells me you’re in a heap of trouble with a short time frame, so that will have to wait until we can make a social call. I’ve done some digging myself, but I’d like you two to tell me what is going on in your own words.”
As much as that sounds like a good plan, I still worry about telling anyone about what we’ve done. Unfortunately, I’m too tense to hang onto her calling him Andy . I begin with, “How much do you know about Andre Moeller?”
A curl of disgust reshapes her lips before she can shake it off. “He is a man with his fingers in many, many pies all over the world. Some legal, some questionable, some that would get him the death penalty, if the rumors are to be believed?—"
“They are,” I cut in.
She raises the most exquisitely formed brow in existence. “All this to say, I have a history with Andre. Not a pleasant one.”
“May I inquire as to the nature of this history? It’s important.”
“The bastard cheats at poker,” she hisses with seriousness.
I almost laugh. “ That’s why you don’t like him?”
“Not entirely, but it would be enough for me to loathe him. I don’t take much seriously in life, but poker is sacrosanct.”
“Understood.” Not really. “Okay, so a few months back, Andre kidnapped me to annoy Elliot West.”
Her brow dances higher on her face as she turns to Anderson. “Andy, you said this was a break-in situation, not a kidnapping.”
“Oh, there’s more to it than I’d like to admit. June, please go on.”
“Right, well, Andre did that and returned me once he was done annoying Elliot. He treated me … okay, I guess. No violence—well, not much. After that, Elliot and I had a falling out of sorts, and he had me professionally blackballed. I lost my job, where I’d been since law school. Couldn’t get hired anywhere. Then Andre offered me a job, paying me way too much money for what he wanted done. I didn’t have much of a choice, so I took the job.”
She tips her head to the side a little. “From the man who kidnapped you?”
“It wasn’t personal. His goons only took me because I was on the street when they were around. If anyone else associated with Elliot had been an easy target, they would have taken them instead. So yeah, while I was totally freaked out at first, I didn’t have a lot of choices at the time.”
Anderson added, “And she knew taking a job with Andre would piss off my dad.”
That earned a smirk from her. “Well, that makes it all better, I suppose.”
“Right, well, that’s where this gets ugly.” I pass her a folder with the hard copies of the documents we printed. “This is a series of documents from companies Andre wants to buy and take over. Some are legal documents, some are affidavits from people who the board members have pissed off?—"
“This is the sort of kill file you put together when you’re looking to win a fight,” she says, perusing them.
We nod. Anderson says, “And my father is involved with these companies.” He points at a few of the names on various documents. “These are some of the aliases he uses to keep his name out of things.”
Dana glances up at him. “Andre is looking to oust your father from over a dozen different companies.”
“Yes, and he made June an unwitting accomplice by having her dig up the dirt.”
“I didn’t know Elliot was involved, thanks to his aliases. But now he’s trying to say I’ve been spying for Andre this whole time. He’s trying to make Anderson hate me?—"
“Why does Elliot have such a grudge against you?”
I sigh. “There’s a lot to it, but it all boils down to the fact that I would not be a good move for Anderson’s political career.”
He laughs. “You still think that’s it?”
“Well … yes. Why else?”
“Baby, it’s because you have a big mouth.”
I laugh hard. “Excuse me?”
“You think for yourself. You voice your opinions. When he says something, you don’t just go with it. You push back if he’s wrong, and you do it politely, which pisses him off even more because if you were rude about it, then he could point to that and make you seem like a terrible person. He has to try this hard to stand a fighting chance against you. Otherwise, he can’t control me.”
Dana grins. “I knew I liked you. Alright, so where does the break-in play into this?”
“That’s how we obtained the documents—well, that and breaking into his desk drawer,” I explain. Most of that is stuff I got for him, but some of it—the parts confirming Elliot’s involvement—were in his office. The only way to get them was to break in.”
“And you did that how? Any evidence left behind?”
My face heats up at the thought of Anderson’s DNA left on the steamer trunk. “Um, I used the keycard he gave me.”
“So, a key log, if his security keeps one, which I imagine they do. You’re not getting out of this with your job intact, but you knew that when you decided to use the key card.” She sits back, thinking. “And you had no idea about Elliot’s involvement … If I didn’t know how much those two hate each other, I’d almost say they coordinated to set you up to take the fall for this.”
“They’re both setting me up in their own ways. Elliot is telling Anderson I’m why Andre is about to buy them out, and Andre used me to twist the knife about these purchases just that little bit more.” I grip the arms of my chair to stop from shouting. “I am so fucking sick of men using me that I could choke on it.”
Slowly, she nods. “And that’s where they are fucking up. They’re both using you, June, you’re right about that. But you can use them right back. Let them know what it feels like.”
“How?”
“Well, first of all, to CYA, you two must negotiate immunity from the illegal break-in. Sure, you could say he gave you the keycard and, therefore, you had legal access, but breaking into his desk takes that shell of an excuse away. The only way to get immunity is to offer or threaten. You don’t have much to offer Andre, so you have to go with threatening him to get your immunity, and that is where things get interesting because what he’s doing is so much more illegal than what you did.”
“You mean blackmail?” Anderson asks.
She nods. “He’s looking to blackmail board members, specifically Elliot, with his illegal activities, or at the very least, make him seem suspicious enough to be ousted. By using an illegal strategy, he’s made himself vulnerable to basically the same thing. Not to mention the fact he fucking kidnapped June. Use that. Use all of it to back him into a corner.”
All this time, I hadn’t thought to use my own kidnapping against him that way. I just figured a man like him would get away with it. But if he’s afraid of it being used against him, then why the hell not try?
Dana produces a folder of her own. “Like I said, I did some digging since you brought up Andre, and his shenanigans go back decades. I found all kinds of fun, exploitable details he would not enjoy becoming public.” She passes him the folder. “Have fun, kids.”