Chapter 19 #2
Jamie took a seat, leaving Cliff at the bar, no longer in view.
Trapped for the moment, she set her attention to Duncan while she schemed on ways to make it back over to at least say a proper goodbye to the sexy security expert.
Maybe the apps weren’t the only way to meet a guy after all.
She’d have to give her rugrat of a little rescue dog a special treat when she got home.
She couldn’t help but look back hoping he would not leave, but he was just out of her view.
Reluctantly, her eyes drifted back to Duncan, who had not one but two phones out at the table, checking both obsessively. Jamie cleared her throat.
Duncan released the one he was holding with a sigh and steepled his fingers. “So, Bryan says you’re hot shit when it comes to getting people out of corporate trouble. Just tell me what I have to do so I can get on with my life.”
Charming.
Jamie assessed. Given his vast fortune, Duncan clearly did not spend it on grooming.
His hair, unruly and wiry, stood up from his head in a fearful manner, as if shocked by its owner’s behavior.
His eyes were small and beady, a patch of dry skin visible on his chin, and he looked perpetually pissed off.
The man radiated intolerance and had a habit of scratching a mole on his right wrist. He did, however, know how to dress.
He was in dark denim, and wore a short-sleeved navy linen shirt, which Jamie guessed was by Brunello Cucinelli, the preeminent brand popular with tech billionaires.
Jamie’s eyes flitted up to meet those of her client, hoping to get this over with as much as he was. “As you know, I’m a psychologist and I specialize in high-level C-suite executives who are experiencing challenges in their current leadership positions.”
“The woke mob. Yada yada yada, I’m well aware.”
Jamie narrowed her eyes, not that he noticed.
“They’re all coming after me.” He mimed people talking at him with his hand, but his whiny voice tunneled into silence as Jamie tuned out.
Peripherally, it reminded her of Pac-Man.
His face had started to trend to beet red.
She shook her head, trying to pay attention to his rant, but all she could think about was Cliff back at the bar with their fries.
She really needed a new line of work. Duncan slammed his fist down hard on the table.
Jamie jumped and tuned back in. “Listen, I’ll give you ten thousand dollars to make this all go away.
I’ll sign something. I don’t know. What do you shrinks do nowadays? ”
We put Band-Aids on pieces of work like you, and hope it holds until we get our paychecks.
But she couldn’t say that out loud. Admittedly, it was also a pretty pessimistic view on humanity.
On some level, Jamie believed she could help temper negative personality traits, develop strategies to handle triggers, and generally cope with garden variety narcissism, but she was also well aware most people were set in stone.
You could chip away at them, make tiny milestones of progress, but the form still stayed close to the original factory settings.
The only way people could change is if they chose to change, and most people do not choose to change unless they have a good reason.
“Mr. Reeves, I cannot just sign a release saying that you’re cured. This is a process.” A long, arduous process. “One that your very own board has hired me to assess and adjust as necessary.”
She finally took the time to look deeply at Duncan Reeves: his composure, how he was sitting with one arm flung over the back of the chair, slouched, like a legacy Harvard student whose daddy just gave an endowment.
Like he knew this was all bullshit. Like he knew he’d win even if everyone was after him.
Paranoid. God complex. Impatient.
“I don’t need those assholes.”
“I beg to differ. They have the power to kick you out of your own company.”
Duncan finally looked up at Jamie, placed his phones screen downward, which he had once again picked up, either from force of habit or to check email or something, and took her in.
“Who exactly are you?” Duncan gave her a withering, annoyed gaze.
“Look, let me just write you a check. You forget I ever existed. Otherwise, I will tell the board I found you wholly incompetent, direct my various social media directors to overwhelm your Yelp page with negative feedback, and tank your business within a month.”
Add aggressive, harsh, possible psychopath.
Jamie stammered. “You can’t—you can’t threaten me, Mr. Reeves.”
Reeves ran a hand through his unruly hair and shoved an olive sloppily in his mouth. “I can do anything I fucking want,” he said smugly. “Don’t you get it? Save yourself the trouble.” He reached across the table, grabbed her wrist, and lowered his voice. Definitely psychopath.
“You will do what I ask and you will do it by tomorrow morning—or else.”
Jamie felt a pang of panic grip her.
Her mind returned to the night of her attack in an instant.
She swallowed back the fear and tried to breathe through it.
The terrifying way he overwhelmed her. Reeves wrenched her wrists, twisting her skin so tight, it burned.
Memory rekindled, she felt all the air go out of her lungs.
Reeves had grabbed her wrist with the same ferocity Melvyn Ott had the night he attacked her.
Duncan finally released her and said casually, “You seem like a smart girl. Do the right thing.”
Jamie got up and nearly knocked the water glass off the table as she rushed toward the bathroom to escape. She walked quickly past the bar area where Cliff had been without even looking to see if he was still there. But she caught the smell of French fries. They must have just arrived.
She went into the ladies’ room and leaned on the counter.
She couldn’t catch her breath. She felt her throat closing, hard to breathe, her vision growing blurry.
She sat down on the bathroom floor, closed her eyes, and began counting as she took in another breath, trying hard to handle her thoughts before they spun out of control.
After the moment passed, she stood up. She splashed some cold water on her face and looked at herself in the mirror.
She would not let Ott, or this new nemesis Duncan Reeves, win tonight.
“You can do this. You are a professional. You’re good with psychos.
Besides, you’re in the middle of a restaurant.
” She took one more breath and walked back out to the dining room.
But when she got back to the table, Duncan Reeves’s brash, cocky, dominating attitude had changed drastically. He looked visibly shaken. She approached warily.
“Mr. Reeves, I refuse to be talked to that way,” she announced with a tremor in her voice. “I demand an apology.”
Reeves was still staring down at the table, then out to the street. “I’m really sorry,” he said, hesitating for a moment before blurting it out.
Jamie squinted. Shouldn’t have been that easy.
Duncan Reeves continued, “I was way out of line.”
Jamie put a hand on the back of her chair, pulled it out, and sat down, still unsure of why there was such a sudden change of attitude. “I accept. Are you … okay?”
His forehead was red and had a mark on it that looked suspiciously like the edge of the plate in front of him.
He seemed to struggle with answering the question.
He looked briefly outside again, which caused Jamie to turn her head to the window facing the street, which was empty except for a parking enforcement agent giving someone a ticket.
When Jamie turned back to Reeves, his eyes were darting back and forth, as if scanning for danger.
He said, “I have these tendencies that get me in trouble.”
Jamie wanted to accept that premise. It wasn’t totally out of the question for a man to act aggressively and then moments later do a complete about-face in manner, tone, and composure … but then she saw the cell phones. Both were completely shattered.
Duncan Reeves drank his entire glass of water as she watched him.
“What happened to your cell phones?”
“Dropped them.”
Eyes narrowing, Jamie put it together. She thought back to Cliff. Had he stepped in to help her? She couldn’t think of another explanation.
Why would he do that?
She suppressed a tiny alarm going off in her head, composed herself, and said to her client, “Okay, Duncan, let’s get started.”
Duncan did everything he could to stop it, but an exasperated sigh escaped his lips.