Chapter 4
Rosie: Has anyone heard from Pepper?
Kathy: Negative.
Maura: No, are we worried?
Kathy: It’s entirely possible that she’s balls deep into a LOTR marathon with Sunny again.
Maura: There is that.
PEPPER
The man who walks into the room is bigger than I anticipated. So huge in fact, that I almost cartoonishly rub my eyes to check that I’m not seeing things.
He halts as the door swings shut behind him, the striker clunking into place with a dull rattle. Nerves revolt in my gut, an internal voice meekly wondering if it was a colossal mistake to bring him here.
He straightens his spine, capturing me in a crossfire of burnt whiskey-colored eyes.
I swallow, tightening my arms around myself against the air of austerity and power he overcrowds the room with.
The whiff of old money drags me kicking and screaming into the memory of cool porcelain pressed against my cheek and my dying pleas for mercy.
I can see a ghost of the family crest engraved on a pinky ring beside my face, hands gripping the sink—caging me in.
Shame coats my skin, leaking into my pores like festering rot. I should have been stronger, better…less naive.
A sharp pain carves through my chest, anchoring me in the present. I realize I’ve not taken breath since he entered and carefully draw in a lungful through my nose so as not to give away my emotion. I will not be cowed by a man like this. Not now. Not ever again.
“You called?” Chase Walker has a voice as deep as gravel, affected with a healthy dose of entitlement.
It’s all the reinforcement I need to allow my hate for men like him to take the reins.
I mentally zip through everything I know about him while he unbuttons his black three-piece suit, making a big show of sliding off the jacket and draping it over the grey plastic chair on the opposite side of the table.
As if he doesn’t have a care in the world.
Dressed from head to toe in GQ, with a flash of a watch that probably cost more than I earn in a year—maybe two—arrogance drips off of every sleek movement as he gives each of his crisply pressed shirt cuffs a swift tug and lowers himself into the chair with more grace than I expect from a man his size.
The suave, thirty-six-year-old tech tycoon with a billion-dollar smile and usually a glamorous woman hanging off his arm.
Dark hair so deep it’s almost black holds the appearance of being effortlessly ruffled, and I’ll bet it is too.
Men like him don’t spend hours preening, they just get up and go.
Blessed with genes from a lineage of good-looking men and women, who have good-looking children that inevitably find each other and make good-looking babies of their own.
A Russian doll of breeding, if you will, with imperfections being slowly chiseled away over generations until we’re left with polished nepo babies like the one now surveying my face with quiet scrutiny.
Women fawn at his feet and I can use that to my advantage. Anything else should be a shock to the system, or an irritant at the very least.
“What a good little wolf-boy you are to come to heel.” I plaster a lazy smile across my lips and lean back, arching one brow to goad him.
If this degradation affects him, he shows no outward sign. He simply holds my gaze and flicks open the collar of his pressed white shirt, running a broad finger around the rim to loosen it. The faintest scent of expensive scotch reaches me across the table.
“Hog roast is my favorite—I simply couldn’t resist.” He smoothes the steel grey tie down to his fitted black waistcoat and arches an eyebrow right back.
My intrusive and wildly inappropriate humor leaps right to something witty and crude about him not getting to stick a spit up this particular pig’s ass, but this would crack the nonchalant veneer I’m wearing like a protective bubble.
“From what the detective said, your hide is pretty much crackling.” His sharp gaze leaves me for the first time since he entered the room, quickly taking in the bare, cracked walls and the camera in one corner behind me sporting a small red light.
“Apparently it’s not just me that you’ve been targeting.
What a naughty little space piglet you are, Pepper Quinn.
” He tuts mockingly, and heat lances my cheeks.
I swallow roughly, recounting the six hours of interrogation about various targets of mine from the last six months.
Detective Moustache has taken great pains to be vague as to the granular detail of his evidence against me.
He’s said enough for me to know I’m in serious hot water, but not enough for me to glean if he understands just how deep this thing goes.
Which tells me one thing: He’s fishing for whatever information he can get.
Information I would sacrifice everything to keep secret if it came to it.
My life with Sunny is paramount, but sometimes things are bigger and more important than any one person, or family.
I’ll do everything in my power to prevent that unthinkable scenario from happening, which brings me back to the mountain of a man sitting across from me.
How did he commandeer the conversation and get into my head so quickly? I need to regain control, and fast.
“I called you here so that you could post my bail and hire me the best lawyer in town.” I unfold my arms and place laced hands together on the table. It rocks slightly on uneven legs, the sound drawing his attention back to me.
“And why the hell would I do that?” he drawls blandly, laying one loosely fisted hand on the table with a soft clip of his watch strap.
“The goodness of your heart?” I tease, flashing a brief smile I don’t feel. In fact, I feel downright sick. This plan is really all I have left before my whole life crashes down around me. The only chance I have left to stay with Sunny. The stakes are terrifyingly tall.
Walker blinks, tilting his head a fraction. Something piercing ransacks his gaze, leaving me with the unsettling sensation that I’m being X-rayed. “I thought you said I would get to blow your house down? This sounds like your house is on fire and you want me to huff and puff it out for you.”
He’s got a point.
I roll my eyes dismissively, leaning back in my chair. “I was going for dramatic effect. Ever heard of a punchline, Walker?”
“Heard of one?” He raises his brows. “I’m living one right now.”
“Ha-ha. Now, do you actually want to hear why you’re going to help me?”
“I’m all ears,” he deadpans, for all intent looking impressively bored.
I throw a quick prayer to every version of God that I can remember and lay down the one solitary chip I have to gamble in exchange for my entire life. “I can help you find the people who sold your technology to Russian rebels.”
He lets out a short, quiet bark of laughter and my stomach plummets to the floor. Not only the floor, but fifty feet below to the rat-infested sewage network that New York City stands on.
“That’s it?” he questions with an unreadable something on his face.
“What do you mean, that’s it?” Fear hones my words into sharp arrows, firing across the table. “From what I gather, you have a dozen private investigators on the case who have come up with precisely nothing.”
“You’re not going to blackmail me?” He sits forward, netting me in a woodsy scent that redirects neurons the wrong way down a one-way street inside my brain.
His question shocks me out of my act for a moment. “Why would I blackmail you?”
“Isn’t that what your kind do? Blackmail and other criminal skullduggery?” He huffs a sharp breath through his nose in what is almost another laugh, now looking openly perplexed.
“My kind?” I spit, my back shooting ramrod straight and my fists curling. How very fucking typical from the privileged white male.
The male in question pauses, a flicker of comprehension dawning on chiseled features.
“You think I’m talking about race?” He stands, a true emotion encapsulated in his expression for the first time since he walked in, anger drawn in deep lines over every tight limb.
“Honey, your skin could be blue and I would still only care about the fact you hacked into my company and leaked confidential information. I was referring to the fact you are a criminal.”
My mouth goes dry, realizing that my only hope is slipping through my fingers like fine sand. That hope picks up his suit jacket and starts to put it back on.
“Wait, I can help you find them.” I stand too, panic sending a fizz of adrenaline down to my toes.
“I don’t need your help. I’ll find them myself,” he says curtly, rebuttoning the jacket and turning away from me. I clutch at the edge of the table so hard my fingernails bend and smart with pain. His hand is on the door handle. It’s halfway down. The door hinge squeaks gently as it opens.
Think, Pepper. Think!
“Two factor authentication!” I project a garbled yell at his wide back, tripping over myself to get the words out quickly enough.
He stops, glancing over his shoulder at me.
“The email account that set up the sale, they used two factor authentication.” I lift my hands, to do what with I don’t know.
“The number linked to that email address was a burner phone,” he says coldly, but he doesn’t move.
A flicker of hope ignites in my chest, urging me on.
“Yes, but they didn’t use that phone number as the second identification method to log in.
” I raise my hands further, in a pacifying motion as if I’m a conductor and he’s a string quartet I’m trying to direct back into that damn chair.
“They used a limited time code from a cell phone app.”
He doesn’t speak for a beat. And then another. A tingle sings down my spine as we remain deadlocked in each other’s gaze. “It makes no difference. The phone was a burner.”
I swallow rapidly, nodding. “It does! Because the phone the app was downloaded onto was a different phone to the number linked to the email account and there is an address registered on that phone service.”
Walker blinks, his focus zipping lightning fast around my face like a pinball in a machine, searching for something. His hand falls from the door handle and I almost moan with relief as the door begins to creep shut again, but I’m still not out of the woods.
“And what’s stopping me from walking out of here and using that information without helping you?”
My heart thunders in my chest. “You missed it,” I say quickly. “If you missed that, what else might you miss that I wouldn’t? Think what you want about me, but I’m good at this.”
A muscle striation flickers in the five o’clock shadow gracing his square jaw. I expect him to protest out of ego, perhaps demand I take it back, but he simply grunts and then turns away, flinging open the door again.
“Wait!” Moisture springs into my eyes and I’m all but ready to drop to my knees and beg. “Where are you going?”
“To hire you the best lawyer in town,” he throws back without looking, the door slamming shut a moment after he disappears from sight.
I silently drop to my knees in response and splay my hands on the rough fibrous carpet tile as the first tear falls, a riptide of relief dragging me under.