Caskets & Conspiracies

by Nellie K Neves

  Chapter 15

  Conversation created a steady hum over the space of the room. Decorators had done a near miraculous job of concealing the lobby of Pharmaco and transforming it into a glittering jewel of a ballroom. If I were not looking for the seams, I could imagine myself in a faraway land, even transported back in time. Sparkling gowns and silver candelabras on the bordering tables caught the low lighting. Tux-clad gentlemen with masked faces added mystery to the room. Everything around me set my senses on high alert and warned me of danger.

  “Do we go now? Just slip off and get this done?” Ryder asked in a low tone.

  “No,” I corrected him. “We need to make an appearance to have some sort of alibi. Do you see anyone you know?”

  Ryder tilted his head toward a man to our left, grayed hair at the temples. I could see pale blue eyes behind a mask of silver, but his mask hid his other features. “That’s my old boss, Gary Calhoun. Shall I introduce you?”

  I followed after Ryder. His former superior, Gary, spotted him from a little way off. “Ryder! I heard from your father you might be here tonight. It’s wonderful to see you.”

  “Hello, Mr. Calhoun. It’s been too long,” Ryder replied graciously. I could hear his debonair manners in his voice, see them in his movement. He had been raised with money and privilege. It was a stark contrast to the man who occasionally called me “Huckleberry.”

  “Please, call me Gary.”

  The older man’s gaze fell on me. “And who is this delicate flower?”

  I was glad Ryder did not laugh at the suggestion that I was dainty in any way, especially since he knew better.

  “This is my girlfriend,” he paused, pupils dilated for a brief second. He did not know what to call me.

  “Lindsey,” I said quickly. “Lindsey Jacobs.”

  I extended my hand to shake his, but Gary took my hand by the fingers and placed a kiss on the back of my glove. He looked up at me, his head still low, pale blue eyes locked on mine. I felt a sudden need to burn the gloves.

  “What a lucky man you are, Ryder. Such a beauty to decorate your arm.” He did not move, and he did not release my fingers.

  Ryder smiled affably, but added with a slight edge to his voice. “Just so long as you remember she came with me, old friend.”

  Gary laughed easily and released my hand. “Of course.”

  Changing the subject, he said, “I heard you have changed your life plans. Don’t tell me you have given up entirely on your dreams of practicing medicine.”

  A vein just behind Ryder’s ear pulsed slightly. “I have merely changed directions for a moment. I am trying to find my own way.”

  “You know you could always join us here at Pharmaco. I could have a corner office ready for you by the week’s end.”

  “My heart was never in this work. You know that.”

  “It’s not your heart I want,” Gary pressed. “It’s that mind of yours that interests me. There’s a spot open that would be perfect for you, working closely with the CEO.”

  He pulled a card from his pocket and slipped it into the front pocket of Ryder’s tux.

  “Call me. We can discuss the details this week.” As he smoothed his jacket, I saw the edge of a card in his pocket, a security pass.

  A chill dropped into Ryder’s tone. “I have your number, Gary.”

  “Well, just a reminder then.”

  The tension between the men expanded until it pressed up against me as well. I felt the need to rescue my pseudo-boyfriend.

  “Mr. Calhoun, this party is absolutely transcendent, and the theme, what a refreshing idea.”

  My words drew his uncomfortable stare from Ryder back to me.

  “It thrills me to hear you say that, Lindsey. At Pharmaco we feel that it is important to pull some of the mystery and obscurity of the drug industry out into the open. People have a right to know what their medication does and what it contains.”

  “Does that transparency extend to the deals made between pharmaceutical companies and the doctors they bribe?” I asked.

  One day I would learn to ask more careful questions. One day.

  Gary laughed easily again, though I could not read him through the mask to see what the genuine expression was. Anger? Annoyance? Perhaps curiosity?

  “Bribery? There is no bribery. At least not from us. We occasionally invite doctors to attend symposiums or educational conferences, but it is hardly a bribe.”

  “Even when those conferences take place in Hawaii or Cancun?” I asked. There was no secret that companies such as Pharmaco had created incentives for their doctors to feel the need to select their drugs. What saddened me was that it actually worked.

  The smile betrayed his annoyance. “Ryder, you sure have found a smart girl this time. She really knows her stuff.” He cleared his throat, the smile instantly dried up and gone. “Since the provisions set out in the Affordable Care Act, all of our business with hospitals and private doctors is public knowledge. There are no masks left.”

  It was true. The Affordable Care Act had called for better transparency in the relationship between the medical suppliers and the practitioners that prescribed the product. But the information was sketchy, poorly reported, and nearly impossible to research. Many speculated that a great deal of the information had been severely watered down or written in a skewed way. It was a step in the right direction for sure but hardly a solution.

  “Well, I think you are trying to change the industry. It must be nice to work for a company that has such high moral standards.”

  That sticky smiled returned to Gary Calhoun’s face. “And wouldn’t you want to have your boyfriend working at such a place? Perhaps you can talk some sense into him.”

  I was about to say something when a hand clapped against Ryder’s back with such force that it reverberated through my body as well. “Ryder, you made it.”

  From the anxiety I felt in Ryder, I did not have to ask. The man behind the gray mask was his father, Charles Harrison.

  “Hello, Charles,” Ryder replied coldly, shaking his father’s hand.

  His father frowned deeply at his son’s use of his first name. “Not even a hug for your dear old dad?”

  Cynicism crept into Ryder’s voice. “Oh, are you claiming that title again? Last I heard, I was dead to you.”

  Charles Harrison ignored him and looked to me. “And who is this?”

  I could feel Ryder’s reluctance to introduce me as if he might derive great pleasure from keeping me all to himself. “This is my girlfriend, Lindsey.”

  They looked alike, at least from what I could tell: face shape, dark hair color, and muscular build. The smile on his father’s face was warm, but his eyes were not. I could see that though they had the same eyes, Ryder had learned kindness and tenderness from someone other than his father.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you, Lindsey. I hope Ryder hasn’t said too many awful things about me.”

  “Actually, he has not mentioned you once.” The quick verbal jab came before I could cut it off. I knew that the only emotion more painful than hatred was indifference, and my quick tongue got the best of me.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he admitted.

  Turning to Calhoun, he said, “I need to borrow you for a moment, if you don’t mind.”

  He smiled tightly at Ryder and me and said, “Please, enjoy the night. Lindsey, you must insist that Ryder dance with you. His mother and I spared no expense in his lessons.” It sounded friendly, but the implication that Ryder owed him hung over us.

  Before he left, Calhoun snagged my hand once more and brought it to his lips. I could feel the dampness through the glove from his saliva, and it made me ill. His pale blue eyes never drifted from my face as he said, “I hope to see you again soon, my dear. I think I will dream about what is hidden behind that mask of yours. Truly you are the gem of the evening.”

  I was grateful for the mask. It was easy enough to control my mouth. Press on the smile, and hold it like an isometr
ic exercise. But I could not fake the expression in my eyes. The mask hid the revulsion.

  As his hand moved away, dropping mine with dramatically slow movement, I spotted a tiny tattoo on the interior of his wrist. It was everything I could do not to gasp out loud. There, in black ink, an upper case A with the embellishment to the right. It matched Harrison’s perfectly. I thought of the key card and played my hand.

  With a free hand I shoved his chest playfully. “Mr. Calhoun, you dote on me too much. A girl could get used to this kind of treatment.” My hand stayed against his chest pocket. Just beneath my fingertips, I could feel the shape of the security card. “Surely, your date will get jealous if she sees you flirting the way you do.”

  His chest swelled slightly, a sign of attraction. “I am here alone, Miss Jacobs.”

  Charles Harrison shifted with annoyance at my interruption. Ryder even looked a bit bewildered. I faked absolute shock at Gary’s words. “A guy like you. I can’t even imagine.”

  My fingers moved over his bow tie to straighten the angle and smooth his shirt beneath. “Let me help you tidy up then, since you don’t have a good woman here to do it for you.”

  To an outsider, it looked as though I was merely aligning buttons and smoothing his lapels. But as my left hand transferred the key card into the widest part of my hand and I palmed the stolen product, I felt a surge of pride at a clean lift.

  I turned to Ryder. “I don’t want you to get jealous either, darling.” I corrected his tie and smoothed his lapels, stealthily slipping the card into his inside pocket.

  Charles pulled Calhoun almost forcibly from our company, leaving me to fuss over my boyfriend’s attire alone. The muscles beneath his tux were stiff and rigid, his lips a straight, thin line of tension. I had underestimated his anger toward his father. It was not a simple disagreement over life plans. It was more akin to hatred, pure abhorrence of the man and everything he stood for.

  Ryder’s hand on the small of my back pressed me to the dance floor with urgency. With the dexterity his father had promised, he positioned me and launched into a careful waltz, perfectly in time with the classical music that wafted over the room. There was an edge and sharpness to his movement, anger that boiled beneath the surface.

  “He really got to you, didn’t he?” I asked carefully.

  “Can we please dance and not talk?”

  I agreed silently and allowed him to lead. With zero dance experience, I was indeed amazed at his ability to transform me into a formidable partner. It left me wondering what kind of life he had led before he walked away from it all. Just how much money did his family have? I imagined tennis courts, polo lessons, private parties on a yacht, summers at a beach house somewhere secluded.

  I had lived a relatively normal and even mundane life other than the secret trip to Germany to rewire my brain. Yet for that moment in time, I let myself be his princess, the perfect partner to his perfect waltz.

  As the song ended and another began, his timing changed, and he settled easily into a slower, smaller movement. His anger had faded slowly, carefully packaged up but not vented. I sneaked glimpses at his face, wishing I could see the space at the corners of his eyes to know how to proceed.

  “Why do you do that?” he asked as he caught one of my quick glances.

  “Do what?” I asked innocently.

  “You look at my face all the time. Why?” he asked. When I did not answer right away, he continued, “At first I figured you found me irresistibly attractive, but you don’t look at me like other women do. You study me like I study art. I pull it apart in my brain, try to figure exactly how it was put together in the first place. That’s how you look at me. Methodically. Why?”

  He did not realize the amount of concentration it took just to stay in time with his beat. I was not sure I could add conversation to the mix.

  “Well, you are incredibly attractive,” I admitted. “But it’s my training. I can’t help it. Microexpressions around the eyes, at the mouth, it all tells a story, and that story tells me how to react.”

  A faint smile appeared at his lips. “Then these masks must be killing you.”

  “You have no idea. It’s like wearing handcuffs while picking a lock.”

  One eyebrow peeked from the top of his mask. “You have experience with that sort of thing?”

  “A lady never tells,” I teased.

  The tension had faded from his body, lost in our conversation.

  “Well, I give you my permission to stare at my face for as long as you would like. Study it, pull it apart, whatever you need. You don’t have to take those quick glances anymore.”

  My lashes bumped the top of my mask as I tilted my head to take him up on his offer. There was not much to see, not with his bulky mask in the way, but I was always up for a challenge.

  His jaw was broad but not square or bulky. There was a slight dent in his cheeks where his face narrowed and then spread up into his prominent and masculine cheekbones. The rhythm of his breath increased as my eyes searched his, dark brown at the center, nearly indistinguishable from the pupil, a rich cocoa at the middle and perimeter. His lashes were long and thick, much as his eyebrows were. I let my gaze fall over his forehead, and instinctively I knew there was a slight crease between his eyebrows, even though I could not see them. His hair was gelled and styled, a far cry from the mussed up look I had seen the night we had first met. I could see a faint scar in the skin near his hairline, perhaps a childhood injury. Sticking out, slightly bent down, his ears reminded me of an elf’s but somehow in a handsome way. With a tanned tone to his skin, I had to wonder what his mother looked like. He was darker than Charles Harrison’s pale tone.

  “What do you see?” Ryder asked curiously.

  “Strength,” I replied after a moment, purely on instinct, “and sophistication.” I followed his hairline down to his neck and along his jaw once more, noting the space that he had missed while shaving. My fingers brushed over the spot of short stubble, and his grip tightened at my waist in response.

  Though I could hear him clearly, his lips barely moved, as if he were scared to disturb my process. “Do you profile me? Do you analyze my words and actions, Lindy Johnson?”

  My fingers traced the muscles in his neck, noting another scar as they moved. “I told you it’s hard to turn it off.”

  “So tell me about myself. What have you learned about Ryder Billings? What did you see that made me a good mark so many times?”

  My emotions clouded my thinking. It had been far too long since I had been held by a good man. His cologne wafted over me as he pressed me even closer. The memory of meeting him at Johnny’s was easy to recall: the boots, the jacket, that same cologne, and infectious smile.

  “You looked expensive,” I admitted. “Your clothes looked professionally tailored, but your finger had no ring.”

  His chin dropped slightly as he chuckled to himself, his body still keeping to the beat of the song like a metronome.

  “I didn’t see you at first, but you pulled your hair to the side, and I thought, ‘Now there’s a lonely woman who needs company.’”

  My fingers wandered over his chin, no cleft, rounded, and strong. “I needed your attention,” I confessed.

  The way he held me, tight against his body but not controlling, I could pull free at any moment if I wanted to.

  His lips were fuller than I had noticed before, the bottom especially. My mind wandered, and I found myself wondering how it would feel to kiss those lips, full and smooth as they were. The urge to touch his lips was strong, but I had given myself far too much freedom already. Still the thought lingered. It would be easy to kiss him. It would only give credence to our cover, but my rationale fought back. It would not be fair to Ryder to give him hope that was not available. Satisfied that I had memorized every curve of his face, I lifted my head and found Ryder staring at my lips. His mouth slightly parted and the rhythm of his dance faltered slightly.

  “How long has it been since your last
relationship?”

  “Three years,” I answered. “I tried to make it work, but it was all horrible.” Amos had been the wrong sort to try to make anything work with. As a professional con artist, every word out of his mouth was a possible lie, and even I could not see it. “You?”

  “A year or so. Nothing serious.” Ryder remained fixated on my own confession. “Three years is a long time without someone to hold, someone to kiss.” His lips parted slightly and then closed tightly again. “Lindy,” he warned, never lifting his gaze from my mouth, “this is starting to feel like a real date.”

  “That’s what happens when you play a part well. It swallows you whole.”

  His face leaned into mine as he whispered breathily, “I don’t think I’m playing anymore.”

  I wanted to give in to him, to his cologne, to his arms and strength. I wanted to forget the case and be a normal girl again. But the reality was I was not a normal girl, and I never would be again. People were dying, and I was all that stood between the criminals and more casualties.

  “Then that means it’s time to get to work.” Over his shoulder I could see Gary Calhoun with two other men, watching us closely. “I’m going to slip off, and if anyone asks, I’m powdering my nose.”

  Fingertips tightened at my waist, filled with anxiety and tension. “You can’t go alone. I’m going with you.”

  I turned my face into his neck to hide my words from prying eyes. “I can’t ask you to commit a crime. This is my case—”

  “You’re not asking me,” he interrupted. “I’m telling you. You’ll never find anything up there. At best you’ll get lost. At worst you’ll get shot. I know where records are kept, so tell me how we are getting out of here.”

  It was true that I did not know him that well, but I could hear it in his tone. If he was right about the layout of the building, I really did need his help. One quick glance told me that we were still being watched. I let my hand travel from Ryder’s shoulder to the back of his neck, each of my fingers swirling and tickling the nape of his neck. He shivered slightly under my touch, but more importantly our observers had seen it as well. Whispers passed between the two men, with knowing smiles and finger-pointing. A plan formulated quickly in my mind. If I played it right, no self-respecting man would come looking for us.