by Cass Sellars
“That is not okay.” Jess ground her teeth together.
“I don’t think so either. But I learned that it’s superior to so many other things.”
Jess tried not to imagine the broken little girl that Skylar had been. Skylar focused on her without tears in her eyes and Jess felt the shaking stop.
“Now you understand why Navigation House is so important for kids like me. If there had been a place like this for me, it wouldn’t have stopped James, but it would have prepared me to be on my own. They manage you through high school, if you’re lucky, but everything else you learn on the job, so to speak. When you leave the system, you get a backpack full of the few belongings that you’ve accumulated, and someone might hold the door for you as you leave. Nobody shows you how to set up utilities in an apartment or make your own money, just how to fill out the application for the next round of social services.”
“How did you know what to do next?”
“I didn’t. I did small jobs for cash and slept in a shelter they sent me to. I had met Deb at a street fair, and we became fast friends. She had everything at home, but only if she played by the rules at Daddy’s house. She wanted the adventure of living on her own and I wanted something to call home. I managed to find a cashier job and she worked selling luggage at a tourist trap, and even then, we barely made the rent on a dingy room on the outskirts of the Haight.” Skylar laughed. “Even then, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. No one shows you how to balance a checkbook. I taught myself. Most of all, there isn’t anyone there to tell you that the rough patch you’re going through gets any better.”
Teared streamed down Jess’s cheeks. She held Skylar, who she once thought was unreachable and distant, and felt her crumble against her. The weight of the story, the past too many years of protecting herself, had been necessary, but now she wasn’t keeping Jess out, and she allowed herself to break down a little. A catharsis, Jess hoped.
She held Skylar until she could look at her without crying for her. Skylar skimmed her thumb over the remnant moisture on Jess’s face.
“I’m sorry I made you sad.” The genuine concern and affection for her broke Jess once again.
“You didn’t. The story made me angry. I am so fucking angry that this civilized country we live in expects kids to find their own way without becoming criminals and trying to survive however they can, often at their own expense.”
“You’re making a difference with Navigation House, Jess. More than you know. Please let me be a part of it.”
Jess laughed. “Let you? I wouldn’t do it without you. I’m fairly certain I don’t want to do anything without you.” She held her face and kissed her gently. The caress was full of much more than budding romance and unbridled passion. It meant belonging to something together.
“Do you know that he’s on the sex offender list?” Skylar needed to finish, to get it all out. “Apparently, he raped a girl after what happened with me. He was eighteen, and already having two strikes was too much for the court.”
“I’ve thought about thirty ways to kill him since you started telling me this,” Jess said honestly.
“He’s nothing. I know that now. He isn’t worth the brain cells.” She watched the horizon and thought three in the morning was likely as quiet as the city ever got. “I’ve been blabbing for an hour, you know. When was the last time you really slept?”
“It’s been a while.”
Skylar smiled mischievously. “It’s kind of late, you think maybe we could have a sleepover?”
“I’ll think about it if you promise me that naked breakfast you told me about.”
She smiled and followed Jess to the bed, still in disarray from the hours of sexual gymnastics. Jess laid her head on Skylar’s heart and listened to it beat.
Jess tucked her arms around her, and Skylar was contemplative. “So, this changes everything, doesn’t it?”
“What?” Jess angled to look at her.
“My past. I told you, it changes how people look at me.”
“You’re right, it does.” Jess looked at her seriously. “We all have a story, and yours is stunning. The only thing it changes is how remarkable I think you are. Thank you for telling me.”
“Good night, Jess.” She felt at home in the arms that circled her.
“Good night, Sky.”
She sank into a blissful sleep, firmly wrapped in Jess’s arms.
* * *
Jess felt Skylar jerk upright at five thirty a.m. after being asleep for only a couple of hours. A dusty yellow light was hinting at the horizon.
She nudged Jess excitedly. “I figured it out!”
“How to operate on no sleep?” She grinned into her pillow. “Or how to wake me up with sex?”
“No, boss.”
“Don’t call me that when you’re naked, unless of course you’re going to play my naughty assistant.” She reached out to pull Skylar against her.
Skylar swatted at her. “Stop being dirty for a minute and meet me in the kitchen.” She scrambled from the sheets and threw a blanket around her shoulders, shuffling toward the living room.
Jess reached for the phone before following down the hall to find her. She concluded a lengthy order for breakfast, including caramel lattes, before she disconnected and shuffled to the kitchen to slip a filter into the coffeemaker.
Jess checked the hall mirror and saw that her hair stood out at odd angles and her T-shirt barely covered her bottom and her tight briefs. She eyed Skylar suspiciously when she handed her a list of names in exchange for the sweatshirt she had tucked under her arm. Jess watched her put it on and walked to her with a palpable renewed desire for Skylar. Skylar shook her head in warning and pointed to the papers in her hand.
“Remember how we figured out how and when but not the who last night?” she said enthusiastically.
“I’m going to assume we’re talking work and not mind-blowing sex? Because I remember the who very well.”
“Concentrate, woman.” Skylar poked at Jess playfully.
“Then yes, I remember.” Jess rubbed her eyes and blinked to focus.
“Remember all the company names?” Skylar fanned the documents in front of Jess so the name on each invoice sat just on top of the one before.
“Mostly.”
“Read the list.” Skylar tapped on the first one.
“Why?” She glanced at the paper and back at Skylar.
“Just do it.” Skylar’s look was serious.
“Continental, Zephyr, MKZ, Blackwood, Navigator, Capri, Aviator, Versailles, Lido. Why am I reading this, Sky?”
“They all are…?” She waited.
“Companies Who Stole from Me for $500, Alex?” The rueful quip was laced with resentment.
“Yes, but that’s not what I mean. Look, they’re all names of cars.”
Jess stared at her blankly.
“More specifically, they’re all model names of a certain make of cars.”
Jess looked down and read the list to herself again. “Son of a bitch. They’re all Lincolns.”
“As in…”
“Brett fucking Lincoln. It wasn’t enough to steal from me, he wanted to wave it under my nose.”
“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.” Skylar winced as she spoke.
“You simply brought a criminal to light. A criminal who has lived in my family’s good graces for decades. Why would he do that, after all my father did for him?”
“You said he thought he would sit at the helm one day. Maybe he resents the fact that he works for you.”
“It’s possible, but why didn’t he just go to work for the competitor? Why steal from me? I thought he was a lot of things, but never a criminal.”
“Is he in money trouble?”
“His girlfriend spends money like a drunken socialite, but he also makes a ton of it thanks to bonuses.”
“I guess we’ll know when we can link it to him definitively. Are you going to press charges?”
“Absolut
ely. I have no qualms about it. He deserves every minute of the humiliation.” She paced with the invoices in her hands, staring at them as she moved. She stopped in front of Skylar. “Hey, did you sleep at all?”
Jess was trying to remember all facets of the night before, instead of the reason she would hunt Brett Lincoln until he rotted in a cell. Or until she extracted her pound of flesh.
“A little. I was too happy.” Skylar couldn’t wipe the grin from her face. “Criminals among us notwithstanding.”
Jess pulled her off the stool. “Me too. I adore you.” She breathed the words into Skylar’s neck.
“Okay. No making me crazy until we finish breakfast,” Skylar warned her.
The doorbell rang before Jess was ready to let her go. She didn’t even think about the state of her outfit when she answered. Delivery people in the city had seen far more than a slightly too short T-shirt and boxer briefs. She signed and handed the boxes of scrambled eggs and croissants to Skylar.
“This is awesome. I’m so hungry.”
“Me too. So, tell me what else.” Jess knew Skylar had more. She smiled over at Skylar tapping furiously at the keys of her laptop. “Go easy on that thing, I can’t afford to buy you another one.”
“Yes, you can. This is so easy to prove if we get a couple more pieces.”
“Like what?”
“We just have to link him to the money so he can’t claim he was some name on a bank account instead of a mastermind.”
“Easier said than done.” Jess dragged a cubed potato through the ketchup in a looping pattern, leaving a trail resembling a “j” in the condiment. Skylar looked up and stared at her.
“What?” Jess said around the potato.
“Write your initials. The way you do when you approve invoices.”
“Why?”
“Jess, just do it, and I promise I’ll make every fringe thought or dirty fantasy a reality before the day is over.”
“Dammit, Sky. You can’t come at me like that. I can’t concentrate.”
“Do concentrate. For me. Sign.” She held out a ballpoint pen.
She snatched the pen from Skylar’s fingers and signed the blank sheet Skylar handed her. She formed a loopy cursive “J” that fell into a hard downstroke lowercase “I,” which she dotted in a glancing way that made a sort of a wispy dash over the letter.
“Again,” Skylar said. After ten such samples she snatched the sheet from under the pen.
Skylar’s eyes sparkled. She foisted one of the Lincoln invoices at her and held the signatures up for comparison. “You didn’t sign these because you never saw them!”
“Explain.” Jess dissected a buttery croissant and pushed a chunk into Skylar’s mouth.
“Look at the ‘I’ in your initials.” She managed the words around the flaky bread. “Straight down, direct, and the dot is really not a dot, it’s sort of a dashy swipe thing. We’ll look into what handwriting analysis says about you later.”
“Great, I’ll look forward to it.”
Skylar pointed at the approval signatures. “Look at the loopy tail of the ‘I,’ and the dot is a hard point. Definitely not your signature, meaning you never saw these.”
Jess felt marginally better that she didn’t actually hand the money to Brett, but the amount and the betrayal were still devastating.
Skylar continued. “Still, someone got them into the system or your files. They got paid.”
“I would make a case for Brett, but I don’t know how.”
“Who else had access?”
“Sky, I literally take the piles home on Friday night, sign them, and put them in Yolanda’s file for Monday morning. In fact, many times I take them in on Saturday and leave them on Yolanda’s desk for her to deal with on Monday.”
“So she could have added to the piles?”
“She could have.” Jess was loath to think Yolanda had any part of stealing from her. In fact, she would bet her soul that she had nothing to do with it.
“Only because she handled all these first. Who else?” Skylar was making notes.
“She would have handed them off to your group. When this started, Brett was handling this all himself.” Jess was trying to arrange the playing field of possible criminals in her head. “Then it would have been Pam Landry, and of course your friend, Toni Starr, probably.”
“Another pawn in Brett’s game, perhaps. She certainly felt like the genius with a purpose when I tried to change her job.”
“Let’s face it, Sky, she has the IQ of a paper towel, she’s not the mastermind type.”
“This is true. Regardless, I’ll put this together in an irrefutable timeline and we can package it up for the police.”
“Remind me to give you anything you want later.” Jess spun Skylar to look at her instead of her notes.
“I already have it.” Skylar abandoned her pen and looped her arms around Jess’s neck instead.
“I never thought I’d find something that could distract me from losing a hundred grand.”
Skylar laughed. “Are we about to have naked breakfast?” She teased Jess’s throat with her teeth.
“God, I hope so.” Jess lifted her onto the bare stretch of counter and felt Skylar’s legs lock around her back. Her field of vision narrowed as the heat from between Skylar’s legs found her skin and she bent to experience it with her mouth.
Skylar braced a hand over the countertop when she shuddered at the first of many orgasms.
Chapter Eighteen
Officer Paladino was standing over them when Skylar opened one eye.
She crawled onto the two-person lounge chair as if she was joining the nap. Skylar shifted, aware that their sleepy duo had just become a threesome, and anticipated Jess’s reaction with a grin as Dino spread her arms across the couple.
“Morning!” Dino, still in her uniform, smiled down at Skylar. “I knew you would wake up in my arms one day,” she said too loudly, still smiling too broadly.
“I will kill you with your own gun, Paladino.” Jess responded immediately, playfully patting her waist as if to search for her weapon.
“Ah, the sweet nothings you whisper to me when we wake up together.” Dino mussed a hand through Jess’s disarrayed hair. “You’ll have to fill me in since I left you in a suicidal state not long ago.”
Jess punched her side and glared at her for the revelations unpermitted.
“Sweetheart, forgive Dino, she doesn’t have a filter or any sense of decorum.”
“At least I’m wearing clothes on the balcony in the middle of the day. This is unexpected, since the last time I was here, you were auditioning for head counselor at Camp Woe Is Me.”
Skylar ignored the revelations. “We’re wearing clothes, too, mostly.” Skylar smiled at Dino, who was clearly happy for Jess. “There are butter croissants in the kitchen if you’re hungry.”
“See, Jess? That’s what manners look like.” She pushed off the chaise, allowing them to shift against one another.
Skylar smiled and pressed her mouth over Jess’s. “You’re going to have to get me some shorts or something. She’s already seen you in your underwear.”
Jess snuggled closer. “Who says we have to move?”
“Likely my physical therapist if we don’t do something exercise related. Besides, I need clothes and a shower.”
“How about a little head-clearing run at the lake and you can get whatever you need, as long as I’m included in that.”
“You know you are. You’re amazing in every way.”
“Take the blanket and go shower while I oust our houseguest.” She jerked her head toward the kitchen where Dino made coffee and hummed “I’m Coming Out” as she warmed a croissant.
Dino slid her eyes over to Jess, who was staring at her with amusement as she walked inside. “What? You want me back? I knew it would happen.”
“Yeah, that’s it. The woman I woke up with is naked in my shower about now and I could only think of you, Dino.”
She sh
ook her head knowingly. “It happens. I can’t blame you, living so close to all of this.” She swept a hand down her body in demonstration.
Jess laughed despite the morning wake-up call. “How was your night?”
“Seems like I should be asking you the same thing. Is this your idea of foreplay?” She pushed at the quilt of files and paper covering the island.
“No, actually, it was Sky’s idea.”
“You’re too easy, Jess. You should have held out for a glass of wine at least.”
“I’m stupidly crazily in love with her, Dino.” Jess didn’t bother to sugarcoat it.
“Wow. You tell her?” She bit into her croissant.
“Indirectly. I mean, I think I made it pretty obvious.” She self-consciously pulled her shirt lower.
“I take it she feels the same way?” Dino’s tone was cautious.
“I think so, yeah. Still a little freaked about the work thing. I think I can convince her that we’re worth overcoming that.”
“Understandable. So, what’s your plan?”
“I fired her.” Jess’s flat tone made Dino chuckle.
“Oh. Sure. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“You’re not as smart as me.”
“Yeah, that’s it.” Dino rolled her eyes. “So, what is all of this?” She picked up an invoice and then tilted it toward Jess for an explanation.
“Ninety-seven thousand dollars’ worth of embezzlement.” The anger crept into Jess’s voice again.
“From IA?” Her forehead creased.
“Yeah. Sky’s been tracing some weird invoices and finally got to the bottom of the numbers and ultimately brought them to me.”
“She was doing all that even when she hated you?”
“I never hated her.” Skylar appeared looking refreshed and slid under Jess’s arm.
Jess easily accepted a brush of Skylar’s lips across her mouth and refocused on Dino.
“I needed to work through being a little vulnerable.” She looked back at Jess. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for, Sky. Please don’t.”
Dino yawned and snatched another croissant from the box. “I’d really like to hear about all this when you’re ready. I assume you’re going to go to Oakland PD?”
