by Jane Henry
“No, I agree,” I told him. “Mr. Pederson sent me because he felt you might have facts and resources that could help him clear his name.” Then turning to Sabrina, I added, “In fact, Mr. Pederson was extremely vocal about not wanting you anywhere near the prison.” I bit my lip, debating how much to tell her, and how fast. “It’s not… a happy place. And he’s changed, even in the past month.”
Sabrina swallowed hard, and Anson held her more firmly. “Let’s take this inside,” he said, sweeping a hand toward the room he’d come from. “Pederson helped us out, getting us info when we were trying to find the people responsible for my mom’s death. We’re prepared to return the favor.”
I nodded and tightened my hand on the strap of my bag once again, reflexively, then walked into the room he’d indicated.
If the foyer had been heaven, this room was like a scene from a period-drama – something English, with breeches and hunting. The furnishings were dark wood and dark leather, and every available wall seemed lined with books. If Mr. Darcy had been parked on a settee inside, I wouldn’t have been surprised, but instead, there were two gentlemen who looked decidedly out of place in their surroundings.
“Guys,” Daly said, as he and Sabrina stepped in behind me. “This is Pederson’s attorney, Ms…”
“Wright,” I supplied.
“Yeah. Ms. Wright,” he repeated, guiding Sabrina to a sofa. “This is Caelan.” He pointed to a giant of a man – bald and built, like a bouncer at a particularly rowdy nightclub – who was sitting sedately in one of the leather club chairs, drinking a cup of tea.
“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” he said, and although his voice was low and rumbling, he had the demeanor of a man who was used to frightening people unintentionally and was therefore determined to set me at ease. It worked.
“Hi,” I returned.
“And the one with his head buried in his tablet is Walker,” Anson said, pointing to the man closest to me, whose face was obscured by a mane of longish black hair. “Walker!” he said more loudly when this introduction got no response.
“Huh?” Walker looked up from his device and seemed to do a double-take, like he wasn’t sure how I had gotten in the room, or maybe how he had gotten there. “Oh, sorry. You’re the lawyer?”
“Haven,” I said, leaning forward to shake his hand. “Haven Wright.”
He smiled, flashing even, white teeth, and his voice was a low, accented purr. “Well, now. Might be worthwhile going to prison, if I had you to defend me, Haven Wright.”
I blushed, but Anson snorted derisively. “Right. Go back to your dark realm, or whatever the fuck you were doing.”
“Dark… realm?” Walker shook his head. “You mean dark web? Jesus. I try and try to teach you shit, and it’s like you deliberately try to hurt me with your ignorance.”
Anson’s unrepentant grin said he did, indeed, do it deliberately, and I felt myself release a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding. These men were like brothers, of a sort, and I found myself instinctively wanting to trust them – a feeling I wasn’t accustomed to anymore.
I took a seat in the chair Anson indicated, directly across from Caelan. He perched himself next to Sabrina on the couch to my left, and I set my briefcase on the low table before me.
“As you all know,” I began, “Max Pederson is my client…”
“Hang on just one second,” Caelan said, holding up a palm. He turned his calm blue eyes to Walker. “Where are the others?”
I glanced at Sabrina. There were more?
“X is down the hall, on a call that should be ending any minute,” Walker said. He typed something on his pad. “I let him know Ms. Wright was here. But Ethan’s still out with Randi. I messaged him an hour ago, and sent him three emergency texts since then, but he hasn’t replied.”
“He’s out with Randi? Still?” This was from Sabrina, in a tone that was both fond and disapproving.
“You know he’s meeting her because she used to work at Silver,” Anson said. “She worked until three and it’s only five now.”
“And they’ve just been meeting all this time?” Sabrina said with a smirk. “Two hours over a cup of coffee?”
“Ethan has his job just as we have ours,” Caelan chided her. “He does what he does to get the assets we need. That doesn’t mean he likes it.”
“Yeah, but sometimes he does,” Walker said with a broad grin. “And Randi’s a hell of a dancer.” He held out his hands in front of his chest and made a curving motion I hadn’t seen since junior high school. “She’s got a lot of assets for him to…”
“I dare you to finish that sentence, Walker,” a voice from behind me said. A blond Adonis of a man stepped into the room, shooting Walker a killing glare. Walker’s mouth pursed, and he sighed.
The Greek god paused by my chair to shake my hand. “Xavier Malone, Ms. Wright.”
“Of the Madison Avenue Malones?” I asked, blinking up at him in surprise.
The men in the room chuckled, like this was some kind of inside joke, and one corner of Xavier’s mouth twitched. “More recently of Masters’ Security.” He made a shooing motion with his hand and Walker rolled his eyes as he obediently shifted to the other end of the sofa, giving Xavier his seat. “I understand you need our help.”
I adjusted my glasses and nodded. “Not for myself, but for my client, Max Pederson.”
I looked to Sabrina, who tilted her head in acknowledgement. “My late father’s close friend and business associate,” she confirmed.
I nodded again. “He asked me to get in touch with you. He believes he has new information that’s connected to one of your previous investigations? And… well, not to put too fine a point on it, he needs your help quite badly in return. The situation doesn’t look good.”
“Ugh.” Sabrina pushed her red curls off her face in frustration. “His wife was such a bitch, but there’s no way he killed her. I want to help him, if we can.”
I found myself wanting to smile at the straightforward description of Emma Pederson. By all accounts, the woman had been nasty and conniving, but everyone seemed to be afraid to say so, now that the woman was dead. I liked Sabrina all the better for telling the truth.
“Indeed,” Xavier said. “And more than that, I’m curious to know what information he has that might help us. Please, Ms. Wright, tell us what you know and what he needs. We can fill Ethan in when he gets back,” he told Caelan, and Caelan nodded reluctantly.
I licked my lips, trying to organize my thoughts, reading down the list of bullet points in my mind.
This was the hard part. I needed them not to simply buy the possibility of Max’s innocence, but to have enough faith in Max’s side of the story that they would go out on a limb and help him. Since I was pretty sure I didn’t have a strong enough case to convince a jury not to sentence the man to life in prison, I didn’t expect this to be easy. But there was no one to plead for him except me.
I opened my mouth to speak, when the elevator dinged in the foyer and a voice called out behind me, “Christ alive, Walker, is the penthouse on fire? Has the zombie apocalypse finally begun, and you’re patient zero? Did we acquire a cat and lose it up a tree while I was gone?”
“Ah. Ethan’s home,” Caelan said with a satisfied smile, and Sabrina snickered.
I smothered my own answering grin by wriggling my size-eight feet inside my size seven-and-a-half shoes until the throb of resumed blood flow sufficiently distracted me.
“I was just keeping you updated,” Walker defended lazily. “I knew you’d want to be here for this meeting.”
“Yeah, yeah. But a man can only get a certain number of 9-1-1 texts before he starts to ignore them entirely, my friend,” the newcomer said, the proximity of his voice telling me he’d entered the room at last.
“Ethan, meet the latest client of Masters’ Security,” Xavier said, cutting through their good-natured ribbing. “Max Pederson’s defense attorney, Haven Wright.”
I smiled as I stood on
my aching feet, extending my hand in friendly greeting before the man’s features had fully registered – the dark, auburn hair with the carefully styled wave in front, the guileless summer-blue eyes I’d stared into a thousand times, the lightly-stubbled cheeks that had only ever been smooth when I knew him, the perfectly pressed button-down and tailored slacks that gave him an air of quiet competence.
When it did register, with the devastating force of a fragment bomb eradicating every logical thought, I felt my entire body freeze, going ice-cold and locked-down just as I’d been on that April day nine years ago when I’d waited and waited and waited for him to come, to make good on his promise… and had realized in one shocking instant that he wouldn’t and had never intended to.
I was ashamed to admit that, despite the way I’d tried to erase every memory of Tad Warner from my mind, I could recall every detail of that day, every emotion I’d felt, with stunning clarity. I would never forget that face. I would never forget those eyes. I would never forget what he’d stolen from me.
Even if, for one second, I’d been uncertain that the man I was looking at – this person they all knew as Ethan – was my Tad, the way he looked at me would have confirmed it. The quiver of his throat as he swallowed, the false-brightness of his smile, the way he hesitated for a second before shaking my hand heartily would have told the tale. I’d learned a lot from Tad Warner about how to spot a fraud. And I knew without a doubt that I was looking at one right now.
“Ms. Wright,” Tad said. “Pleased to meet you. I’m, uh, sorry I was late. Unavoidable.”
Unavoidable. Of course. Because he’d been out with Randi… and her assets. Charming her out of whatever information or money or favors he needed, heedless of what she needed or wanted or believed.
But in a larger sense, maybe he was right, and this had been unavoidable. Maybe the universe had been warning me about this reckoning all day.
Keep it together, Haven. For Pederson’s sake.
I smiled, and I knew it was a brittle, fake thing, but it was the best I could do in that moment.
“Oh, the pleasure is all mine, Mr. Warner,” I told him, and I meant it. I’d longed to find him, to bring him to justice, for years.
“Ethan, Ms. Wright says Max Pederson has information that could be useful to us,” Xavier said, his voice like a blade. I saw him glancing between us with narrowed eyes, reading the currents of tension but not knowing where they originated.
Tad, or whoever he was pretending to be now, watched me like I was a landmine he’d recently discovered in his living room, ready to explode at any moment and give him away.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the tiny buzz of power that gave me.
“Ms. Wright,” he said, and only when his grip tightened around my fingers did I realize that he still held my hand. “You look like you could use a drink. Some water. Or tea.”
“I’m fine, actually.”
“Nonsense,” he said, smiling to the others as he tried to pull me towards the door. “You look overly warm. I’d be a terrible host if I didn’t get you something cold.”
Jesus. I was overly warm, and trust this asshole to realize it.
“No, I…” I protested again, but his grip would not budge, and I realized that I had the choice of being yanked off-balance or maintaining my dignity and going with him.
How the hell did this man always, always put me in this position?
“A nice cool glass of water. Anyone else need anything? No?” he answered his own question before anyone could get over their shock quickly enough to respond. “We’ll be back in a flash.”
“Did she just call him Warner?” I heard Caelan ask as I was yanked from the room. “We never mentioned his last name.”
And I could swear I heard Walker reply, “Oh, fuck,” which seemed to sum up the situation quite appropriately.
Tad – Ethan, I corrected myself – pulled me down the hall into a spacious, homey kitchen with a large farmhouse table on one side and a variety of high-end appliances on the other.
The entire first floor of my parents’ house in Barnstable could fit inside this room, I realized. And still, they couldn’t pay their mortgage without my help every month. All because of this man.
And that was when my icy calm turned to red-hot rage.
“Let go of me,” I hissed, pulling back on my arm hard enough to yank him sideways.
He turned suddenly, grabbed both of my wrists, and pinned me against the refrigerator with my hands above my head. The door handle dug into my back as he plastered his chest to mine.
I was stunned. In all the months we’d spent together, despite all his caveman protectiveness, he’d never once been rough with me.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he demanded, and I had the sense that finally, in his temper, I was seeing the real man behind the façade.
I felt a frisson of excitement flare in my belly before I ruthlessly suppressed it.
Too bad the real man was an asshole, too.
“Me? What am I doing here? Are you delusional, as well as a scum-sucking criminal fraud?” I was so angry - about his lies, about the way he made me feel - that I was practically hissing the words. Where, oh where, was professional, competent Haven? I thought for a second of calling the others, seeing if Caelan or Walker would come to my rescue, but I was determined to fight this battle myself. “The better question is what are you doing here? What are you doing breathing free air anywhere after all you’ve done?”
His nostrils flared for just one instant before he blanked his expression, but I knew that if this guy had a tender spot anywhere inside him, I’d just hit it. One point to Haven.
“What I mean to say is, what are you planning to do? About us?” He held my wrists tighter, his familiar blue eyes staring down into mine.
I laughed. “Us? My God, there is no us. There never was. Are you afraid I’m going to tell your new friends that you’re a liar? That you befriended me, slept with me, pretended to fall in love with me, and got my parents to hand over every penny of their savings, then ghosted?”
“No,” he said. “I’m not afraid you’ll tell them that.” His grip changed, and he rubbed his thumbs over the insides of my wrists. His skin shouldn’t have felt familiar. His warm breath on my cheek shouldn’t have felt so right. My heart sped, and I felt my panties dampen beneath the fabric of my oh-so-professional skirt.
Under other circumstances, with another, more trustworthy man looming over me, arousal might have been understandable, but right now it was just another thing I blamed Ethan for.
The fake-tenderness had somehow slipped beneath my defenses, and the knowledge of my own weakness made me want to kick him.
“Then you definitely are delusional,” I informed him. “Because I have no need to keep your secrets.”
“I didn’t suppose you would. I’m not worried because they already know.”
My mouth fell open in shock. There was no way, no way, that kind-eyed Caelan and frat-boy Walker knew what this man had done to me. They’d been open and friendly, and I was positive I would have spotted a deception like that.
“You lie, which is no surprise. They had no idea who I was.”
“They don’t know you by name,” he agreed. “But they know who I was then. And they know who I am now.”
He said it like those were two separate people, and I made a disbelieving noise.
“Who you are,” I said knowingly. “Right. They know who you’re pretending to be, Tad. Or is it Ethan?”
He seemed to consider something for a moment – I swear, I could read the thoughts flashing across his eyes as he discarded one story and another, trying to read me, trying to manipulate me, and I could only be glad that I knew better than to believe a word that came out of his mouth.
“Ethan Warner is my real name,” he said finally. “The name I was born with. My legal name.”
I squinted my eyes at him. The words had a certain weariness to them that gave them the air of tr
uth, as unbelievable as that was.
“The other Masters know that I’ve been a salesperson. An unscrupulous one,” he said, and I snorted.
“The words you’re looking for are scum-sucking criminal fraud. Say it with me.”
He shook his head, gripping my wrists tighter. “Don’t be a brat. They know that I’ve conned people in the past,” he said instead. “Hell, that’s why I’m on their team. What I want to know is who else you’re going to tell now that you know my identity. Now that you know where I live. Who are you going to tell, Haven?”
I swallowed. He meant, was I going to tell the police? Was I going to tell the other people he’d defrauded? Was I going to get revenge?
Oh, but it was tempting.
And yet, right now Max Pederson was sitting in a jail cell, likely with his back pressed against the wall and fear in his eyes, because there was no safety for him as long as he was in prison. The only people, he’d told me, who had a snowball’s chance in hell of saving him, were Masters’ Security. “They know who I’m dealing with, Ms. Wright,” Max had said. “And they know how to stop them.”
I’d buried my hurt and anger at Tad Warner for nine long years. I could bury it for a little while longer.
“I’m not planning on telling anyone,” I told him, adding a silent right now to the end of that sentence. “I’m here to get help for my client.”
“Promise?” The word was a taunt.
“Cross my heart.”
He lifted one eyebrow, but after a pause, he released my hands. “Well, I’ll say this: you’re a better liar than you used to be.”
“And you’re dumber than you used to be, if you told me your real name,” I shot back, rubbing feeling back into my wrists.
I pushed my hands against his chest, and he moved back half a pace, leaving no doubt that he moved because he chose to and not because I’d moved him.
Everything with Ethan was on his terms. The bastard.
“Maybe I figured you’d play nicely if you felt like you had a little power,” he said with a smile, and for half a second, I thought he was talking about me pushing him, before I realized he meant that was why he’d given me his real name. Smug, conceited ass, being so overt about his manipulation. “Animals don’t bite unless they’re cornered, right?”
