Chapter Six
ANA FOUND PARKING down the street from the Stafford Hotel and slammed the door, clicking the lock button on her key fob as she hit the sidewalk at a near run. She blew through the opulently decorated lobby, waving away offers of assistance from employees and going straight to the elevator banks. She punched the Up arrow a handful of times, as if her urgency would somehow get the elevator there faster. Her stomach cramped at the idea of what she might find above. Emergency services were slow tonight if she’d gotten here before the ambulance.
Mercifully, the car arrived with a ding and the doors slid open. Inside, she hit the Door Close button so the approaching family with loads of suitcases couldn’t get on with her. It was a jerk move, but the last thing she wanted right now was to be held up by a Dora the Explorer roller bag.
When the elevator deposited her on the top floor that held the VIP suites, Ana went straight to the door ahead of the elevator and knocked sharply. “It’s Analyn Sanchez. Open up.”
Immediately, the door opened to a disheveled man in a suit, all too familiar . . . Christopher Mason.
“What’s going on? Why aren’t the paramedics here?”
Mason ran his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t call them.”
“You didn’t . . . what?”
“It’s okay, though. I called a doctor I could trust. He’ll be here any minute.” He looked at her with worried eyes, the usual arrogance stripped away. “You said to stay out of the media. You don’t think calling 911 is going to attract attention?”
Ana pushed past him. She had indeed said that, but that didn’t mean withholding medical attention from someone who needed it. “Where is she?”
He pointed to the bedroom.
Ana’s stomach gave another heave of anxiety as she moved silently across the plush carpet to the double doors that separated the living space of the suite from the bedroom. There on rumpled sheets sprawled a woman, dressed in a skimpy cocktail dress, the straps fallen off her shoulders. No, scratch that. Not a woman. A girl. She couldn’t be more than eighteen, if even that. And she was unconscious.
It didn’t take much to figure out why. The low table in the seating area held drug paraphernalia and what Ana could only guess was heroin. She rushed to the girl’s side and pressed her fingers to her neck. Finally, she found a pulse, weak but present.
Ana pulled out her cell phone and began to dial 911, but Mason jerked it out of her hand before she could finish dialing. “You can’t do that.”
“She needs emergency medical attention, an ambulance. Not some concierge doctor.”
Mason’s expression hardened. “You will not call 911. This is why we hired you. To take care of problems like this.”
Had she thought that he looked concerned earlier? Not for his date’s well-being. Probably for his own reputation and what Daddy would say if he was caught shooting heroin with an underage girl.
“You hired me to fix your mistakes in the media after they came to light. Not to cover up a crime. I can’t. I won’t.”
“Then you won’t have a job tomorrow.”
Disgust coiled through her. She’d just thought he was a provocateur. But now there was no question that he was the bottom-feeder the media made him out to be. No wonder his father had paid through the nose to get him a minder. He really thought she was going to put her job above someone’s life? Ana didn’t know all that much about drug overdoses, but from what she saw, the girl probably didn’t have a lot of time.
She held Mason’s gaze with one she was sure was equally hard and held out her hand. Reluctantly, he placed her phone in it.
“You’re on your own this time. I was never here. And I hope for her sake that the doctor gets here soon.”
“Analyn—”
“Save it, Mason. This is your mess. You clean it up.”
Without a backward look, she strode from the suite and closed the door carefully behind her. She got on the elevator and rode down stiffly, not looking at her own reflection in the mirrored walls. She wasn’t sure that she would like what she saw.
She managed to hold on to her composure through the lobby, but as soon as she hit the sidewalk in the cold air outside, she had her phone in hand, dialing.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“Potential drug overdose at the Stafford Hotel, suite 1901. Please come quickly. She’s breathing and she has a pulse, but I don’t know for how long.” Ana clicked off the line before they could ask for any identifying information. Contrary to popular belief, emergency services had no way of tracking the origin of the call, so it would never get traced back to her. But at least she had done what she could. It was all out of her hands now and in God’s. The girl’s health, Mason’s fate, her job.
She went back to her car, hearing the first whine of sirens in the distance, then dropped her head onto her steering wheel with a long exhalation. “Please,” she whispered, not even entirely sure what she was asking.
As if it were a direct answer to her inarticulate prayer, a fire truck pulled up in front of the hotel in a spin of red lights, followed almost immediately by the paramedics. She watched as firemen and EMTs rushed into the building with their bags.
She texted Melody and Rachel: I need you guys tonight. I just tanked my career. Bring something sweet.
Melody came back first: Be there in 30.
Then Rachel: Finishing up dinner with Alex. Be there in a few.
Ana let out a breath, the angst she’d felt earlier evaporating. They might be busy with their lives, but they still had her back. She could almost believe everything would be okay. Except Mason’s threat might very well be the reality. He’d call his daddy, and Daddy would get her fired. It was only a matter of time.
She made it out of her car just in time to vomit on the street and on the tips of her expensive patent-leather shoes.
* * *
Tuesday dawned with dread and another stomachache, but it was hard to tell if that was because of Ana’s anxiety or the sugary dessert that Rachel and Melody had brought over. They must have had a sixth sense about Ana’s panic—for her, job crisis was at least twice as bad as a breakup—because they’d come prepared for the worst with Melody’s butterscotch blondie bars, homemade caramel sauce, and vanilla bean ice cream. It was one of the bakery’s specialties, taken from Melody’s grandmother’s signature recipe, and it made Ana think Melody had gone back to Bittersweet Café for provisions on the way.
A gigantic blondie sundae and a lot of conversation later, she’d finally made peace with whatever was going to happen. Rachel and Melody reassured her that she had done the right thing and anything that happened from here was not her fault. The only question was whether the fallout would be bad enough to blackball her from other firms in Denver. She hadn’t thought so. This would be more a matter of dereliction of duty; that sort of thing normally didn’t come with vindictiveness.
This morning, she wasn’t so sure.
She dressed in her most professional suit, aware that she looked more like a high-powered litigator than a publicist, but she wasn’t in the mood for friendly and approachable. Slim-cut black jacket with matching pencil skirt, blood-red silk blouse with a deep-V shawl collar, black patent Louboutins with their bloody slash of a crimson sole. For good measure, she clasped on a diamond solitaire necklace that lay precisely at her collarbone, the only piece of fine jewelry she’d ever bought herself, acquired after her promotion to the crisis management division. It had cost her an insane chunk of her equally insane new salary. She still didn’t know why she’d done it. Maybe just because she could.
“Whatever happens, God will take care of me,” she whispered to herself, fingering the necklace. “I did the right thing.”
She held on to that thought all the way into the office, up the elevator, until her foot touched the carpeting on the floor of their office. She knew it wasn’t good the moment she saw her assistant Daphne’s expression.
She dropped her bag beneath the desk and
settled into her chair, making her expression impassive as she logged into her computer. Daphne drifted over to the corner of her desk, clutching a stack of paperwork.
“How bad is it?” Ana asked without looking up.
“He’s been in there since I got here. He looks like a windmill.”
That could be good or bad. When Lionel was arguing with someone, his hands and arms started gesticulating wildly . . . which she hoped meant that he was fighting for her. Placid resignation would make her more worried.
“He asked to see me yet?”
“As soon as you got in.”
Ana sighed and dropped her head forward. “Okay. I’ll be right back. I hope.”
“Good luck.” Daphne’s eyebrows drew together, furrowing her pale forehead beneath her strawberry-blonde hair. She’d been Ana’s assistant for almost eighteen months after Ana had rescued her from Ryan, who seemed to think she was his personal slave. She had to be wondering what was going to happen to her if this all went bad for Ana.
Amazing how things could turn so quickly. Five days ago, she was being called into Lionel’s office to take over this account; now she could be going in there to get fired.
She paused at the door and rapped on the glass divider. “You wanted to see me?”
“Come in, Ana.” Lionel’s face looked serious, but he wasn’t angry, at least. “Close the door behind you.”
Uh-oh. She shut the glass door and then seated herself in one of the chairs across from his desk.
“First of all, I wanted to say, you did the right thing.”
Ana froze, momentarily speechless.
A tiny smile surfaced on Lionel’s face. “The girl is going to be okay. And I do mean girl. She was sixteen.”
A wave of shock and revulsion passed through her. “I had to call. He said he’d called a doctor, but I had no way of knowing if that was true. If I didn’t and something had happened to her, I would have been responsible.”
“Like I said, you did the right thing. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences.” He folded his hands atop the table and studied her carefully. “Tell me the truth. Was it you who called the media?”
Ana stared at him blankly. “Media?”
Lionel clicked on the television on one side of his office and selected a DVR recording. The video had been shot outside the hotel, showing the emergency vehicles and several news vans.
“No! I didn’t have any idea. I only stayed long enough to make sure the ambulance got there.” Ana pressed a hand to her mouth for a long second. “Did they have Mason’s name?”
“Oh, they had Mason’s name and the girl’s too. I don’t need to tell you that it’s bad. I’ve spent half my morning on the phone with Clark Mason, but he’s been told there’s no possible way he’ll be named to the cabinet position after this.”
“Christopher Mason probably did it himself,” Ana said. “Figured if he was going down, he was taking his dad down with him.”
“That’s my thought as well, but Clark remains convinced it’s my office that leaked the information. To what end, I can’t possibly imagine, since confidentiality is our most closely-held value, but he’s not being reasonable. He’s demanding that I fire you.”
Ana had known it was a strong possibility, but up until now, she hadn’t really believed it was going to happen. She drew in a deep breath to mitigate the wave of nausea. “I’ll go pack my desk, then.”
“You should pack your desk, but I’m not firing you.”
Ana looked up. “What?”
“I have to do something, Ana, but I know very well you’re not the one who put this whole thing in motion. I blame myself. I should have never taken the account.” Lionel rubbed his hand across his short-cropped hair, and for the first time, she saw how much of a toll the job had taken on him. “I’m the one who brought you to Denver. Back in San Francisco, I knew you had an uncanny knack for this work, and I knew you were going to be a great asset to this company. I still believe that.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re going on leave. You’ve got six weeks of accumulated vacation time. I think another ten weeks of paid leave should allow the whole thing to blow over.”
She stared at him. “You’re going to pay me to not work.”
“I’m going to pay you to be scarce so I don’t have to answer difficult questions. Clark Mason is no doubt going to be talking about you, but I managed to convince him not to take the firm under. I’m sorry to say you get to be the sacrificial lamb.”
“But my reputation . . .”
“Will be intact.” Lionel smiled sardonically. “Really, Ana, the attention span of the public is short enough that even were you mentioned in the news, no one would remember you by the time you came back. Granted, I don’t think we’re going to have you working with any more politicians, but that probably won’t break your heart.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“‘Thank you, Lionel’ would be a good start. You’re getting a four-month vacation and then you can come back like nothing happened.” He looked at her closely. “And to be honest, I don’t think this is the worst thing for you.”
“What am I going to do?”
“What everyone else does on vacation. Go to Hawaii. Get a cabin in the mountains and hike for a few weeks. I don’t know. What do you like to do outside of work?”
Ana stared at him blankly. It had been so long since she’d had anything else in her life, she had no idea how to answer that question. When she said as much, he laughed.
“Now I know I’m doing the right thing. Go have some fun, Ana. It’s past time you had a life. Figure out who you are besides an impeccably dressed spokesperson for very bad people.”
Ana gaped at him.
“I don’t have any illusions about what we do here,” he said softly. “But it’s a living. And no matter how misguided or downright awful some of our clients are, I don’t think they really deserve the media feeding frenzy that would occur without us. Or maybe they do, but their families certainly don’t.” He stood. “Go. Have fun. Rediscover life outside of these four walls.”
Ana rose too. “What about Daphne? Will she go back to Ryan?”
“I’ll probably make her a floater until you get back. But she will remain your assistant.”
“Thank you, Lionel.”
“I’m sorry, Ana. I wouldn’t have given him to you if I thought it would turn out like this. Your clients are going to miss you.”
Ana nodded and turned, leaving the office far more ambivalently than she had entered it. She wasn’t getting fired, not really. In fact, she was practically being rewarded with extra vacation time until the situation blew over, after which she could quietly get back to work.
So why did it still feel like a punishment?
“What did he say?” Daphne hissed, falling into step with her back to her desk.
“I’m on leave for four months.” Ana opened her top desk drawer and began moving the personal items to her bag—lip gloss, hand cream, feminine products—and then took the single framed photo of her family and shoved it in as well. “You’ll be a floating assistant in the office until I come back.”
“You are coming back, right?”
Ana looked at Daphne curiously. “Of course I’m coming back. What else would I do?”
Daphne chewed her lip, still looking worried. “Well, enjoy your . . . leave . . . I guess? I mean, you really could use some time off. You haven’t taken a vacation since I started working here.”
Ana just smiled in return and made one last pass through her desk. For someone who practically lived here, there was very little to identify it as hers. She looked back at the still-hovering Daphne, then impulsively hugged her. “Thanks, Daphne.”
“For what?”
“For everything. I’ll be back. I promise. You know how to get ahold of me if you need me.”
Ana took one last look around the office, aware that all the other publicists were attempting t
o see what was going on without looking like they were interested. Lionel could explain. Or not, and she’d surprise them all when she walked through the door sixteen weeks from today.
Sixteen weeks. That sounded a lot more intimidating than four months. She rode the elevator down, feeling almost like she was floating. No, not floating. Unanchored.
She’d been in this office every weekday and most weekends for the last seven years. She finally had the time and freedom to do whatever she wanted. And thanks to the fact she was on paid leave, the money to accomplish it.
The only problem was, she had absolutely no idea what that was.
Chapter Seven
“I . . . DON’T . . . UNDERSTAND. Why . . . not?” Alex’s words came out in gasps, punctuated by the tap of his running shoes on the cement steps.
Bryan laughed and glanced at his friend. “Slacking while I was gone, huh? There was a day when you could have held a whole conversation doing this.” He sent a smirk at Alex and took the wide upward steps of the Red Rocks Amphitheatre at an even quicker pace.
It became clear that Alex wasn’t going to play the game, though, and Bryan immediately outdistanced him, taking the upward climb as quickly as he could, passing other exercisers who were doing the same thing. Fine. When they moved more slowly, Alex could talk, and right now he was asking questions Bryan wasn’t interested in answering.
He made it to the top a full thirty seconds before Alex and took the opportunity to stretch his quads and calves while looking out across the spectacular view. Nestled into the foothills of Morrison on the western edge of Denver, the amphitheater was carved out of the jutting red rocks that gave it its name, affording a spectacular view of the city and the plains beyond. Straight ahead were the clusters of high-rises that indicated downtown; to the right, a smaller grouping that was the Denver Tech Center, houses and streets and buildings painting the landscape between.
Alex hit the top step and doubled over, panting. “Okay, you might be right. I’ve been slacking. But in my defense, it’s just my conditioning. I’ve still been climbing. Which is why I want to know why you’re not.”
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