Game On

by Nancy Warren

  She sipped her wine, feeling suddenly nervous now that she knew the small talk and the house tour were over. He had his cop face on.

  “So,” he said, “tell me what’s been going on.”

  “I told you. I’ve been getting somewhat disturbing emails. You read them.”

  “And you’re a smart woman. You’ve had a few weeks to think about who your enemies are, who might be jealous of you or want to hurt you.”

  “I really didn’t think too much about them at first. I’m a fairly high-profile person with a public website. I get emails from people who are maybe very lonely or a little crazy or from perverts who think it’s highly amusing to misunderstand the meaning of performance coach.”

  He made a wry face but remained silent.

  “I was going to delete them. I try not to keep anything negative in my personal space.” She felt the effort he was putting into not rolling his eyes. “But Lisa made me keep them. She’s the one who’s been filing them, as I told you.”

  “Good for Lisa.”

  “It wasn’t until that text today that I realized it has to be someone who knows me. Who could see what I’m wearing.”

  “Tell me about your enemies.”

  “I don’t have any.”

  “I hate to be the voice of doom, but I think you do.”

  She took another sip of wine. “Nobody obvious springs to mind.”

  “Okay. A jealous rival? As you say, you’re pretty high profile. Have you pissed off another performance coach? Is there someone out there who thinks they deserve all your success?”

  “Of course there are other coaches who aren’t as successful, but it’s like that in any business. I’m sure there are people who would love to have my career, but they can. Anyone can be successful if they put some effort into it.”

  He held up a hand. “Okay. Don’t want your coaching philosophy—I want you to think of people who might be jealous enough that they’d try to hurt you.”

  “I can’t think of anyone.”

  “What about Lisa?”

  “Lisa? My assistant?”

  He nodded. “She wants to be a partner. And you don’t take partners. Maybe she’s pissed enough to try and take you down. Remember, that text came right after I walked in on a kind of tense moment. Maybe she decided to rattle your cage.”

  “But we work together. I’ve mentored her. I trust her.”

  “Not enough to bring her into the business.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Maybe it isn’t to Lisa.”

  She couldn’t stand the thought of Lisa sabotaging her. “Lisa is the one who made me keep the emails. She’s keeping the file. And—” she hated to admit this “—Lisa suggested I tell the police. I’m sure she’s not behind this.”

  She doubted he was as certain, but he didn’t pursue Lisa anymore. “Okay. Personal life. Lovers.”

  She felt a warmth tinge her cheeks. “I don’t have any lovers.” Or much of a personal life, if she was honest.

  “Former lovers. Old boyfriends with a grudge.”

  “I try to leave every relationship on a positive note.”

  He stared at her for a long moment. “I can’t help you if you spout bullshit off your website. Or out of your self-help book.”

  8

  SERENA RUBBED HER forehead with the heel of her hand. He might think she was lying when she said she tried to leave relationships in a positive way but it was true. She wouldn’t be successful if she didn’t believe what she wrote and practice what she preached.

  But somewhere along the line, somebody had developed a serious grudge against her. And Adam was a detective trying to help her. She thought back to her longest relationship. Tried to sum it up.

  “My longest relationship was with Carl. He’s a theoretical physicist. We never lived in the same city but got together on a regular basis. When it was clear he was more interested in proving the existence of the Higgs boson particle than he was in me, we parted.” She smiled. “He was one of the team of scientists who proved its existence. Exciting stuff. He married another physicist. Last I heard, they were living in Geneva. I don’t think he’d wish me ill.”

  “You’re right. Sounds unlikely to be Carl Higgs Boson. Who else?”

  “I—” She hadn’t realized how lacking her love life had been. In the three years since she and Carl had split, she’d barely dated. Looking back, it was clear that she and Carl had stayed together for years because both had other passions. They both put their work first. Sporadic companionship, a date for their big events, mediocre sex. It had been enough. For a while.

  Since then? She shrugged. “I’ve dated, but nothing serious.”

  “What about Max?” His voice held a hint of urgency that would have been easy to miss.

  “Max? Max Varo?”

  He nodded, leaning forward, his beer held loosely in one fist.

  “Max and I have been friends and colleagues since we did our MBA together. He’s always had a string of completely unsuitable women and we never felt that way about each other.”

  “Good.” As Adam settled back, it occurred to her that he was relieved she and Max had never been an item. And his reasons had nothing to do with her new email pal.

  “Also, I don’t think he’s the type to send creepy emails.”

  “We’ll take him off the list, then.”

  “I dated a basketball player I coached. Not until after he worked through his issues, of course. I never date my clients.”

  Their gazes connected and she felt the sizzle of attraction, the challenge of trying to deny it.

  “What happened there?”

  “It was great for a few months but...” She looked back on her time with Mike. He’d been full of energy, inventive and insatiable sexually, but in the end... “I think we ran out of things to talk about.”

  “You’re still friends?”

  Were they? “I don’t think we’re enemies. But I can’t say we really stayed in touch. I wish him well. He’s dating a supermodel now.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  She thought back. “About a year...no, eighteen months ago.” Had it really been that long? She’d become so focused on work that she hadn’t really paid attention to her lack of a personal life.

  He didn’t say anything to that, merely frowned. “Well, somebody wants to hu—scare you, anyway. In my experience it’s usually someone you know.”

  She tried not to shiver but it was awful feeling as though it could be someone she knew, talked to, maybe saw on a regular basis, did business with, coached— She gave a small gasp.

  Naturally, Mr. Detective immediately picked up on it. “What?”

  “No. It’s ridiculous.”

  “How ’bout you tell me anyway?”

  “I coach this young internet entrepreneur. Usually I go to his place of business, but right after I got the first message, he changed the pattern. He’s been coming to my office. The first time he came by he said he wanted to talk to me about fear. Naturally, my first thought was that he’d sent the email, but it turned out he was talking about his fear. He’s a little inept socially. I’d forgotten all about it. I’m sure he’d never—”

  “Socially reclusive. Knows the internet well enough that he could send untraceable emails. Shows up at your office? Sounds like we have a possible winner.”

  “How do you know those emails are untraceable?”

  “I don’t. It’s a hunch. We detectives are famous for them, you know.” His eyes crinkled a little around the edges and she knew he was trying to make her feel better.

  Wasn’t working.

  “I’d like to have a little talk with this guy.”

  “And scare away one of my top clients? I don’t think so.”

>   “He could be threatening you.”

  “Why? Why would he?”

  “Why do crazy people do things?” He threw up his hands. “I don’t know. Maybe the stress of his sudden success is curdling his milk. He sees a beautiful, sexy woman like you and knows he could never have her. There could be all kinds of crazy in his head.”

  She had to stop focusing on the fact that he’d called her beautiful and sexy. She had to concentrate on the troubling messages. But there was a sort of jumpy excitement in her belly that reminded her she was sitting across from the most sexually exciting man she’d met in ages.

  Now they were alone in his house. And she really, really wanted to get naked with him.

  “I don’t want you talking to my client. He sees me in my office. My assistant is always there.” She tried to imagine Marcus Lemming sending her threats and simply couldn’t. “You know, I’m a pretty good judge of character and I’ve never had any sense of something being off with Ma—my client.”

  He leaned forward. Pinned her with an intense blue stare. “Listen to interviews with the neighbors and coworkers of a serial killer sometime. Mostly they can’t believe that such a nice young man could do such awful things.”

  Since there was no point in arguing about whether Marcus Lemming might be a serial killer, she took refuge in her wine. The glass was nearly empty and in spite of the conversation topic she was starting to feel more settled.

  “You hungry?” he asked.

  Surprisingly, she was. “Yes.”

  “Pizza okay?”

  “That would be perfect.”

  He stood up. “I’ll call it in.” He strode past her and paused. “You’re not going to make me get some weird-ass pizza, are you? Duck and seaweed or something?”

  She chuckled at his tone of horror. “No. I’m happy with something traditional.”

  “Excellent.” He lifted the receiver on his landline and hit a number on speed dial. She guessed he ate a lot of pizza. “Pepperoni, mushroom and green pepper. Pizza as God intended it.”

  “Extra cheese?” she asked.

  He grinned at her. “You might just be the perfect woman.” Then he was speaking to the pizza place and she was spared an answer. Which was a good thing because she couldn’t think of one. Perfect woman? She was an emotional mess who preached balance to her coaching clients but was so out of balance herself she hadn’t had a relationship in a year and a half and had barely noticed. Worse, she was so clueless that she had an enemy she hadn’t known about.

  Adam put down the phone. Told her the delivery would be about twenty minutes, then remained by the phone frowning. “If you won’t let me open a case file on this, then I’m going to need two things.”

  This sounded very much like bargaining. She didn’t feel like bargaining. “What?”

  “First, you let me show the emails to a colleague of mine. A profiler. She’s a friend. She’ll keep my request confidential if I ask her to.”

  She thought about it. Realized the request was reasonable. “Okay. And the second thing?”

  “We bring Max in on this. You know that one of the companies he owns is a top security firm, right?”

  “Yes.” Max loved planes and flying and space, and he owned a regional airline. But he was also a smart entrepreneur. He owned media outlets, a couple of online businesses and a big security company that was one of the best in the country.

  “But—”

  “I want your apartment and your workplace scoured for bugs, hidden cameras, any kind of surveillance equipment.”

  The text had mentioned her blue suit. The possibility that someone had somehow installed a camera in her apartment without her knowledge was extremely unsettling. She put a hand to her stomach. He was right. If there was something there, she wanted it out.

  “All right.”

  “Then we put in our own equipment.”

  Her eyes went wide. “But—”

  “It’s for your protection.”

  “The text mentioned my blue suit. So what? A few hundred people saw me wearing it today. You’re jumping to conclusions.”

  “Putting safety first.”

  She looked into those eyes that had seen things she didn’t even want to imagine. Which made him a lot more knowledgeable about criminals than she ever wanted to be. “Okay.”

  He called Max. Told him Serena was with him and that they wanted to talk to him. She didn’t hear what Max said, but it was a pretty short conversation. Sounded as if one of the busiest men she knew was dropping everything at an old friend’s request.

  The pizza arrived. Adam poured her a second glass of wine and tore off squares of paper towel for napkins. They settled across from each other at the round oak table in his kitchen.

  While they pulled pieces of pizza out of the box, so stringy with extra cheese that they had to tear at it with their fingers, he said, “I would have pegged you for the brown-rice-and-tofu type.”

  “Some days I am,” she admitted. “But I believe a little indulgence every once in a while is good for a person. Don’t you?” When she glanced up at him, she saw such a blaze of sexual heat in his eyes that a tremor of lust shivered across her skin.

  “Oh, I believe a person should indulge. Yes, indeed.”

  She hadn’t meant her words to be interpreted that way and he must have known it. But she also realized there was little point in denying the obvious. They were hot for each other. As inconvenient and poorly timed as this crazy attraction was, it was as real as the pizza they were devouring.

  He waited until she’d eaten her fill and as he polished off another slice, he said, “Let’s go through your day. Every second of it from the time you got up this morning.”

  She’d known this was coming, of course. He was a cop. Questioning the victim. Her jaw tightened. If there was one thing she refused to be, it was a victim.

  “I got up at six-thirty, as I do every morning. I prepared and ate a yogurt smoothie. Then I threw on my exercise clothes, picked up the suit bag I’d organized the night before and drove to my gym. I arrived a few minutes before seven. I put my things in my locker in the ladies’ change area. I worked out on the elliptical for thirty minutes, then did some mat work. Then I showered, dried my hair, did my makeup and dressed for the day.”

  “In the blue suit?”

  “Yes.”

  “How often do you go to the gym?”

  “Every weekday unless I’m sick or out of town.”

  “Same time?”

  “Yes.”

  “You work out with the same people?”

  “Quite often.”

  “Who saw you after you were dressed and on your way out?”

  “I don’t know. Fifty people.”

  “Any that you know by name?”

  “I know some of the women. We chat in the change room.”

  “Write down their names.”

  “What?”

  “Tonight. Before you forget who you saw this morning.” He saw that she was about to argue. “You don’t have to show me the list. Keep it in case. Who else did you see?”

  “There are always staff coming and going from the front area. Trainers, cleaners, sales people. A few people I recognize but never talk to. My trainer, Tim, spotted me for a few minutes while I lifted weights. A man I see there often came by to say that he’d given my book to all of the staff in his company because he’d read it and enjoyed it so much. That was nice.”

  She sighed.

  He obviously picked up on the distress behind the sigh. “What?”

  “Stanley.” She knew she had to tell him about Stanley.

  “Who’s Stanley?”

  “Another gym client. He works out on the machine next to mine in the gym. He’s an X-ray technician, I think. He has a l
ittle crush on me.” She felt miserably guilty talking about poor Stan like this.

  “How little?”

  “Maybe not so little.” She couldn’t imagine the polite little man who blushed every time he saw her sending those strange, hurtful messages. But then, she couldn’t imagine anyone in her life doing such a thing.

  “How long has this crush of his been going on?”

  “A few months.”

  “Did anything happen around the time you first started getting the emails?”

  She nodded. On some level she must have wondered about Stanley from the beginning.

  “Tim told me Stanley had changed his shift at the hospital so he could work out at the same time as me every day. I’d known he had a little crush on me, of course, but when I knew he’d changed his work schedule to work out with me, I decided to let Stanley know I wasn’t available. I didn’t want him embarrassing both of us by asking me out. So I waited until he was in earshot and had a fake conversation on my cell phone with a supposed lover.” She blushed slightly remembering that she’d uttered Adam’s name during that call. “I got the first email soon after.”

  Adam’s face went hard. “Stanley have a last name?”

  She hesitated.

  “Serena, what he’s doing is harassment. I’ll check him out discreetly.”

  “Wozniak.”

  He didn’t make notes. He must have quite a memory.

  “Did Stanley say anything to you this morning?”

  She felt like a worm. “He said, ‘You look very pretty today, Serena,’ and then he held the door open for me. I thanked him, got into my car and drove away.”

  There was a beat of silence. “Then what did you do?”

  “I stopped in at the office briefly and then I drove to the conference center. I gave a breakfast speech to about two hundred executives and then later on I gave a smaller workshop. There were fifty or sixty people in the room.”

  “You know any of them?”

  “Probably a dozen quite well. Others well enough to exchange pleasantries. I had coffee with the CEO of a chain of salons and spas who’s interested in having me speak to her employees. Then I drove back to the office.”