Resisting Redemption

by Amabel Daniels

  If he had those glasses on, she’d jump him. Go figure bifocals could be such a turn-on.

  “For someone who’s never been in the city, you parallel park rather well.”

  A compliment? Well, how do you like that?

  As he continued to gaze at her with what had to be post-nap contentment, she felt her heart thump faster. Is that what he’d look like waking up in his own bed? No doubt surrounded by heavenly silk sheets and mountains of luxurious pillows. His thick, blond shock of hair rumpled and adorable from sleep, his smile languid and beckoning, and his bare chest taut with muscles as he reached forward to pull her back into the embrace of his arms—

  She shook her head. “Who says I’ve never been in the city?” She cringed and rooted for a quarter in her purse.

  He held up a hand to stop her. “I’ve got a meter card.”

  “No. For the ‘SOB’.” She tossed the coin into his cup holder.

  His proud smile vanished as his brows raised.

  The blush from her unwarranted fantasy deepened as unusual embarrassment seeped in. “I’m trying—”

  “—to cut back on profanity.” He slowly nodded. After he exited the car, he swiped his card at the meter. She locked the car as she rushed up to him. Apparently a seven-minute nap in the car was enough to restore his habitual speed-walking. Maybe he is Superman…

  “How exactly are you planning on getting in?” she asked as the distance shortened to the massive arena. It didn’t seem like they were heading for a spectator entrance, and there wasn’t a game playing anyway.

  “I have a few acquaintances who might bend the rules for me.”

  “A lawyer bending the rules?” She snorted.

  He opened a door for her and then followed her inside. “I interpret laws. Doesn’t mean I can’t selectively maneuver around a couple guidelines.”

  Roxie didn’t comprehend how his oxymoron was justified. “I should have guessed. You have a secret fetish for misbehaving.”

  He cocked a brow.

  Right. No sense of humor. My bad.

  After he inquired a couple things from an individual from the guest services office, then chatted with another employee from a Hawks’ customer service rep, Grant smiled, hugged, and shook hands with a young man in a purple polo.

  Not wanting to appear to be hanging on every word, Roxie stole a minute to check her phone, smile at Sophia’s latest picture of Lucy, and then hustle to follow after Grant and the kid who looked like a ball boy.

  “Bill,” he said and tossed a wave to her as they strode off.

  “Roxie,” she replied with a smile as she cursed her heels. God, I miss boots and sneakers. “Assistant.” She jerked her head toward Grant.

  “Bill’s an assistant ball boy for the Hawks,” Grant explained. “We’ve known each other almost as long as Ben’s been on the team.”

  And apparently the bendee of rules for permitting them to see Jaydon.

  Bill led them into the bowels of the arena, speed-walking down empty halls, passing through the enormous and deserted basketball court, only inhabited with the few janitors sweeping bleachers and vacuuming rugs.

  “You’re lucky. They just finished practice,” Bill said.

  “Going to be a good one Friday,” Grant said.

  The young man clapped his hands as though he’d just left a huddle at the center line. “A very good game. Are you coming?”

  Grant shook his head.

  Bill blanched. “I’m sorry. I mean. Well, I figured you’d still have your season seats even though Ben’s…”

  Grant patted his back. “I’ve still got them. I’d love to catch the game, but I’m anxious to help Ben get back on the courts.”

  “Godspeed. You can tell him we’re missing him. Badly. Coach won’t say the words, but he doesn’t see how they’ll get a seed in the playoffs without Ben.” The young man slowed after they traversed down a darker hallway, basketball players passing them.

  “Jaydon was the last one to hit the showers, so he should be in there still. His bodyguard is waiting at the exit, so I’m guessing he’s in a hurry.”

  “Thanks for sneaking us in.” Grant winked at Bill as he walked away.

  Bill narrowed his eyes to a glare and held his finger to his lips. “Shh!”

  Grant pushed open the door to the locker room and Roxie tried to follow. Another player exited and she let him pass first.

  Who doesn’t he know? Pals with the elusive and cocky owner of Velocity. Chummy with the personnel of an NBA team. “Pays to have friends in the right places, huh?” she asked Grant.

  “I said acquaintances, not friends,” he said.

  Si, Senor Cyborg. Leave it to him to reiterate the expectation to not ask questions.

  “Mr. Himms?” Grant stepped ahead and called out past the rows of lockers and long benches.

  “Yeah?” a man’s voice answered.

  Darkness slammed in front of her and she clutched at Grant’s elbow to stay steady. His warm, calloused hand covered her eyes.

  “The fuck? Who’s she?” Jaydon said.

  Blinded, Roxie put her hands at her hips.

  “My assistant,” Grant said.

  “You her pimp? I don’t need this shit. After a game, yeah. But I don’t have time for this now. How the fuck did you get back here?”

  “A friend of a friend.” Grant’s digits still shielded her vision. What, she was too low-class to see a basketball player in the flesh—

  Ohh… In the locker room. She fought the urge to laugh at Grant’s attempt at protecting her purity. She’d seen penises before. Well, in the last six years, her sexual encounters had been as plentiful as water in a drought, but it wasn’t like she’d get all fangirl and ogle the dude’s dick. With deeper reflection, she frowned at the possibility that Grant had somehow dismissed her as a silly and mindless girl. A peon of an assistant with no maturity and self-control.

  And why should I care what he thinks?

  Jaydon scoffed. “Whose friend? Oh, shit, you’re Ben’s buddy.”

  “Ben’s lawyer,” Grant said.

  “Yeah, I remember you. I thought your wife was representing him.”

  Finally, Grant removed his hand from her face and she blinked at the lights. She smirked at Grant and then tried to smile at Jaydon. In his boxers, he smooched his lips at her as though she should be impressed he was a famous player, of women and of hoops.

  “Ex-wife,” Grant said.

  “Yeah, well, what do you want with me?” Jaydon asked.

  “A couple minutes for a couple questions.”

  Jaydon groaned and looked to the ceiling as he picked up a pair of pants. “I already told the cops everything. What else do you need?”

  Grant sat on the bench on the opposite side of the space. “Two things. First, why did you leave the party when you did?”

  Jaydon finished dressing as he spoke. “I was bored. I had a couple events I wanted to go to that night, but we had to go to the old man’s birthday shit. We were supposed to just have dinner and then take off. Not make a night out of it at the last minute.”

  Oh, dear. Superstar had to make time for someone else.

  “I left the party with some chick from the bar. We went upstairs and she sucked me off.”

  Roxie wondered why everyone kept calling Velocity a club. The VIP wing served as a brothel. Jaydon did enter the guest elevator with some fangirl server at 11:43 and activated entry to his room. “So why did you enter your room the second time?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?” Jaydon said.

  She pulled her legal pad out of her tote. “Cameras show you in the elevator with your sucker at 11:43. Your room was opened at 11:43. And at 11:54. Why did you enter your room twice?”

  “Another chick.”

  “So soon?”

  Jaydon’s grin was icky. “What can I say, women love me.”

  “I doubt it.” She shook her head as said icky smile curved down. “Not your self-imposed God-given sexual magnetis
m. I’ll leave you to that. You get off from one woman, and eleven minutes later, act two is on. Are you on Viagra?”

  “I don’t need any fucking medicine. You wanna see?”

  “Mr. Himms.” Grant rose from the bench. “Settle down.”

  Roxie flipped the page on her notepad. “No offense. I promise. But where is this other woman from?” She turned to find the notes she’d taken in Grant’s office, her own questions from reading the police interviews. “She didn’t come up the elevator, at least not the guest one. And it could have been one of three Velocity employees entering the freight elevator around that time. So who was number two? You told the detectives she was a ‘worker’.”

  Jaydon preened in the mirror. “Fuck if I know who she was. I didn’t ask her name. She was wearing a uniform. Server? I don’t know and I don’t care. All I know is she sucked me off and left.”

  “Why did you bring the first girl up the guest elevator, but have the second one come up on her own?” Roxie stuffed her notes away. “And how did this second server know to come so soon after the first?”

  The catch was, something seemed awfully planned. Roxie had run a fine-tooth comb through the Velocity employees. Only one server admitted to the ride up in the guest elevator with Jaydon. No, she hadn’t admitted to it, she’d bragged about it. But no one confessed to being Jaydon’s second sexual partner.

  “I just saw her in the hallway. After the first girl left, I saw the second one and asked her in.” Jaydon turned from the mirror and addressed Grant. “You said two things. What else is making you lose sleep? You’ve got one more minute.”

  “What initiated your argument with Josh? At the bar?” he asked.

  Jaydon crossed his arms and leaned back onto the frame of his dressing cubby. “He thought I was hitting on his girl.”

  “Richelle?” Grant asked.

  “No. The model. Kylie. She came on to me, I turned her down, and he blew up. Said I was messing with his woman.”

  “She came on to you?” Grant said.

  “Right. It’s on the cameras. I don’t need to hash out this shit again. I told the police all I knew. I mean, I can’t believe Ben shot him. I really can’t. But there’s no denying he was provoked. I was right there when Josh called Sheree a fat bitch.”

  He said, she said. He wanted her, she wanted him. Sheesh. Roxie couldn’t understand how adults, celebrities, could stand themselves bickering and feuding in a sexual soap opera.

  “Happy now? I just wasted five minutes of my time telling you what the cops should have. I’ve got to get to this Nike shoot.”

  “Nike?” Grant said.

  “Yeah. New advertisement campaign.”

  They followed Jaydon to the door.

  “I’m surprised they’ve scheduled that now. In the thick of the season,” Grant said.

  “No shit. No time for anything right now. But since they needed someone pronto, I had to make a deal. All part of the business, you know?” Jaydon said and pulled a pair of sunglasses from his front pocket. “See ya.”

  Without a wave or word back, the athlete walked down the empty hallway to a pair of closed metal double doors. In the opposite direction, Grant and Roxie exited, retreating the way they came in.

  “You believe any of that? About the second woman?” he asked, frowning at the space ahead of them as they walked side by side through the concrete labyrinth of the arena.

  “What? A double-hitter under fifteen minutes? Maybe he takes rhino-dust.”

  He sighed with a groan. “No. How she came to the room.”

  “Maybe. All I can believe is that he did go up there with a brunette in a uniform. His room was opened. Then opened again.”

  “Okay, so number one leaves the room. He has to at least step out of the room to shut the door in order to activate it again.”

  “Right.”

  “Why didn’t you ask why he stayed out in the hallway long enough to see woman number two come by?”

  Why didn’t she ask? What happened to his ‘do not interfere’ mandate?

  “Come on, you’ve gone over all those fucking logs of entry times. You have to wonder about that.”

  “I didn’t know I was at liberty to speak. Sir, Master, Your Highness.”

  After their first important meeting with Paul at Velocity, Roxie reminded herself to keep a lid on her lips. Grant hadn’t been impressed with her interfering in that discussion, and she was slightly surprised he hadn’t gotten uppity when she dared to speak to Jaydon.

  He rubbed at his face. “Nothing stopped you back there. Roxie, I’m not going to dance around permission. Despite challenging his pride, you were spot on there. That’s the kind of no-nonsense attention to detail this case needs. And you know, more than me, who was where.”

  “Not everyone. I don’t know where Ben was.”

  “And he’s not going to say a damn thing. No alibi is going to be used in this case.”

  “Peachy. You want to know what I’m wondering? Why the heck would Jaydon do it? What motive could he have had for killing Josh? The teeny argument about Kylie hitting on him while Josh was supposed to be paying attention to Richelle, who was, at the time, screwing Paul on a questionable red couch?”

  “Maybe money?”

  Roxie stopped as they stepped onto the sidewalk. “Money? Jaydon was paid to kill off Josh?”

  Grant slid his sunglasses on. “No. No hitman. It was a personal kill.”

  “Then how could Jaydon have been motivated by money?”

  He didn’t say anything, only walked to the car. Finally, he said, “I don’t know. But he’s obviously concerned about finances.”

  A millionaire sports player fretting about bills? Poor boy. Nike would probably fatten a wallet or two.

  “You said that before, a personal kill. That’s why you delegated me to do the busywork with checking all the employees, to keep the real motive hidden from me.”

  Grant lowered his butt to the hood of his car and peered over his sunglasses. “Busywork? It matters, Roxie. It all matters.”

  And perhaps, she mattered? It was a catalyzing notion. Damn straight she mattered. And she’d show him how…somehow.

  “Fine. But how was it a personal kill?”

  She unlocked the car and rounded the front to take the driver’s seat. He hadn’t let her see any notes or images from the coroner’s report. And only very few crime scene observations were allotted to her pile of research. Trusting her to verify all the peons was dandy, but she hadn’t passed the requisite for helping with the nitty-gritty.

  “It was…” Grant seemed to struggle for a description as he buckled in next to her. “The detective provided the analysis that it was a personal kill.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. I’m not going to faint. I’ve assisted with horse C-sections and poor animals destined as roadkill. Gore is not going to knock me down.” She started the engine and pulled away. At a red light, she glared at him.

  “Let’s just say, someone seemed to want to tell Josh to go fuck himself.”

  She twitched her mouth.

  “The killer cut off his…” He looked to his crotch. “And shoved it up his…” He tilted his head down.

  “Oh…” Roxie pursed her lips. “That would be a potent insult.”

  They didn’t speak until the next light.

  “Pre- or post-mortem?” she asked.

  “Post.”

  “How did…”

  “A knife.”

  “Like a penknife, or a—”

  Grant groaned. “Roxie, don’t—”

  “Oh spare me the delicacy. I was in a medical field. I’ve operated on flesh. It’s a legitimate question.”

  “Then consider my delicacy. Dismembering is not a thought I want to linger on.”

  She laughed.

  “You can look at the damn autopsy report on your own.” At the ring of her phone, he reached into the backseat and pulled her purse onto his lap.

  “It can wait,” she said. “I’m driving.
”

  “And I’m not. What if it’s an emergency? Or something about your daughter? You seem to check it often.”

  He definitely had noticed. It wasn’t a contemporary, brainwashed addiction to glue her gaze to her screen, but she did receive a lot of cute reminders of Lucy during the day. If Grant had picked up on her habit of checking her phone, it was too often. With a pang to her heart, she knew she needed to advise Sophia to limit her messages—or school herself to cut back the temptation to check in on her chunky monkey. Because Roxie did need her phone on for real emergencies.

  “You gave that phone to me. You check it.” She held her hand out for him to press the sensor to her thumb pad. Once unlocked, Grant relayed the message.

  “Email from Dave’s PA. Meeting is postponed until Thursday. Dave has an unexpected but pressing obligation to attend some kind of political fundraiser.”

  Roxie deadpanned.

  Lovely. Somebody else too busy to answer their questions.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Dave’s meeting was tentatively rescheduled for two o’clock Thursday. He was the second VIP guest at Velocity on Grant’s high priority list. After the discussion with Josh’s manager, he’d still needed to meet with Wayne and Kylie.

  Arranging interviews were menial tasks he usually delegated to whoever was his assistant of the day, and as Roxie was toughing it out—damn, she’s been working with me for three weeks?—she’d set up the meeting after the first delay.

  Distracted, as he always was at the mere thought of his red-headed helper, he glanced across the room. He sat at his desk, leaning back in his chair in a most comfortable but poor-quality pose, while she took her position at the couch, her papers and phone on the coffee table. She had a perfectly fine desk at the other side of his office now, but she seldom used it, preferring the couch instead. Suited him fine, since that angle provided him free rein to check her out as she worked.

  For what had to have been the hundredth time that morning, she slid her phone closer to her, unlocked the screen, and grimaced ever so slightly. Was she checking the time? Waiting for an important call? Worried about missing a message?

  Roxie was brilliant at multi-tasking. Taking messages, demanding compromises, and infallibly knowing his schedule so as to dictate appointments and interviews on the spot. Did she gain her ease of control under pressure from being a single parent? Or from her years at grad school and as a vet candidate?