Kade was wearing a t-shirt that stretched to fit his frame and a pair of sweatpants along with a black ball-cap and glasses.
I snatched the glasses off his face and pulled the hat off. “Trying too hard not to get noticed makes you noticeable,” I said. I looked at Price and could only shake my head. “And that’s not how tourists in New York City dress. They wear "I Love New York" shirts or something. Besides, dressing like a New Yorker is a lot less noticeable than dressing like a tourist, dumbass."
Kade only shrugged, but Price wore a sour expression.
“Maybe I’m a tourist from Florida. Ever think of that, genius?” Price asked.
“Can we just get to business?” I took another look over my shoulder, though I wasn’t sure what I expected to see, anyway. If Celia did have somebody following me, I doubted they’d be wearing a trenchcoat, fedora, and pretending to read a newspaper. It could have been any one of the dozens of people sipping coffees, working on laptops, or eating bagels.
“How long are we going to keep this up?” Kade asked. He had a deep voice, like boulders rubbing against each other.
“Until I know she’s done fucking with me.”
“I could try talking to her again,” Price suggested. “She is my sister, even if she kind of hates me.”
My father decided to make my family tree as confusing as possible by having me with his first wife, remarrying when I was two and having Price with his second wife, who already had a daughter from a previous marriage. In the end, I wound up with Price, my half-brother, and Celia, my step-sister, who was also Price’s sister.
We’d all grown up together from a young age, and from as early as I could remember, Celia had always taken an unhealthy interest in me. We were almost exactly the same age, which meant I couldn’t escape her all throughout school.
“She kind of hates you like I kind of hate wrinkles in my socks,” Kade said to Price.
I stared at him. “What?”
"You know," he said. "When you get that fold in your socks, and it feels like a little lump under your foot all day. It's the worst."
“Did it ever occur to you that you could just take off the shoe and fix it?” I asked.
"Plus, the way you phrased that, it was like you were going to one-up it." Price added. "Like, I don't know, ‘she kind of hates you like I kind of hate getting stabbed.' That kind of thing." Kade looked at Price like he was an idiot. "What kind of person only kind of hates getting stabbed? That's something you all the way hate.”
Price gave me a helpless look. I shrugged. Kade was great at what he did for the company, but making jokes was not one of his strong suits.
Our company sold investment packages to big-time financial advisors and even hedge fund managers. Normally, the advisors and managers put together their own investment packages, but that was our spin on the industry. We did it better, and we had the data to prove it. Their clients were happier, and we just took a small cut, so everyone was happy.
Instead of taking percentages and incentives, we put together the cutting edge portfolios month-by-month and sold them for a premium. We had one of the best records in the business, and it was only getting better. I’d always had a nose for stocks, and that was where my contribution to the company came in. I put together the packages every month, and I busted my ass researching every possible option. Most portfolios promised five or seven percent returns, but we aimed for ten. It wasn’t easy, but I liked the challenge, and I’d rarely had a bad month since we started.
Price was our salesman. He needed a lot of structure and guidance to stay focused on work, but when he was paying attention, he could sell air to a fish. Kade, despite looking the way he did, was basically a genius when it came to software design. He had taken what I did and turned it into an intuitive program that we could sell as a monthly service. I made the selections, and all our clients had to do was stay subscribed to get fed each month's new package of premium stock selections.
Together, we made a pretty damn good team.
I handed a USB drive to Kade. “This is for January.” I looked to Price. “Don’t make any promises if you don’t have to, but I’m pretty confident this package is going to pull twelve, maybe even fourteen percent.”
Price whistled. “Maybe we should get my sister to chase you into hiding more often.”
I groaned. “We still haven’t seen if all the damage she did before I started laying low will come back to bite us.”
“I think you’re giving her too much credit,” Price said. “So she spread some bullshit rumors and got a few magazines to write smear articles about you. So anybody who pays attention thinks you’re a sex-crazed, BDSM-fiend who can’t keep his dick in his pants. You’re gay. You’re all the things. So what? Maybe we’ll bring in some female clients who are hoping to get a piece of that. We could start making you wear a collar with spikes or something. You know, play it up.”
“You think that’s where it was going to stop? Celia wants to see me in ruins. In her screwed up head, I wronged her, and she’s not going to stop until she thinks she’s won. Or, until she gets bored, which is what I’m aiming for.”
"I still can't believe she wanted to have an affair with you." Price grinned, then his eyes sank to the table, and he looked like he was about to gag. "Okay, actually I can completely believe it. I'm just surprised she finally came out and said it like that."
“They’re not biologically related,” Kade said. “They could have perfectly healthy children. I don’t see the problem.”
“The problem, number one, is she’s married,” I said. “Number two is she’s my goddamn step-sister, so it’s disgusting. Number three is even if she was single and had no relations to me, I still wouldn’t be interested. I’ve never met a person as naturally evil as Celia. My dick would probably turn black and fall off if it got anywhere near her. No offense, Price.”
“None taken. Totally agree with the whole keeping your dick away from her thing, just as a general precaution.”
“I think she’s pretty,” Kade shrugged.
Price punched his shoulder. “That’s my sister.”
“Sorry. I think your sister’s pretty.”
“Anything I need to know about?” I interrupted. “On the business side of things, I mean.”
Price pursed his lips and shook his head. “Other than the fact that I’m carrying the business while you’re sneaking around with a tinfoil hat on? No.”
“I think somebody is watching us,” Kade said.
I jerked around in my seat and spotted her immediately. The neighbor girl was standing at the entrance to the cafe with a startled look on her face. She was staring right at us.
“I’ll handle this,” I said, standing.
“You sure you don’t want some help? She’s cute,” Price asked.
I ignored them and headed for the girl.
She did a military-style about-face, turning on her heel before fast-walking out to the sidewalk. If my heart wasn’t slamming against my ribs because I thought she had been spying on me for Celia all along, the sight of her fast-walk might have been comical.
I had to shove my way through a family coming into the cafe and then fight against the crowd outside, but I was thankfully tall enough to keep an eye on her as she darted down into the subway.
I caught her just before the turnstiles.
“Hey,” I said, gripping her shoulder and turning her around to face me. “You want to tell me why you’re following me?”
“I wasn’t.” Her lips were pressed into a thin line as she glared up at me with those defiant eyes of hers.
“You just happened to be there? At a random coffee shop on the opposite end of the city?”
“Yes.”
I sighed. “And what’s all this, then?” I tugged at the Army green bag she was carrying that looked stuffed to the brim.
She jerked it away from me, glaring. “It’s girl stuff. And you shouldn’t touch people’s things.”
I leaned in a lit
tle closer. There was a spark of fire in her eyes that was at odds with the way she kept acting like she wanted nothing to do with me. She had tracked me down. She had followed me. I wasn’t buying her story, and I didn’t know that I even wanted to. What I wanted was to know more about her. There was a story behind the dark-haired girl who hid her smile, and I was greedy for it. Even if it turned out that she was bought and paid for by my step-sister, I needed to know.
Bringing my face closer to hers made her inch backward until she had her back against a turnstile and people were grumbling angrily as they had to move around us. I got my first real taste of her scent, and it was an enticing one. She smelled sweet as flowers.
The hair on my neck stood up.
“I shouldn’t touch people’s things? As I recall, you started it.”
“It was an accident,” she said. The characteristic bite in her words was muted now.
“Accident or not, you touched my package, and now I can’t just let you walk away.”
The corner of her mouth twitched in that way of hers—a smile. I liked that it was a private language. It was a language few would understand, and it made me feel even more drawn in. “How do you plan to stop me, Bob?”
It felt like a cold hand slid its fingers around my heart and squeezed. Bob. So she had looked inside the envelope, after all. There was an edge to the way she said the name, too, like she knew it was an alias—or was I imagining that?
“Seduction,” I said. “Maybe. But I’m still trying to figure out if you can be seduced by anything but seven inches of silicone.”
“Seven point two,” she corrected. “And I guess you’ll have to keep trying if you want to know. Won’t you?” She emphasized her point with a subtle wiggle of her eyebrows and then pushed me back with a fingertip against my chest. She slid a card from her jacket pocket and scanned it at the turnstile, which rotated and let her through.
“Why the long face?” she asked. “You don’t ride the subway? No card?”
I pulled my own card out and scanned it. I stepped right back inside her personal space and grinned down at her. “Was that as far as your plan for avoiding me went? Because you don’t stand a chance if that’s all you have up your sleeve.”
“Well, this is just awkward now. That was supposed to be my smooth exit.”
“Can’t say that I’m sorry.”
She tried to adjust her bag on her shoulder, but the clasp clicked open and sent the contents of her bag spilling to the ground.
“Shit,” She muttered as she knelt down and started trying to scoop everything back inside.
I bent down to help her and immediately noticed a bulky piece of high tech gear. I held it up and gave her a questioning look. “What the hell are these? Night Vision goggles?”
“I’m a birdwatcher,” she said, snatching them from me and shoving them in the bag.
“A listening device?” I asked, holding up another gadget.
“Birds sing,” she said in a duh kind of way.
“What’s your favorite breed of bird?” I asked.
She paused, and I thought I had her, but then she shook her head like I’d said something stupid. “Australian wedge-tailed eagles. They make Bald Eagles look like sissies. A wedge-tail will attack you if you’re paragliding. They’ll prey on kangaroos. Probably could eat a baby in one bite. They are badasses, basically.”
“Where do you even learn something like that?”
She patted her bag. “Bird watching.”
I sighed. As much as I wanted to call her on her bluff, I wasn’t even sure anymore. Maybe I was letting the throbbing pressure between my legs blind me to the obvious, but I didn’t think she was actually working with Celia. Maybe I just didn’t want to think she was.
“What about dinner? Is that still a maybe?”
“I guess I could let you take me to dinner. If you’re into that kind of thing.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t most people into eating?”
“Whatever,” she said, but she couldn’t hide the way her lips were practically itching to smile. “But not tonight. I have this stupid thing for work. Tomorrow.”
Smiling didn't usually come easily to me, but around her, I had to stop myself from grinning like an idiot half the time. Even the way she said, "whatever" was endearing. She tried to make it sound disinterested, but the curve at the corner of her mouth and the sparkle in her eyes gave it an entirely different meaning. It was playful. More and more, I was understanding her language, and I was learning she was nothing like she seemed.
All the sarcasm and dry words were her own kind of game, like a test, even.
"Deal. But I need to know your name if I'm going to be taking you to dinner. You can at least give me that much, right?"
“Lilith.”
I pursed my lips and nodded. “Somehow that fits you.”
“It fits me just like Bob doesn’t fit you.”
I tried to brush her comment off with a shrug. “We don’t get to pick our names.”
“No,” she said, eyes never leaving mine. “Most of us don’t.”
5
Lilith
I leaned against the reception desk at Galleon. The party was being held on one of the upper floors. I was a glorified greeter as people came in on the ground floor. William at least knew me well enough to know I wasn’t about to be smiling and saying nice things to everyone who came in. He did mention something about “directing guests to the party,” which meant telling them what button to press when they got in the elevator, but I didn’t want to rob the poor little guy who had to sit in the elevator and wear a silly hat of his purpose. Instead, I kicked my feet up and killed time on my phone while pretending people weren’t giving me dirty looks.
One of my go-to activities on my phone was browsing Reddit, which meant I’d just stumbled across the whole wedge-tailed eagle factoid a few hours before I had to pull that shining nugget of bullshit out of my ass in the subway station earlier. Bob had seemed to buy the excuse, even if it looked like he grudgingly accepted it.
It’s not like I was going to use the goggles or the listening thing, anyway. Probably not, at least. I was just bored, and I happened to have been kind of hanging out in the lobby of our apartment when he left, and I maybe happened to be standing in a space where I knew he wouldn’t see me as he left.
My excuses rang hollow even in my own head. Right in the center of my brain, there was a muscular, six-foot-three shape, and I was perfectly happy to keep pretending it wasn’t there, along with the other piles of repressed memories I carefully avoided. Over time, my brain had become like a hoarder’s room that I had to try to navigate blind. Occasionally, I’d bump into an unpleasant memory or a traumatic conversation, but for the most part, I kept my distance. It was easier that way.
A couple walked up to the desk. The guy was wearing a suit, and the woman wore a long black dress covered in what looked like iridescent fish scale patterns. It was kind of cool, but the couple was looking at me like they expected me to get up and kiss their rings, so I looked back to my phone and made a point of ignoring them.
“We’re here for the party. We’re friends of Bruce Chamberson.”
“Cool. The party is across the street. If the door’s locked, just knock and wait.”
“Across the street?” The man turned around and gestured to all the people who were funneling through the doors and toward the elevators. “Then what are all of these people doing?”
“They’re here for the free colon exams. Thirty-sixth floor, if you’re interested. You were supposed to bring your own lube, though. Did you—”
The couple was already storming out of the building. Whoops. Some people couldn’t take a joke.
I knew I was supposed to be keeping an eye out for William's old high school friend, but he had neglected to tell me that apparently, they'd invited hundreds of people to the party. I don't know how I was supposed to spot somebody with "close together eyes like a ferret and a neck that looked like a w
et noodle." What the hell did that even mean, anyway?
Only a few minutes had passed when a girl around my age planted her palms on the desk. “Excuse me,” she said.
I glanced up at her with a carefully practiced sigh. It was supposed to scare off social predators the same way a lion’s roar let everybody know a badass was on the prairie. Unfortunately, the girl seemed unfazed.
She had dark black hair pulled back into a long, ponytail and a pretty badass widow’s peak. She was pretty, in an evil villain kind of way, and she was rocking the emerald green dress she wore. I decided to give her my attention.
“Excuse you for what?”
“For interrupting. I can see you’re busy, but I was wondering if I could hide out behind the desk just for a few minutes? There’s this guy who is kind of bothering me, and I—”
"Go ahead. Just don't touch anything," I said. "And if your nose whistles when you breathe, you're getting kicked out. Fair warning."
She thanked me and hurried around behind the desk to duck beside my chair. I went back to my phone while I waited for the night to end, but the new girl apparently was a talker.
“You work for Galleon, right?” she asked.
“No. I’m homeless. I stole these clothes from a girl I beat and hid in the bathroom.”
She grinned. “Sarcasm. I’d almost forgotten what it sounded like. The people I’ve been hanging around are too tight-assed to even have a sarcastic thought, let alone make a joke.”
I wanted to say something snarky just to get her to stop talking, but I admittedly felt a little bad for her. She’d apparently had a rough night, and I figured I could act like a normal human, maybe for a few minutes. I may have had a bit of a twisted outlook on social interactions, but I still hadn’t figured out a way to turn off my capacity for empathy. Unfortunately. “You said a guy was bothering you? Want me to tase him if he comes in?”
“You have a taser?” she asked.
I dug in my purse and pulled out the device. It was about the size of a deck of cards, and when I squeezed the trigger, arcs of electricity clicked between the metal nodes at the top. The sound was like metal balls clacking together. A few guests heading for the elevators shied away and then started walking faster.
His Package Page 3
