we need to have our ducks in a row. Things are going to get stressful, and I’d like some time with you and away from all of this shit.”
Her eyes soften and her head tilts in understanding. “I can’t do two weeks. I can only miss three classes in each course.”
“A week then,” I counteroffer.
“Where would we go?” she asks.
“Wherever you want. I don’t care.”
“So we’d leave tonight?”
“I’d leave right now if we could, but unfortunately, two things prevent that. First, I have that investigator coming just after lunch. I’m going to hire him to start digging into JT. And second, and probably most important, I need to do laundry, as I’m out of clean underwear.”
Sela laughs, and it fills me with hope that we’re going to get through this. She leans forward on the stool, presses her bare feet down into the bottom rung, and pushes up to bring her mouth to mine. Just the softest of kisses and an even bigger smile on her face when she pulls back. “Okay. I’m going to go start laundry, then I’m going to message my professors and let them know the classes I’ll be missing. You do whatever work you need to get things cleared away.”
“So we’re going?”
“I’d like to see Vienna,” she says as she pushes up from the stool. I step back to give her room and she slides past me, heading over to the kettle, which is now boiling. “Or Prague. That would be nice.”
“I’ll get Linda to book us flights and make hotel reservations,” I say, admiring her ass in some tiny white panties that look virginally sweet.
Then I walk back around the counter to my laptop, and start putting things in order.
Dennis Flaherty sits across from my desk in my home office, looking nothing like what I thought a sleazy investigator would look like. I was expecting short and portly with perhaps a bad Hawaiian print shirt with mustard stains. He’s tall and built solidly, wearing a tailored navy blue suit with a sedate yellow tie. His hair is fiery red but cropped close to his head in a military-style cut. The only other thing I notice is a wedding ring on his left fourth finger.
“You’re sizing me up,” Dennis says with a smirk.
“That obvious?” I ask him with a laugh.
“I get paid to observe,” he says dryly.
“Well, what I’m getting ready to ask you to do might cross some ethical lines. I need some dirty stuff. You look like a financial advisor or banker or something.”
Dennis nods in understanding. “Don’t let my love of fine Italian silk suits throw you off. I’ve had plenty of dirt under my nails before.”
I glance past Dennis to my open office door. Sela’s in our room packing. I asked her if she wanted to sit in on this meeting, but she just shook her head and said, “I’d rather not. I know in painstaking detail what you’re going to be talking to him about. I’ll let you take this one for the team.”
Team.
I liked the sound of that.
“I want you to investigate my partner, Jonathon Townsend. I assume you’ve done some background research on me?”
“I have. Your partner too. Quite an interesting business you have.”
“Well, I want the business for myself and I can’t seem to dislodge him. I need something that will convince him to leave.”
“How far do you want to go with this?”
“All the way isn’t far enough,” I tell him smoothly. “I don’t care what the cost or what it takes to get me what I need.”
“It’s personal to you,” Dennis observes as he pulls his phone out of the inside breast pocket. I watch as he taps a few times, presumably pulling up an app or something, then his thumbs race across the screen as he types.
“Just making some notes,” he says without looking up at me. “I need to know why it’s personal so I know which direction you want me looking.”
His face tips back up and he pins me with a direct stare. I know he needs to know this, because I want him also looking into fraternity brothers as possible suspects, but it still burns to have someone know what Sela went through. But I have her permission to disclose this sordidness to him, and he came highly recommended, so I press forward.
“Ten years ago, three men raped my girlfriend,” I say, and Dennis makes a sound of disgust deep in his throat. “She was drugged and couldn’t identify her attackers, but