Illicit Intent, page 3
The elevator doors slid open. The man in the car was handsome if nondescript. He reminded her of one of those spit-polished stars from the fifties movies her mom loved to watch. Although with his dark eyes, black hair graying at the temples, trimmed beard, and smartly tailored suit, this guy would be the villain. He brushed by her without so much as a glance, his Aquatalia boots silent on the terrazzo. As she entered the elevator and hit the button for the lobby, she noticed him pause, like an animal catching a scent, and while the doors closed she briefly glimpsed him resume his pace. That will be a short client meeting. She rolled her eyes and imagined that pristine man trying to rouse a passed-out Phipps.
Just as the car began its swift descent, a deafening blast met her ears, then a second, quieter with the distance the elevator car had gained. Were those gunshots? Surely not. There was no one on her floor except for a comatose Phipps and the suited man she had just seen standing in the middle of the expansive office floor. Unless he was shooting computer terminals with some hidden cannon, he couldn’t have been the source. She was in that weird, paranoid panic mode, and the reminder of the late-night client and Phipps kept her blood racing. Once at the lobby, Calliope sprinted toward the security door. The guard watched her swipe her security pass to release the lock, then returned his gaze to the Islanders game playing on one of the monitors. She sprinted out into the New York night. And ran smack into a brick wall.
Tox looked over his shoulder and chuckled at the lug huffing and puffing behind him. He rounded a corner and barely broke stride when a black-haired butterfly of a girl smacked into him and landed on her bum on the sidewalk, the contents of her messenger bag scattering everywhere. Tox was about to sidestep her to fend for herself—man with a gun in pursuit and all—when he saw her sky-blue eyes and startled face. Her stunning, startled face.
“Calliope?”
“Tox?”
“No time. Let’s go.”
In her irrational panic, Calliope grabbed her bag from the bottom, upending it further. Her work phone smacked the pavement and shattered. She scrambled for the flash drive, the cylinder, the ruined phone, and the various odds and ends littering the sidewalk while Tox grabbed her around the waist and heaved her toward the open rear door of the black SUV that had screeched to a stop at the curb next to them.
“Need a lift?” Steady smiled from the passenger seat.
Tox grinned. “We could probably walk. That fucker’s big as a glacier and twice as slow.”
“Not his bullets, dipshit. Let’s move.”
As if to prove Steady’s point, a bullet pinged off the armored tailgate. Calliope glanced over her shoulder to see an absolute elephant of a man with a gun. The man put his hands on his knees and heaved for air as their car rounded a corner and sped to safety.
Calliope had met Miller “Tox” Buchanan twice. The first time was on a street corner in SoHo when he gave her her dog. He had been bigger then. She remembered wondering if he was an NFL player or a bodyguard. It wasn’t his size that struck her, though; it was his energy. He was this odd combination of arrogant asshole and teddy bear. Despite his obvious disinterest when he looked at her, she felt inexplicably drawn to him—like she could slip into the space under his arm and they could continue on down the sidewalk. She was hit with this overwhelming desire to peel the onion to discover what made Tox Buchanan tick. She’d also realized she had an overwhelming desire to peel the layers of his clothes off, so she quickly diverted her attention to the dog at his side before she started acting on any of those urges. She had scratched behind the pup’s ears and rubbed her back, all the while repeating to herself, don’t gawk at the beautiful man, do not gawk at the beautiful man.
And so, in an effort to ignore the gorgeous animal at one end of the leash, she had adopted the gorgeous animal on the other, Coco. Well, when Tox was fostering her, the dog’s name had been Fraidy, short for Fraidy Cat. The rottweiler had been “fired” from her job guarding a warehouse because she was too friendly; she had actually been painted with graffiti by vandals as they defaced the building. When Calliope took the beautiful dog off his hands, her first order of business had been to change her name to something less demeaning: Coco Chanel.
Coco rarely left Calliope’s side. She came to work with her at The Harlem Sentry, accompanied her on errands, and followed her around her cavernous Brooklyn Heights brownstone like she couldn’t bear to have Calliope out of her sight. Her unwavering loyalty and undemanding presence were a balm in her chaotic life.
The second time Calliope had seen Tox was at the beachfront wedding of her coworker and friend, Emily Bishop. Calliope had brought her other work friend, Terrence, as her date. She needed the emotional support, and he wanted to ogle the mouthwatering military man meat—his words—who worked with Emily’s new husband, Nathan Bishop. When the guys had invited Terrence to join them to “sugar cookie” a buddy, he hadn’t asked questions, he had simply spun Calliope into the arms of Tox and scrambled off the dance floor after the men. Turned out, much to Terrence’s dismay, that “sugar cookie-ing” someone simply meant throwing them in the ocean then rolling them around on the beach, coating them with sand. SEALs or not, boys will be boys.
Calliope was tall, nearly six feet in her four-inch heels, but when Terrence had twirled her into Tox, her forehead bumped his chin. She had struggled to find her footing as Tox steadied her. When she finally met his gaze, she saw something intriguing. He was smirking at first, like the cocksure jackass she assumed him to be, but then, as he held her gaze, the smirk had morphed into a sweet, almost vulnerable, crooked half-smile bracketed by dimples that melted her heart. His eyes reminded her of a dog’s eyes, brown and glassy and longing. The attraction she felt wasn’t sudden or jolting, like a spark or a zing; it was something indistinct and yet profound, like the force of the tide easing a ship into port. They’d stood still on the dance floor for a solid minute. Then, they both went stiff as boards and danced with the formality of middle-schoolers at a mandatory lesson. The phantom pain of the severed connection lingered, the sudden awareness of an ever-present absence, but Calliope refused to dwell on it.
Tox had revealed nothing about himself that day, and the reporter in her had been brimming with frustration, paradoxically adding to both his allure and his repulsion.
“Why do they call you Tox?”
“Long story.”
“So, you were in the Navy with Nathan?”
“I work for him.”
“Where are you from?”
“West of here.” (They were on Nantucket. Everywhere in the U.S. was west of here.)
“Do you have family in the area?”
“So, Emily said you were from Greece or something?”
She had corrected him and then, for the rest of their dance, talked about herself in the same vague terms. When he thanked her and turned to reconvene with his friends at the bar, she stood on the dance floor with balled fists, feeling quite certain she had been, not manipulated per se, but maneuvered. When he glanced over his shoulder to meet her gaze, he winked, confirming her suspicions. She had refused to talk to him again the entire evening. And while her mouth was in full agreement, her eyes made no such promise. Calliope had to repeatedly scold herself for tracking his movements throughout the tent; she allowed herself a little leeway by rationalizing that he was so big, statistically, the chances that he would be in her line of sight were high. Right. Nevertheless, she had done what she could to ignore him.
Tonight she felt no such compunction.
Tox sat behind the driver, eyes forward. He was this remarkable combination of relaxed and focused, his body calm yet coiled. He had lost some muscle mass in the past year; he’d gone from “linebacker” to “running back,” still strong and massive, but less…beefy. He also had been bald when she had danced with him that first time, but his dark hair was now a very short buzz cut; it was exactly the same length as the heavy stubble that covered his jaw. Everything about him flipped her switch. He wasn’t the kind of handsome that starred in movies or appeared in cologne ads; he had the kind of face an artist might sketch, Primal Man or Man Restrained; the portrait would definitely have “man” in the title.
His sable gaze met hers and startled her from her uncharacteristic musings. He didn’t smile, didn’t cock a brow. He simply looked at her, placid. A scar on his forehead bisected his right eyebrow, giving his kind face an edge. Maybe she should give him a month.
Calliope had never had a relationship that lasted longer than a month. It wasn’t a hard and fast rule; it was just that she never seemed to stick around long enough to entertain the notion of permanence. Tox though… As quickly as she conjured the thought, she dismissed it. If the parts of his body she couldn’t see were as compelling as the parts she could, she would have a problem—not necessarily leaving him, but finding the next guy to fill his battered boots. He’d be a hard act to follow. And if she understood on some level that she was rejecting the idea of involvement with him because he might be the guy to make her rethink things, she didn’t acknowledge it.
“So, how’s your day?” Tox asked the question with genuine interest as if he had just picked her up from a nine-to-five.
“Um, good?” Calliope had a million questions, but her reporter instincts had fled.
“Good. Mine too.”
“What…I mean why…I mean, what was that all about?”
“Just a little dust-up over a poker game. All good.”
“A little dust-up?” Calliope thought about the poker game from which Phipps had just come; probably not the same stakes.
The driver, a striking African American man they called Chat, stifled a chuckle. The guy in the passenger seat—she couldn’t recall his name—checked GPS coordinates as they flew across the Brooklyn Bridge. A phone rang, echoing through the Bluetooth. Chat answered.
“Go Twitch. You’re on speaker. Steady and Tox are here, and we picked up a passenger.”
Steady. His name was Steady. Twitch was going to have a field day with this. For someone who saw the world in ones and zeros, she was shockingly romantic. Calliope could practically picture her sighing with her hands clasped under her chin. Having girlfriends was something of a foreign concept to Calliope. She was never in one place long enough to bond. Twitch and Emily Bishop had somehow wormed their way into Calliope’s heart. At the moment, she was regretting the friendship.
“Hey, Twitch. It’s Calliope. Tox bumped into me on the street, and the guys are giving me a ride.”
Tox quirked a brow, pointing to himself and then her while mouthing, I bumped into you? Calliope ignored him.
The incessant click-clacking on Twitch’s keyboard paused. “Interesting.”
“Not interesting. The opposite of interesting. Mundane, in fact.” Stop talking.
“Okay.” Twitch resumed her typing with the trademark twinkle in her voice.
Twitch already knew most of it, but Calliope explained for the benefit of the men in the car.
“Farrell Whitaker, my crazy editor, has me pulling the threads on another of his conspiracy theories. He thinks Phipps Van Gent, the hedge fund billionaire, is up to something.”
“Crazy like a fox,” Twitch responded. “The Feds are on him like chrome on a bumper. Lots of chatter. I’d like to take a peek at what you discovered tonight.”
Steady saved her from having to explain the computer nightmare.
“First things first, Twitch,” he admonished.
“Right. Sorry. Got distracted. This one was almost too easy. No fun at all. The client’s ex-husband has a nanny cam routed to his phone and laptop. The little boy is at the father’s country house. Already got the location. Nathan’s in town for a board meeting, so he’s handling the extraction with Ren.”
Calliope fingered the flash drive in the bottom of her now nearly empty messenger bag. Most of her makeup and sundries were scattered on Broad Street. A wave of dread washed over her. She felt her keys, but not her wallet. The conversation in the car faded as her ears started to buzz.
“What’s wrong?” Tox laid a hand on her shoulder, sensing her distress.
“My wallet. It fell out of my bag when I dropped it.”
Steady chimed in. “Forget it. It’s gone by now. Do you have your bank’s app? You can block your cards right now.”
“Yeah, I’ll do it when I get home. This work phone had a fight with the sidewalk and lost.” She held up the shattered phone with two fingers.
Tox squeezed the shoulder he was still touching. His hand was so big his fingers touched her spine. “It’s just a thing, Cal. Things can be replaced.” He spoke like a man who had lost something that could not.
Calliope loved her name. She always corrected people when they shortened it or mispronounced it, but the endearment coming from this fierce giant warmed her as much as that big paw on her back. God, that hand felt good. She sighed.
“I know. It’s just another inconvenience in a very inconvenient night.”
Tox retrieved the cylinder that had once again rolled out of her bag and flipped it over one-handed. “Let me guess. A map to the secret vault where Phipps Van Gent has hidden billions in gold and the nuclear launch codes.”
“No motherfucker named Phipps has nuclear launch codes,” Steady grumbled. Chat chuckled. He was proving the irony of his nickname tonight. Other than answering Twitch’s call, he had not uttered a word so far.
“Nothing even remotely that exciting,” Calliope clarified as she took the tube. “Phipps got scammed in a poker game. He won what he thought was a valuable painting but turned out to be nothing.” Calliope handed the cylinder back to Tox. “This is trash. I meant to put it in the recycling, but I got distracted.”
Tox turned the tube over in his hand, then banged it on his thigh. “Mind if I take this? I have a leaky pipe in my kitchen and this might just do the trick.”
“Sure thing. Glad to assist with your pipes.”
Steady coughed into his closed fist. Tox gave her a look that nearly ignited her thong.
As they pulled up to her home, Chat spoke to her for the first time. “Calliope, do you have a security system?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Make sure it’s armed.”
“Okay.”
Tox gave her shoulder another comforting squeeze—although Calliope was beginning to think comforting wasn’t quite the right word—and lifted his other hand in a motionless wave.
“Thanks for the ride guys.” She addressed all of them but locked eyes with Tox.
Their black SUV idled at the curb until Calliope had climbed her exterior stairs, let herself inside, and waved through the glass sidelight.
Inside, Calliope turned to see her rottweiler, Coco, engaging in her wake up stretches: butt up, paws out, followed by back legs out behind her in a sploot. Coco produced a squeaky yawn and followed Calliope to the back of the house. Calliope lifted one foot in front of the other, suddenly overcome by profound fatigue. She aimed for the checkerboard porcelain tile floor of the kitchen. Depositing her cumbersome bag on the island she grabbed a bottle of water and headed for the stairs, the clittering of Coco’s nails on the hardwood reassuring, the old stairs creaking as she mounted them.
Coco stopped on the landing and growled. Calliope noticed a strange, flickering light at the end of the upstairs hall. She stepped carefully, quietly, making her way toward the second-floor window overlooking the street. She finally breathed an inaudible sigh when she saw that a plastic grocery bag had hooked the neck of a streetlight, disrupting the beam each time the wind kicked up. She scratched Coco behind the ears as her trusty pet braced her front paws on the sill and gave a stern warning bark to the grocery bag.
“Come on, puppy. Let’s get to bed.”
Coco tossed another bark back at the offending bag and trotted into Calliope’s bedroom. She was a docile, good-natured dog. She had once inadvertently caught a car thief when the perpetrator had misconstrued Coco’s enthusiasm for a car ride as an attack. Coco’s uninterrupted barking and pawing at the car door had delayed and distracted the man and caused such a ruckus, the car’s owner came out to investigate. She napped in the sun, begged for belly rubs, and greeted visitors with a happy spin and a wet lick. But woe betide anyone who threatened Calliope while Coco was around. She may have been a sweet dog, but when it came to Calliope she could be a werewolf.
New York City
April 16
Caleb Cain extracted the driver’s license from the misplaced wallet and held it in his palm. Well, that was a strange turn of events. He had come to Gentrify Capital Partners at Reynard’s request to have a conversation with the boisterous CEO, Phipps Van Gent. Fortunately for his employer, Caleb had already been in Manhattan helping a young congressman extract himself from a potential scandal. Phipps Van Gent had, quite suddenly, come into possession of an item his employer was extremely interested in retrieving.
Caleb Cain hadn’t been concerned with the knockout who passed him at the elevator. On any given day, he looked completely different. Today, he looked like a well-heeled businessman. Tomorrow, he could look like a philosophy grad student, the next day, a Persian playboy. There were probably more versions of him from various sketch artists circulating police precincts than caricatures in Times Square. Not like he had anything to be guilty of today—or most days for that matter.
Caleb was a fixer. If a client had an issue that was threatening their image, their freedom, or their reputation, Caleb fixed it. And not in a control-the-narrative/put-your-own-spin-on-it kind of way. No. Caleb Cain eliminated the problem. For good. As ominous as that seemed, the answer ninety percent of the time was money.
If a prostitute had video footage of a married congressman, or a mid-level accountant had evidence of corporate fraud, it could almost always be handled with a wire transfer and a threat. Occasionally, more drastic measures were implemented. However, despite his reputation for being ruthless and untraceable, Caleb found positive reinforcement was almost always the solution. Almost. Caleb only had one rule: no kids. Any other problem he handled.
