Reunited With The P.i.. Anna J. Stewart

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      “And yet you turned out fine. It all comes down to choices. You made good ones. Jason didn’t. Funny how you’re all about consequences except in this scenario.”

      That Simone was right—had always been right about his kid brother—never did sit well with him. It didn’t matter how many times he’d gone to bat for Jason, tried to help him, detour him or get him a job, the kid was a wreck. If he didn’t have bad luck, he’d have no luck at all. Part of Vince had begun to believe he had to choose: his brother or his wife. And the more he dwelled on it, the more he resented it. And her. That the press had dubbed her an avenging angel hadn’t surprised him. What had taken them so long? “Okay, fine, but I’m making another choice now. Find yourself another investigator, Simone. I’m not your man.”

      He hadn’t meant to sound taunting, or cold, but he’d always seemed to say the wrong thing around his former wife.

      “Are you so determined to punish me for something that happened years ago you won’t even hear me out?”

      “You should have asked whose file it was.” And here he thought he’d set the resentment aside when he’d filed for divorce. He braced himself as she looked at him in silence. “You should have paid closer attention to whose life you were about to destroy.”

      “You’re right.” She drank the rest of her wine and cringed as if the admission burned. “I should have. If I’d known it was Jason, maybe I would have done things differently.” She hesitated. “If that’s worth anything now.”

      “It’s not,” he lied. Her personal learning curve was one of the qualities he admired most about her. Simone wasn’t one to make the same mistake twice. But she’d made one that put his brother behind bars for ten years for a crime he hadn’t technically committed, and it wasn’t something Vince would get past anytime soon.

      “Good to know you’ve moved beyond it.” She toasted him with her empty glass. “At least let me tell you about this case before you shut me down. Please.”

      “Nothing you say will change my mind.”

      “So long as you’re keeping an open mind.”

      There it was. The sarcasm. The passive aggressive mind games she excelled at. “Why me?” He sat back and kept a steady gaze on hers. “Those expensive investigators at the DA’s office not cutting it? You need to slum it with us mere mortals?”

      “If you must know I’m having some trust issues with the people I work with, and by the way, I never thought of you as a mere anything, Vince. Not once.”

      If she meant the statement as a peace offering, it was a pretty good one. Hating himself, fighting that stomach-clenching dread that his world was about to open up under his feet again, he gave in to her. “I assume this has something to do with Paul Denton?”

      Her brow furrowed. “You’ve been following things?”

      More like he’d been following her. Just because he’d ended it between them didn’t mean he wasn’t proud of Simone’s accomplishments. He knew she’d blown through college and law school in record time, landed at the DA’s office weeks after graduation and won her first case a month after that. Her ambition and determination were what had attracted him to her in the first place. Until he’d realized that same ambition and dedication to the letter of the law didn’t leave much room for him.

      “It’s been difficult not to,” Vince told her. “Front page headlines for the past few weeks. Corporate kickbacks, shell companies, money laundering. Sexy stuff.”

      “I’m convinced it’s the tip of an iceberg,” Simone added as she pulled out a file folder and set it on the table. She flipped it open to show a small photograph stapled to the top of a report. A pretty, dark-haired young woman. Green eyes. Green eyes... Vince forced himself to look. Did they always have to have green eyes?

      “Mara Orlov was fresh out of college when she started in Paul Denton’s private office as his record keeper,” Simone continued. “She’s smart, Vince. Like supersmart, with an eidetic memory, and she picks up on everything. So when she came across a pattern in his books, she dug deeper and uncovered Denton’s fraud. Money that should have been dispersed was getting moved from business to business and then it would vanish. She wrote out a detailed report, photocopied all the records and brought everything she had to a friend of hers in my office who brought it to me.”

      “Why you?”

      “The DA was in the hospital. Gall bladder surgery and then complications,” she explained. “Luck of the draw meant he was out of the office for weeks.”

      Vince smirked. “Luck? You never take a day off and were there, ready and able, to assume control.”

      “She’ll be a star in the witness box.” Simone’s eyes narrowed as she plowed on. “She’s unshakable, actually. Or so I thought. We hit a rough patch a little while ago and she got spooked. She thought someone was following her. So after some convincing, I assigned two deputies to watch her. She was back on board, until this morning.” She was staring at him, hard. “She took off, Vince. Poof. The deputies guarding her were drugged and when they went up to her apartment to get her, they found she was gone—her car, too. Now they’ve been suspended pending an investigation that shouldn’t even be open. I need someone completely unconnected to law enforcement. This could be good for you, Vince. Maybe you need this. I need you.”

      If only that were true. “You’re certain she took off?” Vince purposely flipped the pages over to obscure the photograph. The facts and details blurred, got lost behind the past, locked away by sheer will. “You sure she wasn’t bought off?”

      Simone inclined her head and frowned; he recognized the move. “Bought off? You mean bribed?”

      “You didn’t think of that?” he asked. Could his ex be that naive? He wouldn’t have thought so.

      “No.” She sagged in her seat to the point he wanted to reach over and gently erase the lines of concern between her brows. “No, honestly, it never crossed my mind. She’s not that kind of person, Vince. But you thought it immediately, which proves I’ve come to the right person. Maybe she got scared again, or...”

      “Or maybe someone got to her.”

      “I can’t let myself think that.” He heard a hint of desperation in her voice, one that had slipped through her defenses. “Not yet.”

      Whatever sharp retort Vince considered throwing at her became stuck in his throat. He might know what buttons to push when it came to Simone and her devotion to protecting people—especially women. But he wasn’t so callous as to use the unsolved murder of her childhood friend as a verbal weapon against her.

      “Will you please take the case?” she pleaded.

      “Based on what you’ve told me?” Despite his instincts, his mind was already ticking off avenues to pursue: the girl’s address, her friends, family. He still had contacts at various phone companies to trace the girl’s cell phone. Wouldn’t take much to get a feel for things. “No.”

      “If it’s money—” His eyes narrowed and she held up her hands in surrender. “Sorry. I know. Touchy subject.”

      “Only where you’re concerned.” Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined he’d СКАЧАТЬ