The Dangerous Seduction (11 page)

“Hey, let me take a look at that,” Joseph says from behind him.

He turns around, letting his hand fall to his side. Joseph steps toward him and grabs his jaw, tilting his head to one side and peering at the cut.

“It doesn’t look so bad; you won’t need stitches. Does it hurt?”

“No,” he answers truthfully.

Joseph nods, splays his fingers over Ryan’s jaw, running his fingertips over the bristles. The touch makes Ryan shiver; his half-hard cock gives an interested twitch. Joseph glances down and smirks, then looks up again to meet his eyes.

“That will have to wait,” he says. “Go, get showered, buy those new pants, then call me. I’ll come get you. We’re booked on the 12:00 p.m. flight out of here and we should interview Cartwright’s wife before we leave.”

M
RS
. C
ARTWRIGHT
looks pale and shaken, her eyes watery and distant and constantly glancing over their shoulders like she’s on alert.
She discovered the body,
Ryan thinks.
She came into the garage to get a new lightbulb for the dining room lamp and she found her husband hanging from the ceiling
. There’s nothing he can say or do that will take that away from her. She’s going to remember that for the rest of her life. Still, there are the motions and pleasantries and sometimes these things can even help.

“We’re so sorry for your loss,” he says as they take their seats at the kitchen table.

She flinches and her mouth tightens, lips pressing together so hard the color seems to drain from them. She swallows, then says, “I want to join the lawsuit.”

Ryan hesitates, looking expectantly at Joseph, who doesn’t seem surprised by this development. Joseph nods his head calmly and says, “You know that your husband didn’t want to be part of this?”

She jerks her shoulders up and down in something resembling a shrug. “I know. I think he was wrong. I told him so. But he still—God knows why, but I think he still felt some sort of allegiance to… to
that man
.” She spits out those last words as if they’re poison.

“We would of course love to have you as part of the suit,” Joseph says. “Your family was very hard-hit by Jack McNeil’s actions. But I’m going to tell you the same thing I told all the other plaintiffs: this case could drag on for a long time. With high stakes litigation, you need time and patience. No doubt you’ve seen the stories in the press?” Slowly she nods her head. “Yes, it can get ugly. On both sides. I can understand why your husband might not have wanted to drag your family into it.”

“I’m his heir,” she says firmly. “Everything that’s left—not that there’s much of it—but it’s all mine now, including everything that McNeil owes us. I’m not going to stand by and let him get away with it. I spent years working and raising this family, scrimping and saving. I’m not willing to let it go.”

Joseph nods. “Of course, and I’m planning on getting as much of it back as I can. For all of you. I’ve staked my reputation on this case, and I intend to win.”

She nods, her eyes locking onto Joseph’s face with the fervor of the newly converted. “Phil was wrong about you. I’ve read about what you’ve done for other people. Phil said that you were corrupt and bad news. That you were just in it for yourself, for your percentage and the publicity.”

“Of course, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t ultimately in it for myself,” Joseph says, not breaking eye contact. “But I earn my percentage when I win money for my clients. And the fact that this case is worth a lot to me professionally means that I’ll do everything I can to win it. You have my word on that.”

She sucks in a breath and bows her head, staring down at her clasped fingers. “There are a lot of files,” she says hesitantly. “When Phil left the office the day everything happened with the company, he came back with a trunk full of files and papers and paperwork. He was very protective of all of it, and I always thought there must be a lot of sensitive material there. The way he’s been acting these past few months….” She thins her mouth into a brittle, shaky line. “I thought he was paranoid. I thought he was acting crazy. I guess I didn’t realize just how crazy….” She trails off, raising her hand to smooth over her messy ponytail. “But I want you to take it away. I don’t want to think about any of it anymore, and I want… I want it all to help. To mean something.”

Ryan’s heart thumps wildly. He casts a look at Joseph, but Joseph looks as calm and serene as he always does when dealing with clients.

“Thank you,” Joseph says, leaning across the table to clasp her fingers. His eyes widen, looking sincere and honest and very green. “I promise that I’ll do all I can to get back what you and your family is owed.”

She nods again, thanking him with watery eyes and a trembling smile. She gets up from the table and moves to an old-fashioned bureau in one corner of the room. She pulls open a drawer and takes out a small key and a business card. She puts them on the table and slides them across to Joseph.

“Everything he took is at this storage facility. I told him I didn’t want any of it in the house,” she says. “He used to go there a lot. Sometimes he’d be there all day.”

Ryan looks down at the business card.
Castle Storage
, he reads, and a downtown address.

“Thank you,” Joseph says, his voice resonating with sincerity. “We’ll go there now, if that’s okay with you?”

She nods. “Like I said, I’ll be glad to be rid of it. It’s box number 211. Take everything you need.”

T
HE
STORAGE
box is set up like an office space, albeit an extremely cramped, untidy, and depressing office space. One wall is piled high with archive-box files, which on a cursory glance all seem to be stuffed full of papers, folders, and files. More loose papers lie strewn across an ugly battered desk on which sits an old-style Mac computer. Legal manila files stand in teetering towers on either side of the desk, and there are open index files spilling yet more papers, newspaper cuttings, and printouts of spreadsheets all over the remaining floor space, taking up all four corners of the room.

“Jesus Christ,” Joseph breathes when he sees it all.

“You think we just hit the jackpot?” Ryan says.

“I think we have to get all this shit boxed up and shipped back to the office asap. And I think we’re not making that flight. I’ll call Estelle and get her to move our flights. You just get a start on it. We need everything.
Everything
, Ryan.”

It takes them five hours. They sort through as much as they can; Cartwright’s filing system is nonexistent or a tightly held secret known only to the dead man. A lot of the papers seem to be duplicates of stuff Ryan has already read, because he is already intimately familiar with the Operations team Cartwright led for nine years. But there’s a lot of new stuff in there too, stuff that has Joseph’s eyes narrowing and his eyebrows drawing together as he looks over it and sets it all aside into a file that he’s going to carry on board the plane with him. The rest will be shipped via UPS.

“Shit, look, look at this,” Ryan breathes as his gaze stutters over a stapled-together series of spreadsheets. Joseph looks up from his paper and comes over. He takes the pages from Ryan’s hands. Their fingers brush together, and Ryan feels the breath catch in his throat. Joseph is standing really close and he smells really good, and Ryan wants more than anything to grab hold of him, push him up against that desk, and press their bodies together. The thought sends a rush of heat through his body, up his spine and down to his tingling fingertips. He’s suddenly really aware of himself and his own body and just how on edge he’s been for the entire day, just how much his body has been craving Joseph.

He blinks and forces his attention back to the papers in Joseph’s hand. “It’s a series of transaction statements, all for consultancy fees relating to an acquisition,” he says. “The first one’s dated March 7, 2005. That was when the Penrose acquisition went through, right? I’m pretty sure that all the consultancy fees relating to that deal were accounted for in the books. Which means that whatever this is”—he taps the paper—“wasn’t mentioned in the official accounts.”

Joseph nods thoughtfully, leafing through the spreadsheets. He glances up at Ryan through his eyelashes.

Ryan tempers the grin threatening to spill over his face and sucks down his excitement as he says, “McNeil paid 300 million for Penrose, and there’s a clear record of all the consultancy payments he made in the accounts. There’s no record of this payment anywhere.”

“No, there isn’t,” says Joseph slowly. “You’re right. But unfortunately, this has no bearing on our case.”

“No, no,” says Ryan, thinking quickly, swallowing down his disappointment at Joseph’s easy dismissal. “But these kinds of accountancy discrepancies should be investigated. I mean, I’m no expert in corporate tax fraud, but that looks like an offshore account number to me. The IRS cleared McNeil of tax evasion years ago, but something like this might be enough to get them to run another audit on him?”

“Perhaps,” says Joseph, his tone noncommittal. He tucks the papers into his private file and slots it under his arm. He can obviously read Ryan’s disappointment in his face because he gives him a faint smile. “Hey, you’re right. It would be great timing for us if we could suggest to the government that they look into McNeil again. Anything that damages his reputation in the press would be great for our case, but you know that this isn’t relevant.”

Ryan nods, blows out a breath. “Yeah, I know. I just… God, I just want to get that man, Joseph.”

“Believe me, so do I,” Joseph says emphatically. “I’ll give this to James and Eden in the tax department; they have all the background on the McNeil tax audit, let’s see what they can do with it. If there is anything here”—he taps the file under his arm—“then they’ll find it.” He claps Ryan on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. We will get that slippery bastard. I promise you that.”

R
YAN
’
S
PHONE
buzzes and skips across his desk, rousing him from his reading. He looks up and blinks, bringing the rest of the world into focus. He reaches for his phone and squints down at the display.
Daisy calling….

An abrupt flood of guilt hits him; his chest feels tight and constricted. He swallows, picks up the phone, and presses the button to accept the call.

“Ryan? Where are you?” She sounds annoyed. She should be. She
deserves
to be. He should’ve called her when they landed at JFK, but he’d turned his phone off for the flight and only remembered to turn it back on again an hour ago and he’s been busy ever since, engrossed in his reading.

“Uh, I’m at work, honey. In the office.”

“What? Why didn’t you call me when you landed?” She sounds rightly annoyed now, angry even, and Daisy doesn’t usually get angry.

“We only landed an hour ago,” he says, the lie slipping off his tongue before he’s really had time to make the conscious decision to lie to her.

“Why didn’t you come home? You’ve been away one night already! Please tell me you’re coming home tonight.”

He hesitates, gets up from his desk, pausing in the doorway of his office. At the other end of the corridor, Joseph’s private office is lit up. His heart skips a beat and for a second he’s panicking, imagining that she’s reading his mind, sensing something in his hesitation—the guilt, the truth of what he did last night, screwing around with someone else, cheating on her with someone else, with a guy.

His hand flutters up to his throat before he’s aware of it. His fingers brush over the spot where Joseph had nipped at his skin, not hard enough to leave a mark—Joseph knew better than that—but enough for the sense memory to linger, for the pulse to flutter in his throat when he touches it, the memory surging back, vivid and lingering.

“Ryan?” she repeats. “Are you reading something? Why do you always do that when I’m trying to talk to you?”

“I don’t!” he protests. “And I’m not ignoring you! Of course I’m not. I just—it’s this case, baby. I mean, we knew it was gonna be intense when I got the job, but this case is huge. It’s crazy, and we just got all this new evidence, like,
just
got it. Earlier today. We have to go through it right away—”

“So you’re not coming home tonight?” she interrupts, her tone flat and accusatory.

“I don’t know,” he says. He pulls his hand away from his throat, feeling self-conscious, the guilt burning hot and nauseous in his belly. “I’m sorry,” he says and the words catch in his throat. They’re true, so damn true, but they’re easy too, as easy as the lie that slipped off his tongue just before. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise. But we knew… we knew it would be like this.” He looks up again, and this time he knows that he’s looking for Joseph, for his distorted shadow in his office window, magnified by the lamplight like a black-and-white Hitchcock image.

She’s quiet for a beat. Then she sighs. “Okay. But you’d better make it up to me. Maybe with new clothes.”

He chuckles. The sound rings false in his ears, though she doesn’t call him on it. He feels an abrupt burst of affection for her, his girl, making it easy for him, trusting him so damn easily. “Yeah, of course. Whatever you want.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” She hangs up. He stares down at the phone, then sighs and pockets it. He thinks about walking down the corridor, past all the empty offices and knocking on Joseph’s door, and Joseph letting him inside. His skin prickles at the thought, snakes in his belly coming alive. An entirely different type of churning sensation than what he’d just felt speaking to Daisy.

Daisy.
The thought of her is sobering. He pictures her face, thinking of what she’d say if she ever knew what he’d done. She doesn’t deserve it, and he doesn’t deserve her, and whatever the hell possessed him when he was with Joseph yesterday must not happen again.

The words on his computer screen swim in front of his face as he sinks back into his chair. He blinks them back into focus and concentrates on reading, trying to get the sentences to run together and make sense. He flicks to the next page in the report and freezes in shock.