Page 2 of Inside Job

Chapter One

Betty

~ present day ~

Miranda Richardson rests her chin in one hand, her elegantly manicured fingers curling slightly in a gesture of welcome. She stares out over the beautiful waters of the French Riviera, fully aware she’s being watched. She’s alone at her little café table on the boardwalk, her chic sundress cut so low it barely covers her breasts, her shocking hemline skimming her thighs. Her long, shapely legs are crossed at the ankles above the absolutely cutest pink ribboned sandals. She’s the perfect bait. She knows it. He knows it.

Then she senses him behind her… Hawk Majors. Tall. Rough. Rugged. He’s killed three men already that morning, while she’s barely finished her first espresso. And now he’s come for her.

“Betty.”

The voice is older, patient, and long suffering, and I snap out of my daydream, blinking up as I grab the stack of papers in front of me instinctively. “Mr. Grimm! Um…how long have you been standing there?”

The older man’s eyes crinkle in amusement. “Relax, I just walked in. You can put your head back in the clouds in a second. Have I gotten any calls this morning?”

I breathe out a quick sigh of relief and grab the message log. “Only about thirty—I put them on your desk for your admin to sort through when she gets in.”

“Good girl. I’ll need you for another hour or so, and I’ve got a visitor coming any time. After that you’ll be done for the day.”

“Of course, Mr. Grimm.”

He chuckles as he passes by me and disappears into the inner sanctum of his private office, authority radiating from the top of his perfectly groomed white hair to the jagged scar that cuts down his forehead and slashes across his cheek, to his broad shoulders and powerful body in the four-thousand-dollar suit, to the razor-sharp edge of the switchblade I’ve seen him produce from his inner suit pocket on more than a few occasions.

My boss—the head of the Grimm family—looks nothing like your average businessman, because he’s not. As I learned only recently after working for him for like, ten years, he’s the head of one of the most powerful crime families in the U.S.

Which is sort of ridiculous, since I used to call him Grandpa Grimm when he first hired me to look after his grandkids.

Back then, I was looking for anything that would get me away from my house and my stepmom, so I was desperate to be the best babysitter Mr. Grimm had ever seen. I succeeded, entertaining his grandchildren with stories of all the amazing places I read about and wanted to visit one day. Those kids told their cousins, that job led to others, and now in addition to babysitting half the offspring of Mr. Grimm’s top lieutenants, I’m the part-time receptionist for one of his official businesses, Grimm Microchips. We don’t get a lot of foot traffic in this opulent fortress, so I don’t usually have much to do but field calls. In fact, I haven’t seen Mr. Grimm at all for the past week.

Hence the daydreaming.

The intercom beeps. “No messages from Franklin? He was supposed to check in.”

I double check the log. I don’t recognize the name, but Mr. Grimm has an entire network of men who work for him, each more sinister than the last, and none of them darker or deadlier than Hawk Majors, who walked out on Mr. Grimm five years ago and never looked back.

But Mr. Grimm isn’t asking about Hawk, I remind myself. Unlike me, he probably doesn’t think of the man twenty-four hours a day. “No, sir.”

“Hmm. Okay, he’ll be calling soon, then. Thanks, Betty.”

I grimace to myself as I swivel in my overstuffed office chair, the minutes ticking by once more in silence. In real life, my name is boring old Betty, but in my daydreams, I call myself all sorts of different things, each more fun than the last. And in my daydreams…Hawk’s always there. Watching me. Wanting me.

It only takes a moment for my imagination to fire up again.

The ruthless killer pauses in the half-shadows, a dark and sinister figure standing in the flickering lights of LAVO, one of New York City’s most exclusive nightclubs. He tracks Henrietta Richardson with a fierce intensity, knowing that tonight, she’ll be his. He’s longed to pull her into his arms for weeks now, and this glittering nightclub provides the perfect opportunity. She’ll never be expecting him here. And once he has his hands on her, once he inhales her scent and wraps his arms around her, he’ll never let her—

The phone rings, shattering my concentration. I stare down at it, momentarily confused why a jangling phone is in the middle of a pulsing New York hotspot. I grab up the phone and whisper breathlessly. “Grimm Microchips. May I help you?”

The voice on the other end of the line doesn’t hesitate. It’s cold, curt, professional. “This is Franklin. Drop is done. All according to plan.”

Before I can respond, the line goes dead, and I scribble down the information exactly as it was relayed to me. Mr. Grimm doesn’t believe in putting anything online—no emails, no computers, no texting. He can’t break himself completely from technology, but his telecommunications system is a vast network of ironclad switchboards and burner phones. I imagine Franklin shattering one of those burner phones at the close of this call, then reaching into a box for the next one. I don’t know anything about Franklin’s drop or what it might mean, but I don’t have to know. I simply have to relay the information.

I hit the button on the intercom, and Mr. Grimm is right there. “Franklin?”

“Drop is done, sir. All according to plan.”

“Good.” Mr. Grimm says nothing more, and the intercom goes dead as new and different lights flash on my computer console, indicating that the elevator is being sent to this floor.

Mr. Grimm’s visitor! I grab my cell phone to check how I look—which is boring—but at least I’m more or less presentable. Honey blonde hair, green eyes, fair skin, freckles. A mouth that’s maybe a little too big for my face, especially since I’m laughing all the time.

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