Page 28 of Take Her

I didn’t know what else to do, so I stood up. He cast one strange glance at me doing so, and then kept heading out.

“Wait!” I exclaimed. “Where are you going?”

He paused and turned toward me slowly. “It’s called lunch, Lia.”

“But—” I opened up his calendar quickly. “You don’t eat lunch until twelve fifteen.” He made a slight growling sound. “Mrs. Armstrong ran this desk like a Swiss watch, Rhaim,” I said, then caught myself. “Sir,” I corrected, and then I went on. “So where are you going that’s not on my calendar?”

He gave me a look of exasperation. “Sometimes I go places you’re not supposed to know about.”

“Well, what do I tell people if they come by and ask where you are?”

“You can tell them I’m taking a shit for all I care,” he said with a cruel chuckle, before giving me a wicked grin.

“I’m trying to take some pride in my job here,” I huffed.

“It’s your first day. Sit your ass down. Take a long lunch of your own.”

“Shouldn’t I go with you? To take notes or something?” I said, before casting a wild look around for a notepad.

“Do you think I’m incompetent?” he asked.

I reeled back a little. “No. Of course not. But—” If something wasn’t officially on his calendar, then I knew it had likely something to do with my father’s other projects. “I’m not like that stupid daughter on The Sopranos,” I told him. Whatever it was he was going off to do, I wanted to go with him.

I wanted to learn everything.

I didn’t have any fear.

He considered me for a moment then, before putting one hand on the desk and leaning over with the other to take hold of my chin like he had at Vertigo and pull me towards him.

I went willingly—I would’ve followed him out of the building like that, if he’d only seen fit to let me—until he whispered in my ear. “Says the stupid girl who says shit like that where anyone can hear her.” His voice was dark and rough and it did bad things to me, even as it mocked me. “What did I tell you when we first met here?” he asked as he rocked back.

I flashed back to the occasion. “Not here. Never here.”

“Good girl.” He let go of my chin, so I could lower it, abashed. “I’ll be back in three hours. Figure out how to cancel my 1 p.m. meeting before you go eat. Otherwise there will be five men in suits pissed off at you,” he said and left the room.

I waited until the door closed behind him to pick up my phone.

The anger of five men in suits was nothing compared to one utterly obsessed girl.

13

RHAIM

I’d gone into my office earlier and turned on my surveillance of the newly vacationing Mrs. Armstrong’s computer systems immediately, watching Lia change all of Mrs. Armstrong’s grandkid’s names into her own password, which she then unwisely used for every single program.

RLG123!

Simple and easy, and I’d have to assume that all of the programs she had access to were now compromised. I watched her mouse’s scroll across the screen as she happily let herself into all of Mrs. Armstrong’s emails—even the woman’s personal ones, which admittedly shouldn’t have been on her desktop at all, and rocked back in my chair, playing the end of a pen against my teeth.

It’d been a while since I’d felt challenged.

Not that I was happy to have attracted the notice of the FBI yet again, but...there was something in the moment that felt right. A certain electricity to knowing we were playing cat and mouse.

Or cat and cat with one small mouse between us.

Moth, more like.

Because I remembered the tattoo I’d seen on Lia’s wrist that night at Vertigo. I doubted her father had seen it yet; Nero was too old school to suffer anything different from what he was used to: bleached blonde women with waxed pubes, who looked like they’d just stepped out of any number of issues from a 1990s Playboy.

---