Page 38 of Sin Bin

I don’t walk toward them. Instead, I beeline toward the buffet, leaving Gwen to trail after me or be leftbehind.

“Where are you—?” She cuts off, releasing a squeal that darts through my skull like pins and needles. “Oh, my God, we have tosayhi.”

Her fingers latch onto my arm again as she spins me around and drags me toward the other end of the buffet table where a blonde is standing. Poor girl—she has no idea what’s comingherway.

Before we even reach the woman’s side, Gwen exclaims, “Charlie! It issogood toseeyou.”

The blonde glances up, and there’s no mistaking the way her eyes go wide at our approach. She looks on the verge of fleeing, but there’s no time. “Heeeey, there, Gwen.” The woman’s blue eyes flick to me, before landing on Gwen’s shark-like grab on my forearm. “Looks like you’ve made a newfriend?”

By the gods that be, I’mreleased.

“Charlie,” Gwen says, “meet our new publicist, Zoe Mackenzie. Zoe, this is Charlie Denton. She works forThe BostonGlobe.”

I hold my hand out for a proper handshake. “It’s good to meet you. Have you been withThe Boston Globefor awhile?”

“A little over a month now. It’s still pretty fresh,actually.”

“She was withThe Tribunebefore,” Gwen pops into the conversation, as if I should be completely familiar with the newspaper. At my raised brows, Gwen gives a little sigh of disappointment. “I forgot you aren’t from here.The Cambridge Tribunewas a sinking newspaper. It recentlycloseddown.”

I look from Gwen to Charlie, then back again. “Is this a . . . goodthing?”

“Absolutely,” Charlie says, drawing my attention back to her. Just before she stuffs a mini-quesadilla slice into her mouth, she mutters, “I hated that place. Totally soul-sucking.”

I have no idea what to say. On a personal level, I can commiserate with her. On a professional level, I have no idea who she is, and the last year has made me wary of reporters. My gaze dips to the forgotten black recorder on the buffettable.

“What Charlieisn’tsaying, is that you probably heard about her on the news. Little fun fact for you, Zoe: Charlie here busted an entire story a little over a month ago about me and her boyfriend, Duke Harrison.” Gwen watches me, and I have the distinct feeling that this partisa test. “But Charlie is pretty good at keeping secrets otherwise—right,Charls?”

The blonde spares Gwen a narrowed look. “You do realize that I’ve known you for nearly a decade, and you’ve never once called me that.Right?”

Gwen purses her lips. “I thought we werefriends?”

“You called me Charlie Sheen twomonthsago.”

“It was obviously a joke,” Gwen tells me in a conspiratorial voice, hand curled around her mouth and everything. “Charlie’s still feeling a little hurtaboutit.”

“Well,” Charlie drawls, dragging another quesadilla off the silver tray, “if it hadn’t been for you making Duke see me again, I don’t know where I would be today. Thank you for that. But, anyway, I’m an awesome secret keeper.” Her blue eyes find my face. “Should I turn off myrecorder?”

“You have it running right now?” An itchy feeling catches on my neck, and I briskly rub my palm against it, hating the thought that I’m in a room full of people justwaitingto bust open the “Moaning Zoe” jokesagain.

“Oh, yeah,” Charlie tells me, tapping her finger against the recorder. “This baby never gets turned off. You have no idea what you might hear up here. I mean—did you know that the GM was messing around with someone? His divorce papers aren’t evenfinalizedyet.”

Over Charlie’s head, I exchange a look with Gwen. Gwen, mind you, pulls theleastsubtle move in the existence of subtlety, and runs a finger across herthroat.

“Gwen,” the blonde says, twisting around to stare at my boss in horror. “Youdidn’t.”

Uh-oh. I shift backward, intent on escaping. “You know, I think I might try to scope out some of those sponsors you were talking about, Gwen. Maybe spend some time convincing them that Andre isn’t the devilincarnate—”

Gwen’s hand clutches my wrist, stalling my flight. “Body. Shield,” she hisses from behind grittedteeth.

My eyes go wide. “Fromher?Seriously?”

Charlie’s hands go to her hips. “What’s that mean? What are you talking about, ‘bodyshield’?”

“Nothing,Charls.”

Charlie makes a theatrical show of flicking off her recorder, before dropping it into the backpack tucked between her feet. “Recorder is away, Gwen. Don’t even pretend to play coy. Did you sleep withtheGM?”

Sensing trouble on the horizon, I lift a finger. “Can I ask how the two of you know eachother?”

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