Page 69 of With a Vengeance

Sally never thoughtone night could destroy her life—and those of so many others. Yet one did. A night she will never forget and always regret. And it had started off simply. That’s the strange part. There were no signs that something cataclysmic was on the horizon.

It was a Tuesday, and she’d been feeling particularly lonesome after another disastrous blind date with a rat-faced creep who’d tried to paw her within minutes of meeting. “You’ve got the wrong idea, pal,” she’d said before ditching him.

But Sally hadn’t felt like going home. Her date might have had the wrong idea, but the right one was very much on Sally’s mind, leading her across the city to a basement bar beneath an intimates store. The mannequins in the shop window, dressed in silky slips and feathered robes, were a hint of what could be found below.

Inside, Sally went straight to the bar and ordered a drink. The bartender, the only man in the joint, obliged, making it fast and strong. Within minutes, the stool next to her was taken by a young redhead in a blue dress who looked so much like Rita Hayworth that Sally assumed she’d walked into the wrong kind of bar.

Thrumming her fingers on the bar top, she turned to Sally and said, “I never know what to order. What are you drinking?”

“A Manhattan,” Sally said.

Rita Hayworth widened her eyes. “A Manhattan in Philadelphia? Is that even legal?”

“In this city, probably not.”

“I won’t tell. Your secret’s safe with me.”

Then she winked, making Sally understand the redhead knew exactly what kind of place she’d wandered into.

One Manhattan became two, which eventually turned into three. By the time her glass was empty, Sally had her hand on one of the redhead’s supple thighs, pushing ever so slightly up her skirt.

“Take me home with you,” Rita Hayworth said, her voice husky with lust.

Sally never took women to her apartment. She’d learned that from her father. A world-class philanderer, he screwed around in half the hotels in the city. Until the one time he didn’t. Sally’s mother had taken her and her sister to Cape May for the weekend. When they got home, they found their father still asleep and a brunette drinking coffee topless in the kitchen.

“I don’t live alone,” Sally lied.

“My hotel, then.”

She grabbed Sally’s hand without waiting for an answer, leading her out of the bar, into a cab, and into her bed. Sally spent the rest of the night there, marveling at the beautiful young thing in her arms and wondering how she’d gotten so lucky.

It turned out luck had nothing to do with it. Sally learned that two days later, when Rita Hayworth phoned her at the office asking if she could meet for a drink at her hotel. Too excited by the prospect of another good time with the fiery redhead, Sally never stopped to wonder just how she knew where to call her. Only whenshe reached the bar and found Rita in a corner booth with a man did Sally realize something else was going on.

Because it wasn’t just any man seated next to the woman she’d recently taken to bed. It was Kenneth Wentworth, her boss’s chief competitor.

“Miss Lawrence, so glad you could join us,” he said, adding with a wink, “I believe you two ladies already know each other.”

Rita refused to make eye contact as Wentworth placed a manila envelope on the table and slid it toward Sally.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Open it and see,” Wentworth said with an unctuous smirk.

Sally opened the envelope—and almost passed out. Inside were a dozen photographs snapped from inside the closet of Rita’s hotel room, showing everything they had done that night. The two of them kissing, undressing, tumbling into bed. By the time she got to the picture of Rita’s face buried between her legs, Sally wondered why she hadn’t yet died from shame, anger, and fear.

“Can I go now?” Rita asked Wentworth.

He handed her an envelope filled with cash and said, “Good work, kid.”

The woman still couldn’t bring herself to look at Sally as she scurried away, whispering a rushed “I’m sorry” while she passed. Too shocked by what was in those photos, Sally barely heard it. By then, her blood ran so cold she was certain it had frozen in her veins.

“You have a choice, Miss Lawrence,” Wentworth said. “I can send copies of these photos to your mother, your sister, your employer, everyone you know. Or I can give them—and the negatives—to you to destroy. I can make these go away. In exchange for a favor.”

Sally, who’d already decided to accept the offer without knowing what it was, said, “Anything you want.”

What it turned out to be didn’t become clear until the day afterTommy Matheson’s funeral. That was when Sally learned she’d be forced to create a convincing paper trail that connected her boss to the act of sabotage that killed his son and a bunch of newly enlisted troops.

If she did it, the photos and negatives would be hers, along with more money than she ever dreamed of having.

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