Page 155 of The Wild Charge

“You and I,” Waverly parroted, lip curled. “We’re nothing alike.”

“Well, you have considerably more power, I’ll grant you,” Tenny said. “But I fill out a suit more beautifully, so.” He shrugged and leaned back. “My contributions aren’t insignificant. There’s a reason Luis approached me in the first place, and it isn’t because you think I’m beneath your notice.”

Waverly tipped his head a fraction in concession.

“I’m not too proud for my own good,” Tenny continued. “I won’t challenge you, if I come onboard. But I do have one condition: that you leave my husband, and Raven Blake and her sister alone from this point forward.”

“Raven Blake. Dog loyalty, again.”

“No. Raven isn’t a member of the club. She knows what her brothers signed on for, what they’re risking. Leave her out of it. Leave her sister and my husband out of it, and I’ll call the Dogs off of you. They need my money too much to go against my orders.”

Waverly considered a long moment, scratching at his chin. “I would need a show of good faith,” he said, finally.

Tenny’s phone pinged and he withdrew it. “How about this? The Kozlov bratva just found out it was the Italians who got them raided. I just received confirmation that they’ll be here in two minutes. The authorities have been tipped off. You and I can quietly slip out the back and let them handle the Russians when they show up. How’s that for good faith?”

~*~

Abe had swiped them visitor passes while Fox distracted security. They slapped them on their chests, and then he turned toward the first painting they came to and said, “I’m not always a fan of Impressionism, but the brushwork in this piece is immaculate. It gives the impression of fractured light on water, don’t you think?”

An employee walked right past them without a second glance.

“That was good,” Toly murmured.

“Let’s see if it’s good enough to get us all the way up to the offices.”

It got them to the second floor, but then they faced a problem. An employee wearing a lanyard stood outside the door that led into the Employees Only area, which was their destination. Abe slipped Reese a flash drive through sleight of hand and whispered, “You know what you’re after?”

Reese nodded.

Abe nodded back, and then pasted a warm, grandfatherly smile on his face, hitched his steps so that he looked frail, and shuffled toward the employee. “Excuse me, do you think you could show me…”

As simple as that, the employee left his post, and Reese and Toly slipped into the staff area without being seen. There was a likely chance they’d been caught by the cameras, but both of them were wearing ballcaps and had angled their faces carefully.

So far, Reese approved of Toly. He was quiet, collected, and hadn’t felt the need to posture or preen. Efficient and competent. A useful partner in this endeavor.

Beyond the door, they found a short, narrow hallway flanked by half-open office doors. Cassandra had told them that all her official clinic correspondence had come from someone named Janet Bledsoe, and thankfully, all the offices bore name plaques.

They found her office empty, unlocked, and cluttered with house plants that gave the overwarm space a faint peaty scent. Toly gestured to the computer and said, “Do you mind?”

“No. Go ahead.”

He snapped on a pair of nitrile gloves from his pocket, pushed the chair in, and leaned over the back of it to get to the keyboard. The screen prompted them for a password, and he had it figured out in a matter of seconds.

Reese glanced over his shoulder to check the doorway – clear – and stepped up beside him. “How’d you know her password?”

Toly snorted, faintly, as he clicked through Document tabs. He reached with his free hand to flick a Post-It fixed to the side of the monitor. “She has a list.”

“Oh.”

“It’s Bright Spark, yeah?”

“Yeah. Look, here, it says it’s a roll call.”

They popped in the drive and saved it, along with a score of other related Docs, anything labeled Bright Spark. Then they got into her email and screenshotted everything that seemed relevant.

Reese wished they had more time for this, that they could really stop and search all her files at their leisure, but all the while he felt an imaginary clock ticking in the back of his mind.

Out in the hallway, the outer door opened and then clicked shut.

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