Page 63 of Truth, Lies, and Second Dates
“For other people, not me… I would watch a show aboutsomeone who spends ninety-five percent of their time in a lab environment.”
“Of course you would. Well, what do you think?”
“I think you are a lovely, passionate, intelligent woman who eats garbage.”
“I meant, where do we go from here? And you’re wrong about that.” She left it vague so he could wonder which attribute she had a problem with. “I’m in the same boat you are, by the way. Actually, my boat’s much leakier—you’re at least part of the criminal justice system. I’ve got no official responsibilities and no training in forensics or law enforcement. But fuck it. The killer chased me away last time.
“Well, not again. Not this time. This would normally be the part where I proclaim that I never make the same mistake twice, except I do that all the time. But I’m owning it now. I’m not running away. And I’m in the game now, Doc Baker! Not that this is a game.”Stop talking. Eat your bottom-feeder dinner.
Nope. Her inner voice was denied; turned out she had more to say. “I’m still using the playbook from ten years ago, is what I’m trying to stay. And it got me exactly where it did before: flying away and pretending nothing ever happened, or if it did, that it was so long ago it didn’t bother me anymore. But the hell with that playbook and the hell with the killer. You’re coming with me and we’re going to actually do something.”
“Technically,you’recoming withm—”
“Don’t wreck my self-actualization, Tom!”
“Right. Sorry.”
“Okay then.”
“Yes.”
“Glad we’re on the same page,” she added.
“As am I. Also, I suspect I am coming to adore you, which I can’t explain.”
“Probably just some bad fish.”
He laughed and made a show of gobbling the rest of his salmon.
Nice speech,her eternally snarky inner voice piped up.But for someone who keeps saying this isn’t the movies, you’re making lots of movie-heroine mistakes.
Maybe so. But at least she wasn’t hiding. She’d face her fuckups head-on, and nothing was going to stop her.
Probably.
Thirty-Three
“You’regroundingme?”
“Yes, Ava. I’m very sorry.”
“But my follow-up test was clean! Everyone agreed the first test was deeply screwed!”
“It’s not a punishment, Ava. But someone blasted past our firewalls and e-mailed half the company your fraudulent test results.”
“Good God!” And on the heels of that:holy shit, Tom was right!On the bright side, this latest unwelcome announcement saved her the “why does my entire crew know I flunked a piss test?” phone call to HR.
“You’re still getting occasional press about the belly landing, which means this has the potential to become a major news story. And while you’ve done nothing wrong, what do people usually assume when they hear a celebrity—”
“What? Ridiculous.”
“—flunked a drug test?”
Ava sighed. “People usually assume the subject lied, not the test.”
“Exactly. We need to find the leak, plug the leak, and make sure something like that can’t happen again. All of which will take time. And meanwhile…”
“This sucks, Jan.”
