I simply wouldn't reply. It was none of her business, anyway.
But apparently she didn't need to ask. Something I probably should have expected by now. Because when she spoke, all she said was, "He'll be back."
I yanked my chair around to face her. So hard, in fact, that I almost spun in an entire circle. I had to catch myself on the edge of the desk and compensate back to center. I never told her that he had left. I never even told her that he existed. I hid it from everyone here. I never even—
"The ring." She nodded toward my left hand, seemingly reading my thoughts like some kind of freaky tarot card–wielding psychic. My eyes darted downward to the hand that was still gripping the edge of my desk. Yes, there it was. Jamie's diamond engagement ring. The one that refused to stop shining. The one that I had slid on my finger the night before and forgotten to take off.
The very one I had forgotten to put back on only a few short weeks ago.
"You never wore it before," she explained. "When you looked so happy."
A small laugh escaped my lips. Not because the situation was funny, but because it was so far from being funny that the only thing I could do was laugh. "Right," I said solemnly, understanding her logic perfectly. Even though to anyone else, it would have failed to make any sense at all.
"Maybe if you called him," Hadley suggested timidly.
"No," was my obstinate reply. "He doesn't want to be with me anymore."
Hadley cocked her head to the side in a silent question mark. I could tell she was considering a counterargument, and my eyes pleaded with her to just let it go.
She eventually conceded with a nod and turned back toward the door. "Your ten o'clock appointment should be here any minute," she reminded me, eyeing my outfit.
I swung my chair back to face the window again and nodded absently. "I know."
"Would you like me to postpone?"
"No."
Hadley pursed her lips thoughtfully for a moment and then shut the door behind her.
I pulled up my legs and hugged them to my chest. Then I sat, un-moving, in the silence of my office, watching the waves on the shore and the busy morning traffic of Ocean Avenue. From way up here, the world actually appeared to have some sort of order to it.
But I knew better.
Zoë was right. I had crossed the line. This time I had gone too far. I let a twelve-year-old child talk me into testing her father. All because I needed to prove to myself that I had made the right choice. That choosing my work over Jamie was the right thing to do.
God, could it really get any lower than that?
My thoughts were interrupted by the buzz of my intercom.
"Yeah," I replied, barely turning my head toward the speaker.
In a perplexed tone, Hadley said, "Um, the new associate is here to see you?"
I continued to stare out the window as I replied numbly, "What new associate?"
Then I heard something that sounded like a struggle and a familiar voice saying, "Just give me the phone," and then more clearly came, "It's John! I have to talk to you. It's very important."
There was another apparent struggle for the receiver, complete with grunts and hissing, and then Hadley was back. "Sorry about that. He says you hired him last week. Do you want me to send him in?"
My head collapsed back against my chair. "Fine. Whatever."
John trudged into my office a few seconds later, zeroed in on my location at the desk, and headed straight toward me with an intensely determined look on his face. "You," he stated ominously, wagging his finger in my direction. "You and I need to talk."
I didn't even turn around. "No, we don't."
"Why haven't you been answering your phone? Or returning your calls?"
Without moving my head, I glanced in the direction of my bag. I suddenly remembered shutting off my phone before entering Alice Garrett's house yesterday. "Oh yeah," I muttered dazedly. "I forgot to turn it back on."
John sighed dramatically. "Not cool. I've been trying to get a hold of you!"
When I didn't respond, he marched over to my chair and turned it around to face him. Then he leaned in close to me, and I could smell the McDonald's McGriddles on his breath. "I'm sorry about showing up here like this, but you left me no choice. You have a problem."
I closed my eyes. "I know."
He put his hands on my shoulders and shook them. "No, I mean a serious problem."
I pushed him away from me and stood up, stalking to the far end of the room. "John, I know," I growled. "I'm a terrible person. I never should have ratted out Zoë's boyfriend. I never should have cheated on Jamie. I never should have done anything. Okay? What do you want me to say?"
He furrowed his eyebrows and shot me a confused look. "What are you talking about?"
I groaned. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about your associate. The cute blond one."
I swung my head around and stared at him. "Katie?"
"Yes. Katie."
"What about Katie?"
John sighed and removed a manila folder from the green-and-black messenger bag that was strapped across his chest. He dropped the folder on my desk and opened it. From across the room, I could just barely make out what looked like a stack of eight-by-ten black-and-white photographs. The kind that private detectives take to prove that someone is in cahoots with the Mob. I squinted at the photos, trying to make out their contents.
"What are those?" I asked, completely exasperated and having no patience for John's games.
"They're pictures of Katie at the Chateau Marmont," he stated matter-of-factly.
I took a few steps closer. The photographs were almost in complete focus now. "Well, what is she doing in them?" I asked warily.
John watched my reaction carefully, almost as if he was expecting me to faint again and was preparing himself to catch me. "She's walking out of Dean Stanton's hotel room."
29
traitor in our midst
I Stood motionless for a full minute, my eyes trying to absorb everything that they were seeing while my brain tried desperately to compute it. Neither one seemed to be keeping up with the other. I stared down at the black-and-white photo that sat on top of the pile in front of me. I hadn't dared touch it.
No matter how many times I tried to come up with an alternative explanation for what was being represented, my mind kept coming back to the same conclusion. The only conclusion. That the woman in this photograph was Katie Morgan. My associate. And the man she was kissing outside of a hotel room door marked with the number 812 was Dean Stanton. I had recognized him not only from the picture in his case file, but from the pictures I had seen multiple times in Variety magazine as I was researching his case.
When my hand was finally able to move, I reached out and flipped over the photograph to reveal the one underneath. A similar shot, still black and white, still taken from somewhat of a distance using some type of zoom feature, but still the same two subjects: Katie and Dean outside room 812. This time they weren't kissing. Instead, he had his face buried in the side of her neck and she was laughing.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to think back to the details Katie had given me last week about the Stanton assignment. I could almost swear she'd said that Melissa Stanton caught them making out on the couch and then she packed up her things and left. Yes, that's definitely what she said. Although why did the Chateau Marmont sound so familiar? I opened my eyes and reached for the yellow legal pad on my desk, flipping back through a dozen pages until I landed on the right one. My eyes scanned the scribbles until I came face-to-face with the words Chateau Marmont. That's where Dean said he was staying after Melissa kicked him out. Katie had said something about how he'd whispered it into her ear as he was leaving, hoping she would stop by later, not knowing that this whole thing had been a setup.
Oh God.
I leafed through five more photographs. More of the same.
My head popped up. "John, where did you get these?"
/> "I took them," he said proudly. As if the artistic value of the photos were the primary concern here.
"When?"
He walked around the edge of my desk, tracing it with his fingertip as he walked and finally plopped down in my chair. "Yesterday morning."
"Yesterday morning?" I repeated, my voice strained.
"I tried to call you," John countered defensively. "But someone wasn't answering their phone."
My head was spinning. And now I felt as though I really might faint again. I fell into a guest chair behind me and gripped the armrests. "But how did you know . . . why were you even there?"
"Well," he began, leaning back in the chair and folding his hands over his stomach, "I was at the Chateau Marmont for a party two Fridays ago—"
"Two Fridays ago?" I interrupted. "You knew about this for more than a week and you didn't tell me?"
John sighed. "If you'll just let me finish, I can explain."
I slouched in my chair. "Fine. Go. Finish."
"So I was at the Chateau for a party with this smoking hot new guy that I met named Chad. I've been trying to hook up with him for the past month, but he keeps blabbing something about having a boyfriend in London or someplace like that. I mean, really, that's ten thousand miles away and I'm here. Hello?"
"John!" I screeched. "Get on with it."
"Right. So we were just leaving the party, which was in this amazing suite in the Chateau, and we passed by this couple that was walking to their room. A late-forty-something guy with silvery hair and a little blond girl." His head nodded toward the photos in front of me, and my stomach flipped.
John continued, "I remember thinking, Okay, total Hollywood stereotype. Older guy, younger girl, Chateau Marmont. Can we get any more cliché? But then after they had disappeared into a suite, room 812"—he nodded again toward the photographs—"Chad whispers to me, 'Do you know who that is?' and I don't, so I go, 'No,' and then he tells me it's Dean Stanton, the head of New Edge Cinema. And then of course I feel really dumb because I know I should know who that is, given that my boss has totally met with him on more than one occasion. But whatever, I was drunk and that's beside the point."
He stopped talking, and for a moment, it appeared as though he had concluded his story. I waved my hand. "And?"
John looked confused. "And what?"
"And that's it?" I cried, exasperated. "How did you get these fucking pictures?"
John's face suddenly lit up with recognition. "Oh, right. Sorry." Then he shot me a disapproving glance. "Testy, testy. So anyway, when I first saw the girl he was with, I thought she looked kinda familiar, but I couldn't really place her. And when Chad told me who he was, I just assumed she was some D-list actress I had seen on TV somewhere. But then that night at Sophie's when you told me that your associate Katie had tested Dean Stanton and I remembered those PI photos you showed me last year before you hired her . . . well, I realized why she looked so familiar."
"Then why didn't you say something?" I blurted out.
"Because I couldn't be sure. I mean, I was so wasted when I left that hotel. As was Chad. That guy we saw could have been anyone. I needed to make sure before I told you. So I decided to go back and stake it out. I went by the hotel every night after work, but I didn't see anything for an entire week. Room 812 was dead silent, and I thought maybe he had already checked out. But then finally, on Saturday around midnight, I saw Dean and Katie in the lobby. I couldn't get a clear shot of them without being noticed, so I came back early in the morning and staked out the hallway until she finally came out around seven and I got these shots."
"Did they see you take them?"
John shook his head, again, extremely proud of himself. "Nope. I'm just stealthy like that." He got up from his chair, walked around the desk, and thumbed through his handiwork. "I thought the black and white was a nice touch, don't you? Very early forties detective movie."
There was a tightness in my chest, and suddenly I felt as though I couldn't catch my breath. John noticed and immediately came over and put his arm around my shoulders. "Jen, breathe. Take a deep breath."
"What does this mean?" I cried, feeling defeated, betrayed, saddened, and infuriated all at once.
John cracked a smile. "What do you mean, what does it mean? It means she broke the cardinal rule. She slept with him."
I ran my fingers through my dirty, tangled hair. "I know that, but it just doesn't make sense. When she told me what happened at the staff meeting, she said she made out with Dean on the couch and then his wife walked in and kicked him out and he went to the hotel. Why would she just go with him? Just like that? No one's that good a kisser!"
"Easy." John shrugged. "That wasn't the first time they kissed."
My eyes widened, and a strangled gasp escaped my lips. I hadn't even thought of that option. "What?"
John shook his head and laughed at me. "You know, Jen, for someone who makes a living off of other people's relationships, you certainly aren't very good at figuring them out."
My thoughts were a blur. Details from the past few weeks were whizzing through my head as I tried desperately to sort them all out and rearrange them into a conclusion that didn't make me want to throw up right there in my trash can.
"You're saying she was having a relationship with Dean Stanton?"
"Um, yeah," John stated, as if it were obvious. And maybe it should have been. Maybe if I hadn't been so preoccupied with my own personal dramas, I would have actually noticed the clues. Because there had to be clues, right?
Suddenly my mind flashed back to that conversation I'd had with Katie nearly three weeks into her assignment. When I told her I wanted to pull her out of there and mark the whole thing down as a pass. She was so quick to dissuade me. Too quick, actually. She'd insisted that she needed more time.
Was it possible that she was sleeping with him that whole time? And that's why she didn't want to leave? Because she was actually enjoying herself? And all that time, Melissa Stanton was paying for her to be there?
Oh God, the nausea was here. I couldn't hold it back any longer. I leaned forward, grabbed the trash can from under my desk, and vomited into it.
John instinctively took a few steps back from me and turned his head, either to give me privacy or to avoid puking right alongside me.
The intercom on my desk buzzed just then, startling both of us. "Ashlyn?" Hadley's voice came through. "Your ten o'clock is here."
Horrified, I looked at the phone on my desk. There was no way I could meet a client now, looking like this. Then I turned to John. He seemed to understand and spoke into the speaker. "Uh . . . Jen's not feeling very well. I think you should probably reschedule it."
"Okay," Hadley replied, sounding wary of his response. After all, to her, John was just some strange guy who had barged in unannounced, claiming to be a new employee, and was now answering my intercom for me. "Should I reschedule all of her appointments today?"
John looked to me, and I nodded. He relayed the message to Hadley and then clicked off the phone.
I fell back into my seat and closed my eyes. This was all starting to feel like a bad dream. Everything was wrong. Every decision I had ever made in my entire life was wrong.
I had given up so much for this job. This agency. This life. And it had betrayed me. My own employee had deceived me. And if Katie was capable of that kind of betrayal, who's to say the others weren't, too? Who's to say they weren't already betraying me?
With Jamie, I'd had something real. Something wonderful. And I'd traded it all in for this. A corrupted world full of dishonesty, lies, and most of all . . . infidelity. When you boil it down—strip off the layers and fancy titles and designer clothing—that's all this job was. A business of cheaters. Nothing more.
And I had lost the only thing that could have saved me from it. The only person who had ever represented everything that this world was not.
And now it was too late.
30
universe idol
&nbs
p; "It's not too late," Sophie insisted from behind her iced vanilla soy latte.
After I had entered a comatose state in my office where I pretty much mumbled incoherently for ten minutes while staring into space, John had to practically carry me from the building. Not knowing what to do, he'd plopped me down in the front seat of his car and driven me to the Starbucks near Sophie's work, where the three of us now sat.
Although my location had changed, my current state hadn't improved much. The incoherent mumbling had stopped, but I was still just staring into space like a psych ward patient who had been injected with too many brain-numbing drugs.
"Drink your tea," John instructed me.
I looked down at the cup of hot liquid sitting on the table in front of me, but I didn't touch it. I just fidgeted with the string on the end of the teabag. John looked anxiously to Sophie. "She's been like that for almost an hour now."
"Well, I don't blame her after what you did to her. Why are you always the one to bring her the bad news?" Sophie reached out and poked him in the ribs with her index finger.
"Ow!" he yelped, rubbing his side. "What are you talking about?"
Sophie nudged her head subtly toward me. "The website," she whispered. "Remember? You're the one who told her about that stupid website with her picture on it last year. That nearly ruined her. And now this!"
"I don't know," John shot back defensively. "I'm just observant, that's all. Are you saying I shouldn't have told her that her own associate was lying to her?"
"Will you guys stop talking about me like I'm not even here?" I grumbled.
Sophie put on a cheerful face and smiled brightly at me. "You know," she began, quickly changing the subject, "you can still try to get him back. It's amazing how far a simple 'I'm sorry, I was wrong, please forgive me' can go."
"It's too late," I repeated again, my voice empty and lifeless. I'm pretty sure this was the statement I had been babbling over and over again while John was dragging me from my office.