Right Through Me (The Obsidian Files #1)(61)

Noah slid his hand beneath hers on the table, fingers open, as if he hardly dared to squeeze. Just warm, gentle contact. No words.

She didn’t dare speak. Starting to cry would mess her up.

“You miss him,” he said finally.

She gave him a tight nod. “We trusted each other,” she said. “I was lucky to have him in my life. We were very close.”

Noah didn’t ask the question, but she could feel it hanging in the air.

“Not like that,” she clarified. “He was thirty years older than me, and in a wheelchair with degenerative arthritis. Plus, I think he was gay, though it never really came up.”

“Ah.” She sensed him relax. “More like an uncle, then.”

“Exactly,” she murmured. “A benevolent uncle.”

There was an awkward silence.

“Anyhow, it was a dream job. I made pretty good money, and Dex gave me flexible hours so I could go to art and design school and rent a cool little studio. I did freelance art design too. It was awesome. I loved my life,” she finished, a little wistfully.

His fingers curled around hers and gave them a brief, encouraging squeeze. “I can see why.”

“OK. So how did I end up here? I know you want to know.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Months ago we got a new client, Mark Olund. He requested me as a coach but it turned out he didn’t need coaching. He got the interface on the first try. I offered to refund the fee, but he refused. Then he started coming on to me during our sessions.”

“Happens.”

“Well, I didn’t want it to happen. I mean, it was flattering, but I just wasn’t feeling it. He was smart, good looking, and he had to be rich to afford a GodsEye vault, but he made me tense. It just didn’t seem . . .” She shook her head.

“What?” he demanded.

She shrugged. “Real,” she said. “It was all shiny and pretty and . . . nothing.”

“Good,” he said, with rough emphasis.

“So one morning, I’m reading online about a murder and theft in Chicago. A security expert murdered his client and stole a lot of money and some art pieces. One of them was a brooch worn by French royalty in the seventeenth century. Priceless sapphire the size of a golf ball. There was a picture in the article. Very beautiful.”

He nodded. “OK.”

“So that evening, I did my last coaching with Mark. He’d requested that we do it in his own apartment rather than our open workspace in the West Village. It was odd, but he made the request through the main office and paid the premium fee for a home coaching. That was an extra that we offered for problem clients like Lydia, which wasn’t Olund’s case, but I figured he had the right to use the services we advertised. And he’d always been polite to me. Flirtatious, yes, but nothing scary. I thought I was a good judge of character. So I went.”

Noah’s thumb was stroking her palm. Slow, soothing circular movements. She realized that her hand was shaking.

She tried to make it stop, but the agitation came from deep inside.

She braced herself and went on.“So anyhow. We do the session, and afterwards, he insists on offering me a glass of wine. While he was out of the room choosing a bottle, I wandered around. There was a door open to a room with a table heaped with stuff. All kinds of things. Antiques. Extremely valuable. Made of gold, encrusted with jewels, just piled up and tangled together as if it were junk. But it was genuine. I have an eye for that kind of thing.”

“I know.”

“That sapphire brooch was there,” she said. “I’d just seen the photo. I remembered every detail. That’s just what my brain does.”

He nodded. “What did you do?”

“I panicked,” she said. “I ran away. I’m still alive right now just because he took so long to pick out that bottle of wine.”

“Did you go to the police?”

“No,” she admitted reluctantly. “Like an idiot, I second guessed myself. Started wondering if maybe the brooch was a reproduction. Or if maybe he’d bought it from the thief in good faith. That maybe he was the normal one and I was crazy. I went back to GodsEye headquarters to talk about it to Dex. He always worked late. But Mark followed me there.”

Noah squeezed her hand, but she no longer felt it. She saw the memory as if she was there.

They’d grabbed her right after she walked in. The big leering guy with body odor and huge groping hands held her down on Dex’s work table while Mark told her how she was going to go with them to open Lydia Bachmann’s safe. About the trail of evidence he’d planted to show she was stealing trade secrets from Dex and selling them to other biometric startups. So that when they found Dex’s body, the police would suspect that she was the killer and the DA would charge her with first degree homicide. No priors. But no bail either. Go straight to the slammer and say hello to your public defender, because Mark had cleaned out her bank account just in case.

But if she was very good, Mark might keep her alive. As his pet.

The images were horribly bright, fragmented. Pinching, groping hands. Foul breath choking her. Rough hands curling her fingers around a gun butt and then the trigger. Planting her fingerprints. They were going to shoot him.

Dex was gagged, and watching from his wheelchair from across the room. His horrified eyes begged her for help.