The Devil You Know (The Devils #3)(6)

I think of Kyle, then, walking down the hall at Stadler—broad-shouldered and square-jawed and so utterly confident—smiling that secret smile at me and me alone. For a long time, I could only see one way we’d turn out.

“One day it will all make sense,” I tell her, though I’m not sure that’s true.

Kyle was over six years ago, and I still can’t make the puzzle pieces fit.





I go straight from court to the Beverly Wilshire, where Ben and I are meeting Margaret Lawson for the first time. When I step through the large glass doors, Ben is the first thing I see, leaning against a column while he waits. He runs a finger inside his collar when he spots me, as if the mere idea of spending the next hour together makes him feel suffocated, and then his gaze drops to my heels.

I’ve noticed he looks at my heels a lot. You wear a size 13, Ben. They won’t fit. I’ve thought it a hundred times, but I’ve never said it, as it would mean admitting I know his shoe size. I know far more about Ben than I should.

“You’re early,” I tell him, not slowing my stride as I pass.

“Only you would try to make that sound like a flaw,” he mutters. “What a fun night out you must be.”

“You know what’s fun about the women you date?” I ask. “The way they all just seem to disappear after you’ve been out with them once. Someone should check into that.”

“You know what’s fun about the men you date?” he replies. “The way they don’t exist in the first place.”

I catch his smirk in my peripheral vision and pretend I haven’t seen it, wishing I could make him invisible instead. There’s nothing like the sight of his shoulders straining against his jacket to take my brain in the wrong direction.

We arrive at the restaurant to find Margaret waiting. My first impression, from a distance, is promising: she’s professionally dressed, and there’s no whiff of crazy about her—no frizzy hair, no weird pins, no cat-hair covered scarf or briefcase obscured by bumper stickers. It matters because the jury won’t be asking themselves Was this fair? They’ll be asking Would I promote this woman?

“She’s perfect,” I say under my breath as we head toward the table.

“Slow your roll, there, Castrator,” he replies. “You haven’t heard her speak.”

“Don’t need to, Undertaker. Mark my words: we’re taking this case.”

Margaret rises when we reach the table. Ben introduces us and holds out a chair for me as I take my seat, an irritating bit of fake chivalry on his part. If she weren’t watching, he’d pull the chair out from under me and laugh at my fractured tailbone.

Ben makes small talk with Margaret until the waiter is gone, and then, with a glance at me, he begins. “What would be helpful,” he tells Margaret, “is if you could start by walking us through what happened during your time at Fiducia, because it sounds like it began pretty well before it went downhill.”

I like the way he asks the question. I don’t hear any doubt or suspicion in his voice, and he hasn’t asked her how she perceived their behavior, as if there’s another side of the story that is, perhaps, more valid.

Margaret describes the years she spent watching male managers get promoted, the way her annual reviews turned sour after she asked why she wasn’t promoted, and finally, the discovery that men just out of college were earning more than she was. Except she’s simply reciting facts we already know, and I’m eager to get to the things we don’t. My foot is tapping with impatience beneath the table…until Ben’s hand lands on my knee. For a moment, all I register is the heat and size of his palm, which feels large enough to wrap clear round my thigh if he wanted. It’s a little too easy to picture how his hand might slide farther, if we were two different people—the kind who don’t despise each other—but he should certainly know better than to place his hand on the knee of a woman known as The Castrator without her consent, even if he’s merely doing it to tell me to chill.

The waiter refills Margaret’s water, and I take the break in conversation to give Ben a quick glare, which says get your hand off my fucking knee.

His mouth twitches in response, and he gives my leg one final, infuriatingly firm squeeze before he releases me, as if to say Patience, Castrator. Let her tell this the way she wants.

My thigh feels cold in his hand’s absence. And while Ben gently reminds Margaret where she was in her story, his voice betraying absolutely none of my impatience, I cross my legs, trying to somehow grind away the memory of his palm on my skin.

Soon she’s offering us more detail, the things we didn’t already know, and I’m aggravated that Ben’s been proven right as I begin to take copious notes.

“You’re aware they’re going to throw every word you’ve ever said in your face?” Ben asks as lunch concludes and he’s signed the check. I’m glad he’s leveling with her because it’s an ugly process being deposed as a plaintiff and—if it comes to it—going on the stand. “Every misstep, every moment of anger or sick day is going to be broadcast. Are you ready for it?”

Margaret turns to him. She’s been admirably calm while discussing the case, which is a good thing—a jury will label a distressed female as shrill or hysterical for the exact same behaviors they’d term righteous indignation in a man. She swallows now, continuing to hold herself in check. “I was a model employee. I only took three sick days in ten years of work. If that’s their strategy, I wish them luck.”