Save Me from Dangerous Men (Nikki Griffin #1)(15)

A man holding a briefcase got out. The man squinted toward the bookstore, then jaywalked across the street. I turned back to the time log. The details drove me crazy: times, mileage, locations. But divorce cases had a tendency to end up in a courtroom, and I’d been called to testify more than once. In court, documentation and precision ruled.

The intercom on my desk crackled. “Nikki? Man here to see you.”

“He say what he wants?”

I heard fuzzy laughter through the intercom. “Do they ever?”

“He can come up.”

On one of the monitors I watched Jess talk silently to the Tesla owner. She walked him over to the EMPLOYEES ONLY door. On another monitor I watched the man climb upstairs with brisk, energetic steps. He disappeared from the frame and the next monitor picked him up at the door. There was a knock. I got up and opened the door.

I was greeted with a broad smile and an avalanche of enthusiasm. “Nikki Griffin? How do you do? I’m Gregg Gunn. Call me Gregg.” He glanced around. “Oh, Nikki. We’re going to get along so well, I can feel it. This street—this charming little bookshop—it’s all so wonderfully seedy.”

“Seedy,” I repeated. “That’s the look I gave the decorators. Come on in, I suppose.”

That was how Gregg Gunn entered my life.





10


“You’ll have to understand,” I said. “You caught me as I was heading out.”

“I’ll be no time at all!” my visitor said, sitting down unprompted.

The first thing I noticed about Gregg Gunn was his energy. He was constantly moving. His hands, his feet. He wore fitted selvedge jeans and black New Balance sneakers and a button-down blue shirt. Late forties, an athletic build, curly sandy hair, clean-shaven. A long time ago someone had told me that the best way to guess a man’s worth was by looking at his shoes and his watch. A lot of rich people liked to dress casual. A suit, even a nice one, didn’t mean much anymore. Especially in Silicon Valley. Gunn’s sneakers were nothing special. Along with the jeans and button-down or polo shirt, the de facto uniform of the Valley, from CEOs to interns. The watch peeked out under the shirt cuff. Soft gold dial, leather strap.

I took another look. A Patek Philippe. Meaning it probably cost about as much as his car. Definitely not something the interns had.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” He held up a finger. “Wait! Don’t tell me. ISTP, right?”

“Huh?” I looked at Gunn, confused.

“ISTP,” he repeated proudly. “You have to be, right? I’d bet anything.”

“IS-what now?”

He gave me a funny look as though I was teasing him. “Don’t tell me you don’t know your type?”

“My type? You mean, like tall, dark, and handsome?”

He laughed. “I love it! You truly are a diamond in the rough. Take Myers-Briggs sometime, Nikki. ISTP, I guarantee it.” He glanced around affably. “I can’t remember the last time I was in a bookstore. And people still come in? To buy books?”

“As crazy as it sounds. What can I do for you?”

His knee bounced up and down like a jackhammer. “I’m correct in my belief that you sometimes handle … delicate work?”

“All I know about delicate,” I said, “is that it’s a setting on my dryer.”

“You do have a reputation for discretion.”

“This line of work, you don’t get too far by writing in to the Chronicle about what you had for breakfast.”

He switched knees. Bouncing the other one now. He hadn’t been still a moment since he’d walked in. “With lawyers, of course, there is attorney-client privilege.”

I nodded. It was a common question. People came to me with private problems. They wanted the problems fixed. They also wanted the problems to stay private.

“But you’re not an attorney.”

I spread my hands in a what-can-I-do gesture. “Sorry to disappoint. But if you need a lawyer, San Francisco is right next door. I bet you could find yourself one or two.”

Gunn laughed. Now the original knee was bouncing along like an off-kilter metronome. “The last thing I need is another lawyer. I have too many already. I just need to know how you handle information that is of an extremely confidential nature. Call me paranoid, but one can’t be too careful.”

I sat back in my chair. “You walked into my office. You need something, you tell me. Maybe I can help. Maybe not.” I gestured, taking in the plain white walls, the plants and secondhand furniture. “No megaphones or microphones in this place. I get subpoenaed? Let me tell you loud and clear, I don’t do perjury. Not for love or money. So if you have a body on your hands and you’re looking to dump it? Save your time and go somewhere else. Anyway. I got sick of kick-the-can back in grade school. You talk to me, or not, Mr. Gunn. It’s all the same.”

He took this in. “Okay. I’ll trust you.” He paused. “But I must ask you to sign this.” He opened his briefcase, removed a packet, and handed it to me. I took the papers and flipped through them. A nondisclosure. This one happened to be about ten times longer than normal. I didn’t bother to read through it. Just set it aside.

“You’re not going to sign it?”