Suddenly One Summer (FBI/US Attorney #6)(30)
“Also true.”
He studied her. “Why would you do that? You don’t even know my sister.”
Victoria leaned her hip against the back of the couch. “She needs help. I can help her. It’s not all that complicated.”
He came around the couch, moving closer. “I looked into you, you know. Your firm appears to be quite successful.”
“I do all right.”
He stopped in front of her, shifting uncomfortably. “So, if someone with your . . . seemingly acceptable legal skills”—he looked slightly pained by the acknowledgment—“has decided to help my sister, I suppose I shouldn’t get in the way of that. Even if it does mean we have to work together.”
Victoria, who’d been rather enjoying seeing Ford stumble his way through this begrudging, quasi–thank you, blinked at this last part. “I’m sorry. Did you say, ‘work together’?”
“Trust me, I’m not thrilled about it, either. But seeing how you’re Nicole’s lawyer, and I’m the one who’s going to track down Peter Sutter, I figure we’re pretty much a team now.”
A team? Oh, now that was cute. But, unfortunately, not the way she operated. “Right. I remember Nicole saying something about you using your resources at the Trib to find Peter Sutter.” Victoria waved this off. “That won’t be necessary anymore. I plan to hire a private investigator to handle that.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “But I already told Nicole I would do it.”
“Well . . . un-tell her, then.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“It’s nothing personal,” she said. “Okay, yes, fine, it is personal. You and I hardly mesh well. But on top of that, I don’t subcontract out the investigative work in my cases to relatives of clients. Period.”
Ford considered this. “How much will a PI charge you?”
She thought back to the last time she’d worked with a private investigator. “Around a hundred an hour. Maybe more.”
“And you’ll just pass along that cost to my sister, despite the fact that she has someone who’s offered to do the work for free?”
Victoria bristled at the implication. “I didn’t say that.”
“Then . . . what? Your firm eats the cost of the PI? All we have is a name and the bar where Nicole and Peter Sutter met. Do you realize how long it could take to find this guy? We could be talking about thousands of dollars here. I can save you that expense.”
The practical businesswoman in her paused at that.
But.
“I just don’t think you and I working together is a good idea.”
He met her gaze boldly. “I can handle it if you can.”
“I never said I couldn’t handle it.” And the truth of the matter was, technically, Nicole had every right to use her brother to track down Peter Sutter, whether Victoria liked it or not. She didn’t have to give Victoria the go-ahead to use a private investigator for that.
“Then it’s settled,” Ford said.
Not seeing how she had much choice—most unfortunately—she wanted to get one thing straight from the beginning. “If we do this, we do it my way. I want to be kept fully in the loop with everything you’re doing. I can’t be worrying that you’re running around knocking on the door of every Peter Sutter in town, demanding to know whether he knocked up your sister.”
“Just so I know, is it your plan to be this bossy the entire time we’re working together?”
She smiled sweetly at him. “You’re welcome to walk away anytime.”
“This is my sister we’re talking about.” He took a step closer. “Which means you’re stuck with me, Victoria. Like it or not.”
She’d had a bad feeling he was going to say just that.
* * *
TWO DAYS LATER, Ford was at his desk in the Tribune newsroom, finishing up the first part of his series on the Cook County probation department. Fueled by the second cup of coffee he’d had that morning, he wrote for nearly three hours straight, banging out the entire story before lunchtime.
Just as he was finishing up with some editing, his phone rang. He checked the caller ID and saw that it was Nicole.
“Unfortunately, no luck,” she told him.
“You’re sure?” Yesterday, he’d begun his search for Peter Sutter. They didn’t have much to go on, just the name and a vague description—brown hair, between the ages of twenty-five and forty—but Nicole believed she would recognize him from a photograph.
Ford hoped she was right about that, because if she couldn’t ID the guy, this was going to be a hell of a lot more complicated than it already was.
His first step, on the off chance they’d get lucky, had been to check Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. He’d run searches for all Peter and Pete Sutters in Chicago, and then had e-mailed Nicole profiles of the three guys with brown hair who’d popped up.
“I’m sure,” she told him. “Do these men honestly look like the type I’d go home with? Even when drunk, I have my standards.”
“This isn’t Match.com, Nic,” he said. “I don’t care whether they look like your ‘type,’ just whether they might look familiar. Besides, for all you know, these guys are totally cool in person.”