Suddenly One Summer (FBI/US Attorney #6)(5)

Back when she’d been looking for a place to hang her shingle, she’d been attracted to this particular office space because of its clean, modern lines, and great use of natural light. The bright, open feel of the place was reassuring to her clients, who were going through a difficult time in their lives. You’re going to be okay after this divorce. Victoria Slade & Associates will make sure of it, said the sunlit, sophisticated décor.

After unlocking the fogged glass doors that bore her firm’s name, she turned on the lights to the reception area. She liked being in before everyone else, so she could soak in those few moments when the office was quiet and just hers.

Her office had two walls of windows that framed a picturesque view of the city and the Chicago River. She settled in behind her desk and checked her e-mail while sipping the coffee that she’d picked up on the way in. About a half hour later, she heard her four associates trickle in, followed by Will, her assistant.

She heard a knock and saw Will standing in the doorway.

“Give it to me straight. How bad are they?” he asked, touching the rim of his new wire-frame glasses. He’d turned forty years old earlier in the year and, much to his displeasure, had been told by his eye doctor that he needed reading glasses.

“Ooh . . . I like them,” Victoria said approvingly. “Very Gregory Peck.”

“Hmph” was Will’s sole response, although she noticed he seemed to have a little swagger in his step as he took a seat in front of her desk.

“Tomorrow’s the big day. Is there anything else you need me to take care of?” he asked.

She smiled, knowing this was pretty much a rhetorical question. If there was anything else that needed to be taken care of, Will already would’ve thought of it himself. The man was a god when it came to organizing these types of things. “I think we’re all set.”

Tomorrow she would move into her temporary home, a loft condo in a converted warehouse in Wicker Park. She hadn’t lived in an apartment or condo building since law school—her place before the townhome had been a duplex—and, as a relatively private person, she wasn’t overly enthused to suddenly be sharing common space with a bunch of strangers. But this was her life now, at least for the foreseeable future, so she supposed she would just have to get used to it.

Ever since the break-in, she’d hadn’t gotten more than three or four hours of sleep each night. Instead, she would lie awake in her bed, listening for any strange sounds and repeatedly getting up to check her security system—not that her security system had kept the burglars at bay before.

Scary thought.

From what she’d learned from the police—who, thankfully, had arrived quickly on the scene because of the 9-1-1 dispatcher—the masked men had staked out her place for most of the night, with the exception of a short break when the man with the gruff voice needed to use the bathroom at a convenience store a few blocks away because the White Castle sliders they’d grabbed earlier hadn’t agreed with him.

Nice.

Apparently, his partner was a former employee of a home security company, and thus knew how to bypass certain types of alarm systems—including hers. The police had caught both men, one of whom had foolishly fired his gun at the cops and thus earned an attempted murder charge, along with a charge of home invasion. During questioning, they admitted being responsible for the string of burglaries in the neighborhood, and were expected to be in prison for a good, long time.

Victoria knew she should consider herself fortunate, at least as far as scary-ass home invasions by masked men with guns went. But when the two weeks of not sleeping stretched into three, and after Will walked in on her dozing off at her desk, startling her and making her face-plant against her open laptop, she’d decided it was time to face facts.

She wasn’t comfortable living in a place that had more than one level.

She couldn’t relax in her townhome, and feared she would always be tense at night, waiting for that beep of the alarm, and listening for the sound of footsteps on her stairs.

Once she’d come to terms with that, she’d immediately put her townhome on the market and spent a weekend condo hunting with Audrey and Rachel, her two best friends. She decided on a two-bedroom place in the Trump Tower, telling herself that the burglars hadn’t really gotten the best of her if she was moving to a place with its own indoor pool and health club.

And it even has a spa, dickheads.

In her head, she had all sorts of sassy one-liners for the scary-ass armed men who’d broken into her place.

But there was one problem: the current owner of the Trump Tower condo couldn’t close on the sale until late August. She’d been about to walk away from the deal—she needed to get out of her townhome ASAP before she made some sloppy mistake at work in her sleep-deprived state—but then her friend had saved the day. Rachel knew a real estate agent who was trying to rent her client’s condo for the summer, and the place was available to move into immediately. Victoria signed the three-month lease the moment the agent faxed it over, Will found a company that would send in a team to pack up all of her stuff (she didn’t even want to ask how much that cost her), and thus tonight would be her last night in the town house she’d proudly purchased as her first home.

Yes, she was pissed. She’d been chased out of her own place by the Burglar Dickheads, essentially, and that didn’t sit well with her. On top of that, she’d just bought the townhome ten months ago, so she probably would have to sell it at a loss. But she needed to be practical here—she was a busy woman, the head of her firm, and she needed to be at the top of her game when it came to work.