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Chapter 1
Ruth stepped into the door of my office, so much stress drawn over every inch of her body language that it looked like she would snap if something happened, and it was precisely my luck that a pigeon chose that moment to slam into the window behind me. Ruth jumped about a foot into the air, banging her head on the corner of the door, and she nursed the spot muttering a string of profanities.
“For fuck’s sake,” I sighed, standing up. “Are you all right? I felt that from here.”
“No, I’m not all right. Christ. I should have hit it harder and just taken myself out for good, that’s what I should have done.” She sank onto the couch opposite my desk—I’d put a couch in my office instead of a chair just because a couch was less likely to go wrong for any poor soul sitting in my office. I watched her for a second longer, making sure she wasn’t bleeding or about to pass out, before I settled back into my chair.
“All right, Ruth,” I said, sinking back in the chair, tenting my hands on the desk. “Well, if you’re not dying, talk to me. Why are you so desperate to take yourself out on a door?”
She let out a short, exasperated puff of air. Ruth was a slim, tall Black woman with a short Afro hairstyle, dark skin and a penchant for gold eyeshadow, but right now the only thing wreathing her eyes were deep lines of exhaustion. The poor woman had probably been about to keel over even before she’d brained herself on my door.
Speaking of—the pigeon had left a mark. I’d have to be out of the office when the window-cleaners came around, though. They’d probably fall.
“I’m this close to losing Garcia,” she said. “I need help. Trust me, I’d rather bash my head on every damn door in this place than admit that, but—I need help. You’re better at this than I am. He doesn’t like me. How could he? He never gives me a chance to say a goddamn word, so I can’t say anything to win him over.”
“Ah… Mister Garcia.” I turned to my computer, pulling open the files. Adam Garcia, current head of Exo Solutions, a consulting and logistics management firm for tech companies in the Miami bay area. Looking to purchase a new office building. Ruth Sanders had been the unfortunate soul put in charge of selling him on the fifteen-million-dollar development we could procure for him. A second-generation Cuban-American man who’d grown up between Miami and Havana, with an easygoing countenance but a ruthless, rock-solid bargaining sense. Ruth’s assessment of the man lined up with the intel.
“If we don’t close this by the end of the week, you and I are dead in the water, London,” Ruth said, a hand to her forehead. “This works, it keeps us alive for another fifteen minutes while María deals with the fraud case. If it doesn’t?”
María Gonzalez was a big girl. She’d live if we didn’t close Mr. Garcia. But we did need all the help we could get right now.
I needed to stop sinking companies. Queen Pearl had been good to me. María too—like the mother I never had, taking me on even though she knew I was cursed. I didn’t want this damn fraud case driving us to bankruptcy. It was the least I could do for Mother Goose—even if I still didn’t get why we called María that sometimes.
“You do know I have my own job,” I said, my voice light. Ruth rubbed the back of her head again.
“You won’t if we don’t do this. You rather I ask Miguel instead?”
Miguel could take a long walk off a short pier, but that voice was staying inside my head. I gestured her to the door.
“Right then. Point taken. I can spare some time to help out with Mr. Garcia. In the meantime, why don’t you put some ice on that?”
“You think you could have put a harder door on your office?”
“They’re all the same doors, Ruth. Watch out for pigeons on the way out.”
∞∞∞
“Going home already, are we?”
María caught me on my way out of the office, walking in with a cup of coffee in hand from the Cuban café in the building lobby. She put a hand on her hip, giving me a wry smile as I passed reception, heading for the elevators.
“Must be nice, clocking out early,” she said.
“I’m doing some field work. Ruth asked me for help with Adam Garcia.”
“Perfect. I was going to ask you to help her with it. I know you have a lot on your plate already, but… we need your magic touch.”
María Gonzalez was—although I would rather be put on a firing range than say it to her face—possibly the most attractive fifty-year-old woman alive, with a fit figure and a sharp eye for fashion in her white blazer and gold jewelry, lively brown eyes, and dark brown skin with the most flawless complexion, those kinds of perfectly placed wrinkles on her forehead and corners of her eyes that added a touch of class. A Colombian woman who’d moved to Miami eighteen years ago now, she’d worked as a barista for six months before launching a real estate company, really the epitome of a career glow-up. I wasn’t sure how it had worked out so well for her. She’d attributed it to a killer glare that made people want to do as she’d said. Here I’d thought maybe it was charm and charisma.
“Relax. I’ll close the guy and be back for lunch.”
“Back for lunch? How late do you take your lunches?”
I folded my arms. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you sneaking that pizza yesterday. We don’t have the luxury of proper mealtimes these days, do we?”
She pursed her lips through a thin smile. “Too true. So, your wizardry find anything on Garcia?”
“Maybe. I’ll have to see. Hasta luego, María.”
