Page 11 of You, Only You

Lindsey Ashford was standing in my office at ten o'clock at night, and she wasn't dropping anything.

"You're serious," I said. Not a question.

"I don't make requests like that as a joke."

"You understand what you're asking." I stood slowly, watching her face for any crack. "If I show you what I have, you can't unknow it. You can't go back to being a neutral auditor with clean hands and a clear conscience."

"I haven't had clean hands since I was twenty-four." Her voice was quiet, but it didn't bend. "The day I found out my father was a thief, I lost the luxury of pretending the world was simple. So stop trying to protect me from complications and show me what you've got."

The smart move was to laugh it off. Show her to the door. Spend the week building an airtight cover story. That was the survival play.

I grabbed my coat from the back of my chair.

"Come with me," I said.

I didn't wait for her response. I walked out of my office, through the darkened hallway, past the empty reception desk where Diane's computer hummed in sleep mode. My footsteps echoed on the marble. For three long seconds, I heard nothing behind me.

Then, the soft, deliberate click of her heels followed.

I wasn't thinking about why I was doing this. That was the part I'd examine later, pick apart, and catalog the way I did everything. Right now, there was only motion, forward momentum, the door opening onto a decision I was apparently making without consulting the part of my brain responsible for self-preservation.

The elevator ride was silent. She stood two feet away from me, close enough that I caught the faint scent of her soap, clean and simple, nothing like the expensive perfumes most women in this building wore. She didn't ask where we were going. Didn't fidget or check her phone or fill the silence with nervous chatter. She just waited, her reflection ghosting in the polished elevator doors.

"You're not going to ask?" I said finally.

"Would you tell me if I did?"

"No."

"Then I'll wait and see." She glanced at me sideways, and something that might have been dark humor flickered in her eyes. "I'm told I have trust issues. Might as well put them to good use."

The elevator opened onto the parking garage. I led her to my car, a black sedan, expensive but not conspicuous, and she slid into the passenger seat without comment.

I pulled out onto rain-slicked streets, the city lights smearing across the windshield. Neither of us spoke. The silence should have been uncomfortable. It wasn't. It was the silence of two people who'd stopped performing and were waiting to see what happened next.

I caught myself glancing at her profile more than was justified by lane changes. The way she watched the city slide past, her face half-lit by passing streetlamps. The slight furrow between her brows that told me she was cataloging the route: street names, turns, landmarks. Building a map in her head.

"You're memorizing the route," I said.

"Habit." She didn't look away from the window. "My father used to take us on drives when I was a kid. Sunday afternoons, no destination, just wandering. I'd track every turn, every street sign. Made a game of finding my way back."

"And now?"

"Now I do it because knowing where I am means I can leave if I need to." She turned to look at me, and her expression was more open than I’d remembered. Not unguarded. Just less guarded. "Control issues. Another gift from dear old Dad."

"We all inherit something."

"What did you inherit?"

The question surprised me. Not her words, the casualness. Like she was asking about my eye color. I kept my eyes on the road.

"Stubbornness," I said. "According to my sister."

That wasn't the real answer. I knew it wasn't. But the real answer was locked in a storage unit twenty minutes from here, and she'd see it soon enough.

"Your sister." Lindsey's voice was neutral but interested. "You're close?"

"She lives in Portland. Graphic design." I navigated toward the industrial district. "She killed a basil plant last month and called me to eulogize it."