Page 89 of The Monster and the Masochist

Alyssa was nodding, a huge smile spreading across her face.

“Of course! I’ll do that right away!”

“Cassandra!”

I glanced up to see Nolan poking his head out of his office. He was frowning, and I froze as he pushed past his EA’s desk and started walking swiftly in my direction.

“You know what, Alyssa? I think I’m going to work from home today. Just so much to do, you know? It’ll be easier to focus at home where I know I won’t be interrupted.”

“No problem, Ms. Walker! I’ll ping you when I know more about the venue.”

“Great,” I replied, but I was already heading back to the elevators, my heels clipping swiftly across the floor as I moved.

“Cass! Wait!” I glanced over my shoulder to find a frantic Nolan being inconveniently held up by Alyssa, who seemed to keep ‘accidentally’ stepping in his way as he tried to rush past her.

Happily, the elevators were still on our floor, and when I hit the button, they opened right up to accept me. Thanks to Alyssa’s diversionary tactics, he hadn’t even made it to the elevator bank by the time the doors safely closed and started their descent.

I let out a slow breath of relief, and a satisfied smile curled across my face.

Working from home was not the norm for me. The firm was my queendom. My empire. I loved being there… normally.

Normally, it kept me busy and my mind off of how quiet and empty my condo was when I came home after a long day of work.

As much as I was self-sufficient in most respects, and I didn’t really need other people to lean on from day to day, I’d often wished I had someone to bitch and moan to about my day.

Now I did.

My smile widened as I thought of how surprised Theo would be to come home after training and find me already there, waiting for her.

Maybe I could make her dinner this time?

I’d never wanted to make anyone dinner before. But I thought of how wide her eyes would get, and the possibility of seeing that shy, bashful little blush that sometimes spread across her cheeks when I did something even remotely kind for her….

Yeah.

Maybe I would try my hand at cooking.

It couldn’t be that hard, right?

It was nearly two pm, and I’d managed to get the reverend’s files more or less organized.

Turns out, there were fewer distractions at home. Working from my kitchen table, I had most of the preliminary paperwork done for his file by noon. My plan was to spend some time in the afternoon watching some of his YouTube videos to get a better feel for what he was all about.

I already had some serious reservations about him after reviewing his background. Most people had a digital footprint that was more or less public domain from the time they made their first social media accounts.

But not Reverend Elias Sterling. He’d made his YouTube account roughly five years prior, and he opened his megachurch nearly a decade ago. But before that… nothing. It was like he didn’t exist. It was highly suspect.

It meant he was hiding something from us, which was usually bad news for the case. If he wasn’t completely open with us about his past, things could come up in court that we weren’t prepared for, which could seriously jeopardize his case.

It was every defense attorney’s worst nightmare.

Representing a client who lied to their counsel was a recipe for failure, though it wasn’t uncommon.

I would just need to make sure to pry the truth out of him if I wanted to keep my perfect track record… and I had ways of doing that if I had to. Though I usually turned to Vox as a last resort. He didn’t exactly use legal tactics to dig up information for me, and that always came with a certain level of risk.

But there was something about this guy that was giving me the serious ick. If I couldn’t get him to tell me what he’d been doing before opening his church, I would need to engage our resident black-hat hacker.

I was about to start digging into the man’s YouTube channel when my phone buzzed.