“Please.” Drea snorts. “I’m not making a career out of cater waitering, so they can fire me all they want at the end of the night. As long as we’re not going to, like, kill him, I’m in.”
“Same!” Becks chirps. “Plus, I’m sixteen, so they can’t try me as an adult.”
“Wait, are you going to kill him?” I ask.
“No!” CJ snaps. “He’d have to consume something like eight tennis balls’ worth of peppers to actually put himself in danger.”
“Then we’ll help,” Drea says. “No offense, but you’re…” She waves her hand vaguely in CJ’s direction until Becks cuts in with a kind, “You’re a little obvious.”
CJ cuts her eyes to me, clearly seeking permission. Since they’re in it already, I give a quick nod of my head, and she responds with a tiny smile back.
“I’d love that. Thank you.” Over the girls’ excited squeals, she says, “But ladies, I do need to talk to your brother. Want to head over to the kitchen right now and tell Chef Samson that you’re on Howard duty for the rest of the night? I’ll join you shortly to explain how to make sure he’s the only one grabbing the heat bombs.”
The little traitors actually listen to her, scrambling to their feet and tripping over themselves to run out of the room, leaving CJ and me alone once again. As always, it’s a dangerous situation.
“So,” she says, sauntering over to stand in front of me. “There you have it. As evil and manipulative as you always thought I was.”
I tilt my head. “Are you, though?”
“You tell me.”
My hand acts on its own and lifts to trace the curve of her left ear where it peeks through the braid.
“No elf points this time?”
She sucks in a breath and shakes her head, dislodging my hand. “No.” Her gaze falls to the floor, then bounces back to my face. “When did you find out that your boss is a white-collar criminal?”
The truth flies out of my mouth as swiftly as my fingers found her skin just now.
“When my mom had a… a health issue last year. I reviewed her 401(k) to see if she’d be able to take any money out to cover the bills and found that it was way underperforming.” My hands fist at the memory. “I recognized the name of the benefits provider as one Sounder works with, and I started to dig a little.”
“Let me guess,” she says. “You found a history of Howard taking major kickbacks from sketchy benefits providers for pushing bad investments with punishingly high fees onto your clients?”
“While playing a shell game with Sounder’s budget over the years to cover his tracks,” I say grimly. “Once I started looking at our own records, it didn’t take long to see how much Howard was pocketing through the Retirement Products Group.”
“Same.” She paces away from me, all short skirt and nervous, fidgety energy. “I knew something was off in that first Sounder audit, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what.” When she hits the farthest wall, she turns and leans against it. “That’s part of the reason I stuck around Beaucoeur, you know? To keep an eye on him. Try to figure out why he used me like he did.”
She shoves off the wall and resumes pacing. “Then a couple of years ago, I was doing an audit for a benefits administrator out of state and noticed exactly what you just described. After seeing what this other company was doing, a light bulb went off and I started digging.” Her laugh is humorless. “Lazy of me not to catch it seven years ago, huh?”
I shake my head. “You weren’t. Howard hid it well for a long time.” I catch her gaze and hold it. “I was wrong to ever say that about you. I’m sorry.”
She looks away, one corner of her mouth lifting in a sad smile. “Thanks. That’s nice to hear.”
We both fall silent until my mouth runs away with me yet again. “Anyway, once he started talking about taking Sounder public, I couldn’t let it happen. He’ll either level up his fraud?—”
“Or he takes all that money, flees to someplace tropical, and lets the rest of you take the fall for him.”
“I wouldn’t look good in prison orange,” I say.
“Eh, with your coloring, it might work.” Her lips tilt at the corners like she’s picturing me in a jumpsuit, but she shrugs it off quickly. “Oh, fine, when I turn everything over to the SEC, I’ll make it clear that Howard’s the only one involved, as far as I can tell.”
“Mercy from CJ Parrish?” I ask. “I appreciate that. Hopefully my own SEC complaint will play well with yours. And hopefully, tonight’s the night we get to see him fail, extremely publicly.”
That lip curl is back. “So we’re both want him in legal trouble, but we also want to fuck with him a little too.”
“A lot, actually,” I say. Then my mouth moves faster than my brain, and I ask, “Why else?”
She raises her brows in confusion, and goddammit, now I’m stuck explaining.
