I would have to…
I couldn’t even bring myself to finish the sentence.
That was what made it even more painful when Keaton asked me at the end of the week if he could move to work with Ace Park permanently.
Keaton
Ace got up and grabbed a couple of cans of ice-cold drinks from his mini fridge.That was one of the things I’d grown to like about Ace.
He didn’t expect me to do absolutely everything for him just because I was his secretary.
The mini fridge was on his side of the room, so he was the one to get up and get the drinks, even though he could have ordered me around if he’d wanted to.
“Once it finishes printing, we need to go through every frame, one at a time,” he said as he popped the ring-pull on his can.The whirring of the printer behind me was a constant rhythm under his words.“There must be something we’ve missed.Something we can use.”
“Even if it was Brody, what can we do about it?”I asked.
Ace grimaced, the same way he did every single time Brody Driver came up.I’d seen first-hand that the two of them really didn’t get along.In fact, that was something of an understatement.It was kind of funny to see just how much he disliked Coleman’s star agent, though.Throughout the last couple of days, he had become increasingly convinced that Brody was to blame for this whole mess – and he was determined to find a way to prove it.
I was hoping he wasn’t letting his personal feelings make him delusional, because we hadn’t found anything yet – and if he was wrong, we were wasting a lot of time on the wrong person.
So far, we’d learned that Brody hadn’t been working for Coleman for longer than a year, and also that he’d had an interview here at the Harvey Group before getting hired there.Ace had read the records, even though we weren’t supposed to.Mr.Harvey had turned him down and hired someone else.
“We can start by taking the evidence to Coleman and hoping he fires the asshole,” Ace said.“And if he doesn’t, at least it’s something we can present to West Morson Resorts to show them that we were telling the truth.And then I can go over there and punch him in that smug smirking fucking mouth of his, which won’t achieve much of anything, but it will make me feel better.”
The printer finally stopped making a noise.In the ringing silence that followed, I sprang up to collect the pages, still warm from the tray.I had a feeling I should have been telling Ace not to get into a fight with the other man, but I didn’t know that it was my place.Ace had been good to work with so far… because we hadn’t argued about anything.I didn’t want to find out if that would change.
I started to pore over the printed images, but Ace made an impatient noise and took them from my hands.It was a thick sheaf of paper – a printout of every single frame from the camera footage of the package arriving at the front desk.Ace was nothing if not thorough.
“Let me do it,” he said.“I know him better than you do.You’ve only seen him in person once.”
I sat still as he went over each page, looking down at the documents scattered across the table between us.While Ace also had a meeting area in his room, just like Mr.Harvey, it was very different: a glass table at full height was set up with eight chairs, allowing for a mini conference area.The room was a lot brighter than Mr.Harvey’s, mostly with clean and plain white walls – though I gathered that was less a design choice on Ace’s part and more a lack of customization.
“You don’t put a lot of yourself into this office,” I said, glancing around more.It was all very clinical – like he’d picked out an office furniture set from a catalog and left it at that.It didn’t feel like Ace at all.
“What do you expect me to do?Put up a rainbow flag on the wall?”he asked, a sardonic smile playing around his lips as he flipped through to another frame from the surveillance footage, holding them close to his face so he could see them in detail.
“Well, it would be a start,” I joked, keeping my voice as flat as possible.He looked up to see me grinning and rolled his eyes, though he didn’t look upset.I remembered his words from our interview.Maybe people like us are more aware of what we give away and don’t give away, especially in the public eye.
He carried on looking at the pages and I glanced around again, beating a quick drum beat on my own knees.What else was I supposed to do?We’d gone over every inch of the fake contracts yet again and seen nothing that could give us any clue.I didn’t expect us to – not after Mr.Harvey had already done the same.We’d looked into Brody Driver, who had seen something of a meteoric rise within the Coleman Group: if he was already Coleman’s favorite after less than a year, that was something special.We’d looked into the phone number Ace had rung only to find it was now disconnected and, disappointingly, there was no way to get the records of who had registered it without a subpoena.We’d even found the specific type of paper used in printing the contract, only to find out it was just a very normal brand available at most office supply stores, which ended our private detective careers before they had begun.
“How do you think he rose through the ranks so quick?”I asked.
Ace glanced up at me.“What?
“Driver,” I said.“How do you think he became Coleman’s best agent so quickly?”
Ace snorted.“He’s not Coleman’s best agent.”
I frowned.“Coleman said he was.”I’d heard him when he had visited Mr.Harvey’s office.
Ace looked up, matching my frown.“No, he didn’t.You must have misheard him.Brody only manages, like, two clients.Both of them are minor league compared to our guys.”
I looked to one side as Ace went back to the pictures, thinking.If he wasn’t the best agent, then why had Coleman said it like that?Was that the information that he’d been trying to pass on to Mr.Harvey without me knowing…?
“Ah!”Ace exclaimed.“I’ve got it!Look!”
I leaned over and looked at the grainy image he was holding out.It looked like… nothing.Just another shot of the mysterious figure who had delivered the envelope, frozen in motion, one arm swinging forwards with the envelope held out.
