“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Pippa Saint James. The name you asked me to run. My Jane Doe from the club! I’m so fucking pumped! Thank you for finding her real name. Seriously! How did you do it?”
Eva bursts out laughing. “Well, this is entertaining,” she chokes out through laughter.
My brain is still trying to compute. Hudson has been waxing poetic about this woman from the club for almost a year—a sexy redhead.
There is no fucking way.
Eva’s continuous laughter breaks me from my thoughts. I look up to see Hudson’s smile has sobered.
“Shit. What’s going on?” he asks.
“Pippa is the woman from The Vault who was with McCarter last night,” Eva explains. She’s a little too giddy at this revelation.
Hudson and I stare at each other, blinking. I’m trying to remember what I said to him last night after I met her.
“Huh,” Hudson starts. “Okay, well yeah, shit. Okay.” He mumbles a few curses, as is his way. “Well, based on what we found out about her, that makes sense. She is a DC staffer. Must have been there for work.”
I clear my throat. “Yeah, let’s compare notes. Like I said, I had this hunch when I saw her last night that something was off.”
“Off how?” Hudson asks.
“When I saw her with McCarter, everything about that scene screamed that she was working a mark. She was baiting him. And he was eating out of her hand,” I explain.
“Yeah, that sounds like my Jane,” Hudson says. He doesn’t attempt to keep the adoration from his voice.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath.
Hudson has been sleeping with Pippa. Pippa and Hudson… Well, fuck!
This is complicated. Not just because I think she may be up to something, but because she’s the first woman who’s truly captured my interest in a long time. Maybe ever, if I’m being honest with myself. The way my body came to life just being in her presence. And my best friend found her first?Fucking hell.
“Hudson, Enz said you had Luna run her file. What did she find?”
“I’ll send over what she found. It wasn’t much.” Hudson pulls out his phone.
“Same,” Eva admits. “Which is kind of odd in itself, right? We have her employer, alma mater, the usual résumé fluff—Yale, PoliSci major, Chem minor—but zero social media, which in DC, is basically a felony. She’s either allergic to cameras or hiding something.”
“You’re right about that. Looking at these files, it seems you and Luna found the same information.” He pauses. “Hm…I guess my hunch about Luna was off then,” he says almost absentmindedly.
“What hunch?” Eva asks.
“She was caught off guard when I mentioned Pippa’s name. Or at least I thought she was. It wasn’t anything obvious, I’ve just worked with her long enough to know her reaction seemed off, but maybe it was nothing.”
“Interesting.” Eva types a few things into her device. “Well, I certainly don’t see any overlap between Luna or Pippa. Unless you count the fact there is almost no information to be found about either of them.Muchto my disappointment.”
Hudson clears his throat. “We don’t really have much to go on here, but I am curious what a staffer for Cramden is doing meeting with the Speaker of the House?”
We all agree it is odd. Eva takes a quick look at McCarter’s calendar. We have phone-mirroring and tracking apps installed on the devices of all of our clients. They don’t know that, but they do know we are an organized crime ring, so it’s really on them for not considering the means we utilize to keep them under our thumb.
“The Speaker’s calendar says he was meeting with Pippa about an upcoming gala. Oh, this is the opening of the new presidential ballroom. The Speaker is the official host, so maybe there’s nothing to see here,” Eva says.
“Yeah maybe,” I say.
We fall into silence as we run more searches on our devices.
I’m also distracting myself from this Hudson development.
