Lyndee
Sometime after midnight, they had sent for the valet. A sleek cocktail dress and Van Meer's John Phillips double-breasted suit went down for dry-cleaning.
The closed-circuit cameras in the garage showed him and the woman walking together from her small sporty Mercedes, him leaning heavily on her in a way that suggested a mixture of lust and slight intoxication.
Perhaps that was what bothered me. In the few years I'd known him, he had been almost boastful about his temperance. He seldom drank more than a single cocktail at a given event, most often electing to drink mineral water above anything else.
"Too much of one thing limits the capacity for other enjoyments, daughter mine," he had once said after finishing one half of a martini at a library fundraising event.
Daughter mine...
I reviewed the footage of the two of them arriving for the dozenth time, pausing the video and rewinding, convincing myself I was simply dealing with a side of Van Meer he seldom let show.
Well, I've seen it. But...
I shook the feelings away. He disliked feelings. He trusted loyalty, and he admired stamina. He cajoled "likeness."
This woman was older. Perhaps he knew her? Her false name was a way of sneaking her in without me off on a path of jealousy and pettiness.
I'm being petty and jealous.
After all, what we were was a secret. And he was once a wild youth, right?
"Perhaps a woman his own age is healthy?"
"What, boss?" Booth asked from his place ten meters away.
"Nothing," I said. "Thinking aloud." I finished my fourth cup of black tea and shut off the image of him pinning the woman against the wall by the elevator, rutting into her breasts hungrily... "I'm heading up for the night," I said, popping my shoulders and brushing my hair out of my jacket collar.
"Your old man is entitled to a little fun now and then," Booth said.
Snide little British snot.
"I am not my father's keeper," I said off-handedly, shoving my odd feelings to the back of my mind.
I rode the service elevator up to my small suite. I stripped, showered, and --while drying my hair helped myself to a double scotch--from the minibar.
"If he's indulging, I might as well, right?"
I'd tucked myself in with my tablet, Johnny Walker Black Label, and my cellphone near.
Slipping between my satin sheets, I finished my drink and set an alarm for 6:00 A.M.
Now, after 9:30 A.M., I was dressed and looking at the security feeds from when room service had taken up a selection of fruits, muffins, and coffee for breakfast.
They left the cart at the door and the woman from the night before, in a hotel robe, collected it with no sign of Van Meer.
I shot the cuffs on my blouse and took my little Walther from its case in the security office, and I slipped it into its holster under my left arm.
I used my phone and selected his number, opting to text as a way to probe the situation without seeming intrusive. I pressed the button for the elevator, intending to ride it down to the valet.
"Your first appointment is in one hour," I typed. "Do you want me to bring your guest's dry-cleaning?"
I sent the text as the elevator arrived, and I stepped in and rode it down. When I was in the sub-basement hallway, my phone buzzed.
"Cancel appointments and reschedule, please. Will send for guest's clothes when she needs them."
I considered the message a moment. It was curt and yet gave a sudden hint of his humor.
I scrolled up through the hundreds of text communications we'd exchanged in the past. I saved them all, everyone.
"86 this for me. Hitting the gym."
That had been the message the first time he'd force me to play 'bimbo-wrangler.'
After the daughter of a business rival had come back with him from the Met Gala, he'd had his fun leaving her in his bed shortly before midnight, opting to work out in his private gym.
It had been a test. As he was puffing away on a rowing machine, I was wrapping a twenty-something girl in her rumpled dress and pouring her into a cab.
"Don't expect much in the way of a second date," I had said.
That night he'd congratulated me by taking me mid-week to our private suite at Vice. I'd ended up taking the better part of the remaining week off to recuperate.
"You need to learn to say 'stop,' daughter."
He said the words often. But he knew I'd always take more.
More was what he needed to give in the way of pain. And more was what kept him at least in most ways mine.
But as I read the text, I chewed my bottom lip.
Was this him testing me again? Was I not supposed to feel anything about this seemingly 'normal' liaison?
Letting her send down her clothes with his? Ordering her breakfast? Sending her to the door for the cart?
Derek Van Meer seldom brought women back to his hotel unless it was about conquest, dominance, and control. And once he had conquered, he usually saw no further point to the needless entanglement.
To him, most people were nothing more than toys. Most were cheap toys that lost their luster and broke easily.
Except for you, daughter mine...
My phone buzzed. An email the night before with a photo of the mysterious woman's license plate had garnered a replay.
Christine Rawlins of Lawrence, Massachusetts.
He never canceled meetings for a woman. He did not cuddle in the afterglow.
I chewed on the inside of my bottom lip until I tasted blood.
Something was very off.
Derek
I hated hangovers: the head three sizes too big, the soreness behind the eyes.
As best I could, I flung my phone to the woman at the end of the bed. She put it in the pocket of a hotel robe, keeping the little pearl-handled Beretta automatic in her right hand leveled at me with her finger off the trigger.
"Could I trouble you for a glass of water?"
She stood, pouring water from a pitcher on the cart and bringing the glass to the edge of the bed. She held it for me as I drank.
I nodded when I'd had enough, and she put the glass on the nightstand.
"I think you hardly need the gun," I said, trying to recall the details of the previous night.
"Memory loss?" She asked. "Feels like your eyes are dry, and your skin doesn't quite fit, too?"
I shook my head, clearing some of the cobwebs.
"What did you--"
"Rohypnol," she said, standing and moving to a room service cart. She selected a strawberry and turned to face him as she bit into it.
He nodded. "Boston, wasn't it? Sometime between 1998 or 99?"
She cleared her throat. "Autumn 98," she said.
I nodded. "You're the one who showed up at my father's offices, aren't you?"
She nodded.
"Look, I know there's no excuse for what hap-"
She cocked the hammer back on the pistol.
Okay, wrong tactic. "How about I shut up and let you run this meeting your way?"
She smirked, shaking her head. "You think you're charming, don't you?"
I looked at my hands cuffed to the headboard. "Call it my last line of defense in a desperate situation. "
She unlocked and safetied the pistol. "You thought you were charming back then, too."
I watched the gun go into the pocket of her robe. Something else came out to replace it; a picture of a youngish woman, perhaps 20. I nodded. "Cute kid."
"Yours," she said, putting the picture away. "Her name is Chloe. "
I nodded as I watched her load a bowl with fruit and pour a glass of orange juice.
She came back to the edge of the bed to sit. She offered me a strawberry, and I shook my head. "No, thank you," I said. "And I know I should remember it, but your name?"
"It's not the name I gave you last night," she said, dragging the strawberry through the rich cream and popping it between her lips. "I don't know why I expected you to recognize me."
"Miss," I began.
"Rawlins," she sighed. "Christine Rawlins."
"Look, I know I hurt you," I said. "But if you know my history, I made changes shortly after you met with my father...."
Christine
"He forced you into rehab," I said. "Set up an executorship and blind trust, which you have been fighting for almost ten years now."
He nodded. "You've no doubt read about it extensively in the Financial Times."
"You've done pretty well for yourself despite not having a controlling interest in your family's legacy. Would you characterize yourself as a ruthless businessman?"
"I don't recall ever holding a gun on anybody," he sneered.
"There you are. See, I remember that dark temper, Derek. Can I call you Derek?"
"I don't care what you call me. What do you want?"
"What wasn't in the financial times, and what you no doubt hadn't learned until recently, was your father made provision that part of the holdings in your blind trust be set aside for your heir."
His eyes looked away.
"With the management of those funds to be handed over to the mother of the said heir in the event of your father's death. Died in a plane crash, didn't he?"
"Thirteen years ago."
I nodded. "I know. That's when I sold some stock off and bought us a house out in the country."
"I'm sure you're both very happy."
"Three of us," I corrected. "I married."
"Lucky fellow."
"He's a loving and devoted husband and father," I said. Then I produced a tablet and drew up some candid photographs. "Not like you, though. For a long-lost daughter, you two seem awfully close. I would argue, inappropriately close. "
"Frankly," he sighed. "I still don't see your reason for being here. I can't touch that money, as you well know."
"But she can," I said.
"I'm almost impressed by your flair for the dramatic. Tell me, last night, did we at least..." He wiggled his eyebrows.
"No. You were a perfect lifeless gentleman, and I slept on the sofa."
"Pity," he said. "You get Sevier by the minute, Christine. May I call you Christine?"
I dipped a strawberry in the rich cream and presented it to him. "Are you sure you don't want some? This fruit is delicious. Really, your family is first class in hotels."
He opened his mouth, accepting the fruit.
"So" He smiled, around the mouthful. "You're here because you think your daughter's legacy is threatened. Is that it?"
I once more presented the tablet. He nodded at the nine-figure total in the account. "Mozel tov."
"I've spent over ten years managing that money so that Chloe could graduate from a good college and learn she could do anything with her life. Anything at all. And suddenly, six months ago, I received a letter from a lawyer telling me I have to relinquish half the principle just like that?!"
"The money was set aside for my heirs. It turns out I have two."
"I know. I spent money on a private investigator who got ahold of the paternity test results," I said. "He also snuck into that club you frequent together and took these."
His eyes danced over the photographs and then up to meet mine. "All this theatrically, and it comes down to blackmail?"
