Risking It All. Beverly Bird

a few deft moves, she had the modem line and the printer cable disconnected and everything ready to go. She went back to the living room.

      Jenny was gone, off paying Mrs. C, and McKenna was lounging on the sofa as if he owned it. He had turned the television on.

      “I’m ready now.” She kept her tone flat, her voice on the far side of tantrum.

      “Got your toothbrush?”

      “I’ll have no need of a toothbrush tonight.” As soon as she got his statement, she would be coming home. Safely home, Grace thought.

      “Maybe, maybe not.” But at least he turned the TV off and stood from the sofa.

      “There is no maybe involved in this discussion.”

      For a moment he looked pensive, she thought. “There are a lot of maybes,” he said finally. “And I have a feeling that it’s going to take us all night to unravel even a portion of them.”

      “I’m very good at unraveling.”

      He grinned again as he joined her at the door. “I’m very good at prognosticating. And procrastinating.”

      Was he using the convoluted words again on purpose? Was he still hung up on the intelligence issue? She had the feeling that he could be like a dog with a bone when it came to something that bugged him. He wouldn’t let it go.

      Grace decided that the best she could do was step around the issue. “At four hundred an hour?” She yanked the door open and stepped out into the hall.

      “Is that what you’re costing me?”

      “I’m the new kid on the block. I come cheap.”

      “Do you now?”

      Her heart jerked. How many hours was it going to take her to learn that this man could twist anything she said? She headed for the stairs.

      “You’re just hired?” He followed her. “I got the rookie?”

      “Lutz wasn’t going to charge you at all until you acted like a five-million-a-year extortionist.”

      “I acted like no such thing. So what would a veteran cost me?”

      “Five hundred and up.”

      “I don’t have that kind of money.”

      Grace snorted, doubting that. “I guess you’re stuck with me then.”

      “Not necessarily. There are other firms, lesser fees.”

      She stopped cold in the building lobby to stare at him. “Are you trying to convince me you’re stupid?”

      “Wouldn’t take much work, would it?”

      His face had hardened. She didn’t like the fact that it unnerved her a little. “I never said that, never insinuated it.”

      “We’ll get into what you’ve insinuated once I’ve got you locked in a hotel room.”

      “I’m not going to be locked there. You are.”

      “You’re very argumentative. Did anyone ever tell you that?”

      How had she come to be nose to nose with him? Grace backed off. She jerked toward the lobby door and all but jogged out onto the street.

      The cab was still waiting and it was probably going to cost her a hundred dollars by now. Lutz was going to have a stroke when she put this expense in to the firm. Then again, he had just given up a room at the Hyatt for this character.

      By the time they landed at the hotel, the meter had steadfastly clicked its way up to $67.40. Grace didn’t have that much cash on her. She rooted through her briefcase twice and still came up short by almost ten dollars. She squeezed the bills that she did have in her fist and closed her eyes in a last-ditch effort at composure. When McKenna’s voice came from beside her, it sounded amused. “Problem?”

      She opened her eyes carefully. “Yes. You’ve been one since you first walked into that interrogation room.”

      “No way can you hang it on me if you don’t have enough money on you.”

      “You don’t have money?” the cabbie demanded, alarmed.

      “I have money, damn it!” Grace shouted. So much for composure. “I can get more.”

      “Is that your way of saying you are short?” McKenna asked.

      Grace pushed on her door to open it and slid out.

      “You know, this wouldn’t be a problem if you had just let me take my billfold from the jail,” McKenna said from inside the car.

      “It was either you or your wallet,” Grace leaned back into the car to remind him. “Fire me if you’d have preferred to stay there yourself tonight!”

      “I was saving the subject of firing you until we got inside,” McKenna answered. “Assuming we ever get there.”

      Grace slammed the cab door on him. She managed to take two steps before the cabbie grabbed her from behind, someone else touching her without permission. But this was someone she didn’t have to toe any lines with. She spun back to him, snarling. “Get your hands off me.”

      He hesitated, but then he dropped his hands and stepped back. “Can’t let you go in there, lady, not without paying me. That’s a hell of a fare you ran up.”

      “Tell me about it,” she grated. “Here.” She shoved the fifty-eight dollars at him that she’d managed to rummage from her briefcase. “It’s short,” she said before he could point that out.

      “I’m going inside to get the rest. You can keep…keep…” Temporarily, words failed her. “Him.” She gestured at the car. “For collateral.”

      “What am I supposed to do with him if you don’t come back?”

      Grace wasn’t even sure what she was supposed to be doing with him. “I’ll be back.”

      Getting cash wasn’t as easy as she’d thought it would be. She didn’t see an ATM anywhere in the lobby but she had the key, and the room was reserved in Lutz’s name. They had her boss’s credit card number on file. The desk clerk wanted to extend Lutz’s guest any courtesy, but how many women had the man brought here anyway? Grace wondered. Enough that forking over cash to be charged to his credit card alarmed the staff, she answered herself.

      “I’m only asking for twenty dollars,” Grace hissed at the woman. Even as she spoke, she heard a horn bleating outside—again and again and again. She wondered if it was a traffic jam or the cabbie.

      She hated McKenna.

      “I’ll have to check with Mr. Lutz first,” the woman said. “I have his phone number on file—”

      “No!” Grace raised her voice again, alarmed, as the woman started poking at the computer keyboard. She’d already been chastised once by Lutz for not keeping enough cash on her and she had only been with the firm for four weeks. She didn’t want him to know that she’d gotten caught short again.

      There was an answer to this conundrum, but it made her skin itch a little. “Here,” she said, and dug her own credit card out of her briefcase. “Put it on this.”

      “You want me to charge twenty dollars to your credit card and give you the cash?” The woman looked doubtful.

      They could easily do it, Grace thought, but there’d be more fuss and she was in a hurry to pay the driver. “I want you to put the room on my credit card—and an extra twenty—and I want you to give the twenty dollars to me.” She’d put the whole damned expense into the firm and hope that Lutz didn’t ask her why she’d done it this way.

      The clerk finally took her card and Grace felt a little out of breath again. She could have tried to tell herself that it was the stress of the past few hours but she didn’t bother. She felt