She didn’t think it would be this.
Emptiness underneath anger.
“I’m going to go to bed.”
For a few days. Weeks. Months. Then she would see about the rest of her life.
Her dad grunted and sat down again, his eyes turned to the TV again. “If it were me and I got played and lost my job because of it? I would do something about it.”
“Good night, Dad. And… thanks.”
“Yep.”
Sinead made her way back to her bedroom, left her clothes behind and crawled under the covers.
Do something about it.
If she could do something about it, what would she want to do?
Pain. She would want to inflict the pain she was feeling on David.
She would want to see his suffering and know she was the one who caused it. The anger inside her burned. A blue flame of heat that flickered.
Chapter 11
Sinead walked up to the counter in the dress department, a garment bag over her shoulder.
“Hi, I need to return this dress.”
Sinead handed the receipt to the girl behind the counter at Nieman Marcus. The girl took it and started working the return.
“I can’t even remember what card this was on,” Sinead said casually. “Can you tell which one it was based on the receipt?”
“Uh yeah. It was your Amex.” The girl raised her eyebrows. “The Black Card.”
“Are you kidding me? I told my husband to put it on my card! He’s sweet like that. Just buys things for me all the time. Is it under his name, David Whitmore?”
“Actually it looks like a company. The Tricorp Group?”
Sinead smiled and nodded. “Oh, that’s his company card. Well, if he paid for it, I guess there is no reason to return it, right? Thank you anyway.”
Sinead walked away with the empty garment bag slung back over her shoulder.
* * *
“Tricorp Group?”
“Yes,” Sinead said, then spelled it out over the phone. Google had returned no results. Neither had the Better Business Bureau.
Clearly it was a front, but a lot of times a front might have an office location to make it look more legit. The money he threw around was real. The restaurants, the jet. He didn’t make that happen with pretend money. So going on the theory that he might have actually rented an office space, Sinead had targeted high-end realtors who specialized in Class A professional office space.
She was on her fifth agency.
“Yes, I have a listing for them. They have an office in the Hamilton Building on Pacific. In the Financial District. We just leased the space not… four weeks ago.”
No doubt in case she pressed him on wanting to see where he worked. It had never really occurred to her to question what he did when he was away from her. He always said he was meeting with lawyers, which sounded fairly routine. But to take the precaution of having an office location, whatever the operation was, it was thorough and well funded.
* * *
Sinead parked her father’s car in the underground parking lot and found the elevator. Now that she was without a job and a cruiser, she was going to have to buy her own car. Her dad was actually looking online for her.
He was helping her. Not being dramatic or overly mushy. Just being solid when she needed him to be. When this was behind her, she might try and not look at it as the stupidest mistake she ever made in her life, but the thing that brought her and her father back together.
She made it to the lobby first to check out the companies directory.
Tricorp Group was on the 18th floor.
She made her way back to the elevators and hit 18. Immediately her heart started to beat harder. She could feel the sweat on her palms, and rubbed them against her jeans.
It wasn’t likely he was here. She knew that. Con men didn’t stick around after the job was done.
The job? What really had been the job?
Sinead dismissed the thought immediately. She had to focus. Right now the thing in front of her was tracking down David.
The elevator dinged and she walked out into an open atrium building. Elegant, expensive. A place for high-powered law firms and hedge fund financial operators.
And his front corporation.
She turned right and tracked down the suite for the Tricorp Group. When she swung open the door, the space was empty except for a long desk with a phone and a tall, slim blonde woman sitting behind it.
Either the office workers were invisible or this was one really bored receptionist. Sinead approached her. “Excuse me, is this the Tricorp Group?”
The blonde lifted her head and beamed. “Finally!” She opened the top right desk drawer and pulled out a plain white envelope. “Are you Sinead (who spells her name correctly) O’Hara?”
The breath in her lungs froze until finally she had to push the air out so she could speak.