Great Exploitations

TWO SIMPLE WORDS. One complex problem.

Henry Callahan.

He’d messed up my life big time a few years earlier. So much that nothing was left to mess up. Or so I’d thought.

Five years later, Henry Callahan was messing up my life once again. He might not realize it, but that was beside the point. Especially beside the point after I’d just gotten an earful from G for the past fifteen minutes. My eardrums were still ringing.

Since we knew another agency already had a girl on the Callahan Errand, G told me—well, she ordered me—to do whatever it took to get inside Callahan Industries or make sure the other girl got a one-way ticket outside. G said if I went with option B, she didn’t care how I did it, so long as it worked. If I needed a more . . . permanent solution, I was supposed to give her a call because G had a handful of hit-men on speed-dial. She’d used them before and she wouldn’t hesitate to use them again, especially with an Errand this big. It was a bad case of the ends justify the means—something I wasn’t exactly on board with when it came to a human life.

Luckily for me, option A was a mere phone call away.

I didn’t bother calling his office line. If Henry’s new assistant was as adept at her job as I was, she’d never put me through to him. She’d take a message, say he was in a meeting, out of town, or the line would mysteriously go dead. That’s what I’d do and, as G and I knew, whatever phantom agency we were competing with, they’d assigned their best girl to the case, just as G had me.

A ten-figure Errand wasn’t the time to send in the second string.

No, I wouldn’t call Henry’s office. Not when I had his private number.

I walked along the beach, straddling that jagged line where the damp sand meets the dry—one foot stayed on top, one foot sunk below. Punching in the number that I may or may not have memorized, I slid a few feet over into the wet sand.

It didn’t ring twice before he answered. “Hello?”

A couple things struck me as odd. He’d answered without identifying himself—something like Henry Callahan speaking seemed more appropriate—and his voice was a couple notes high. Almost . . . expectant.

“Hey . . . Henry?” G would have shit a shotgun if she’d heard that gem of a greeting.

“Evie?” There was a clipped pause, and then, “Eve, is that you?”

My heart ached for the briefest moment when he called me Evie. I became that young and naive girl again, overwhelmingly in love with a boy I swore would turn the world upside down for me if I asked him to.

I mentioned I was naive back then, right?

“Yep, it’s me. Eve . . . that is.” I paused on the beach because I obviously wasn’t up to the task of walking and talking.

“You know, I was certain that when I gave you my business card, you’d toss it into the closest garbage can you could find. I didn’t think you’d keep it, let alone call me.” Henry’s voice was back to normal. Calm and confident. Warm and solid.

I hated how so many of the things I’d loved about him were still the same. Things like his soothing, low-timbered voice, or the way he said my name—almost like it was a prayer and a sin all at once. He hadn’t changed. But I had. I had to sell myself on those two assertions more than I should have to.

“You’re right. I did throw your card away.” It was true. I had. “But the closest garbage can happened to be the one inside of my condo, so it was easy to dig out.”

Henry laughed softly. That exact laugh I’d loved. And now I hated. I had to remind myself of that last part because hating Henry Callahan’s laugh was a difficult thing to do. Thrashing about in a small tank full of sharks without getting attacked would have been about as easy as hating his laugh.

“So what made you dig it out? Not that I really care, but I’m curious.”

“Why don’t you really care?” I asked.

“Because you called.”

I sucked in a slow breath and decided to sit in the sand. If he kept saying things like that and I kept feeling things like I just had, I wouldn’t be able to stand and talk either. I had to remind myself why I’d called him before I could speak. “The reason I called is because I was wondering if your offer still stood.”

“Which offer?” he asked. “I don’t really care because whatever offer I made you that you’re referring to you can have, but it would probably be good for me to know which one you’re talking about.”

Henry had caught me off guard yet again. He made me other offers that morning on the beach? Which ones?

“The job slash contracting offer. Would you still be interested in having me on board?” Asking a favor from Henry was about as painful as I imagined pulling out an abscessed molar with pliers might have been.