When I got back into the bedroom, Noah had pulled on a pair of drawstring pajama pants and was checking his emails on his iPad.
“Will I see you back here later?” he asked.
“Yes.” I nodded. “We could… I mean, we could have dinner?” It felt strange, asking him to dinner after we’d done things that were so much more intimate.
“Sure.” Noah nodded. “I have some things I’d like to discuss with you, too.” His eyes blazed, and I knew what he was talking about. The BDSM stuff. He wanted to talk about the rules, and I remembered how he’d said that sex was just one part of it.
“Okay.” I said. I was excited to learn more about what was expected of me. Him telling me what to do, me having to live by his rules, to exist to please him, to pleasure him, in whatever way he desired was a turn on. And now that he’d let me in a tiny bit, now that he’d wanted to go to a party with my family, it just felt… right.
I did trust him.
It wasn’t just words.
One of things that I’d learned about being a good lawyer was that you always had to trust your instincts. And my instincts said that Noah could be trusted, that he wasn’t a killer
He was a good man.
The kind of man you could fall in love with.
I was halfway out the door when my phone buzzed. I looked down. A text from Julia.
We should talk.
I didn’t really have any interest in talking to her, so I closed it out and decided to deal with it later. But I noticed my phone battery was about to die, and I rustled through my bag, looking for my charger. It wasn’t there. I must have forgotten to grab it in the rush to get out of my apartment.
I walked back to the bedroom and poked my head in the door. “Hey,” I said. “You wouldn’t happen to have an extra iPhone charger, would you?”
“In the drawer in the office,” he said. “If there’s not one there, have Jared stop at the store on the way and run in and get you one.”
“Jared?” I asked, surprised. “Your driver?”
“Yes,” Noah said, looking up from his iPad. “I won’t have you riding the subway or taking a taxi, Charlotte. It’s far too dangerous.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but he held up his hand to stop me. “My rules.”
I nodded, knowing it was useless to argue with him. “Where’s the office?”
“Down the hall, second door on the left.”
I hurried down the corridor and into the office. The room was painted in a calming shade that was somewhere between blue and slate grey. On the walls hung framed black and white prints of the city. A huge marble desk stood in the center of the room, with a desktop computer sitting on it, with a screen saver that showed the logo of Noah’s firm, Cutler and Associates.
The room was beautiful and sleek, but it wasn’t exactly the kind of room I’d want to do any work in. There was nothing warm about it – no half-full coffee mug on the desk, no family photos, no books on the shelves. The only bookshelf was filled with books with covers in shades of grey and white to match the décor, and the only other furniture was a dark oak filing cabinet and an uncomfortable looking grey chair.
I crossed the room to the desk, opening the drawers carefully one by one. Everything inside of them was neat, meticulous, paper clips sorted into little containers, binder clips neatly arranged, a fresh pad of post-its and a full jar of pens.
But no phone charger.
I was about to leave and have Jared stop at the store on the way, as Noah had suggested, when my eyes fell on the file cabinet in the corner. Could Noah have meant the charger was in there?
I went over and tried the top drawer, but it was locked. The middle drawer was locked as well. But the bottom drawer was open slightly, like someone hadn’t pushed it completely shut the last time they’d used it.
I crouched down and slid it open, but it was filled with forest green file folders, all of them hanging neatly. I ran my hands over the labeled tabs, wondering if they were cases Noah had worked on. I wondered if he’d let me read them. I’d been so focused on Noah as a client, that I’d forgotten he was a lawyer in his own right, and a very successful one at that. I could learn a lot from him.
I was about to shut the file cabinet and head out when I saw it.
Her name.
Katie Price.
It was written on one of the file folders.
It must have been a coincidence, I told myself. Maybe Noah kept files on all his employees, filled them with performance reviews and that kind of thing.
My hand flew to the folder, and I pulled it out. I sat there on the floor for a moment, just staring at it.
Don’t open it. It’s not your business. It has nothing to do with you. You said you trusted him, and you do. If it’s true, if you really mean it, you won’t open the file.