Casimir turned toward her on the couch. “Oh?”
“A couple weeks ago, Josie gaslighted me.”
Cash raised one eyebrow. “And that means?”
Rox spread her empty hands in front of her. “I mentioned to her that we had found some irregularities in Val’s contracts, some clauses that were detrimental to our clients, and she told me that either I was imagining it or that you were lying about it, or you were mistaken. She made me feel like I was crazy. She said that she didn’t trust a junior partner’s opinion over Valerie’s, and she kind of threatened my job.”
Cash’s jaw set in a harder line. “I wouldn’t have thought that of Josie.”
“I wouldn’t have, either.” Rox turned to Wren. “What else happened at that meeting?”
Wren crunched down farther, almost hugging her knees. “They said that we should cooperate fully with the investigators and that we shouldn’t talk to anyone else who might be asking questions, especially anybody else in the office. They said that anyone asking questions and anyone answering questions for anyone but the investigators would be let go.” She looked up, her short eyelashes nearly touching the epicanthic fold of her eyelids. “I think she meant you two.”
Casimir looked over at Rox and exhaled hard. “Wren, go back to your desk. If anyone asks what we talked about, tell them that you were asking about this scar on my cheek.” He pointed to the small patch of gnarled skin below his cheekbone. “Glass went through my face in the accident.”
Rox flinched and tried to send psychic messages to Wren to not make a big deal about it.
“Oh.” Wren squinted at him. “I guess you do have a scar there.”
He blinked. “Yes.”
“If you grow your beard back out a little, no one will be able to see it at all.” She smiled at him. “You always looked good with a little scruff. Kind of lumbersexual, except that I can’t imagine you in a plaid shirt.”
“I’ll take that under consideration,” he said.
“Okay. That’s what I’ll tell people.” Relief lightened Wren’s voice.
“Go now,” Cash told her, “before you’re in here too long.”
Casimir, Rox reminded herself. Not Cash. Casimir. Jeez, this was not going to be easy.
Wren practically fled the office, her light steps silent on the carpeting. The door clicked shut behind her.
Rox looked down at her hands, twisting in her lap. “So we really can’t talk to anyone else, either.”
“No. It’s almost time for my meeting with Val anyway,” Cash said.
Rox frowned at him. “What do you mean my meeting? I’m going in with you.”
“No, you’re not. If this goes badly, I don’t want you to lose your job, too.”
“Yeah, you might end up living with me and the cats in a one-bedroom apartment.”
“You don’t have one of those.”
She smirked at him. “I will totally get one just to see you try to fit in it.”
He laughed. “Don’t forget that we’re going to Amsterdam this weekend, no matter what. If we both lose our jobs, maybe we’ll just stay in Europe.”
Rox rolled her eyes. “I don’t think so, buddy. It took me my whole life to get to California. I’m not giving up the beach and the sunshine that easily.”
“The Netherlands is right on the ocean. Scheveningen has a very nice beach, and there’s a beach area even within the city of Amsterdam.”
“I thought Holland was below sea level, and that’s why you have those dikes and windmills and stuff.”
“We still have beaches.”
“You didn’t say anything about sunshine,” she pointed out.
He shrugged. “Sometimes we have sunshine. The weather is notoriously variable.”
“Great. Variable.”
“With luck, the weather should still be nice enough that we could sit on the beach this weekend. Pack a bathing suit.”
Rox snorted at him. “I will. A beach below sea level. This, I have to see.”
AMSBERG V. ARBEITMAN, ROUND THREE
Rox’s heavy purse, slung over her shoulder, bounced against her back as she strode toward Valerie Arbeitman’s office. Cash walked beside her, his long legs covering the ground so that she had to trot to keep up.
Casimir, dang it. Not Cash. This was definitely going to take some getting used to.
He carried his briefcase and a few pages that they had printed out from the DiCaprio contract with the damning language in it.
When they passed Wren’s desk, she didn’t even look up at them. Her blonde hair hung like a curtain around her face.
They dodged through the cubicles like a maze, and no one met their eyes. Everyone seemed to be very busy looking at whatever was on their computer screens or their desks or their laps or their feet.