Working Stiff:Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1)(59)

The first name on the list was Wren Sishi.

Wren's name peppered the list. Weird. She must have been getting someone other than Rox to log her on.

Even the last name on the list was Wren Sishi, and she had supposedly edited it at six o'clock that morning.

Wren? At the office at six o'clock in the godforsaken morning?

Unlikely.                       
       
           



       

Rox pointed to Wren's name on the screen. "That can't be right. Wren is  never here that early. She's never anywhere that early. She rushes in  late at nine-thirty every day."

"Maybe if someone paid her well enough," Casimir said.

"And she's hopeless at using the tokens to log onto the system. She  always needs help. You remember a couple months ago when I got an  emergency text in the meeting with Lourde Clinchy's people? Wren was  freaking because she couldn't log onto the system, and she was too  embarrassed to tell anyone else. I had to leave the meeting to help  her."

"Maybe it was a ruse to make people think that it wasn't her."

"Then it was a very long and embarrassing and perfectly consistent ruse." A ruse. Man, he sounded British sometimes.

Cash's breath was warm on her neck. Casimir's breath. He said, "Good. We  need to talk to her. Tell her that we have a few questions about some  other contract and bring her in."

He pushed himself away from the desk so that Rox could leave, but she  was sure that his hand grazed her hip, his fingers lingering on her  skirt.

Rox wanted to turn and grab him, hold him and hear him whisper in her  ear again, but she swallowed hard and walked out of his office door.

She trotted through the cubicle farm to Wren's desk. "Hey, can you come talk with us for a sec?"

"Yeah, sure." Wren followed her, but she kept looking around nervously,  her blond hair swishing around her shoulders as she walked.

Back in the office, the three of them sat down on the couches around the  coffee table. Cash's law school diploma hung high on the wall above  them.

Cash was leaning back, his arms resting on the back of the couch. Rox  sat on the opposite end of the couch from him, trying to make it look  like they weren't screwing around.

Wren was hunched forward, her arms crossed and her elbows resting on her  knees. "Val and Josie called us all into a meeting first thing this  morning. They said that some irregularities have been found in the  contracts, and they're bringing in an outside firm to investigate what  has been going on. So, you must have told them what you found?"

"In a manner of speaking," Cash said.

"What time was the meeting?" Rox asked.

Wren rolled her eyes. "Right at nine."

"Did you make it in time?"

Wren laughed, but the harsh sound was more like a nervous cackle. "I skated in and stood in the back for part of it."

So Wren couldn't have opened the DiCaprio contract at six in the morning  in the office, assuming that she was telling the truth about when she  had dragged herself into the office.

"You sure about the time?" Rox asked her.

Wren squinted at her. "Yeah. I had trouble catching on to what they were  talking about. Something about the security system and how no one knows  what's been checked out or hasn't been or what's going on."

"Well, we know what's been going on," Rox said, crossing her knees. "We just don't know how."

"Or why," Cash said. "The studios' motivation is obviously money, but I am shocked that Val would be a part of this."

Wren shook her head. "But Val wouldn't have done it. She just wouldn't have. Do you think it could be Josie?"

"Why do you think Val didn't do it?" Cash asked.

"I just can't imagine her doing anything like that. She's always been so strict about everything ethical."

Rox shrugged. "Might be Val. Might be Josie. Might be both of them."

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.

Rox hurried to keep up with Cash. Usually, he was good about waiting for  her while she trotted beside him, but when he was riled up, those long  legs of his stretched even longer, she could just swear.