Someone was moaning and groaning, and then, “Yeah, you love the Big Daddy Dick, don’t you? Suck it harder, baby. I’m almost there.” David’s smug voice was disgustingly strained right before I heard another sort of distorted howling sound that could’ve been either one of the chicks or Scott for all I knew. Either way, it made my skin crawl.
Polly looked a little green in the gills. “Oh, that is just so wrong.”
“What are they doing now, Dez?” I whispered across the space. Of course she was still watching, the hussy.
“Duh,” Polly said. “They’re coming.”
I rolled my eyes. “Not that. I mean, now.”
“No, she’s right,” Dez answered. “They are coming. At the same time. How’d they manage to sync that up?” What was worse was that her brows were furrowed like it was a math problem she was trying to solve. I’d bet good money she’d go home and work on the solution to that equation later. After a moment, she said, “Okay, so Sluts-R-Us just went into the back room, which happens to be Scott’s personal bathroom. My guess is they’re going to scour some of that spunk funk off each other. Tweedledick and Tweedlecum are firing up the puff-puff-pass.”
I sank down onto the floor and let my head fall against the thin wall that stood between me and that stupid contract. “This is going to take forever. Noah’s going to freak out and think something went wrong if I don’t get back soon.”
“Wait a minute, hon. Don’t go getting all dramatic yet,” Dez said, waving me over to see what was happening in the next room from her phone.
“We should probably take advantage of the time we have with them,” Scott said, stroking his cock unabashedly until it started to harden again. As quick as that turnaround was, that coke must’ve been laced with a male enhancement drug. “Pussy like that doesn’t come along every day, you know.”
“Hell, yeah!” David crowed. He picked up his pants and fished his cell phone out of the pocket. “I’ll be there in a minute. I’m expecting a call from the senator, so I should probably check my messages real quick.”
As soon as Scott had joined the twins in the bathroom, David put his phone back in his pants and rushed over to Scott’s desk. Taking another look over his shoulder, he opened one of the drawers and pulled out a manila folder. He grabbed the paper inside, placed it on the fax machine, and dialed some numbers.
“No, no, no …,” I chanted, knowing full well that piece of paper was the contract. My contract.
Polly growled. “That bastard!”
Said bastard stood there drumming his fingers impatiently while waiting for the machine to finish up. Once he got the receipt, he shredded it and then replaced the paper and file folder in the desk before practically skipping off into the bathroom to join the orgy no doubt already in full swing.
I hit my forehead against the wall. No way would I be able to keep him from using the contract as leverage against Noah now.
“Cheer up, Lanes,” Dez said, a little too chipper. When I furrowed my brow at her crazy talk, she waved the phone in the air. “David Stone is in cahoots with Scott Christopher in both the drug and sex trade. It’s all right here. I think that makes for a damn good bargaining chip, don’t you?”
In that moment, Dez was the sexiest beast I’d ever seen. If she wasn’t my best friend, I probably would’ve thrown her against the wall and shoved my tongue down her throat. She was right. We had all the proof we needed to bring David and Scott down. I wondered how well that would sit with Scott and all of his very influential clients. Not too well, I guessed.
“You should still get the original contract,” Dez said. Since when had she become the voice of reason? “I know he’s already faxed it, but one contract floating around out there is a hell of a lot better than two.”
Good point.
“I’m going,” I said, reaching for the door.
“Wait a minute!” Polly whispered harshly, putting her hand on my arm to stop me. “What if you get caught?”
“But if I don’t go now, I might not get the chance to get the contract at all,” I reasoned. “I’ll go inside real quick, and if I don’t hear the shower, I’ll slip back out and we’ll wait it out a little longer.”
“Let her go,” Dez told Polly. “We can watch from in here, and if she gets into trouble, we’ll mount up and ride to the rescue.”
“Um, okay.” I could hear the reluctance in Polly’s voice. “But if anything happens to you, Noah’s going to go apeshit on me, so please be careful.”
“Of course.” I nodded nervously and then turned the doorknob very slowly.
Once in the hallway, I tiptoed along the wall to the door to Scott’s office. I checked the handle, finding it unlocked, and then pushed the door open slowly. My ears picked up the sound of the shower running and I could hear male and female voices from the other side of the bathroom door, though I couldn’t tell which belonged to whom.
Hurrying over to Scott’s desk, I opened the bottom drawer, where I’d seen David put the folder earlier. And there it was, filed under T for Talbot. I pulled it out and flipped it open to grab the contract.
A smile like the Cheshire cat’s spread across my face once I had it in hand, then I replaced the folder and tiptoe-ran back across the room just as the shower shut off. I was careful not to make any noise when I slipped out of the door and pulled it closed behind me. Dez and Polly were already waiting for me in the hallway.
I held up the contract and Dez did the same with the phone. I swear, I was just about ready to kiss her on the mouth. With huge grins on our faces, Dez and I did our victory dance. It had been perfected over decades of friendship and really was just us shaking our butts from side to side in well-choreographed synchronization. Polly bounced up and down on her toes while giving us silent applause. And then we headed for the stairs to make our stealthy escape.
Mission accomplished. Maybe not the mission we’d set out with, but accomplished nonetheless.
11: Dare to Dream
Noah
All Hallows’ Eve, better known as Halloween.
Cultures from all over the world celebrated the tradition in one form or another for a great many years. Although they each had their own history, no one really knew who had started the tradition or why, though it was most typically tied to pagan roots. Regardless, it remained a day annually celebrated throughout the world, one that allowed us to party with the dead on the one night they were permitted to cross over onto the living plane. It was all smoke and mirrors, fun at the expense of spooking someone else. Given its traditions and the situation at hand, it seemed apt that the all-important board meeting would fall on October thirty-first, a day where it was acceptable to dress up as someone you were not to play tricks on the gullible.