“I’m kidding. I didn’t sleep with Justin. He treated me like an annoying little sister the whole weekend he was here.”
Reese choked on her coffee, hot liquid spray hitting him across the face as her lips burst open on a laugh. He blinked, coffee dripping down his nose as his heart rate returned to normal and his murderous thoughts shifted from Justin to Claire.
“That is not funny,” he told them both sternly.
“I’m sorry,” Reese said as she choked back laughter, taking the sleeve of his shirt she was wearing and wiping the coffee mist off his face.
Claire was laughing on the couch, enjoying her joke.
Reese and Claire were both so young, so fresh, so connected to each other in their humor and outlook, that Derek felt a pang that had nothing to do with Claire’s sex life.
Given the pains in his chest, and his gut, and his knee, and listening to them lose it over something he found not even remotely funny, Derek suddenly felt grumpy as hell.
FORTY-SEVEN
Reese wonderedwhy she had quit her boring and meaningless job at theNewark Newsto take one even more so at Delco Pharmaceutical.
Nothing of absolutely any interest had happened since her hallway encounter with Chatterton.
Until Markson popped his head into the copy room on Friday and said, “Excuse me, Reese. Can I see you in my office, please? I need some copies made.”
“Alright, give me a second.” She had piles of collated reports stacked precariously on every table and surface in the room. This could have been an email, honestly.
Delco hadn’t heard of the concept of a paperless society. Everything was sent via email, then reinforced in hard copy.
Deciding there was nothing she could do with the mess in the next second, she sighed and followed Markson down the hall to his office. He hovered at the door until she was in, then shut the door and locked it.
Not cool. Trying to keep the edge out of her voice, she said, “What did you need, Mr. Markson?”
“I know who you are,” he said, taking a step in her direction.
Stan Markson was normally a very average-looking guy, but with that strange gleam in his eye and sweat stains in the armpits of his white dress shirt, he veered into alarming. Scary. Reese took a step back and felt around on his desk for a paperweight to lob at him if necessary.
She said lightly, not wanting him to smell her fear, “Of course you know who I am. I’m Reese, the woman who gets paid to hand you coffee.”
“You’re Agent Knight’s girlfriend. I recognize you from that night in the Holiday Inn parking lot.”
“Oh, uh…” This was better. Maybe. If Markson didn’t plan to murder her and toss her out with the trash,Knightwould when he found out Markson knew who she was.
“You’re really an undercover agent, aren’t you?”
Well, that was kind of a cool thought. Special Agent Hampton, going undercover. She was tempted to lie for about a split second, then sanity returned. “No, I’m not. I’m really Knight’s…girlfriend.” She about swallowed her tongue on the word.
Markson looked distracted by that. “I thought he was married.”
“He’s divorced.”
“He looks like the married type. Not your type at all.”
Like this goof knew what her type was. It made sense to just explain they had a casual relationship, or even to just let the topic drop. It didn’t matter what Stan Markson, Delco informant, thought about her love life.
That’s what she should have done. Instead she said, “What do you mean? We’reperfectfor each other. Knight is sooo happy with me. Happy, happy, happy.”
Oh, my God. She sounded perky.
“Well, he seems like a nice guy. He’s been real honest and fair with me, I always thought. That’s why I was worried that maybe the FBI wasn’t telling me everything, and you were an agent. ”
“No, I’m not an agent, I promise.” But she was a reporter, and she sniffed exclusive interview. “But I am a journalist, Mr. Markson. This job here at Delco is a cover, just not for the Bureau. I’m doing my own journalistic investigation side by side with the FBI, so that when indictments are handed out, the public will know the whole story.”