Darker Shades of Elise novel · Chapter 15 of 24
Chapter 15: M
The buyer's lawyer was eating breakfast alone in the Marquand's glass dining room at nine on Monday morning.
She wore a gray suit instead of the camel coat, and her briefcase sat on the chair beside her.
I sat down across from her without asking.
"Mrs. Reddick," she said, and her voice was warm butter again, though her fork went still.
"I'm not here about the sale," I said.
"I'm here about row nine."
She put the fork down very carefully.
"I don't know what that means."
I laid my phone on the tablecloth with Ansel's screenshot on it.
A spreadsheet row, her city and her firm, and the last column in Rafe's handwriting.
She read it once, and the color left her face from the top down.
"Where did you get that?"
"From the man who has your photograph pinned to a wall."
"There are eleven of you, and my husband has watched mine live from his desk."
"Does he watch yours?"
She looked at the waiter across the room, then at the window, then at me.
"Two years ago," she said, very low.
"A client party in Norwalk, and a photographer who asked if he could shoot my portrait."
"I thought I was being seen."
"I know that feeling," I said.
"Rafe called me the next spring with a clip of my face and the name of my firm's managing partner."
"I paid him for a year."
"This summer your husband called."
"He said Rafe had sold him the same footage, and that he'd like to talk about the Linden Homes deal over drinks."
"At the Marquand, most weeks."
"He has never asked me for anything out loud."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of Darker Shades of Elise are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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