Was the Heiress Switched at Birth? novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Hush Money

In the parking garage the company's COO offers $250,000 and an NDA, Billie tears up the check, and Annalise sneers; Roland Kenworthy offers a lawyer and a test, and Piers notices the white streak at her temple.

Piers Stanwyck walked me out through a service door, down a ramp and into the parking garage without once raising his voice.

He did it all with one hand around my arm.

"You can let go," I said.

"When we're out of camera range."

"Is that a threat or a policy?"

"Both, probably."

We stopped on the second level beside a black sedan with its engine running.

The garage smelled of concrete and wet coats.

Upstairs, three hundred people were taking video of an empty podium.

He let go.

Then he reached into his charcoal overcoat and took out a long white envelope.

"Ms. Odom, this is a cashier's check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

"That's a lot of money for a stalker."

"There is also a non-disclosure agreement," he said evenly.

"Ms. Kenworthy's position is that you are a confused young woman reacting to a death in your family."

"My mother hasn't died yet."

His jaw moved once.

"I'm sorry about that," he said, and for a moment it sounded true.

I set my stenotype case on the hood of the sedan and opened it.

"What are you doing?"

"Keeping a record."

I put my fingers on the keys.

"Say the amount again, slowly."

He stared at me.

"You're taking down my offer."

"I take down everything people say when they think no one's listening."

"That's a very odd way to live."

"It pays fifty-eight thousand a year, which is less than you just offered me for being quiet."

I typed the whole thing into the machine, his name, the check, the word confused.

The paper tape curled out of the tray.

"Ms. Kenworthy wants this settled tonight," he said.

"Then she can come down here and settle it."

"She won't."

"Because she knows I'm right?"

"Because she's at a podium with three hundred guests, and because you are a stranger with a sad story."

I tore the check in half.

Then in half again.

I put the pieces back in his envelope, handed it to him, and watched the little white squares settle in his big hand.

"My mother worked for that woman for twenty years," I said.

"She was called a thief on a stage, and all you brought me was cash."

A heel clicked on the concrete behind him.

Annalise Kenworthy came down the ramp in her cream suit, with a young man at either elbow holding phones.

Up close she was prettier than her photographs and harder.

"Is this her?" she asked.

"Annalise, go back upstairs," Piers said.

"No."

She walked around him and looked me up and down, from my boots to my jaw-length hair to the white streak.

"A court reporter," she said.

"Stenographer."

"Whatever."

She smiled for her phones.

"Your mother fetched my mother's coffee for twenty years, and mine, and I let her call herself family."

"She's not family to you."

"No."

"She's staff."

"And you're the staff's idea of a plot twist."

One of the young men laughed and then stopped when I looked at him.

"I'm sorry your mother is sick," Annalise said, in a voice that held no sorrow at all.

"But I won't stand here while you make up a story about my birth."

"I didn't make it up," I said.

"I brought the band."

"Bring a lawyer next time."

"I'd love one," said a warm baritone from the ramp.

We all turned.

A white-haired man in a bow tie came down the slope with a gold pocket watch swinging from his vest.

He was sixty-odd, round-chested and pleased with himself.

"Roland," Piers said, flatly.

"Hello, Piers."

"Annalise, darling, go and charm somebody."

She did not move.

"Annalise."

She went, and the two phones went with her.

Roland Kenworthy held out a hand to me.

"I'm the chairman of the board, Ms. Odom."

"A claim like yours, made into a microphone in front of our investors, becomes the board's business by morning."

I shook his hand because he'd offered it.

"What do you want?"

"A cheek swab."

He said it as casually as ordering coffee.

"Tomorrow, nine o'clock, a clinic I'll text you."

"I'll pay."

"My own lawyer will be there to see that no one tampers with a thing."

"Roland," Piers said, "this isn't the moment."

"Why not, Piers?"

The older man smiled up at him.

"Are you afraid of the answer?"

Piers said nothing.

I looked from one to the other.

A yellow light buzzed on a pole behind them.

It threw its glare across my face.

Piers turned back to me to say whatever he had been planning to say.

He stopped.

His eyes had gone to my left temple, to the white streak.

All the color went out of the argument in his face.

He looked at it like a man who had seen that exact streak on another face every working day for thirteen years.

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