58.
Nadine
“God, that was tense,” Nadine said, feeling her legs wobble beneath her. That had come so much closer to the brink than she’d expected, that nasty little contest of exes that had saved her from getting her brain plunged by the psycho meta. She’d watched the reason leak slowly back into Sienna Nealon’s eyes and exulted silently as she stood on the sidelines, wishing she could fade right into the wall and disappear until much, much later.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Scott Byerly said, stoic and stone-faced, pulling away his glasses and putting them in his front pocket. He looked at her, drawing slow breaths, his eyes warm. The tension that had wired his frame during the confrontation with Sienna was gradually dissipating.
“I’m just glad you came,” Nadine said, holding her hand in front of her neck. “She … she forced her way into my house, made all sorts of accusations …” She feigned surprise. “How did you know she was here?”
“There’s an FBI agent watching your house,” Scott said, still stiffly. “They gave me a call when they saw her come down, so I rushed right over.” By his manner, she could see he hadn’t forgotten who she was, what she was accused of, and was still treating her accordingly.
She’d have to change that. Because now she’d had an idea, and it required that he forget it, that she put as much distance between his current perception of her, the one that had come from his preconceptions, and what she would show him going forward. She couldn’t be a criminal to him, no, not at all, not the badass that had unrepentantly screwed Wall Street as hard as she could and showed everyone who ran that world.
She swallowed hard, trying to dredge up an old skill she hadn’t used since she was a child. She felt a little lurch of disgust, but she put it aside, as she tried to summon up tears. She pressed her chewed nails into her palm, hard, then harder, then hard enough to draw blood. It wouldn’t take but one or two; she had the measure of Scott Byerly, and he was soft of head and soft of heart, a sucker if she’d ever seen one. He was standing there looking at her, probably thinking he was the gallant knight charging in to save the day.
Well, if that was how he wanted to look at it, she wouldn’t disagree.
She felt a salty tear trickle down her cheek and blotted it immediately. Subtle was better for these things. Let him work to get there. “I’m sorry,” she said, turning away, like she was embarrassed that she had emotions at all, let alone that a man was seeing them. So scandalous. She put a finger in her eye and pressed while her back was turned to him, letting a little more liquid seep out of the duct, entirely for effect. “I …” She sniffed and kept her back to him. “I … thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, and she could tell he was a degree less hard in his response than he’d been a moment before. Her little ploy had moved the dial on him, and more than a little. When it came to getting a man to eat out of her hand like an animal, the first steps were always the worst. She knew if she could get him far enough, get him to open up just so, there were other things she could do to push him the rest of the way.
“I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t shown up,” she said, not daring to look back at him. She just listened for his tone of voice. It would tell her everything. “She had her hand up like she was going to … touch me. Drain me, I guess?”
“She probably would have tried to take your memories,” he said, and she could tell he was angry at Sienna, thankfully, and not her. “Break into your mind, rip out what she wanted.” She could hear him clench and unclench his jaw. “She does that.”
“Oh, God,” Nadine said, and now she turned around, using the full weight of what she had felt in those moments of terror to her advantage. “She can do that?” She could see the pain in his eyes, and somehow she knew that Scott Byerly had been touched in some way by this ability of Nealon’s. How best to exploit it? “That’s … she could strip the layers away from a person … peel them like an onion, taking a little humanity, a little personhood away from them at a time until …” She swallowed heavily. “I mean … what would even be left, once she took … whatever she wanted?” She gave her voice a haunted quality, like she’d let her imagination wander down the road not taken and found it led into a foul grove, filled with rotting trees shaped like monsters and beasts.
Her little shot hit its mark. Scott flushed, his nostrils flaring wide, and then all the fight went out of him. He sighed, loudly, and she would have bet he didn’t even know he was doing it. “I don’t know,” he said, as though he’d asked himself the same question a hundred, a thousand times, and never found an answer that satisfied. He rolled on the balls of his feet, and started to turn. “I should—”
“Please stay,” Nadine said, putting a pleading note into her voice. Sure it was pathetic but it usually worked beautifully, and honestly, she didn’t care what people thought of her most of the time, especially insignificant shits who didn’t matter in her grand scheme of things.
She cared that she got what she wanted.
“If you leave, she’ll come back,” Nadine said, swallowing heavily. “I—I don’t have anywhere else to go, and there’s no one—no one will help me. The things she said to me, accused me of—she thinks I’m rich and evil, but—I mean, the FBI seized all my assets. I don’t even have enough to get a hotel room at this point, my electric bill is thirty days past due, and I ca—” She halted, midword, and pushed out that last tear, let it roll like a punch. “I’m sorry. None of this is your problem.”
That was the bait, the trap set. All she had to do was wait, and she’d know in seconds if he’d stumbled over his gallantry and fallen right into it.
“She does have a tendency to fixate on people she considers suspects,” Scott said, staring off into the distance, past her shoulder. “If she really thinks you’re guilty … you’re right, she’ll be back.” He seemed to dwell hard on this, and then he pulled out his cell phone and dialed. After a moment, he said, “Hey, it’s me. What’s the word from—” He paused, listening. “And forensics is—” He stopped again, listening to the voice at the other end of the line. “Okay. Tell Phillips I’m playing a hunch for a while, since we don’t have anything to go on at the moment.” He nodded, the idiot, as though the person on the other end of the line could see him. “Call me if anything comes up.” And then he looked up at her. “I can stay.” That caution flared up again, as he remembered who she was. “For a while.”
“Thank you,” she said sincerely. Based on what she’d seen of him so far … a while was all she’d need.
And the best part was … he didn’t look half bad, if a little too innocent for her usual taste. He was a strapping guy, big and strong, broad-chested, fit.
Hell, even absent the obvious effect it would have on Sienna Nealon … Nadine might just enjoy this.