Chapter Twenty
Tiffany
“How did this happen, Mr. Haas?”
“I – I really don't know, Miss Greene,” he stammers. “Nobody, and I mean nobody saw this coming.”
The fat, sweaty man across the desk from me looks like he's about to have a heart attack. I could only be so lucky. Carl Haas is a reporter for the San Antonio Beat, one of the city's sleazier tabloids. And he is my employee – an employee that just failed miserably at his job.
As much as I hate coming to this city, I hate coming to the offices of the Beat even more. They're dirty, grimy, and about what you'd expect of a tabloid. I feel dirty even sitting in the chair across the desk from him.
Tossing the day's paper on his desk, I point to the headline above the picture of Brady, the woman, and his bastard son. A headline that announces in big, bold letters, “Keating Steps Out With Mystery Woman.”
“Clearly, somebody saw it coming,” I say. “Somebody from your own – paper – nonetheless.”
“To be fair, Miss Greene,” he says. “This story only came out after we got word that your brother ˗”
“Half-brother,” I snap.
“Sorry, half-brother,” he says. “That story was written only after we got word that some of the other journalists went down to the zoo to cover it.”
“Journalists,” I spit. “You and your ilk are even less a journalist than some of these bloggers who insist they've found Bigfoot's love child.”
“That's not exactly fair, Miss Greene –”
“You told me that you have the pulse of – society – in this city,” I cut him off. “You told me there is nothing that happens among the so-called San Antonio A-list that you don't know about first.”
“And that's all true,” he argues. “This though – this came out of left field. Nobody knew he was dating this woman. Not until yesterday.”
“I pay you a lot of money, Mr. Haas,” I say, my voice bitterly cold. “I pay you that money to keep tabs on my half-brother. To let me know about the women in his life.”
“I – I know you do, Miss Greene,” he says. “But I can't tell you something that I don't know about.”
“I pay you to know these things, Mr. Haas.”
He falls silent and looks down at the top of his cluttered, filthy desk. I grimace at the collection of soda bottles and old fast food wrappers. There is an overpowering odor of grease and body odor in his office and if I stay there much longer, I might just be sick.
“What do you know – if anything – about this mystery woman?” I ask.
He sighs and sifts through some of the pile of papers on his desk, likely pretending he's looking for something so he doesn't have to meet my eyes.
“Not much yet, I'm afraid,” he says. “All I know at this point for sure is that her name is Amanda Johnston.”
“And?”
“That's it,” he says. “She's not one of the elite in the city. So far as I've been able to dig up so far, she's a nobody. Nobody of any real relevance in San Antonio, anyway.”
I laugh and shake my head. “So, my half-brother is dating a pauper,” she says. “A mysterious, unknown pauper at that.”
Mr. Haas shrugs. “So far as I can tell at this point.”
I look at him coldly, pinning him to his seat with my eyes. I want him to feel the full weight of my unhappiness and dissatisfaction with his efforts. This is my inheritance, my birthright on the line and he needs to understand how personally I take it and what I will do to him if he fails me.
“Certainly, she did not materialize out of thin air,” I say. “And I highly doubt he imported her from Russia. This woman – this Amanda Johnston – somebody in this god forsaken city knows who she is. Knows about her.”
“Yeah, probably.”
I look at him for a long moment. “Then don't you think you should be out there, on the streets, doing what you can to learn everything you can about her?” I say coldly. “Or should I perhaps, release the photos?”
A look of pure terror seizes his face and Mr. Haas looks ready to blow. He shakes his head violently.
“No, no need to do that, Miss Greene,” he says.
I believe in having leverage over people. I find that it greases the wheels and allows things to get done in a far more efficient manner. For instance, I have photographs of Mr. Haas here engaged in an illicit affair with an underage teenage boy.
Holding on to leverage like that can be a very persuasive tool in getting a person to agree to your demands. But I'm not a complete monster – I pay him a very fair wage for his services. Though, given his current failures, I'm not certain what I'm paying him for.
“Then get me what I need,” I say. “I need to know who this girl is. I need to know her vices, her dirty dark secrets. I need to know everything about her.”
I have a private investigator on retainer and he's been wonderful in providing me with leverage on any number of people – such as the unfortunate photographs of Mr. Haas. It was the happy by-product of a normal investigation, but even my PI has lines he won't cross. He has ethics and refuses to dig too deeply into the muck of somebody's personal life.
But somebody like Mr. Haas here – he doesn't concern himself with ethics. Which is why he is perfect for the role I need him to play in protecting my own future and my own legacy. Those things I'm owed.
“I need something I can use, Mr. Haas,” I say.
“I'll find it, Miss Greene,” he says. “Don't worry. I'll find it.”
“You have until the end of the week.”
I stand and quickly walk out of his office, wanting nothing more than a hot shower and a stiff drink. I slide into the back seat of the car and the driver closes the door, sealing me into the dark, comfortable interior. I instruct him to drive and then raise the glass partition between us, needing a little privacy.
I didn't see this coming. I didn't think that Brady would ever be serious enough with a woman to threaten my inheritance. He loves living the playboy lifestyle. Loves to party. Loves beautiful women. And he takes nothing seriously. Ever.
Which makes the fact that he has a mystery woman – that nobody knew a thing about – on his arm more than a touch disturbing. His affairs are always public and always very brief. Making the situation even more worrisome for me is that he had his son with them in the picture.
Brady is a lot of things, but one thing I do know – and the only thing I'll give him credit for – is that he is a devoted father. Certainly, more so than his own dirtbag of a father. And I know that Brady would not stand for shuttling strange women in and out of Nicholas' life. The fact that he rented out the zoo for the three of them to spend a day together is – troubling.
Mr. Haas' failure to see this situation coming – and even more disturbingly, to know nothing about this woman – is causing me more than a little stress. I can see the threads of all of the plans I've made, of the groundwork I've laid, dangling out there. All Brady needs to do is pull one of those threads and the entire tapestry will unravel.
And I can't let that happen.
I don't have faith that Mr. Haas is going to deliver. If this woman is as big of a mystery as he says, I fear that he might not be able to dig up anything I can use. Which means that I need to implement my contingency plan.
I didn't want to have use my nuclear option, but I don't see that I have much choice. If Brady is as serious with this Amanda Johnston as it seems, then I'm going to need to blow things up sooner, rather than later. I cannot afford to let them get married or I'm going to lose everything that's owed to me.
I take my phone out of my purse and dial my PI's number. He answers on the first ring.
“Ackles,” he says in his, thick, gruff Texas drawl.
“Mr. Ackles,” I say. “Tiffany Greene.”
“Yes ma'am,” he replies. “What can I do for ya?”
“The contingency plan we discussed,” I say. “I need to begin implementing it.”
He chuckles softly. “Saw the paper this mornin',” he says. “Thought I might be gettin' a call from you today.”
“You thought correctly then,” I reply. “Can you do it?”
“Course,” he says. “Just gimmie a little time.”
“Of course,” I say. “But please be aware that time is not our greatest ally right now.”
“Roger that,” he says. “I'm on it.”
“Thank you, Mr. Ackles.”