Addison

THE CALL FROM Ethan Sinclair came in the next day. Dylan sat on the edge of her seat and listened as I set up the interview for the following morning. Then I calmly hung up the phone before she and I jumped out of our chairs and danced around the office.

“So the interview’s tomorrow?” Dylan asked when we finally settled down enough to speak.

“Yep.” I rubbed my hands together. “Ohmigod, we need to close the office and go shopping.”

“No we don’t,” she replied, her tone emphatic. “We went shopping before we opened the office. You know, last week? We have plenty of business clothes to choose from.”

“But do we have anything from the line of ‘I can spy on dirty cheaters without getting caught’?”

Dylan giggled. “I don’t think that’s an actual line of clothing.”

“Well it should be, because that’s what we need. I could always go for Thug Barbie again.”

“You promised Jake no more wearing lingerie in public.”

“I’m sure I can find something else.” I whipped out my cell phone and started scrolling through my contacts. “In fact, I bet Monique will know exactly what we need.”

“No...not Monique,” Dylan groaned.

Monique was my personal shopper. Dylan still hadn’t forgiven her for their last encounter. “How can you still be upset with her? You looked gorgeous in that gown.”

“I know!” Dylan agreed. “But you guys tricked me.”

I laughed. “Dylan Linn James, you are not that stupid.”

“She had me try on sixty-three hideous dresses before she trotted out the one you’d already decided I’d wear. That counts as a trick in my book.”

“Yep, we had to fool you into looking good. What does that say about you?”

Dylan snapped her mouth shut and glared at me. Then her glare turned into a very satisfied, and slightly frightening, smile.

“What? No snappy comeback?” I asked.

She shook herself. “Sorry. I was stabbing you and Monique in my mind.”

“Sometimes you’re a little scary,” I said, dialing Monique.

Dylan giggled maniacally.

An hour later, Monique met us at Anthropologie, where we found the perfect interview outfits. The next morning, we arrived at Ethan Sinclair’s office at eight forty-five. It was only a few blocks from our office, but miles away in terms of style. There was no doorman for the dilapidated building, so we had to call up to be buzzed through the security door. The elevator was out of order (and looked a bit shady anyway), so we took the stairs to Ethan’s third-floor office where a mousy receptionist seated us before disappearing into the adjoining room.

Moments later, a handsome, dark-haired man in a rumpled suit introduced himself as Ethan Sinclair and showed us into his office. He gestured us toward seats barely better than folding chairs while he sat behind a well-used desk and slid a manila file across the desk at us.

“What’s this?” I asked, reaching for the file.

He smacked a hand over it, trapping it to the desk, while he pulled a sheet of paper from the top of his file cabinet. “Sign this first.”

I skimmed the paper while Dylan asked what it was.

“Typical non-disclosure to protect the privacy of myself and my clients,” Ethan provided.

After I confirmed the non-disclosure didn’t set us up for failure (or liability) we signed the form, he filed it away, and then released the folder. I picked it up and started thumbing through it while Dylan scooted her chair closer so she could see.

“This is your first job,” Ethan said. “My client, Mary”—he pointed to a photo of a plain-looking woman in a conservative dress—“is convinced her husband, Greg”—he pointed to the big man in a business suit standing beside Mary—“is cheating on her with his coworker.” He picked up another photo and added, “Jean. There’s a copy of Greg’s work schedule in the file. What I need you to do is follow him and catch him in the act with Jean, or any woman other than Mary for that matter. Snap a few pictures, bring them back to me, and I’ll pay you five hundred dollars.”

I’d done some charity event planning for my family but hadn’t ever officially been interviewed before. But this didn’t seem like an interview. I looked to Dylan, whose forehead was scrunched up in confusion.

“And this is...our interview?” I asked Ethan.

He gestured at a stack of files on his desk. “I don’t have the time to even post an ad, much less interview investigators, so I figured we’d just go ahead with a trial run. You get proof of him cheating, you get paid and I give you another file. You don’t get proof, you don’t get paid or another file and we go our separate ways. Nothing gained, nothing lost.”

Well that was pretty cut and dried, but it didn’t sound anything like the business practices we’d learned in class. “What about a retainer?” I asked.

He chuckled and leaned back in his chair. “I just started my own practice and am busting my ass to keep it afloat. If I could afford a retainer, you’d be sitting in better chairs and I’d be hiring a PI with references.”

“Well, we charge one hundred fifty per hour, plus expenses,” I countered.

“We do?” Dylan said, then added quickly, “I mean, we do.”

“I’m not paying for your on-the-job training,” Ethan said. “Mary will fork out five hundred for proof, but that’s it, so if you want one-fifty an hour, I suggest you get proof in three hours.”

“Uh...what if Greg’s not stepping out on Mary?” Dylan asked.

“Oh, he’s cheating,” Ethan replied.

Intrigued, I asked, “How can you be so certain?”

“I’ve been doing this long enough to know, but trust me...even if I were a blind man sitting in on their mediation, I would have been able to see it.”

“That sucks for Mary,” Dylan said, studying the photo of the two of them.

I glanced back at the file, my blood boiling, my hatred of cheaters overtaking my ability to study the information with any kind of logic.

I have always believed there will be a special place in hell for cheaters, but I became acquainted with the devastating effects of them when my parents fired Yolanda, Asher’s and my nanny. I was ten at the time and Asher was twelve. Yolanda had always been with us, and then one day she was gone. We didn’t even get to say good-bye to her. The only explanation our parents would offer was that our nanny had been fired for “lewd behavior.”

A few years later, during one of our parents’ epic fights, we overheard the truth. We sat at the top of the stairs and listened to Mom rage at Dad. She’d just come from one of her luncheons, where the cousin of Yolanda’s new employer loudly “let it slip” that our father had badgered our nanny for years. The day she told him she’d never sleep with him, he fired her. All those years, Mother had believed Yolanda had come on to him. The worst part about it was that Mother didn’t give a damn that Father had propositioned Yolanda or that he had fired her unjustly when she rejected him. The only thing our mom seemed concerned with was her reputation. She was so mortified he’d dragged our family into the middle of a scandal, she threatened to leave and sue him for everything he had. Like usual, Father threw money at the problem until it worked itself out, and Mother stayed.

After learning the truth, Asher spent years trying to find Yolanda without success, but back then we’d been young and had to hide the search from our parents. After we grew up we never looked for her, because what would we say? Would she even want to see us again after what our dad had done?

Dylan squeezed my arm, giving me a sympathetic smile. I took a deep breath and closed the file. “We’ll do it.”

“Great,” Ethan said. “Can you start tonight?”

“Yes,” I said.

The lawyer stood, shook our hands, and we headed back to the office to plan.