Sadie
“Who are you? What do you know about Bamber?” Micah leaned against his desk, looking straight at me—staring at me, in fact. “Where is he?” I wished that he’d be quiet for a minute—just a few seconds—just to give me the chance to work on the idea that I’d gotten.
“My name is Sadie,” I said quickly. “Sadie Bamber.” Micah’s eyes widened slightly and I tried for a quick smile. “Yeah—I’m Chris’ sister. That’s how I know about Bamber.”
Micah stood and went around to the other side of his desk once more, seating himself and looking at me intently. “Where the hell is he?”
“I’m not going to tell you that,” I said. “Not—not yet, anyway.” I took a quick, deep breath, trying to cover it as best as I could. “He didn’t steal from you; someone else—two people—jumped him, took the cash and the drugs.” Micah raised an eyebrow at that, and I thought to myself that his brows were oddly well-groomed for a guy. “Chris doesn’t have the money; he said the guys who attacked him in his car had used the service last week.” I pressed my lips together for a moment. “He doesn’t have the money or the drugs,” I finished, “but he didn’t take them himself.”
Micah leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “Who the hell do you think you are and why do you think I’d fall for such an obvious line of bullshit?” It was my turn to stare at Micah; I’d told him the truth, hadn’t I? I was actually surprised—pleased—with how calm I’d kept through my recital, in spite of the fact that my voice had shaken a little bit.
“It’s not bullshit,” I insisted, feeling my face warm up slightly with blood rushing into it. “I just told you the truth—the facts—about the situation.” I licked my lips, wondering when my mouth had gotten so dry, my lips too. It was probably a bit naive of me, to assume that if I told the truth it would be obvious.
“Let’s assume I believe you—or at least believe that you believe that story,” Micah said, steepling his fingers in front of his face. “If you thought your brother was innocent, why wasn’t your first move to bundle him onto a fucking bus headed to the middle of fucking nowhere?”
“Because that wouldn’t solve his problem—not in the long run,” I replied. “I—something tells me you’re not the kind of guy who would forget about something like this in a couple of weeks. Or even a couple of months. Am I right?” I caught a gleam of something like amusement in Micah’s eye.
“You are,” Micah admitted.
“So the goal would be to get rid of his debt—right?” I felt my heart beating faster. “If...if Chris was able to pay back, then that would make things even, wouldn’t it?” Micah’s tongue darted out over his lips and I saw the machinations in his eyes for an instant.
“Chris owes a lot of money,” Micah said.
“Five thousand, I know,” I countered.
“More than that,” Micah told me. I stared at him and for a moment I was torn between wanting to cuss him out for a liar and feeling dread at the fact that my own brother might have sent me in with unreliable information. “He also owes for some shortfalls the previous weeks. So call it six.”
“Okay,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “Six thousand. If Chris was able to pay it back, you’d be square, right?” Micah shrugged one shoulder.
“More or less,” he agreed.
“I’m going to help him pay back,” I told Micah. “I want to make a deal with you—I work off Chris’ debt, since he can’t come up with six thousand fast enough without getting into more trouble.” Micah sat back in his seat and stared at me, his lips twitching slightly at the corners in the start of a smile.
# # #
Micah
Pull the other one, why don’t you? I looked at the girl who’d claimed to know something about Chris Bamber, who’d told me she was his sister. Either she really is his sister, or she’s his girl, I thought; after all: why else would she put her neck out like that? “You want to work his debt off?” I grinned a bit. “Tell me more about how a pretty little thing like you can do that.”
I had to admit that she was damn cute—wholesome, clean-cut, with reddish-blond hair and big, green eyes. I’d caught a quick glimpse of her figure when she’d come in, and it wasn’t bad; not the kind of figure the girls I hired tend to buy for themselves, but then it was good enough that I was pretty sure this chick couldn’t imagine paying to improve it.
I let my eyes stop for a moment at the neckline of her shirt. The loose fabric couldn’t cover for the fact that her tits probably would just fit in my hands. I hadn’t caught sight of her ass, but her hips were full enough that it was probably pretty decent, and she didn’t have a lot of obvious extra weight on her; of course, Bamber himself was a skinny guy. Hard to believe that Bamber could have a hot sister and no one knew about it.
“I want to make a deal with you,” the chick—Sadie—said. “You’re a businessman, I figure you’ve got the same kinds of problems any businessman does.” I raised an eyebrow at that. Who the hell even is this chick? I couldn’t believe her.
“Go on,” I said, twirling my finger in a circle to underscore the point. “Tell me all about this deal you want to cut with me.” The idea of her—coming into my office, proposing some kind of deal—was enough to make me want to laugh my ass off. But I had to admit she had guts.
“Chris should have never gotten involved in something like this,” Sadie said to me. “But since he’s screwed up— intentionally or not—I figure I can make things right, get him even with you, and then he can bow out.”
“Just like that, eh?” I did smile at her. I could tell she was starting to get flustered. She stood and I took advantage of that to look over her body again. Now that I thought about it—now that I saw her up close—she was as hot as my hottest girls in the call rooms.
“I’ve got my head screwed on straight, and I know how to do business,” Sadie was telling me. “Within a few weeks, I can have the debt paid off—in installments—and it’ll all be settled.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing; this chick thought I would just accept a payment plan, like some kind of credit card company? As far as I was concerned it didn’t matter whether it was Chris who’d stolen the six thousand or someone else—I wanted six thousand, up front, done.
“I’m sure you’ve got a lot of people who owe you different amounts of money, right? You can’t afford to go after all of them with the full fury…” She was talking and talking, and I had no clue what she meant. The chick was throwing around words like Interest, capital, principal. Finance terms—shit my investment proxy would know about, but I didn’t really have a clue. I caught a glimpse of the girl’s ass in silhouette, through the tight cloth on her skirt, and a jolt of heat worked through me.
Even someone like her—clean, probably pretty easy to talk into all kinds of extras... She’s not going to be able to pay off six thousand in a couple of weeks on the streets. Maybe a call room—but I’m not about to give a room to someone who doesn’t belong to me.
“Just how the hell do you intend to work for me?” I gestured to her body. “I mean, you’re hot—don’t get me wrong—but something tells me a good girl like you isn’t cut out for hooking. And that debt needs paying back sooner rather than later.”
The color blazed up in her face. “How many people owe you money altogether?” she asked me, quickly. “Including Chris? How much to they owe you, all added up?”
I stared at her. What was this bullshit? “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
Sadie flapped one of her hands irritably and I almost called her out for it. She was hot, I’d give her that; and she was obviously pretty smart, but she was already starting to annoy me.
“Just—” she took a breath and blew it out between pursed lips. “How many people owe you money, how much to they owe in total, and how much are you writing off as total loss?” Sadie sat down and looked at me intently. “Do you have some kind of records? I mean—I know you can’t really have hugely accurate records, but surely you’ve got someone keeping books, making sure that things come out even, right?”
“You’re asking to see my books?” I shook my head. What was this woman on? Was she out of her damned mind?
“If you’ll let me,” Sadie said, shrugging. “I mean, I could just get a total from you, but the point is—if you can let me find a way to get you the six thousand that Chris owes, from other people who owe you…” she shrugged again. “That would work, wouldn’t it?”
It’s a setup, I thought. She’ll get access to your books, and use that shit to try and nark to the police, or maybe the DEA, and get her brother forgiven when you go inside. But Sadie didn’t look like the type of chick to nark. She looked like she was serious. “You’re going to collect my debts?” I crossed my arms over my chest and looked at her. It made more sense than her offering herself up to whore out for however long it took to earn Chris’ debt.
“Basically, yeah,” Sadie said. Her tongue flicked out over her lips and I almost wanted to offer her something to drink—but I kept myself from it. “Give me one week, and I’ll get back the equivalent of Chris’ debt, or maybe even more than that.” I saw her swallow, and images flashed through my head of that mouth, that tongue, those lips...and what it would feel like to brush up against the inside of her throat.
“One week? How exactly are you going to do that?”
“It’s like this,” Sadie said. “I figure that the guys who owe you money aren’t going to expect a woman to come around collecting it.” I half-nodded, accepting that as valid. “I also noticed that no one even so much as patted me down before letting me up here to see you—would you have let that go with a guy?”
I hadn’t even noticed the fact that no one had given her a once-over. Wish it could’ve been me, at that. I smiled slightly to myself, thinking of the flustered, almost humiliated look on the chick’s face that would have come with me copping a feel of her tits, her ass, while checking her for weapons. That wasn’t a pleasure I’d let anyone else on my staff enjoy. “Okay,” I said. “So you go to them, you try and collect on my debts.”
“I don’t try,” Sadie said, giving me a quick, confident grin. “I’m going to succeed.” She was entirely too confident—a recipe for disaster, at least for her. I felt the heat pooling in my groin; it was a shame to let a hot piece like that leap into danger. It was going to be a waste of time either way.
“If you think you can do it, I’ll let you,” I said, sitting back and looking her over again, letting my eyes stop at the best parts. I rose to my feet and it was almost like I was drawn to her; I walked around to the other side of my desk. “You know they’re going to get rough with you,” I told her. “Not a one of those bastards has any kind of chivalry or decency.”
“I can handle anything they can throw at me,” Sadie told me, looking proud of herself.