He practically flew down the stairs, outstripping the elevator, grateful he’d been working out more and more since May so he could keep up with Hunter and Chuck. He wasn’t as fast—or as muscled—but he wasn’t underweight with stooped shoulders or a potbelly like Foster, either.
God, he hated that guy.
Foster was a terrible, terrible suck-up, for one thing, and he was the kind of micromanaging executive who forced all the competent people in a department to quit, then congratulated himself on getting rid of dead weight. Right before being fired for destroying company productivity and forcing the executives to spend three years repopulating what had once been a perfectly functional department.
Carl had seen it happen several times at Serpentus. And he’d watched Foster Aldrich start the process all over again last May. Carl’s independence bothered Aldrich—but as long as Carl’s methods were sanctioned by the board, who had been really excited by Carl’s propensity for bringing in clients, Foster didn’t have a leg to stand on.
Carl just had to avoid the little bastard until Foster’s own incompetence fucked him over, and for that reason, he kept up a ground-eating clip until he arrived at Union Gold and disappeared inside.
Ginger—petite, with hair to match her name, a little bit of padding in the hips and bust, and a pointed chin and upturned nose—always reminded him of a cheerleader. One of the modern ones with the athleticism and nerviness that should have terrified football players in every school in the country. She even had a nose covered in little bronze freckles, discreetly covered by makeup of course. They’d worked out together for a time, and he knew the only reason he could bench press more than she could was because God had given him the advantage of being six foot four with shoulders almost as wide as she was tall. Give the woman time and her determination would rectify that, he was sure.
But that didn’t keep her from jumping to her feet in four-inch heels and greeting him at the table with a kiss on the cheek and a genuine smile.
“Carl! Honey, how’re you doing?”
“Can’t complain,” he said, taking the seat across from her in the booth. “Club soda?” he asked, indicating the drink in his spot, and she nodded.
“With lime, just like you like it.”
Ginger was drinking diet soda. As workout buddies a few years ago, they’d both confessed to being recently on the wagon, and it was one of the many things that had kept them from being lovers. Carl couldn’t do that. Not again.
“Thank you,” he said, giving her his best gracious smile. “But I have to warn you, I told Foster Aldrich that we were eating at Union Station before I left. You need to think of a reason to take a train after lunch. I’ll pay for your cab!”
She grimaced. “Gah! What a reprehensible little toad. And boy is he interested in you. He’s been looking up your contract, you know, to see what it says about your outside clients. He’s got an ugly soul, Carl. Be aware.”
Carl nodded, taking her warning seriously. “Watching my back,” he reassured before scanning the menu and setting it down, ready for the approaching server.
“So,” Ginger said when the server had taken their order and departed, “I’m so glad to see you actually here. How long are you staying?”
“Leaving the day after tomorrow,” he told her, grimacing at her surprise. “I’m really only here to ship my winter clothes to a sublet in Chicago. That’s going to be my home base for a while.”
She cocked her head. “Not that you can’t do that, Carl, but why now?”
He wondered how much to trust her. “For one thing, a friend of mine—the kid in a family I’m close to—is sick, and I just feel like I can do more for the family if I live in the same town and commute to the offices when I need to.”
“And for another?” she wheedled.
He could not have helped the wildfire that swept up his cheeks if he tried.
“Oh really?” she asked, surprised. “A young woman this time, or…?”
“A man,” he said simply. They were both bisexual, and having a friend with whom to freely discuss his love life was yet another reason Ginger had never been a part of that. “He… it’s only starting, but it’s got—” A vision of Michael’s dark eyes after their kiss that morning flashed through Carl’s mind. “—promise. So much promise.”
Her look at him was kind. “That’s lovely. I’m only jealous that it happened to you first.”
Carl smiled gratefully. “Thank you.”
“So, now that you’ve divulged all your secrets, are you going to tell me why you wanted to have lunch? Was that it? To flaunt your boyfriend and personal life because you have one and I don’t?”
Carl chuckled. “No, no. I’m pretty sure I could have done that over the phone.” He paused then and resisted the completely asinine urge to look around like a character in a spy movie. This was a perfectly innocuous question, after all. “Look, I’ve got a line on something odd going on, and I need to talk to your contacts in the DOI. Would that be a problem?”
Ginger frowned. “The Department of the Interior? Why? Is somebody smuggling alligators? Baby lions? Trespassing on tribal lands? Seriously, Carl, what do you need to talk to them about?”
“Endangered species,” he said grimly. “And Saudi princes. You must remember, Ginger. I worked that case for your client.”
Her eyes widened. “No,” she whispered. “Falcons?” She’d been the one to authorize his trip to Doha in Qatar eight years ago. He’d brought back pictures of the Souk to show her because they’d both been fascinated by the idea.
“I’m thinking,” he said. “But at the moment, all we have is someone smuggling bustard eggs.”
She frowned. “Wait. Is this about the Italian national in the desert?”
Interesting that she knew about that. “Mm, yes. I had some dealings with his family recently. The situation caught my attention.”
Her face hardened, and Carl was suddenly supremely aware that not only was she his superior, but she’d had a hand in some of the more hard-nosed decisions that he’d worked so studiously to circumvent.
“Leave it,” she said sharply. “Tell the family you met a dead end. Mandy Jessup did that investigation, and….”
Carl’s eyebrows went up. Mandy Jessup, the girl he’d flirted with back before Danny, had been on an investigation five years ago when she’d simply disappeared in Mexico. No body, no witnesses—nothing! She hadn’t had a husband or boyfriend at the time because apparently Serpentus was the death of all relationships, and her bank account had been cleaned out immediately after her last contact with her sister. Carl had been in Europe at the time, running down car thieves, and had been unable to blow town unless he’d wanted to blow his cover too. After the near miss with Chuck, that had been his last chance to stop this particular ring, and their body count had been growing.
By the time he’d been able to return to the States and stick his nose into Mandy’s investigation, the trail had gone cold. And given the investigator they did hire, a grizzled veteran with a lot of loudly voiced prejudices, anybody who would have helped them look for her had gone to ground.