Guilty Pleasures (5 page)

A sharp knock on his door jerked him back to reality.

“Come in.”

“Your mail, Mr. Ingram.”

“Thank you, Linda.”

She put the mail in his in-box. “You have a meeting at ten.”

Stan nodded, reached for the stack of mail, and shuffled through it.

Linda looked at him for a moment, shook her head, and walked out.

Just the usual stuff. Stan tossed the envelopes aside one at a time until he came to a thick brown one. He frowned, reached for the letter opener, and slit open the envelope.

He gasped, grabbed his chest. A handful of color photographs of him, bare-assed naked with … Leslie on top, stared back at him.

His stomach rushed to his chest. Bile burned the back of his throat. He blinked hard. Must be some kind of optical illusion, his imagination gone wild.

His hands shook as he picked up the pictures, stared at them in terrified disbelief.

His eyes were closed, but he was smiling … or so it appeared. Leslie straddled him. Her naked back faced the camera. Her head was tossed back in a vision of ecstasy. Her black hair hung across her shoulders. Another photo was of him again on his back with Leslie leaning toward his erection, her mouth opened wide.

“Oh my God. Oh m-my God.” He grabbed his chest. His heart was out of control. Sweat ran down the center of his back. The room swayed in and out of focus. What did this all mean
Oh God.

The phone screamed. He yelped in shock. He looked at the flashing light. The ring pierced the room again. A wave of nausea loosened his bowels. He reflexively squeezed his butt cheeks to keep from having an ugly accident. Ring!

He forced himself to concentrate, drag his hand toward the phone. He swallowed a nasty taste in his mouth.

“In-g-gram,” he stammered. He struggled with his tie, which was choking off his breath.

“Did you get my present
”

His head spun. “I—I don't know what y-you're talking about.”

“Oh, I think you do. Maybe you can't talk right now, so just listen. Okay
You have three days to put together fifty thousand dollars in small bills. You'll get a call on day three. Be sure to answer the phone, Stan. I'd hate to have to leave a message. Oh, and one last thing. If you don't have the money, if you don't answer the phone, the next delivery will be to your wife, then your boss, then … Well who knows. There are just so many options. Oh, yes, and just like they do on TV, we have copies and a video! Have a great day, Stan. And by the way, you were marvelous!”

Stan Ingram barely made it into the stall of the men's room before his stomach emptied.

*   *   *

Weak and disoriented, Stan made his way back to his office. He locked the door. His mind ran in a million directions at once. What was he going to do
He didn't have fifty thousand dollars, and he had no way of getting it. Lenora controlled all the money; she always had. He couldn't let her find out. Worse, he couldn't let those … those pictures get into the hands of management. What little career he had would be ruined.

His intercom buzzed.

He stabbed at the flashing light with his index finger. “Y-yes
”

“Your meeting is starting.”

He swallowed. “I'll be r-right there.”

Stan sat in his high-backed leather seat, paralyzed by fear and circumstance. He was a fool to have thought that someone like Leslie would have a real interest in him.

Slowly he pushed himself to a standing position. He had three days to figure something out. He shoved the photos in his desk drawer and locked it. Maybe what he should do is simply walk out the bank doors and keep going. Who would miss him anyway

*   *   *

Lenora Ingram sat in front of her computer. Her emerald eyes studied the encrypted security file on the screen. She'd been working in secret for close to three years to nab Xavier Suarez. It would be her coup de grâce. His capture would garner her the status and recognition that she so richly deserved.

She knew she was loathed within the department. Her nickname among her colleagues was “Little Bitch.” Although they dared not say it to her face, she'd heard the whispers and the snickering. All that was about to change, and those snot-nosed bastards would have to
bow down
to the Little Bitch. Suarez was a notorious smuggler, bringing in everything from guns to drugs to diamonds. But the FBI had yet to connect him to anything. He covered his tracks well, and his front men remained equally untouchable. She was getting closer. So close, she could smell his Venezuelan sweat.

She studied Suarez's picture on the screen. He was what romance novelists would describe as devilishly handsome. Of medium height, with dark hair swept back and away from his broad forehead. A thin mustache outlined a rich mouth. His eyes were raven black, piercing, dominated by silky sweeping brows and long lashes. His swarthy good looks belied his ruthlessness. Suarez was said to have murdered his own sister for having crossed him in a drug deal. Lenora wasn't sure if the story was based on fact or urban legend.

She closed that file. This was her personal quest. No one in the department knew what she was doing. It was only a matter of time before she nailed him.

Lenora smiled. She could write her own ticket, get rid of that albatross of a husband, and have the head honchos eating out of her hand. She wondered how they would feel when the tight shoe was on the other foot.

She pulled open her filing cabinet drawer and pulled out the folder containing information on the latest terrorist threat. Her mouth twisted in a petite grimace of disdain. It was all bullshit. A government smoke screen to scare the public. Who the citizens should really be concerned with were their elected officials.
Those
bastards were the
real
criminals.

Lenora took her designer jacket—in the predictable corporate gray—from the back of her hard as nails chair and put it on. For the next hour, she had to listen to the Chief drone on about illegal aliens crossing the borders of Mexico into the United States. She was part of the task force but could give less than a damn about illegals. However, she would play the role for the big boys and bide her time.

“Good morning, Agent Ingram,” Mike Fuller said as she passed him in the long corridor. His cool green eyes hungrily took her in.

“Morning, Mike.”

He winked. “Nice skirt.”

“Fuck you, Mike.” She walked off to the sound of his chuckle.

Her department, International Affairs, was run—make that
overrun
—by men. Men who firmly believed that equal opportunity and women in the work place had led to the downfall of the United States of America. Of course, they didn't speak their thoughts out loud, but it was evident in the sexism and chauvinism in the department. Women were routinely ignored. Most of the female employees were relegated to the secretarial pool, or if they were really talented promoted to the status of Assistant to an Assistant. There weren't even enough women to really protest the treatment. The few who had crawled up the ranks kept quiet and kept their paychecks.

Lenora saw her way out of that fate, and she planned to take it. She opened the door to the conference room, took her seat, and gritted her teeth. It was only a matter of time, she silently chanted. Only a matter of time. She flipped open her notepad and pretended to be interested in the PowerPoint presentation.

When she looked up, the conference attendees were pushing their seats back under the table and gathering their notes.

Lenora shook her head. She'd actually zoned out for the past twenty minutes. She collected her belongings, prepared to leave—when her boss, Special Agent Flannagan, stopped her.

“Lenora, can I see you in my office
” He didn't wait for her response. He walked out of the room.