and she began to worry that the borrowed and
slightly too large shoes would fall off of her feet before they arrived at
their destination.
“In there,” Jenkins said, swinging open a
door.
The room that she stepped into was large
enough that her entire apartment would have fit inside it with room left over.
A glowing rug that was so gloriously colored and gently faded that she knew
instantly it had to be incredibly expensive, covered the polished hardwood
floor.
Heavy leather furniture sat in small
groups, a teakwood bar stood under a long bank of gleaming windows that
overlooked the vast skyline and a tall cabinet with two heavy doors sat between
a deep recliner upholstered in black leather and a rather odd and decidedly
out- of-place wooden chair whose heavy arms looked like they had been through
some type of battle. Hash marks covered them; deep gouges and shiny worn places
also marked the wood. For some reason the chair made Meghan feel nervous.
A large desk sat in the dead center of
the room, a chair behind it. The gilt-edged green blotter was empty; the Mark
Cross ink pen was neatly capped and laid in a straight line beside the blotter.
The paintings, tastefully lit by track
lighting, gave the room warmth but it still made Meghan feel too small and
somehow very vulnerable. She wasn’t sure of what she should do so she stood in
front of the desk, nervously clasping her hands in front of her waist and
trying hard to stand perfectly stall and straight.
The door opened and she arranged her face
into what she hoped was a pleasant expression. Danny Sullivan entered, his
expensive cologne adding its own subtle aroma to the scent of leather that hung
over the room.
“I have your file here,” he said as he
sat himself behind the desk. “Do you want me to tell you what is in it?’
The red heat filled her face again and
she wanted to run away or begin to weep. The folder, lying on his blotter,
looked so innocuous. The pale manila folded exactly and tabbed with red over
neatly typed black letters that spelled out her name was far from harmless
however.
“I assure you,” she said in a quavering
voice, “I am not going to steal anything.”
“I imagine if you had wanted to steal
something you would have grabbed one of the paintings and run for the door.”
There was amusement in his voice, but it made her feel no better. “Tell me why
you did it.”
Meghan took a deep breath, “I don’t have
a reason.”
That was true, but also a lie. Danny kept
his eyes locked on hers and she tried to hold his arctic gaze but she couldn’t,
she dropped her eyes to the toes of her shoes.
“Did it feel good?”
Meghan blinked. No one had ever asked her
that. “Excuse me?”
“You broke into homes – estates,
and robbed them. It must take a lot of sheer nerve to be a cat burglar, what I
want to know is, did that feel good? Did you feel a rush, did your pussy get
wet when you went through the windows?”
The word pussy caused her jaw to snap
open. She whispered, “Yes,” before she could stop herself. Her hand came up to
her mouth almost immediately in a vain attempt to trap the word, to take it
back.
Danny watched her struggle with herself.
He could see her discomfort and her shock, he knew that she was trying
desperately to figure out a way to take back what she had said and still save
face. He found himself amused by her, and intrigued but he was not quite sure
that she was exactly what he was hoping she was. His eyes went to the sleeve of
the jacket; it lay too long and wide across her wrist, hiding the bruise from
his sight.
“You didn’t do it for the money, your
family has enough of that.”
Meghan wanted to simply storm out. Once upon
a time she would have but that had been before she had been caught robbing the
house that belonged to the Beauchamps, one of the wealthiest families in town
and the people who just happened to be best friends with her parents. Her
parents had kept her from going to prison