Ellie Ashe - Miranda Vaughn 02 - Dropping the Dime

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DROPPING THE DIME

by

ELLIE ASHE

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Copyright © 2015 by Ellie Ashe

Cover design by Yocola Designs

Gemma Halliday Publishing

http://www.gemmahallidaypublishing.com

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BOOKS BY ELLIE ASHE

SNEAK PEEK

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My heart pounded, and my legs ached, but I kept putting one foot in front of the other. I struggled for breath and grimaced at the pain in my side. Gasping, I struggled onward through the empty city streets in the gray early light.

"I hate this. I hate this. I hate this."

There was no one out on the street to hear my complaints, so I voiced them, chanting in time with my footsteps on the sidewalk.

"Hang in there, pretty lady. Your butt will look good."

"Eeep!" I leapt sideways at the voice and saw the bearded man reclining in a doorway. He lifted a paper-covered bottle and winked a bleary eye at me.

I picked up my pace and crossed the street, my heart rate well into the aerobic range thanks to the new rush of adrenaline.

It's pretty much impossible for me to explain how much I loathe running.

I hate feeling like a lumbering elephant as my feet pound away at the unforgiving sidewalk. I hate sweating. I hate sports bras.

But I kept moving at a pace that could be considered a jog. It was barely daylight, the only sane time to go out in public and humiliate myself. At least there were few people out and about to see me attempt the concept of exercise.

Why was I doing this if I hated it so much? I asked myself this question as I tried to focus on the music streaming in through my earbuds. It was healthy, though it made me feel like I was dying. It would let me fit into the cute dress I just bought that was a
little
snug.

And the next time I was chased by gun-toting psychopaths, I'd be ready to run.

I hoped there was never a next time. But after recent events, I wasn't going to rule it out.

By the time I reached the entrance to the alley that led to my apartment I was a huffing, sweaty mess, and all I could think of was showering then stopping by my aunt's bakery and grabbing a hot almond croissant right off the baking tray. My mouth watered at the thought of the pastry as I opened the gate to the backyard that led to my apartment over Aunt Marie's garage. I'd been living in the apartment for a couple of years and though it was small and cramped and I could now afford to move out, I liked living near my only family member. And her yummy bakery.

I'd been on the lookout for a new place to live, but nothing had caught my eye yet. Living downtown near my new job was convenient, but there weren't a lot of rentals, at least not affordable ones. There were some nice houses in my price range in some nearby suburbs, but I wasn't sure if I was suburban material. I was unmarried, didn't have kids, and wasn't crazy about long commutes. Until something perfect lured me out of the garage, I was staying put. At least it was cheap, and I could save up some money.

I stepped into Aunt Marie's backyard and froze at the sight of a man standing in the shadows outside the backdoor.

A year's worth of adrenaline flooded my body, and my heart, already racing from exertion, nearly burst from my chest. My skin prickled, and my mind ripped through a thousand scenarios, none of them good. Burglar. Home invasion. Or something personal.

The tall, lanky man stepped out from under the patio cover and into the early morning gray light, and it was worse than I feared.

Robert Fogg.

My former attorney, now my boss.

In his boxers.

Good morning, awkward.

He set down a bowl of cat food and gave me a wave. I returned a weak greeting then ran up the wooden steps to my apartment.

Well, that settled it. I had to move.

It wasn't that I begrudged Aunt Marie her "happily ever after." The woman was a saint, who had taken me in when I was three years old, had worked like a dog building Sugar Plum Bakery into a successful business, and had put her love life on hold all these years to do both of those things. If dating my boss made her happy, I was all for it. From a distance.

Seeing her and Rob holding hands and laughing and exchanging those warm glances sparked something in me. And I wasn't too proud to admit it was a little bit of jealousy. I thought I was on my way to finding that happiness myself, but that didn't happen. My engagement to Dylan Holland ended two years ago when I'd been arrested on bogus fraud charges. That turned out to be for the best.

Plus, witnessing Aunt Marie's flourishing love life just reminded me of a time six months earlier when Jake Barnes and I were flirting, touching, kissing. We were also dodging bullets and bad guys as I tried to clear my name. While it had certainly felt like there was something between us at the time, I had since convinced myself that it was just adrenaline. Now I was moving forward, without the sexy FBI agent to deliciously complicate my life. So, yeah, I wasn't entirely convinced that "happily ever after" was something that could happen for everyone.

No amount of scrubbing in the shower could scour my brain of the image of my boss in his underwear, but an hour later I was dressed and ready for work. I couldn't put it off. I had to go spend the day working with Rob and trying to pretend I didn't know he'd made a booty call at my aunt's last night.

The Sugar Plum Bakery was two blocks from my apartment, and there was a line out the front door, as usual. I ducked down the alley behind the building and peeked through the screen door. Sheldon, the hulking kitchen manager, loaded trays into the industrial dishwasher while Aunt Marie checked the stocks of breakfast supplies.

"Good morning, sweetheart," Aunt Marie said, coming over to kiss my cheek. Her blue eyes sparkled, and her cheeks were rosy, and she looked happier than I'd seen her in a long time. "You're cheating, sneaking in the back."

"I don't have time to stand in line, and the thought of an almond croissant was the only thing that got me moving this morning," I said.

I found a bag and loaded up enough pastries to share at the office. Then one more because I needed to eat something on my way to work. Tilting my head, I studied the buttery fruit Danishes next to the croissants and added a couple of those for good measure. Damn. At this rate, I'd need to start running every day instead of just a few times a week.

Aunt Marie disappeared into the walk-in refrigerator and came back with a bottle of orange juice.

"You need to eat a balanced diet," she said, handing me the juice. She peeked in the bag. "Hungry this morning?"

"I'm taking them to work," I said.

She gave me a quick hug then picked up a tray of Danishes and started back to the line of impatient customers. "Make sure you get a bear claw for Rob. They're his favorite."

She winked and used her rear to bump open the swinging door to the front of the bakery. I added a bear claw, said goodbye to Sheldon, and let myself out the backdoor. I was happy for Aunt Marie. And for Rob. But I was definitely too close to the action, so to speak.

On the five-block walk to Rob's law office, I chowed down on my extra pastry. By the time I hit the door, I was ready to brew a pot of coffee and nosh on another croissant. I'd run three miles. I figured that entitled me to a little extra breakfast. Plus, I'd had the orange juice, so that's like a fruit.

"Mmmm, bear claws?" Rob greeted me with a grin and an outstretched hand. At his side, his massive golden retriever, Basil, looked up with hopeful brown eyes that never left the white bag.

"Of course," I said, handing over the treats.

Rob, too, had a satisfied aura around him, and I wished I didn't know the source of it. He pulled the bear claw out of the bag.

"I'm glad you're here early. We've got a new client coming in this morning, and I'm going to need your help with her. Let's talk when you get settled."

I made my way toward my desk in the corner. Rob's office wasn't quite big enough for his staff, at least not since he added me a few months ago. Theresa, his secretary, had staked out the reception area. My friend Sarah Girard, Rob's paralegal, had a desk in a wide area between Rob's office and the library/conference room. There was a small office off the reception area, but it was rented by Burton Worthington, a private investigator who worked with Rob on most of his cases. I couldn't intrude on his space, and Burton was in no danger of being evicted, since he was far more valuable to Rob than I was.

I had worked in the small conference room while helping Rob defend my own case, but the windowless cube we called the "war room" was claustrophobic, so Rob moved some old filing cabinets out and had pushed a small desk into the corner of the main office space. It wasn't ideal, but at least I wasn't stuck at my desk forty hours a week. My duties consisted of reviewing evidence in Rob's white-collar criminal cases, so I could set my own hours and work from home if I wanted.

Rob looked up from his computer as I walked into his office and took a seat in front of his wide oak desk. He pushed a folder across the desk toward me, and I took it.

"What's this?"

"Background for our new case."

The folder contained newspaper articles, about two dozen, on Leonidis Developments, Inc., a local real estate company that had built most of the suburbs surrounding the city. CEO Simon Leonidis was a prominent man in the community. The articles detailed his business successes and his charitable giving. The photos accompanying the articles showed a man in his mid-sixties, still very handsome, with thick silver hair and warm brown eyes.

"Simon Leonidis?"

Rob shook his head. "No, we're representing Kathryn Hammond, the corporation's chief financial officer. She's agreed to cooperate with the government, turn over information about Mr. Leonidis's illegal activities."

My eyebrows shot up at this news. "Really? He seems like such a pillar of the community."

Rob smirked. "Looks can be deceiving."

Ain't that the truth.

"Ms. Hammond will be here later. Can you sit in on our meeting? I'm going to need someone to translate the finance terms for this old cowboy," he said with a grin.

It was a little unusual for Rob to have a client who wasn't a criminal defendant, like I had been. Almost two years ago, I'd been charged with fifteen fraud counts, along with two of my bosses at the investment bank Patterson-Tinker Investment Strategies. Thanks to Rob, a jury had found me not guilty of the charges last summer. Since then, I had learned there was a difference between not guilty and innocent. As an attorney, Rob was satisfied with not guilty. But as the person accused, I wanted to be found innocent.

"What do you do when your client isn't charged with a crime?"

Usually, when a new case came in, we investigated, reviewed the evidence against the client, determined whether it should go to trial, or if Rob should negotiate a plea agreement with the prosecutor. But having a client who was a witness was new to me.

Rob ran a hand through his hair and leaned back in his chair. "Well, she's a whistleblower basically. She's turning over information to the government so they can go after Simon Leonidis, maybe others in the corporation. But we want to make sure she's protected, that the government isn't violating her rights. That she doesn't say something that gets herself in hot water. I'm working out an immunity agreement with the prosecutor, and once that's finalized, she'll sit down with the FBI agents investigating Leonidis and tell them everything she knows, provide them with the documents to prove it. If the case moves forward and someone is indicted, then she'll testify at trial."

I frowned at the thought of working for the federal prosecutors. My own trial wasn't so long ago that I was ready to forgive and forget that they'd tried to put me in prison for a decade. Plus, the prosecutor had made sure that my trial was high profile, and even after the jury found me not guilty, my reputation in banking was muddied up enough that I'd probably never be able to use my degrees in economics and finance.

"What can I do to help?"

Rob grinned. "She's bringing in a few years worth of annual financial statements, and I sure as hell don't want to read them."

It looked like my finance degree was going to get a workout after all.

"There is one other thing." Rob bit his lip, and his eyes flickered away for a moment.

"Okay," I said, unsure of myself. Had I screwed up something?

"The FBI agent on this case is Jake Barnes," he said.

My stomach did a gentle somersault at the mere mention of his name, but I struggled to keep my face neutral.

"That's not going to be a problem, is it?" Rob glanced up at me, a concerned expression crossing his face.

Damn it, I didn't need or want his pity.

"No, that's not a problem."

He raised an eyebrow. "Because if you and he were still involved, then there might be a conflict, and I'd need to disclose that to the client and make sure she understood and waived any conflict. And I'd probably need to inform the prosecutor."

I forced a smile. "Rob, it's fine. Jake Barnes and I are not, and were not, involved."

Jake had made that clear with a quick and adamant denial six months ago when we were in Miami. So we'd exchanged a few kisses. A few hot, mind-melting kisses. No big deal. It clearly meant nothing to him. Sure, he had to stay away from me while the investigation into our adventures in Central America was still pending. But then after that case was closed, Jake had vanished from my life like a wisp of smoke.