After Hello Read Free Page A

said breezily, “No, no, attorney-client privilege, I get it.”
    He sighed. “I take my job very seriously. People need things; I find things. But need is something that is private—personal. If you knew what I’d found for this person, then you’d know something about them. You’d know something about what they needed. And what my brother’s boss needs more than anything at the moment is privacy.”
    We walked a few more steps together.
    “What kinds of things do you find?” I asked.
    “I can find anything.” He said this rather matter-of-factly. Not a boast or a brag. Just the simple truth.
    “Just books?” I asked.
    Sam shook his head. “This was a rare request.”
    The sky above us was a cloudless blue, bright and hot. “What was the strangest request you’ve had? I mean, if you don’t mind my asking. If it’s not confidential. ”
    He gave me a slow smile. “That’s easy. I once tracked down an honest-to-goodness pirate treasure map.”
    “Like with ‘X marks the spot’ and everything?”
    He nodded. “It even said ‘Here there be dragons’ in the margins of the oceans.”
    “No. Way.”
    “Way.”
    “Where did you find it? Who wanted it? A pirate map—” My voice trailed off into the high-pitched squeak it hit whenever I was excited about something.
    Sam laughed, but not to mock me. “Would you believe me if I said I found it at the pirate treasure map store and bought it for Long John Silver?”
    I laughed back. “Not a chance.”
    “Okay, okay. Here’s the story. I was in SoHo on a job for my brother when I stumbled onto a movie set.”
    “Which movie?”
    Sam waved his hand. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is that I saw a former client of mine working as an extra in the scene. During a break, he came over and told me that Vanessa was finally ready to trade.”
    “Who’s Vanessa?”
    “You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”
    I didn’t apologize. “I like knowing the answers.”
    Sam looked at me straight on, his dark brown eyes searching mine, searching me. The hairs on my arm shivered to attention. A warm wave shifted inside me under his scrutiny. He tilted his head so slightly I almost missed it—a gesture of acknowledgment and acceptance.
    When he looked away, I felt like he had plucked an important bit of information out of my mind and filed it away for future reference.
    Oddly enough, I didn’t mind.
    “So who’s Vanessa?” I repeated when the silence between us had stretched almost to the point of being uncomfortable.
    “Vanessa is a Creole voodoo priestess. She has an art studio in SoHo, where she lives.”
    I stopped walking. “She’s a what, now?”
    Sam didn’t stop with me. Instead he turned on his heel and walked backward. “She’s from New Orleans, originally, but she moved here four or five years ago. Tired of battling hurricanes, she said.”
    I closed the distance, my mouth hanging open in surprise.
    “A voodoo priestess,” I repeated. “Like in zombies and black magic and stuff?”
    “No, actually, nothing like that at all.” Sam looked at me again as though reconsidering where to put me in the filing system in his head. “You really don’t get out much, do you?”
    “You’re the one who noticed this is my first time in the city.”
    “Where are you from, anyway?”
    “Don’t change the subject. I want to hear the rest of the story.”
    “And I want to hear about you,” he said. From anyone else, that might have sounded like a bad pickup line, but all I sensed from Sam was genuine interest. I couldn’t tell if the flutter I felt was flattery or disbelief.
    “No, you don’t. Trust me, Vanessa the voodoo priestess is a lot more exciting than I am.”
    “Trade you for it,” Sam said, a shaded gleam in his brown eyes. Even walking backwards, he managed to avoid bumping into people, exhibiting a natural grace and instinct.
    “Trade me for what?”
    “Your story for Vanessa’s story—and the story of the pirate map.”
    “I