Great Exploitations (Crisis in Cali) Read Free Page A

was when my phone rang again. After three days of radio silence, G would be pissed if I didn’t answer.
    Sighing, I tore my eyes from Henry as he wove through the lab. Fairy tales were for girls. Reality was for women. Duty was for me.

 
     
    THERE WAS NO rest for the weary. Obviously. G’s call last night, when I’d been entangled with Henry Callahan on my desk, had not been for the sole purpose of checking in on her coveted Ten. There’d been plenty of that of course, and I’d assured her things were progressing at a satisfactory pace and that I estimated I was within weeks of closing the deal. I left out the part about me being a couple pieces of clothing away from having closed the deal last night. Since none of it had been planned and a Contact hadn’t been called and all those other small details like not letting it get personal were missing, I kept that secret to myself. G didn’t need to know I’d almost had sex with Henry because the Eve she knew hadn’t been about to do that. It was the Eve she didn’t know who had been about to make love to the man she’d once loved.
    So after ten minutes of Callahan Errand edited play-by-play, G dropped another Errand on me. Not because she was worried the Callahan one was taking too long, she assured me—we both knew this wouldn’t be one I could close in a week—but because she didn’t want me getting bored, aka rusty. She didn’t want her top Eve getting out of practice working a single Errand for months. She wanted to make sure that once we’d closed the Callahan Errand, I’d be ready to spring right into the next one she had waiting at the top of her never-ending stack.
    I’d never mentioned to G that when and if I closed a Ten, I’d take my earnings, add them to what I’d already saved, and buy a one-way ticket far away from this life. She clearly assumed I would keep going until the first loss of elasticity in my boobs made her force retirement on me. She really didn’t have a clue . . .
    So another Errand it was. This one, she assured me, would be so simple, I’d snap my fingers and it would be done. It was such an easy, breezy Errand she could have handed it to a rookie Eve as her very first assignment. So I already knew the breed of Target before she dropped the details on me.
    Professional athlete. Top of his game and top tier of the pay scale. Pretty little trophy wife at home with a ring so large, it obscured her view of what was happening right in front of her face. The mansion that smirked at the other mansions on Mansion Row, outlined by a string of fancy, fast cars in colors that are made to be seen. The only thing grander than the mansion and cars and wife was the ego of the Target himself.
    I’d worked plenty of pro-sports Targets, mainly in my first year because, as G had explained to me back then, those guys possessed dicks so undiscerning, she could have dropped a pomegranate in their laps and they would have dropped their pants. It was true. Those Errands were so simple and clear-cut, I’d never taken longer than forty-eight hours to close one. On my last one, I’d casually wandered up to the Target to catch his attention, and before I’d gotten out a Hey, he told me his limo was around back and it had a spacious and comfortable back seat.
    This Target was Damien Wallace, a basketball player who’d gone pro a few years into college and hit it big his first year in the pros. He lived with his wife in the Bay area, which would make it that much easier for me. I wouldn’t have to jet-set across the country to work duel Errands. Apparently, when he wasn’t making headlines or breaking rebounding records, Mr. Wallace could be found with his wife on their yacht going up and down the coastline or on the golf-course with other members of his team. Or lately—the whole reason Mrs. Wallace had called G in the first place—in the penthouse suite of whatever hotel was closest to the club he’d been visiting at the time.
    G had told me