Read Online Great Exploitations (Crisis in Cali) by Nicole Williams - Free Book Online

trying for close to a month to attract Henry in the old-fashioned ways, she’d resorted to those less well known tools in our toolboxes. A vial of this or a pill of that dropped into a Target’s drink, and voila , an Eve can render a man witless and powerless. Judging from the cocktail this Eve had dropped in Henry’s drink, it was a miracle he was still alive.
    My palms were so damp, the pages started to slip from my hands, but I’d read enough. I’d seen enough. I let the file and its contents spill to the ground. Henry’s mother had somehow managed to get in touch with the Eves once she’d learned of her son’s engagement in hopes that she could tear us apart before we reached the “I do” stage. An Eve had been assigned to Henry, worked Henry in what I guessed was the typical fashion, and after getting nowhere, decided to resort to means that weren’t necessarily unheard of in our line of business, but they were rare. Most of the men we dealt with didn’t need to be begged or drugged—they were usually the ones who pulled us down with them. I didn’t doubt that Meryl’s Contact had been somewhere inside that room, snapping the photos that would no doubt wind up on my desk or in my backpack, but me walking in . . . not even Mrs. Callahan could have planned that more poetically.
    Henry had been a Target before. G had to have realized that, so why hadn’t she told me? I guessed she wouldn’t have known who Henry’s fiancée was, but that my Target had been one before shouldn’t have been left out of my initial briefing.
    After the file, I was done. I was so exhausted I wasn’t sure if I’d ever recover from it. My life had been filled with lies and deceit these past five years, the lies I gave and the ones others fed me. I’d lived with lies for so long, I wasn’t sure I knew what the truth was anymore.
    Somewhere along the way, the ocean waves lulled me to sleep. When I woke, I could just make out the morning light starting to touch everything around me. The release of sleep hadn’t helped me make sense of the chaos surrounding me, but it had managed to create a peace within me that I wasn’t used to feeling. It was a peace that couldn’t seem to be shaken, even when I thought of everything I’d learned over the past twelve hours.
    The more I contemplated it, the more at peace I felt, which didn’t make sense. Nothing about what had recently happened stemmed from a peaceful place. Whatever the reason for my newfound tranquility, I’d take it, but I couldn’t waste any more time reveling in it at the condo. I could sense G was on her way, and with her, she was bringing a boatload of difficult questions and scalding accusations.
    I couldn’t be a part of this life any longer. I was done. Out. The career I’d dedicated myself to for years was the same one that had been responsible for decimating the very best thing I’d ever had. My salvation had also been the reason why I’d needed salvation in the first place. That was all too much irony to continue condoning. I wasn’t going to turn on that phone again, so my silence and disappearance would have to suffice for G.
    As I peeled myself out of the lounge chair, I noticed a note in the file that I hadn’t seen last night. It was paper-clipped to the last page, a simple message scratched down in Henry’s familiar handwriting. It read, If you can and want to leave it all behind, the plane leaves at seven a.m.
    No specifics, no information about where the plane was going or with whom or for how long—just those few words. Could I and would I leave it all behind? Everything? Not just my work as an Eve, but what had happened between Henry and me? How he’d hurt me, how I’d hurt him? How we’d deceived each other?
    Could I leave it all behind? Would I?
    Those were questions I didn’t stop asking myself as I rolled my suitcases to the Mustang, and they were the same questions I was asking myself as I left the condo behind forever. They were the