Cutting Loose Read online

  “Oh!” Rudy jumped, as if he’d truly forgotten that I was still there, taking notes on all his crazy ideas! I saw him glance down towards his bare wrist, then look away. Yes, he’d noticed the missing watch, even if he didn’t suspect Sawyer. I shifted my eyes briefly over to the thief, who hadn’t missed the director’s glance at his wrist. Sawyer didn’t look guilty in the slightest; if anything, he put on a self-satisfied little smile, like the cat that had swallowed the canary.

  “Forgive me,” Rudy went on, after pulling out his cell phone instead to check the time. “I hadn’t realized how long I’ve been talking! Why don’t we take five, go freshen up, and then meet back in the Main Hall! I have some wonderful ideas for how we can hang the bunting…”

  Rudy kept on talking, but I decided that it was less rude to leave now than to hang around a second longer and risk snapping, shouting at the man. He might not have much social perception, but he seemed honest enough. I nodded to him and Sawyer and stepped away, praying that I could remember the path back to outdoors. Even more than food, I desperately needed a breath of fresh air, to feel the warmth of the sun on my face.

  I managed to get back to the Institute’s main entrance after just a couple of wrong turns. I stepped outside, took a deep breath and let it out slowly, tilting my head up towards the faint but still present sun. Ahh, that felt so good!

  After three breaths, I felt a bit calmer, re-opened my eyes. I immediately spotted a café, Bean Scene, across the street from the museum that looked open. My stomach practically reached up and seized control of my brain, forcing my legs to hustle across the street and into the café.

  As soon as I pushed open the door, my nostrils flared at the scent of freshly baked bread, the hearty hint in the air of just-sliced deli meat. I hurriedly made my way up to the counter and ordered the heartiest sandwich I saw on the menu, along with an extra-large coffee. If I was going to keep taking notes on Rudy’s million party requests, I’d need all the caffeine I could get into my system!

  I stood near the end of the counter, waiting for my order, looking idly out the window of the café. It was then that I spotted someone sitting in a car, parked across the street, near the front of the Institute. I didn’t see a face at first, but the short-cropped blond hair on a square head looked oddly familiar.

  Sipping my coffee, I peered a little closer. I couldn’t make out his features, but as I looked, I grew more certain that I recognized that head. I collected my sandwich, pulled it from the bag, and took a big bite as I stepped outside and moved a few feet down the sidewalk for a better angle.

  Yes, it was definitely him. An impish smile dancing on my face, I crept closer. He seemed to be busy looking at a laptop screen sitting on the central console of his car and didn’t notice me – until I rapped on his window.

  Eastman leapt nearly out of his seat, high enough to bump his head on the ceiling of his car! He spun to look out at me, face instantly flashing into an angry glare. He looked just as he’d appeared yesterday, with short blond hair that still somehow managed to be slightly mussy, strong features, and a scowl plastered across his face. He instantly recognized me, and I had to jump backwards as he threw the door open.

  “You,” he said, somewhere between a sigh and a snarl. “What are you doing here?”

  “Me?” I replied, putting on my best innocent expression. It couldn’t match what I’d seen Sawyer pull off, but it made Eastman’s scowl deepen. “I’m on break from my job. But what are you doing here, skulking out in a car?”

  As I replied, I glanced past Eastman, into the car through the still-open door. I could see the laptop’s screen displaying some sort of video. Was that surveillance video? It had the grainy, black-and-white look of cheap cameras.

  A second later, Eastman sidled in front of me, bumping his car door closed behind him. “I’m doing my job,” he replied archly. “A job which is honest, unlike whatever you’re doing with that criminal. Unless you made the right choice yesterday and told him to kick rocks?”

  “Afraid not,” I said. Eastman could probably figure out pretty easily that I’d started working with Sawyer, even if I wasn’t doing anything illegal. Of course, Sawyer didn’t appear to be doing anything illegal, either, but despite his assurances to me, I was certain that he had an ulterior motive. “But I’m doing honest work, I promise. Scout’s honor.” I held up some fingers, trying to approximate a scout’s salute.

  Eastman shifted his glare over to my fingers, then back to me. “You were never a scout, were you.”

  I shrugged. “Is it against the law for me to lie about that?”

  “In my experience,” he countered, “if someone lies about one thing, they’re often likely to lie about others.”

  “Well, I’m not lying.”

  “And isn’t that what a liar would say?”

  I tried to find a counter to this, but I couldn’t get any sort of grip on his circular reasoning. “That’s hopeless!” I groaned, poking a finger at him with the hand that didn’t still hold half a sandwich. “If you went around thinking like that, you’d be convinced that everyone in the world is a criminal!”

  “In my line of work, that’s a fairly safe assumption.”

  “Sounds like a pretty lame way to live,” I said. “Come on, what are you doing here?”

  “Lame, but I’m right more often than I’m wrong.” He looked surprisingly sad to admit that fact. As I considered it, I had to admit that he probably had a point. After all, how would it be to go through life and be constantly uncovering horrible crimes committed by the people you met? Maybe being an FBI agent had stripped him of any optimism he’d had when he started.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” I pointed out.

  “I know. I’m trying to decide what I should tell you.”

  I thought about wheedling him some more, but he looked like he might snap at me again. Instead, I perched on the hood of his car and took another bite of my sandwich. Gosh, but it was good to get something to eat, after all that time cooped up in the museum! Eastman frowned at my butt’s location on his car, but he didn’t say anything to shoo me away.

  “Where’s the sandwich from?” he finally asked.

  Caught off guard by the question and with a full mouth, it took a moment before I could respond. “Bean Scene - the café over there, across the street,” I finally stammered out.

  “Is it any good?”

  I considered the sandwich. “Pretty tasty, but I’m also starving,” I admitted, still trying to figure out how our conversation took such a sharp left turn.

  “Not the most glowing endorsement, but I’ll take it.” Eastman locked his car with the key fob and then set off across the street towards the café. A few steps away, he turned and glanced back at me. He didn’t say anything, but his raised eyebrows asked the question for him.

  I followed after, still confused about what this supposed FBI agent wanted, or why he was after Sawyer.

  Inside the café, Eastman ordered a sandwich and coffee, and then settled into a chair at a small table. He flicked his eyes at me, and then at the chair beside him, clearly ordering me to take a seat.

  I sat. Sandwich on the table in front of me, I waited for his interrogation to start.

  “Alice,” Eastman said after a silence that stretched on for a couple seconds too long.

  “That’s my name, good job,” I replied, trying to sound cheery and teasing. Judging from his unchanged expression, it fell flat.

  “What’s the second half of it?”

  “Ice?”

  He didn’t laugh. “Your last name.”

  “I…” Would he keep it to himself? What if he put it into his files somewhere, and it got leaked out where my family could find it? “I don’t want to tell you.”

  That made his eyebrows creep upwards. “Suspicious behavior, especially when talking to an officer of the law.”

  “I don’t even know if you really are an FBI agent!” I protested, hoping this could buy me a few seconds. />
  Eastman reached into the pocket of his suit coat and withdrew a leather billfold, which he flipped open and extended so I could see. I saw his unsmiling picture on the laminated card inside, opposite a metal badge attached to the leather that looked very official. The few seconds hadn’t given me any new ideas.

  “Want to try again?” Eastman asked.

  I still hesitated a second longer, wondering if I could trust him. “You can’t tell anyone else,” I asked. “Promise.”

  His eyebrows were still raised. They were thick, I noticed. Bushy, like a couple of caterpillars crawling across his face. Those could be overbearing on another man’s face, but they seemed balanced by the rest of his strong features. His face was mostly angles, like he’d been carved from sharp-edged rock with slicing strokes of a chisel.

  “What if I don’t tell you?” I asked.

  He shrugged, not looking away from me. “I could always arrest you on suspicion.”

  “Suspicion of what?”

  “Hanging out with Darren Sawyer? All sorts of things. Being around that man makes you suspicious. Full stop.”

  “But you’d have to let me go,” I wheedled.

  “After a twenty-four-hour hold,” he admitted. “But that gives me plenty of time to fingerprint you, send your photo out to all the databases for identification. Probably would be easier for you to just tell me, save yourself the ride to a holding cell.”

  A thrill of fear ran through my body, up and down my spine. I really, really didn’t want to go to jail. I didn’t have any personal experience with jail, only what I’d seen on television. Still, that was enough for me – I didn’t need any sort of ‘scared straight’ program to keep me out of trouble.

  Besides, if I got arrested, my mother would surely hear about it through some channel. If she survived the initial heart attack, she’d come hunting for me with a mind full of murder.

  “Okay, okay,” I gave in. “But really, please, keep it quiet.”

  He didn’t say anything. His eyes waited, expectant.

  “Alice Melton.” I dropped my last name, the name that simultaneously filled me with pride and self-revulsion, and waited.

  For a moment, his face just showed incomprehension – and then the name registered.

  “Melton? As in…”

  I nodded, miserably.

  He was silent for several seconds, just looking at me. His sandwich arrived, and he didn’t even seem to notice.

  Chapter Nine

  * * *

  “Alice Melton,” Eastman finally repeated, as if he needed me to confirm that it hadn’t been an auditory hallucination.

  I nodded again. I waited for him to ask the next questions that I’d heard, so many times before, when I had to introduce myself to people.

  “As in the Melton family,” he asked next. “The billionaires, head of the whole Chicago political machine.”

  Another nod. My legacy, my ancestor’s accomplishments that trapped me like a fly in a web. Why did they have to be so conceited as to name the whole organization after themselves, with their last name?

  For another long minute, Eastman just stared at me. It seemed to take him a surprising effort to snap out of his daze. “You’ve got to explain more,” he finally said, shaking his head and reaching for the sandwich in front of him.

  “There’s really not much to explain. My great-grandfather was William Melton, who saw that politics was inseparably connected with business interests, and that it benefitted both sides to work together. My grandfather and father worked for his organization, expanded it. It handles donations, lobbying, industry groups, all sorts of parts that connect to politics without ever being directly elected. The Melton Group is considered to be one of the most valuable private companies in the country.”

  “I know about that,” Eastman said. “But what are you doing here, multiple states away?”

  I glared back at him. “Am I confined to exist only in Chicago, because that’s where my family is?”

  That got through to him, and he finally looked away from me. “No, of course not.”

  “Now, can you answer a couple questions of mine?” I jumped in, trying to take advantage of this momentary shift in conversational power. “What’s the deal with Sawyer? Who is he? Why are you after him?”

  Eastman frowned at me but didn’t say anything immediately. Still watching me, he took another couple bites of his sandwich. I waited as he chewed them, swallowed, not letting the silence force me to speak. I’d seen my father use this strategy to extract valuable concessions from clients and rivals. I wasn’t going to let this FBI agent use the tactic against me.

  “Darren Sawyer,” Eastman finally said after he’d finished eating a good quarter of his sandwich, “is one of the, if not the very, best sons of bitches in the world of white-collar crime.”

  “White-collar crime,” I repeated. “That’s financial stuff, right? Like embezzling money out of a corporation?”

  “Yes, although it’s broader than that. White-collar crime is everything from art forgery to bank fraud to embezzlement and racketeering. If it’s not openly violent and the criminal intends to make a financial profit, it falls under the umbrella of white collar.”

  “So what crimes has Sawyer done?” I asked.

  Eastman sucked his lips in against his teeth. “That we can prove? Nothing.”

  I waited.

  “But he’s the prime suspect for more than a dozen different crimes!” he burst out after another second, frustration coloring his tone. “He’s robbed banks, without ever appearing on security cameras! He’s stolen millions of dollars of rare and valuable art, sometimes leaving forgeries in their places that are so good that it took carbon dating to prove they were fakes! He’s practically the da Vinci of the white-collar crime underworld!”

  “But you can’t prove that he committed any of these crimes?”

  Eastman practically growled at me before he got his temper under control. “No,” he said shortly, scowling furiously at the remaining half a sandwich on his plate. “We can’t prove anything. The evidence, when we find any, is purely circumstantial, and definitely not enough for us to pursue charges against him.”

  “Well, he seems charming enough to me.”

  “Of course he does,” Eastman said shaking his head. “He’s charming to everyone. Even me. You know that he sent me a Christmas card last year?”

  “He did?” I asked, shocked.

  “With a photo from the Museum of Modern Art in New York.” This seemed especially depressing to Eastman.

  “So?”

  He glanced up at me. “Somebody robbed the museum in November. They stole a Cézanne worth upwards of sixty million dollars.” He ran a hand through his hair, further adding to its disarray. “Guess what painting was featured on the Christmas card I got from Darren Sawyer?”

  The answer was clear.

  “And so,” Eastman said after a pause, “let me ask you again. What are you doing with Sawyer, and do I need to start keeping a file on you as well?”

  I definitely didn’t want a file on me. “I had no idea about Sawyer’s background,” I said quickly. “Look, I’ve only known the guy since yesterday! I’m new in town, and he offered me a job.”

  “At the Institute of Arts, where you two have been skulking around all day.”

  “Skulking?” I repeated. “We’ve been chasing after the place’s prima donna director and taking notes on the billion things he wants to feature at his party!”

  “Party?” Eastman asked, sitting up a little straighter. “What party?”

  I shrugged. “There’s a new exhibition coming, I guess, and Sawyer managed to get himself hired as a consultant to plan for it. He hired me on to be his assistant, I think, and it feels like he’s delegating the party planning to me.”

  “Sawyer got himself hired as a consultant for an arriving art exhibition,” Eastman repeated in wonder. “That’s like a wolf getting himself hired as overseer of the chicken coop.”


  “Maybe he’s going straight, trying to put his skills to use for a good cause.”

  “Maybe I’m late for a date with a Victoria’s Secret model,” Eastman countered snappishly.

  I frowned at him. “You’re a real charmer, you know that?”

  “Watch it. I could still arrest you.”

  Just to further antagonize him, I reached out and grabbed a few of the potato chips that accompanied his sandwich, popping them into my mouth. “Look, he’s not doing anything wrong. And neither am I. And as far as I can tell, you’re the one who’s obsessed with him, stalking him trying to catch him committing some crime that might not even be real.”

  Eastman didn’t say anything. I suspected that he might not have any smart, snappy response ready, but I didn’t like the intelligent look in his eyes as he watched me. Despite his rudeness, the FBI agent seemed smart and capable, and I didn’t really want him digging further into my own background.

  “You could walk away,” he finally said.

  “What?”

  “Walk away,” he repeated. “You said that you just met Sawyer yesterday. You don’t owe him anything, do you?”

  I considered the question. I didn’t really owe Sawyer anything, but I had agreed to help with his job – and I’d also accepted his offer of a room in his penthouse apartment, which felt a bit like a promise that I’d stick around and not run off the first time an FBI agent suggested that it would be in my best interest to do so. “I agreed to help him,” I finally said. “And I’m certainly not going to do anything that’s against the law, but so far, I’ve just been doing normal work. I’m not going to walk away from him because of his past. Is that how you’ll judge me, Agent Eastman? Based on my past, my family’s name?”

  Eastman looked at me, and although his expression was mostly frustration, I thought I caught a hint of acknowledgement, of begrudging respect. “Right now, Miss Melton, I’m only judging you based on your own bratty sarcasm. Not because of anything I know about your family.”

  “Alice,” I corrected him. “Not Miss Melton.” I didn’t want him using my last name, even out loud.