Page 47 of Reckless Kiss

But here it was different. I might never have chosen Marie or Roman out of a lineup, but we shared the same passion for sports, got the same thrill from negotiating contracts. Our friendships developed slowly. Trust was built over time.

“She’s extremely intelligent and very beautiful.” I realized I was smiling at the image of Esme naked and tangled in my sheets. “I like talking to her because there’s always something to talk about and I’ve begun looking forward to seeing her more than anyone else.”

I blinked away my memories of this morning and refocused on my coworkers. All three of them were grinning.

“She sounds lovely,” Marie said.

“It’s important to have a partner you can talk to,” Maddie agreed. “I’d die of boredom if Rachel wasn’t so much smarter than me.”

I knew Esme was brilliant from speaking with her. That was confirmed at the fundraiser. But I still barely understood the depths of her intelligence. It was just one of many things I was looking forward to exploring over the next six months.

“How does she feel about this?” Roman asked, waving his hand around the room.

“Conflicted.” And I hoped my job wouldn’t become one of the reasons she pushed me away. I could understand why it might be too much. I hoped it wasn’t.

The glass conference room door swung open. Gwen Hartley and Oscar Gomez came hurrying in.

“Sorry, sorry!” Gwen called, plopping down beside Marie.

Oscar came around and sat on the other side of Maddie.

“Okay, that’s everyone.” Marie glanced around the group. “What we discuss doesn’t leave this room. I trust the five of you completely and expect discretion from each of you while we work our way through this problem.”

Roman was a close family friend to Marie, as well as a damn good agent. Maddie, Gwen, and Oscar were lower down in the company but all solid. People I trusted. Also, I couldn’t help noticing, all agents of the football players Marie and I had identified as connected to an influx of unaccounted for money.

She brought everyone up to speed on which players we’d identified as well as the money or prizes they’d come into.

“What I don’t get,” Roman fiddled with a pen as he looked up at the information on the whiteboard “is the connection. These players are all on different teams. They came out of different college programs.”

“They play completely different positions,” Maddie agreed.

Esme’s advice suddenly came back to me. “Positions.”

Everyone turned towards me as I scrambled to remember exactly what she’d said. “Let’s dig deeper into that. What positions do they play and how have they been playing this season compared to past seasons. Maybe there’s something that jumps out at us.”

I felt like the answer was staring me in the face. It was like forgetting why you walked into a room but knowing there was a reason, you just had to retrace your steps to jog your mind.

“We’re not seeing something because we expected there to be an obvious connection. We have to stop looking for the expected.”

Marie stared at me, nodding. “Let’s pull the information and take a coffee break. Meet back in twenty?”

Maddie and Gwen ran off to the break room while Roman retreated to his office and Oscar made a call in the hallway. That left me alone with Marie.

“What do you think we’re going to find?” she asked, her suspicious gaze locked on me.

“I honestly don’t know.” I kept my eyes trained on my laptop as I pulled up Derek Byers and Russ Watkins’ stats from last season.

“I saw the light bulb go off over your head while Maddie was talking. You’re thinking something. What?”

I shoved back the laptop and sighed. “I don’t know. It’s just...if they aren’t connected by anything obvious, then it has to be something else. Roman said the obvious stuff. It’s not one team or owner. It’s not a single agency, there’s no past connections between all of them. So when Maddie mentioned they don’t even play the same positions it just got me wondering. What changed this season? What is the common denominator?”

And why couldn’t Esme simply tell me what she knew? I didn’t get the impression she was playing games with me. If anything she seemed scared. In fact, now that I thought about it, her strange behavior at the Renegades party made a lot more sense if she were being threatened in some way.

Maybe she knew exactly what was happening and that knowledge was dangerous. God, I hoped not. Just entertaining the idea made my pulse race.

“Okay. We’ll dig in deeper,” Marie said, pushing up from the table. “We’ve got to figure this out. If they’re doing something illegal—which they most likely are—this is going to come down on all of us.”

Which begged the question, “And what do we do to stop the consequences when we figure it out?”

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