Erica Orloff - The Golden Girl

Ordinarily, Maddie would never flaunt her wealth like that, but the two cops were irritating her with their insinuations. And she did think it had to do with Pruitt & Pruitt, but no sense giving the police any idea about her father—he was under a big enough cloud of suspicion already.

Marcus said, “I’m going to post a security detail outside your apartment until we redo the system tomorrow.”

“That’s not necessary.”

Marcus, with the chiseled features of a roman statue and the sculpted body to match, shook his head. “Look, Ms. Pruitt, your father’s company pays me a lot of money to keep its valuables safe. And I’d say, if you excuse the expression, you’re his most precious possession. You can’t talk me out of it, so know our guys are there and then put it from your mind. And I still think you should go to the hospital.”

“Dr. Halloway is coming over.” He was the Pruitt family’s personal physician. She and her father were in superb shape, but Jack Pruitt couldn’t tolerate the thought of ever wasting even ten seconds in a doctor’s waiting room. So Halloway played a lot of golf and was kept on a retainer basis. He had gone to prep school with Jack Pruitt and her father was extremely loyal to old friends.

Hours later, Maddie was mentally—and physically—exhausted. The police hadn’t seemed as interested in catching Claire’s killer as in nailing her father. She was used to it in a way. People loved to take down the wealthy, to be able to think, “See, money can’t buy you happiness.” Maddie knew that was a thousand percent true. Her childhood, for instance, hadn’t been a particularly happy one. But she also knew relishing the downfall of another person wasn’t right either. By the end of the interview, Detective Briggs had begun zeroing in on Maddie herself—her resentment over her father’s affair with Claire. Luckily, Maddie had an airtight alibi. She had been at the office when Claire was killed. After that, she was in the club—and had been seen there by hundreds of people, not to mention she had gotten a playful mention in Rubi’s column.

Briggs even went so far as to insinuate that Maddie herself had staged the break-in. Maddie had risen from the dining-room table, and with all the iciness she could muster, and with a look in her eyes that would instill panic in even the toughest lawyers negotiating with her over a piece of property, she said, “The mayor will be hearing from me about this ridiculous line of questioning as my friend’s body lies in the morgue. You can leave now, gentlemen, and don’t come back. If you do, you’ll find my attorneys will make you wish you’d never joined the force. If, after my call to the mayor, you even stay detectives instead of being reassigned to the K–9 unit.”

After they had left, Halloway had arrived and given her a prescription for an anti-inflammatory and a painkiller. She intended to fill neither. Her father called.

“Marcus filled me in. What the hell happened?”

“If he filled you in, then you know, Dad. Look, I’m wiped out.”

“Dammit, Madison, I hate it when you don’t keep me informed.”

“Hmm…Imagine how I felt about you and Claire. Uninformed, lied to. I’m going to bed. Good night.” She hung up. Then Maddie had poured herself a stiff drink and tried to think.

Claire had been an absolute tigress in the courtroom—but she was proud of her reputation. There wasn’t any way she had been involved in anything illegal. So who was the traitor at Pruitt & Pruitt? And who was so powerful to have been able to access her building and her apartment?

Maddie sipped her scotch—a single malt that would go for two hundred dollars a shot at any high-end restaurant. She remembered being twenty-three the first time she had scotch. She had thought it was the single most vile drink on the planet, but again, her father had taught her well. The “big boys” she negotiated with and against drank it to celebrate closing a deal—and she learned to drink it, too. Now she enjoyed a smooth scotch—and she needed it to steady her nerves in light of all that had happened in the previous twenty-four hours.

She gazed out on the skyline, and Renee’s words rang in her ears. All her life, Madison had wanted to build skyscrapers, to leave her mark in history—on the skyline of Manhattan. She wanted to look out on spires and soaring glass buildings and know she was responsible for making these hundred-million-dollar projects a reality. But as a member of the Gotham Roses undercover organization, she could do so much more. So in the wee hours, as Manhattan spread like a shining jewel in front of her, Madison Taylor-Pruitt decided she would work undercover. She would be a government agent. And she would see that justice was done. For Claire.

Bam!

Madison was flung through the air and to the mat by her trainer. She’d hit the mat so hard, she thought she’d broken a tooth.

Jimmy Valentine gave her a grin and reached a hand down to help her up. Madison actually felt for the mat beneath her. She felt as if she’d hit solid floor, not mat, but no…the mat was still there.

“Man, you are one well-trained lady.” Jimmy smiled. “You may be my best agent yet.”

Maddie accepted his proffered hand and rose, slowly, from her prone position. “Well trained? You’re kicking my ass.”

“Look at me. I’m six foot one, a good two hundred twenty-five first thing in the morning before I’ve eaten my way through one of my wife, Linda’s, breakfasts. I should be kicking your ass. I’d be kicked out of the CIA if I couldn’t. Now let’s try that move one more time.”

Jimmy was teaching her to do leg sweeps, whereby she literally tried to sweep an opponent’s legs out from under him or her. This was after a half hour on a heavy bag, twenty minutes of jump rope, four miles on a treadmill set for steep uphill, and a firearms lesson, which she had passed, Jimmy said, “like you were a born sniper.”

Maddie tried to focus, but she was still absorbing the fact that beneath Renee’s glamorous home and the Gotham Roses elegant club was a labyrinth of rooms and tunnels. Feeling as if she was in a James Bond movie, after she was processed and prodded and poked by a doctor, and after her irises were scanned into some high-tech security equipment, which made even what Pruitt & Pruitt had look amateurish, she was ushered downstairs into a whole new world.

Maddie decided the best metaphor for it was an anthill. There may have been a whole world, busy and bustling upstairs in the Club. There were always teas, events, planning meetings and lunches being held to benefit their charities. On the second and third floors were Renee’s private residence—just she and her daughter with Preston still in prison. But beneath the world of the hill above was another world. Madison saw two or three fellow Roses turned agents ushered in and out of high-tech rooms, and she discovered, when Renee gave her the tour, that everything from computer equipment to sophisticated listening devices, to a firing range and training center, even to a dressing room with a stylist who helped women when they went under deeper cover, were all housed here.

Most amusing, to Maddie at least, were the people like Jimmy Valentine, who was their trainer. She had seen him before. In a painter’s outfit, splattered with the color of Renee’s sitting room. Another man she saw tending to an immense computer she had always believed was one of Renee’s personal accountants.

“You ready, Pruitt?” Jimmy grinned at her. He was certainly gorgeous, with classic Italian sexiness, but behind that smile was a deadly serious trainer. He showed no mercy because, he said, “The bad guys won’t either.”

They squared off against each other. Maddie stayed out of the range of his reach—which was the tricky part. He so seriously outsized her that in order for her to attack him, she had to get close to him, which meant he could grab her and send her sailing across the room.