Improper Influence Read online

  But, she didn’t say anything. Instead, she stretched on to her tiptoes and covered his warm mouth with hers, driving away thoughts of both Garrett English’s document production and her mother’s guest list and color scheme preferences.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Early Saturday morning, Mia Martinez traipsed out of the nightclub still dancing and laughing, even though her buzz had worn off hours ago.

  “Woo, am I hot!”

  She lifted her glossy, dark curls from her sweaty neck and fanned herself.

  “Yeah, you sure were hot. I didn’t see you pay for a drink all night,” Raina told her, deliberately misunderstanding Mia’s point.

  “Or sit down even once,” Chelsea added.

  Mia just laughed. It had been a long week between studying for finals, sending out resumes for summer internships, and working her shifts for the campus catering company. She should have been dragging. But she’d been bouncing off the walls, moving and dancing for hours, flitting between the girls she’d come with and friends she’d run into at the club.

  In fact, she realized, she wasn’t ready to call it a night.

  “Hey, anybody wanna hit Nico’s? Some greasy eggs and bacon would hit the spot!”

  “Sister, you’re crazy. It’s almost two o’clock. Go home and get some sleep,” Chelsea said.

  No one else seemed interested in prolonging the fun either.

  Mia walked with the group to their cars. Everyone was set for a ride home, so, after a flurry of hugs, she slid behind the wheel of her red Miata, started the engine, and cranked the music.

  A short beep of the horn goodbye at Raina, who’d pulled out of the lot behind her, and Mia was cruising down the mostly deserted street, with the window down so the breeze could cool her down. She was still sticky from dancing.

  By the time she’d navigated from the South Side to the one-bedroom apartment she rented on the top floor of an Oakland row house, her skin was clammy, and she was feeling tired and queasy.

  She tripped up the staircase, clinging to the handrail, suddenly dizzy and breathing hard.

  In her apartment, she grabbed a bottled water from the refrigerator and headed straight for the bedroom.

  The evening’s fun forgotten, she just wanted to get out of her clothes and get to sleep. She realized she must’ve hit a wall. She was exhausted and out of breath. And now she was shivering.

  Mia gulped the water and curled up under her comforter, still wearing her skirt and tank top. She didn’t even bother to take off her jewelry or wash her makeup off her face, even though she could her hear her mother clucking disapprovingly in her mind.

  She fell into a restless, fatigued sleep, wondering if she’d caught some kind of bug—she felt so crappy out of the blue. Her iPhone fell from her slack hand and bounced off the hardwood floor. She didn’t stir.

  Forty minutes before sunrise, her racing heart stuttered to a stop.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  As Mia Martinez drew her last, gasping breaths in her walk-up apartment in South Oakland, four miles away, Bodhi stood on his porch in Highland Park, shivering in his blue-and-white striped pajama bottoms and a thin white t-shirt.

  He sipped his hot tea and stared out at the gray predawn sky. He had slept fitfully, unable to quiet his mind. Finally, at four-thirty, he’d admitted to himself that rest was out of his grasp and had started his day.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about the dead girls whose bodies had passed through his hands. He had recorded his thoughts about their fleeting lives, and now those thoughts were gone, too, along with his official files. His mind and spirit were jangling, unsettled. And he didn’t know what to do.

  When people expressed surprise at his chosen vocation, he understood. People would ask why he didn’t become a doctor who helped the living rather than deal in death? And when he was younger, he would have tried to explain that he didn’t fear or revile death, death held no surprises, and he considered it an honor to provide dignity to a life that was passing out of this world and into its next phase. That was all true, and vaguely Zen enough to satisfy most questioners.

  But it wasn’t the only reason: he’d gone to medical school with the dream of ministering to the needs of the sick and diseased in countries that the United States had written off as “third world.” But, he’d quickly learned, through clinical work and classes, that the emotions of his patients and his colleagues overwhelmed him. Their worry and distress would wash over his body in a physical wave and he would feel their anxiety as if it were his own.

  The dead had no such concerns. They had left their bodies behind as empty vessels, devoid of fear, or anger, or sorrow. And he had found peace working for and with them. Until now.

  A rustling next door jarred him from his thoughts. His neighbor stepped out onto her porch clutching her robe to her chest and stooped to pick up her newspaper.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Willham.”

  She turned and squinted in his direction. “Bodhi, you startled me.” She shook her Tribune-Review out of its biodegradable wrapper and went on, “You’ll catch your death of cold standing out here like that.”

  He smiled at her scolding. Cora Willham had raised five children; the admonition was second nature to her. With her husband dead and her kids scattered around the tri-state area, she had turned her mother hen attentions to him.

  She was halfway back into her house, her head bent over the front page, when she stopped in the doorway and jabbed a finger at him.

  “These deaths are shameful. All these pretty young girls. What are you doing about it? Says here the medical examiner’s office attributes the deaths to natural causes.”

  He was surprised by the anger in her tone.

  “Yes, ma’am. The official finding is myocarditis—that’s an infection of the heart. Did you know one of the girls, Mrs. Willham?”

  “No, but I know a load of malarkey when I hear it.”

  The door banged shut behind her, and Bodhi was alone with his thoughts. The principal one being that he, too, believed the official statement sounded—as Mrs. Willham so colorfully put it—like malarkey.

  The question, he knew, was what he going to do about it?

  Bodhi sipped his tea and stared at the sky.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Mackenzie ignored the knot in her stomach and smiled encouragingly across the breakfast table at Barry, hoping he’d get the hint. But, being Barry, he missed the signal entirely, and focused on smearing entirely too much cream cheese onto his bagel.

  She ratcheted her smile up a notch and turned to Stone “Fred” Fredericks, the chief executive officer of Better Life Beverages, Limited. “Mr. Fredericks, let me assure you that the mayor and our entire team remain committed to our partnership.”

  Fredericks smiled back at her, letting his gaze linger just a second or two too long for a business meeting, and then turned to Barry. “Z’at true, Mayor Closky?”

  Barry spoke around a mouthful of bagel. “Absolutely, Fred. Mackenzie speaks for everyone on my economic development task force. We’re not worried about any fallout, and you shouldn’t be either. As I understand it, there’s not even a definite link to the dead young ladies, isn’t that right?”

  Mackenzie winced. When Barry made the argument, he sounded like a tobacco executive pretending the science wasn’t settled on lung cancer. She’d have to work with him on his delivery.

  Stone, Junior—called Stone by everyone except his father, who referred to him “S.J.,” as if he were still a child—cleared his throat and spoke before Fred had a chance. “Well, it’s true that there’s no conclusive link, Mr. Mayor, but from what Ms. Lane tells us, the medical examiner’s office found withania somnifera in the stomach contents of all three dead girls. That’s a pretty big coincidence.”

  Stone turned his serious brown eyes to Mackenzie. “Isn’t that right?”

  She pushed the scrambled egg around her plate with her fork while she formulated an answer.

  “Yes. From what my s
ource tells me, the medical examiner’s office is trial testing some sort of software that looks for patterns across cases. The software hit on a link. There’s no evidence, though, that your product was the source of that ingredient. And, from what your father’s told us, Champion Fuel actually features a proprietary blend of four herbs, and there was no reference to the other three herbs in the reports. Plus, I understand there’s no evidence that withania somnifera causes myocarditis. So, while it’s not a great scenario, I don’t think it’s a crisis.” Yet, she added silently.

  Stone turned his mouth down into a slight frown. “Well,” he said slowly, “that’s partially true. There is no known causal connection between withania somnifera and myocarditis, but let’s be frank, those girls probably drank Champion Fuel if that stuff was found in their systems.”

  “Why do you say that?” Barry demanded, finally worried enough to focus on the conversation.

  “Well, the drink is exploding in popularity—especially among women in the eighteen- to twenty-five-year-old demographic. It’s wildly popular with college-aged women, so it wouldn’t be at all surprising if the deceased women drank our product. They’re our target market. And, while withania somnifera is available in other formats, it tastes ... for lack of a better word ... disgusting. So most products contain trace amounts only. Our selling point is that we’ve been able to mask the flavor to a large extent but deliver the benefits of a larger dose. By the way, that also explains why the other three ingredients in Champion Fuel may not have shown up—our drink is mainly withania somnifera and caffeine. The other ingredients are present in much smaller—probably undetectable—quantities,” Stone explained.

  “Bah,” Fred said. He slapped a hand against the table. “Conjecture and bellyaching. That’s what this is. Like S.J. said, other people sell it. Hell, you can buy it as a pill supplement, loose tea, and in energy bars. No reason we have to get tagged with this issue—if it even is an issue.”

  Relief washed over Barry’s face and he nodded his agreement. He looked meaningfully at Mackenzie. “This supposed link, it won’t become public?”

  Mackenzie’s source had taken a significant risk to ensure no one learned about the link that software had identified. She knew Barry didn’t want to know any details, though, so she simply said, “Yes.”

  That settled the issue for Barry and Fred. They moved on to talk about the hockey playoffs and their plans to catch a game together in Fred’s luxury box.

  Mackenzie tuned them out and watched Stone, who was shredding his paper napkin into narrow strips. A nervous habit, she imagined. He’d bear keeping an eye on: there was no room for nerves in business.

  He felt her eyes on him and looked up. She gave him a reassuring smile.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Sasha’s vision blurred, and the type on the page she held seemed to swim in front of her eyes. Time for a break. She blinked hard a few times, finished skimming the report, and placed it face down in the growing pile to her right. Unfortunately, the mountain of boxes containing unread documents to her left had barely shrunk in the four hours she’d been reviewing them.

  She wished Garrett had pulled another big firm stunt and made the documents available for review rather than copying them. The rules required the former; attorneys usually went ahead and did the latter as a matter of mutual courtesy. By exchanging copy sets, both sides avoided having to camp out in a warehouse somewhere and review originals. Lawyers griped about that like it was a fate worse than jury duty, and she could attest that it was grueling, uncomfortable, and boring to park yourself in a chair on someone else’s territory and paw through documents.

  But at least boxes of originals had staples and paper clips and folders, all of which provided some sense of order and recognizable flow to the documents. Plus there was always the possibility of finding a crackerjacks prize of sorts—a fancy, jeweled paper clip; a Post-it note doodle of stick figures stuck to the back of a redweld; a neon orange folder; anything to inject a little liveliness into the review. In contrast, straight copy files like these were just sheet after sheet after sheet of paper with no natural breaks between documents. Monotonous pages crammed into as few boxes as possible, banded with giant overstretched elastic bands, made an already-disheartening task worse somehow.

  She stood and stretched. She was trying to decide whether to go for a quick run or settle for some yoga postures on the office floor when Naya poked her head into the room.

  “What are you doing here?” Sasha asked.

  “I was in the neighborhood,” Naya said.

  They both knew she was lying.

  “Naya, you can’t help. You heard English. One document review isn’t worth risking your scholarship with Prescott. I’ll get through the boxes.”

  Naya walked into the room and eyed the stack of boxes beside Sasha’s desk.

  “You sure about that?”

  Sasha rubbed her eyes. “It’s just going to take some time.” She checked the time. “Want to grab a bite with me? I’m going to need sustenance soon.”

  “Sure. How about the Thai place?”

  “Perfect.”

  Sasha grabbed her sweater and purse and shut out the lights. She confirmed that the door locked behind her, and they headed downstairs.

  As they walked along Walnut Street, dodging Saturday morning shoppers laden with bags and packs of preteens with their heads bent over their phones, Naya returned to the subject of the call from Prescott.

  “Mac, it doesn’t sit right with me—Prescott calling and pushing you around.”

  It didn’t sit right with Sasha either; but she wasn’t willing to go toe to toe with Prescott when the outcome could affect Naya’s future.

  “Naya, seriously, it’s fine. You might as well get used to it now. Once you’re a Prescott lawyer, they’re going to own you in a way they never did before.”

  They stopped at the corner to wait for a break in traffic. Naya turned toward Sasha. Her signature eyebrow arch indicated she didn’t like what she’d just heard.

  “Own me? Nobody owns me.”

  Naya’s voice was loud and angry. The man standing to Sasha’s right, glanced over in surprise then quickly looked away when Sasha held his gaze.

  “Shh. Calm down. We’ll talk about it over lunch.” She patted Naya’s arm in what she hoped was a soothing manner.

  Naya glared at her but held her tongue. They crossed the street in silence, and the eavesdropper trotted ahead of them, eager to get away from the brewing conflict.

  Sasha used the time to formulate her thoughts. Naya was possibly the least sentimental person she knew. The older woman prided herself on being realistic, resilient, and resourceful—all traits that had served her well as a legal assistant and would, Sasha knew, be helpful to her in law school and beyond. Sasha also knew that some small part of her friend harbored an idealistic vision of her future life as a Prescott & Talbott lawyer. That piece of Naya was perhaps so minuscule that it was invisible to the naked eye, but it was there. And it was Sasha’s job to gently disabuse her friend of her fairytale dream, but to do it in such a way that she didn’t destroy Naya’s excitement and anticipation about her new career.

  They settled into seats near the window. The restaurant was not quite half full. The weekend lunch crowd was more boisterous than the office workers who frequented the place during the workweek, and Sasha was glad for the noise.

  Naya was likely to yell at her at least once. The din in the background would help to cover any of the shouting that Sasha anticipated.

  She didn’t have long to wait.

  As soon as the smiling waitress filled their glasses with ice water and left with their orders, Naya lit into her.

  “Mac, you know you can’t go telling a black woman someone owns her, right? I mean, you do know that, don’t you? Tell me you know that.”

  Sasha put a hand up and gestured for Naya to lower the volume a bit.

  “Naya, I’m not trying to compare a professional position with a si
x-figure salary to an existence as a slave in the American South—”

  “But?”

  “But,” she continued, “it’s not all that different from indentured servitude.”

  Naya stared at her, her almond eyes full of disbelief.

  Sasha took a sip of water then tried to explain. “Look, I know you worked at Prescott for a long time. Answer me a question: who do you think had more autonomy—you or the junior associates?”

  Naya laughed so hard she nearly choked.

  “C’mon, Mac. The lawyers. I was support staff.”

  “Right. And if you wanted to turn down an assignment, could you?”

  Naya cocked her head at the question. “Like, if I were too busy to take on additional work?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know I could have. I rarely did, though. The overtime was sweet—”

  “We’ll get to that next. But, you could say ‘sorry, my plate’s full,’ right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “With what repercussions?”

  “None. An attorney couldn’t …?” She trailed off and traced a small circle on the tablecloth with one fingertip.

  “Oh, an attorney could turn down work. And some people have done it. Once. No one who plans to stay at Prescott does it twice.”

  “Come on. Really?”

  “Really. It’s a guaranteed ticket to a bad annual review. And an associate might be able to recover from one bad review, but two? Forget it.”

  Naya looked closely at her. “Is that what happened to Hannah?”

  Hannah. Sasha had almost forgotten about poor Hannah Marsden-Smythe. That was exactly what happened to Hannah, who had the audacity to ask not to be assigned to a trial on the other side of the country when her twins were three months old. Then she compounded that error in judgment by asking for unpaid leave to care for her father-in-law when he was dying.