Page 31 of Simon Says… Fight (Kate Morgan Thrillers #11)

“H ey, where are you coming from?” Rodney asked, giving her a quick look, and then did a double-take. “You don’t look so great.”

“Thanks,” she muttered, “nice to know.”

He winced. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

She laughed. “No, but you’re right. I don’t look great. I just came from the hospital.”

He stopped in the act of pouring coffee. “Oh. What’s the news?”

“Sonny? Our victim from the warehouse had a series of mini-strokes during the night. He’s now officially determined to be brain dead and is on life support. Discussions are happening about pulling the plug, since at least some of his organs could be viable for donation.”

“Jesus Christ.” Rodney stared at her. “That went fast.”

“Yes, it did,” she agreed, “though, all along the doctors were clear, at least with me, that the head injury might not be something he would survive, at least not in a functional sense. Then last night he took a bad turn with the strokes and all, and that was the final straw for his brain. It was just far too damaged, and there was no way to save him from that,” she murmured.

“Jesus. How’s his wife?”

“Maybe a little bit better, maybe a little bit worse. There is something to be said for having clarity about his condition, even though it’s bad.”

“So, does she know… about the—”

“Yeah, I didn’t get very far, and she guessed as much. I was trying to be gentle about it.”

He snorted. “Really no way to be gentle about an affair.”

“And she also guessed who it was,” Kate noted. “So I don’t know how that’ll go over. And this wasn’t the first time apparently. Oh, and he was also married before, and that time Anna was the side piece. He ended up leaving his wife for her.”

“Jesus Christ,” Rodney repeated, staring at her in shock.

“So, Anna’s doing a lot of thinking about life at the moment, maybe even karma,” she added, with a brief glance in his direction.

“Yeah, you’re not kidding,” he muttered. “That’s always a hard one.”

“Which is why I don’t understand why people do this shit.

Why can’t they stick to one at a time? If they don’t want to be married any more, then go through the divorce process and get out of it.

At some point in time, you just need to stop screwing around on the side.

I just don’t get it.” Kate frowned at him and asked, “Is that fresh coffee?”

“It is. I just made it.”

She hopped up, walked over, and stated, “So, now the Sonny case is ours.”

“Absolutely,” he murmured, “and now we really get to look into the details of his life.”

“Exactly,” she said. “First and foremost, did a cab charge go onto the company’s credit card, and, if not, is there one on somebody else’s?”

“Meaning?” Rodney asked.

“What if Sonny didn’t happen to have the company credit card on him? What if he accidentally forgot his card this time?”

“Oh, you’re right. That could happen.”

“All kinds of things could happen. We also need to know if any security is around the building. This all happened very quickly, and, when we consider everything that’s gone on, as a timeline, this is even uglier.”

“True,” Rodney agreed. “Let me see if there’s security around the company building.”

“Were you ever able to contact the owner of the warehouse building?” she asked, as she ambled over to her desk.

“It’s for sale, and the owners live in Germany. I spoke to their real estate agent, but they haven’t had anything to do with it yet. It’ll be listed here soon,” he added.

“Right, they need somebody like Simon to buy it and to turn it into some good thing.”

“He’s certainly someone who has that kind of money.”

“I have no clue what Simon has for money,” she stated flatly. “That’s not a discussion I care to have with him. For all I know, he can go buy Mars.”

Rodney snorted. “Why the hell would you want that planet?”

“I don’t want any planet or anything else,” she stated, with a smile.

Rodney shook his head. “You’ve got one of the richest men around hanging all over you,” he pointed out, “and you really don’t care?”

“No, I really don’t,” she declared. “It’s not my money. It’s his.” He stared at her, and she stared right back.

“You really mean that, don’t you?” he asked. “You know how unusual that makes you?”

“No, it doesn’t make me unusual at all,” she snapped. “It just makes me,… well,… me .”

*

Simon worked steadily, dealing with problems as things blew up from one rehab project to another.

He couldn’t understand why some days were complete shit and others seemed to go smoothly.

He had to admit that the days when things went well were few and far between, and it seemed as if he hadn’t one of those in a damn long while.

As he finally left the one rehab project and walked to another, he stopped to look at the skyline, his attention drawn to the warehouse where they had found the skeleton of that poor dead man.

He realized he would always look at this building with that same sadness.

“Somebody really needs to do something with it,” he muttered.

Then he snorted because Kate would be all over him if she heard that. He could almost hear her saying, Well,… do it then . It’s not as if he was built of money, but, if he shuffled things around, he could probably finance it. That was if it was even for sale and if he even gave a crap.

Honestly, he did give a crap. He just didn’t know what to do about it.

Ariel, his stalking Realtor, who kept inserting herself in his business, called him a few hours later. “We need paperwork.”

“Hello to you too.”

“I need the paperwork cleared.”

She was not messing around, and her tone was all-business, with none of her usual chatter and flirtation. “You were supposed to get it to me,” Simon noted.

“I did,” she snapped, “and you didn’t sign it.”

Frowning, he quickly looked through his emails and stated, “I don’t have any of it.”

“What?”

“I don’t have it,” he repeated flatly. “So, if you want me to sign docs, then you need to get me the paperwork.”

“It’s coming your way again ,” she said in a huff and ended the call.

He wasn’t sure if she was just busy or if it really was something that had gone off the rails, but he hadn’t even given that project any thought.

When the documents came through a few minutes later, he forwarded them to his lawyer, asking for a reading, ASAP.

He couldn’t possibly ever move without getting a feasibility study.

Allen contacted him and asked, “These are on the Queensborough, yes?”

“Yes,” Simon confirmed. “The Realtor seemed to think that I had the paperwork already and resent them just now, so I want to confirm they’re on the up-and-up.”

“I’ll go through them. When do you want them?”

“Now,” he replied succinctly.

His lawyer laughed. “Of course you do,” he muttered. “Let me make some coffee, and I’ll sit down and read through it.” With that, he ended the call.

Simon realized coffee was something he rather desperately needed right now too.

He headed to his favorite coffee shop, frowning as he realized it was hard to even imagine it as a favorite anymore—not after he’d already had something to do with discovering that a customer here ended up being a serial killer.

Still, he stepped up and ordered coffee and a muffin.

Just as he went to sit down with it, his phone rang again.

He looked down to see it was his lawyer. Allen Moore.

“It’s all good,” he declared. “Sign away, as long as you’re okay with the price.” They went over what the conditions were again. Then Simon quickly signed the doc and sent it off to the Realtor.

Ariel contacted him about an hour later and stated, “Okay, it’s a done deal.”

“Good. I need to start running some numbers through on future plans for this one.”

“Yeah, it’s a hell of a property.”

“Location-wise it’s a hell of a property,” he corrected. “Building-wise, it’s a piece of shit.”

She snorted. “Yeah, but you apparently do those.”

“I do,” he confirmed, “and most people won’t touch them.”

“I never understood why you do them and other people won’t.”

“It’s a cost issue,” he explained. “You have to figure out if you can swing it and still be standing at the end of the day. By the way, do you know anything about a warehouse?” Then he gave her the address.

“Oh, shit,” she muttered. “That’s the one where a skeleton was just found.”

“Yeah, not only that body,” Simon clarified, “but a man was found beaten up in there the previous day as well.”

“Good God, seriously?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Wow, I hope he’s okay. That’s a really rough area of town.”

He refrained from giving her any answer. “I just wondered about the building.”

After a moment of silence, she asked quite playfully, “As in?”

“As in, I just wondered what the deal is with the building,” he clarified. “I’m sure you could find out.”

“Do you want to purchase it?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied, frustrated. “Let’s just say that I’ve got a lot of things on my mind. I really don’t need another one, especially considering what I just bought, but I am curious about that property.”

“Fine,” she said, all flirtatiousness gone. “I think it came up in a discussion at the office the other day. I’ll check it out and see what the deal is.”

“Good,” he replied and rang off. He knew it was a foolish thing to even consider. Beyond foolish. The last thing he needed. But then again came that little voice in the back of his head. But sometimes you have to do what you have to do .

“But I don’t,” he snapped.

Wincing as he realized he’d brought some attention to himself, he hoped they would think he was talking on Bluetooth or something.

Realizing he was always one step away from looking like he’d completely lost his marbles, he picked up his coffee and started to walk.

The last thing he really needed was another project.