Page 96 of The Defender

“It’s about Zenith.”

Any other day, I would’ve jumped at news about the ambassadorship, but not today. “Let’s discuss?—”

“They want to do a test shoot.” He barreled on, oblivious to my mounting frustration. “It’s not official. It’s the holidays, so the execs are out of office, but I know someone who knows someone who’s?—”

“Lloyd.” I wanted to shake him. “Get to the point.”

“The point is, it’s a freaking test shoot! Do you know what means?”

I stared at him blankly.

“It means you’re in the home stretch.” He flapped his hands in an extremely un-Lloyd-like manner. “My source says it’s down to you and Filipovic. Martin is out after his recent cheating scandal. Stepping out on your long-term partner for a threesome with her best friend andyourbest friend’s girlfriend isn’t a good look. Anyway, word is, the test shoot will be scheduled for sometime in January or February. Whoever performs better will get the deal.”

“Great. Looking forward to it. Thanks.” I brushed past him, trying not to calculate the number of minutes I’d lost listening to him talk about Rene Martin’s personal life.

“That’s it?” he yelled after me. “This is fucking Zenith, Vincent! Don’t you want to know the details?”

“Email them to me!” I yelled back without slowing my pace.

I made it two steps before my phone rang. I sent it to voicemail without checking to see who was calling.

I almost made it. I wasthisclose to reaching Brooklyn’s table until the one person I couldn’t brush off stepped into my path.

Coach.

Fuck.

“DuBois.” Like the rest of the club, he was wearing a suit. He wore one to the gala every year, but that didn’t make it anyless weird. It was like seeing a grizzly bear play the piano every Christmas.

“Boss.” I switched to calling him “Boss” in case it endeared me more to him, though I doubted it.

We’d resumed our punishing daily schedule of early runs and awkward dinners after I returned from Budapest. I was pretty sure he didn’t know Brooklyn had been on the trip, or he would’ve locked me up in a dungeon by now.

Then again, she’d bid on me in front of the entire ballroom. He didn’t need to know about Budapest to be suspicious, as evidenced by his piercing stare.

“Tied for the highest bid of the night. Impressive,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“My daughter had a hand in driving that amount up.”

I swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

“Any idea why she bidthirty-five thousandpounds on her ex-flatmate?”

“Well, sir, we’re friends.” I searched for a plausible excuse. “And she, uh, knew I didn’t want to do the auction, so she offered to bid on me if I paid her back later.”

“Is that right? You looked quite surprised when she stood up.”

Damn me and my slip-ups. “I…didn’t know she was going to start her bid that high.”

“Now that you mention it, why didn’t she bid on you earlier if that was the plan?”

Sweat dotted my forehead. This was worse than getting interrogated by MI5. “It’s a strategy that we found online. Wait for the small bidders to drop out, then come in at the end and take the whole thing. Like those last-minute bidders on eBay.” I was pulling my answers out of my ass, and I couldn’t tell whether he was buying it.

“Yet she didn’t place the winning bid.”

“Um…” I stalled for time. “I gave her a cap of thirty-five thousand pounds. I didn’t think we’d surpass that.”