Free A Dangerous Talent (An Alix London Mystery) by Aaron Elkins, Charlotte Elkins

company, and they didn’t care very much—at all, really—about personal relationships between employees, even bosses and subordinates, as long as you were professional at the office. Considering we were all working crazy hours, seven days a week, it made sense. Who had time for anyone outside the company? Oh, and I was also Liz’s boss at the time, as it happens.”
    “The plot thickens,” Alix observed.
    “Just a little. Thank you,” she said to the bartender, who had placed a fresh gin and tonic on the side table between their chairs, along with a sectioned tray of potato chips and nuts. Chris chomped on a handful of the nuts and took a swallow of her drink, chewing away and studying Alix over the rim of the glass. “You were studying in Europe, weren’t you, during the tech bubble?”
    Alix nodded. “Yes. Oh, I’d hear things about new tech companies, IPOs, stock options—the Italians were pretty big players, as well—but it’d go in one ear and out the other. I still don’t even know what an IPO is. It just had no relevance to me. I bet it was exciting, though, to be in the middle of it.”
    “It was really something. Sytex was just one of a whole lot of start-ups then, but we all felt that we were part of something that was going to be big, and that made it tremendously exciting. It’s impossible to describe the climate; everything was possible. Anyway, Craig and I weren’t engaged or anything—we were all too busy to think about stopping long enough to get married—but everybody understood that we were together, or so I thought until one Saturday when the three of us and a few others were working on a big presentation over the weekend. I left at about five, but on the drive home I realized that Liz had some material I needed to review before a Monday morning meeting. So, okay, I walk into her office and—”
    At the memory, the corners of her mouth turned down. “And I find the two of them…oh, Christ…I find them…screwing on the carpet, right on the floor, like a couple of goddamn animals in heat.”
    “Oh no.”
    “Oh yes,” Chris muttered.
    “What did you do?”
    She laughed bleakly. “The same thing you would have done. I turned around and walked out. I was mortified.”
    “Of course. I meant—”
    “I know what you meant,” Chris said in a low monotone.
    “Chris, there’s no need for you to talk about it if you don’t want to. I’m sorry if I—”
    But Chris barreled grimly ahead. “Naturally, I was as mad as hell at both of them, but Liz came to me later that afternoon, as contrite as a little mouse: she hadn’t meant for it to happen, they’d never done it before, but Craig had been giving her signs for weeks—an ‘accidental’ touch here, a little-too-long handshake there, lingering glances that were unmistakable—and in a weak moment—he was awfully attractive, after all—her hormones had taken over and she just plain gave in to him.” Chris shrugged. “She was in tears, she felt horrible, she’d never have done anything like that to me if she’d been in her right mind, or if Craig hadn’t been so persistent, and on and on. She begged me to forgive her.”
    “And?”
    “And I forgave her.” Another weary shrug. “We were old friends—I’d known her a lot longer than Craig—we’d done so many things together. Craig…Craig was a different story.”
    He had told her he was sorry, yes, and he’d seemed to mean it. But that was it. No defense, no denial of what Liz had said, no explanation other than that he’d made a bad mistake and it wouldn’t happen again. He said that if Chris preferred not to be around him, he’d quit Sytex and move on. All she had to do was say the word.
    “So I said it,” Chris said softly. “I was terribly hurt; I couldn’t believe he’d let me down that way. I never wanted to see him again. And I guess part of it was that I wanted to make him pay. I was really angry.” She smiled. “Boy, did I make him pay. Eight