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Yes, that would be the logical thing to do. Megan could pretend she never got it. E-mails went astray all the time. And yet just the appearance of Barry’s name made her heart pound harder than it ever did with her police work. Maybe that’s because she was trained for police work. Nothing had trained her for Barry.
“Megan?” Gina prompted. “We’ve talked about this.”
“I know.”
“Deep breaths.”
“I know.”
“Now hit delete.”
She made it sound so easy. “I—”
Gina leaned over, her finger headed for Megan’s delete key. Megan grabbed her wrist.
“Megan!”
“I know he’s only e-mailing me because he wants something.” And not because he’d suddenly developed a grand passion for her, she didn’t say aloud. And from Gina’s expression, Megan figured she didn’t have to.
“And you know what happens when Barry asks for favors?”
“I give them to him. And bad things happen,” Megan recited in a monotone.
“Very good. Delete the e-mail.”
Megan stared at Barry’s name. “How can he make me feel guilty when he’s the one asking for a favor?”
“Because that’s what he does.” Gina spoke in slow, measured tones—her “talk them off the ledge” voice. “He is an expert. He’s like a legit con man. You’ve studied them. You know how they read and manipulate people.”
Megan nodded, her eyes never leaving the “Barry Sutton” on the e-mail. “You know he has different smiles?”
“Most of us—”
“Not like Barry. I know he’s practiced them and cataloged them. I’ve watched him watching other people. Then he’ll paste a smile on his face and approach them. You see, he always smiles first. He decides how he’s going to appear. He can make himself have dimples, or not. He regulates how much of his teeth he shows. It’s never spontaneous. And once you respond to him, that’s the smile you always get. You know what mine is?”
Gina carefully shook her head. Her eyes had widened slightly, as though she thought she was dealing with a crazy person. Maybe she was.
Megan continued anyway. “I get the single-dimple smile with the slightly lowered brow. A pseudo-private smile, as though there’s something between us that no one else knows about. Then, after I helplessly blab everything he wants to know, he takes one side of his mouth down a notch and flashes the other dimple. And then he winks. I hate winking. Hate it. But he’s always turned away by then. Once I told not to wink at me and he just gave me a double-dimpled smile and said he knew I loved it.”
Gina stared at her. “Have you been practicing your Barry aversion therapy?”
“Sort of.” It just made Megan think of him more.
“Now would be a good time.”
She was really lucky Gina was being so patient with her. Megan felt so gullible and so stupid and so silly and so weak when it came to Barry. But Gina said everyone had weaknesses. She, herself, couldn’t speak in public. Appearing on camera the way Megan had—before her reassignment—made Gina freeze up. Megan had seen Gina in action, or nonaction, so she knew it was true. It was Gina, who had studied psychology, who’d helped her devise the Barry aversion therapy.
Megan slid open her desk drawer and withdrew a set of lined index cards. On each was written one of Barry’s transgressions.
“Read one aloud,” Gina instructed.
Megan drew a breath. “He smiles at me even though he knows it makes my face go all red.”
“What is it with you and the smiling?”
“People will think there’s something going on between us!” Megan defended herself.
“Oh, please. Get over yourself and give me that card.” Gina took it and tore it up. “There are plenty of other more serious consequences to dealing with Barry, and you know it.” She pointed to the stack of cards. “Write another one—write that his requests for special treatment disrupt your peace of mind and affect your work.”
“They don’t affect my work!”
“Have we not just spent ten minutes obsessing over Barry?”
“It’s not obsessing.”
Gina nodded toward the computer. “Delete the e-mail.”
Megan swallowed. “I…should read it first.”
Gina leveled her stern policewoman’s stare at Megan. “Deep breath. Read the next card.”
Megan inhaled and exhaled. “Barry called me in the middle of the night—”
“At your unlisted home number.”
Megan hoped that Gina wouldn’t ask how Barry got her unlisted home number. “He knew I would be asleep,” she continued, “and took advantage of my grogginess to trick me into giving him the mayor’s meeting schedule, which then confirmed that the mayor was meeting with out-of-state candidates for the new assistant police chief.” An echo of the anger she’d felt then calmed her pounding heart now. Hey, this aversion-therapy stuff might work.
“It was a dirty trick, but it was very clever,” Gina commented.
“I still should have been prepared.”
“He woke you up at one-thirty in the morning! On purpose!”
“He had a deadline.”
“You are not defending him.”
Megan stared at the card. She was defending him, drat it all. “Okay. You’re right. Thanks, Gina. I can handle things now.”
“You’re deleting the e-mail?”
“I’m going to write a refusal before I open and read it.”
“Megan—”
“Gina.” Megan stiffened her spine. “I have no business deleting e-mails unread. If I do, then he is affecting my work. I have to be able to deal with him when I’m department spokeswoman again. This is good practice.”
Gina gave her a look with just a touch of pity in it, then headed back to her own desk.
Pity, huh? Megan brought her fingers to the keyboard, mentally composing a polite, yet firm, very firm, refusal, when another e-mail from Barry popped up with the subject line Need urgent favor.
The sinking feeling she tried to ignore told her that she’d been hoping the first e-mail might be a let’s-get-together-for-coffee e-mail. Which would be a prelude to a dinner or a movie or a night of wild monkey sex.
No!
She did not think that way ever. Certainly not about Barry. Okay, she would not think that way about Barry ever again. Gritting her teeth, Megan tried to type a scathing reply to the as-yet unread message, but her hands had been sweating and SDeR B Atty was all she managed to type.
Oh, fine. Sighing, she opened the e-mails and discovered that he wanted her to run a license-plate number for him. He was interested in a name and whether that name dinged any police bells.
Although cops had been known to do so, accessing the Law Enforcement Information Network outside the performance of official duties was totally against the rules and Megan wasn’t in a position to break any rules. She typed back a naked No and hit Send, feeling strongly virtuous.
The feeling lasted for a couple of seconds before she realized she’d made a tactical error.
“Oh, no.”
“What?” Gina asked.
“I shouldn’t have answered him.”
“You answered him?”
“I said, ‘No.’” Megan’s e-mail was already chiming. “But now he knows I’m here.”
“What did he want?”
“For me to run a plate.”
Shaking her head, Gina pointedly looked at her monitor. “I didn’t hear that.”
“It’s okay that you heard it. I’m not going to do it.”
Gina didn’t meet her eyes.
“I’m not!” Megan had to raise her voice over the sound of the e-mail chime. She turned off the sound.
She tried very hard to concentrate on her very important work—yes, the world would be a better place once she finished inventorying the True Blue pencils that the community relations department passed out to school kids. She was about to make a huge decision: The navy-night color was no longer manufactured so Megan had been given the responsibility of choosing a new color for their next order. It was important. It was. Every time elementary school students used their pencils, they’d think of the police. The blue—and yes, it would stay blue—color had to be strong, but not intimidating. She had a call into the Dallas Cowboys organization to find out what their shade of blue was called so the police didn’t duplicate it. But the police had gold lettering and the Cowboys had silver, so Megan thought that was enough of a difference if their only choice was the Cowboys’ blue—well, the point was, she was busy making important decisions here. She had no time to pay attention to Barry and his incessant e-mails.
They were coming at the rate of one a minute now. What a jerk.
And then three minutes went by without one and Megan was lured into looking at them and their identical subject lines: I’m sorry. Please?
Megan slumped. Honestly, for all the mental energy she’d expended, she should just—No. This was a test and if she gave in now, she would never be able to take a stand against him again.
A thought occurred to her and she grabbed for her phone and activated the instant voice mail. He’d be calling any minute.
She wouldn’t be able to keep her voice mail set that way for long, but Barry wasn’t stupid. He’d get the message and leave her alone.
She waited, then went back online to search the Internet for pencils.
She had three solid minutes to compare pencil colors and quantity prices before her e-mail icon flashed. The subject line read You’re not answering your phone.
Megan sighed.
“You could block his e-mails,” Gina suggested.
“I hate myself,” Megan muttered. “He just…just…”
“Pushes all your buttons?”
“Oh, it’s worse than that. I have special buttons just for him.”
Chuckling, Gina leaned down and when she straightened, she handed Megan a handful of change across their desks. “I could use a Dr Pepper right now. You could, too.”
“Yes. Dr Pepper. Sugar. Caffeine.” Megan stood. “I’m on it.”
“Why, thank you, Megan.” Gina grinned and pointed to her dimples.
Megan’s e-mail chimed.
“I thought you turned that off.”
“It turns on after you access it.”
“Oh, Megan.”
“I’m going now.”
“Good idea.”
Megan used the walk to the break room to clear her mind of Barry Sutton and his e-mails. The squad room was packed with officers and detectives. Why did he pick on her?
Because she was a soft touch, Megan thought, answering her own question. She had no business being a soft touch. She was a police officer. She was competent and in control.
Megan shoved quarters into the soda machine and took a restorative swallow as soon as she opened the can. Okay. Technically, Barry was harassing her. Therefore, she would send him an e-mail explaining exactly what the consequences were if he didn’t cease and desist because if she received one more e-mail, she was turning him in. Strong. Competent. No nonsense.
When she got back to her desk, there were fifty-seven e-mails clogging her in-box and they were now arriving every few seconds.
Megan sent her cease-and-desist e-mail and then waited.
They stopped.
“Quitter,” she muttered, almost disappointed. Twenty minutes later, Barry strode across the squad room.
BARRY DID NOT HAVE time for this, but apparently Megan was the type to hold a grudge and would require a little face-to-face intervention.
Frankly, he was surprised. Usually, getting Megan to cooperate was a no-brainer. She was refreshingly eager to please, so honest she squeaked, and had both freckles and breasts. Barry had figured out that she liked the freckles and didn’t know what to do with the breasts. She was the type of woman who felt they got in the way. And he supposed they did. They sure spoiled the line of her uniform. And he meant that in a good way.
She was sun-kissed cute, the type of girl a guy would ask to fill in on a Saturday softball game. Barry didn’t play softball, but he could appreciate her type. He’d decided her type was the adolescent pal who suddenly developed a sexy little body that she ignored and none of her guy pals could. The way to her heart was to ignore her womanly charms and treat her like a kid sister—somebody else’s kid sister. See, that kind of subtlety was the key to Barry’s success. If he treated her like his kid sister, then the male-female thing was not there. Somebody else’s kid sister, and the male-female thing could be there. It was that whiff of possibility that he put into the smile he reserved just for her.
