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Sadie took another sip, appraising Josh over the rim of her mug. He was good-looking, with dark wavy hair and blue eyes. He could probably pass for her brother. He was the hot guy she’d hired for the experiment that became the Cleaning Crew. Barely a man back then. He’d been about to turn nineteen, full of attitude and anger and a desperate need to belong to something. Sadie had understood. She’d taken a gamble with him and it had paid off. Paid off very well. They clicked immediately when he told her he’d aged out of the foster-care system. Eighteen and on the street. Exactly like her. Only he had been lucky and his foster family had let him stay until he finished high school. Sadie hadn’t been as lucky. She’d been put on the street the minute she turned eighteen, four months from graduation.
He was one of two people who knew her whole story. And she was the only one who knew his. Her instincts had been right about him. Given a chance, some guidance and sisterly affection, his loyalty had become a fierce thing. And she paid him well for all he did. He’d trained every new guy for years. He set the tone and enforced her expectations in guy speak that carried more weight than her rules and regulations. She trusted him like no other. This was why she hesitated to say what she’d brought him here to say. But she knew her hesitation was nothing but selfishness.
“I’ve been getting inquiries,” she said. “About if we would consider franchising. And Molly’s been logging at least five calls a week from the Columbia area asking if we take clients there. So there’s a potential market.”
“But you’re against selling a franchise. Don’t want to lose control over the quality.”
“Exactly. Here’s what I was thinking. Not a franchise, but a second office.”
“Uh-huh. Might work. Would keep you in charge.”
She sat back, tenting her fingers and pressing them to her lips. “I was thinking about offering it to you, Josh.”
He sat up from his sprawl. “Offering what?”
“To head up a new location. To be the manager. Get the whole thing off the ground. Hire the guys, train them, everything. You’re the only person I’d trust to do it, Josh.”
“Wow.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Wow. I’m, um— I don’t know what to think.”
“I’m floating it out there as an option. As much as I’d hate to lose you, I don’t want to waste your talents holding you here.”
“How would it work, though? I’d be the manager?”
“We’d have to sit down with Lena and a lawyer and work out the details. I wouldn’t be against giving you a franchise so you’d be the owner. I trust you.”
“I’ll think about it. My gut reaction is to say no because I don’t want to leave. But it would be a challenge.”
Sadie rose and walked around the desk. Josh stood also and she pulled him into a tight hug. “I wish you were my real brother,” she said.
“I am your real brother.”
She stepped back and wiped at her eyes. “I know. I’ll miss you if you go to Columbia. But I want it for you. I know you’ll do an awesome job.”
“I said I’ll think about it, Saff.”
She swatted at his arm. “Stop it. You’ll slip up one day and say it in front of the wrong person.”
After Josh left, Sadie took Jack for a walk around the block. An idea began forming in her head. She wasn’t the type to engage in a battle. It was far safer to ignore and evade. But this Marcus thing was starting to irritate her. When she got back, she called Lena.
“How much money is in the advertising budget?”
“None. You don’t advertise. I don’t budget for it. Why? What do you want to do?”
Sadie pulled open the bottom drawer and opened her stash of jelly beans. She needed a sugar high for this. “I was thinking of doing an ad thanking the people of Charleston for voting for us in the City Paper thing.”
“Uh-huh. I’m liking it.”
“A group shot. Of all the guys.”
“And you in the center.”
“Um. No. I stay out of the limelight.”
“Then I won’t approve the funds.”
“You have to. It’s my money.”
“Come on, Sadie. This is an awesome idea. Your gorgeous self, surrounded by all that hot beefcake, thanking the people of Charleston? Marcus will choke on his breakfast opening up the paper.”
Sadie picked out a cream and a strawberry jelly bean to eat together. While she chewed, she pictured the look on Marcus’s face when the ad came out. The image appealed to her after all his nasty comments. “You got names?”
Lena heaved a long, mournful sigh. “This is why I take you to those business association meetings. For you to meet people, build up a network.”
“I know. You got names?”
“Hold on.”
After scribbling down the name of a woman who ran an advertising agency, Sadie popped another jelly bean in her mouth. “I was thinking about going to see Abuelito this weekend. Would it be okay?”
“Better than okay. We can go together. He’d love to see you.”
“Can I wait until then? Should I go sooner?”
“There’s time. Not much, but time.”
Sadie ended the call and leaned back in her chair, propping her feet up on the desk and holding the jar of jelly beans on her stomach. Jack put his head on her thigh and sighed. She scratched his ears and let out her own sigh. “Oh, Jackie Boy. I don’t know if I know how to say goodbye.”
A brief rap on the door pulled her attention away from the jelly beans. Molly walked to the desk, holding out an envelope. “Mail for you. Looks personal.”
Sadie took the envelope. White business-letter size. Hand written and addressed to S. D. Martin. Her eye and breath caught on the return address: G. Rogers, Florence, SC. “Okay,” she said, dismissing Molly with a voice that sounded faint and tremulous inside her head. “Thanks.”
After Molly left, Sadie dropped the envelope. Florence. Where her mother lived. Rogers. Her mother’s married name. Grant, the baby her mother kept. The one she was pregnant with when she signed away her parental rights to Sadie. Throw it away. Tear it to shreds and burn it. She wanted—needed—nothing from those people. Still she remained frozen, her hands curled into fists framing the envelope. But how? Why? Had her mother told her new family about her? And how had he found her? Open the letter. Find out. Instead, she swept the letter into the top drawer. Out of sight, out of mind, right? She had a business to run here.
* * *
WYATT’S MIND KEPT going back to how Sadie had motioned for Josh to follow her once the meeting had ended. He was beginning to suspect Josh was much more than just another employee. The way he’d joked with Sadie about the dead cat, the way he’d passionately defended her against Marcus Canard and now the way they disappeared to her office together. Maybe Josh needed a little investigating.
He was on a tour of headquarters, following his preceptor, DeShawn, down the hallway, past Sadie’s office and the classroom and to the third door.
“This is where you’ll start every day. You’ll have an assigned group of clients. Each day is scheduled out. I know mine by heart so I don’t have to check, but there’s a calendar there.”
The calendar took up the only wall space not filled with bookshelves. There was a small round table in the center of the room. The bookshelves were filled with white binders. Each binder had a name printed along the spine.
“These are the client books,” DeShawn said with a wave of his hand. “We’ve tried to talk Sadie into going paperless, but she wants to keep these.”
“Wow. That’d be a huge job to transfer all this to computer,” Wyatt said. He was slightly stunned by the number of books.
DeShawn crossed the room and began to pull binders from the shelf. “We’ve got a pretty easy day today. It’ll be good for your first full day.”
They sat together at the small table and DeShawn opened a binder. “Every morning, you see who’s on the schedule and pull their books. All the information you need is in here. Name, address, contact number. Any special requests will be here.” He turned a page and pointed. “See, for example, this is an elderly couple. We moved their cleaning day to coincide with the recycling pickup day because they have trouble getting the full bins out to the curb. We do that for them.”
“That’s a nice touch,” Wyatt said.
“It’s more than a touch. Sadie expects this. It’s part of what sets us apart. Anytime a client asks for something extra, we do it, every time if needed. If we see something like this we’re supposed to offer to take care of it.”
“Great.”
He had no idea how cleaning services were usually run, but he could imagine this individual attention was rare.
“So we get the books, go over them to remind ourselves of anything extra to do and we take them with us so we can update them. There’s a cleaning log here where we log time in, time out and the date. Also, anything unusual goes here. Any new requests or needs are put at the bottom of the special requests list. Got it?”
Wyatt nodded. “Seems straightforward enough.”
“Questions?”
Only about a hundred, Wyatt thought. “I’m still a little concerned about the whole ‘guys cleaning your house’ aspect of this. I know about the behavioral contracts, but there’ve been no problems, have there?”
DeShawn shook his head as he stood and gathered the day’s books. “It’s a thing with some of the newer clients. Most of the people who’ve been with Sadie for years know it’s all about the job we do, not who’s doing it. It’s an attention-grabbing gimmick, nothing more. Our service is beyond excellent. Now, come on and let me show you how to properly clean a house.”
Wyatt, who had been cleaning house since he was twenty and his mother became ill, was a bit offended by that...until they started. He’d known the work would be mostly physical: mopping, sweeping, vacuuming. He wasn’t prepared for the military-level precision with which DeShawn went through a house. He could clean a house twice as well in half the time Wyatt could do his own home.
By lunch, Wyatt was beginning to wonder what he could report to Marcus. Every client they’d seen so far had been an elderly couple. Surely they weren’t buying drugs or sexual services. Even the idea that Sadie was running the cleaning service as a front to some criminal business was hard to believe. Front operations were usually poorly run. Most attention went to the criminal activity as it was the more lucrative. Fronts were only that—fronts, barely functioning covers. The Cleaning Crew was no front. It was a thriving business.
“So, how’re you liking it so far?” DeShawn asked over lunch.
Wyatt smiled at him. “It’s good. Pretty much what I expected.”
“You’re picking it up very quickly. Better than most, trust me.”
“Probably the military training. I like order and plans.”
DeShawn’s eyes lit up. “You were military?”
“National Guard.”
“Did you get sent over?”
“Two tours in Afghanistan.”
“Can I ask you some questions?”
“Sure.” He braced for the usual questions from young men who thought war some exciting real-life version of the video games they’d grown up playing.
“I’m thinking of joining after I graduate next year. I can go in as an officer but I can’t decide which branch. The air force appeals to me, but with my engineering degree, some have said the army might be best. What do you think?”
Wyatt dropped the french fry he was holding. Whoa. Okay. This kid was serious. “I’m not an expert on all the different branches. I was in the Army National Guard. There was a demand for engineers. Mostly for rebuilding. What do you want to do with your degree? Say you enlist, do your twenty years and retire. What experience would you want to have to transfer to a civilian job?”
“Structural engineering.”
“So compare what’s available in each branch to what jobs are comparable in the civilian market, and go with that.”
DeShawn lifted his hand. “Boom! Right to the center of it. Thanks, man.”
Wyatt did the fist bump thing and grinned. This made him feel a little better about the whole undercover-and-lying thing. He’d maybe helped this guy. “Let me ask you a question now.”
“Shoot.”
“Sadie said everyone went out with a partner. But you don’t. Neither does Josh. Why’s that?”
“There are only a few of us who go solo. The ones who’ve been here the longest. We have the older client lists. The clients Sadie had back when she worked alone. Before there was a Crew.”
Wyatt nodded. That wasn’t going to help him much. He needed to get in with the newer clients and newer employees. See what was going on with them. He gathered up the remains of his lunch and followed DeShawn to the trash bin. This is only day one; give it some time.
They finished up just after three and headed back to the office. Sadie was in the back room, filling out the next month’s calendar when they went in to put the books away. Wyatt felt his heart rate amp up a few notches at the sight of her. The jeans and T-shirt hugged her curves and her hair was down, loose curls spilling to the center of her back. She turned and smiled as they walked in.
“Hey. How’d it go?”
“Good job with this one, boss.”
Sadie’s gaze moved to him and he felt every inch she looked over. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. Picking it up so fast, he probably doesn’t need a full two weeks. In a month, he’ll be ready to go solo.”
Wyatt grinned at DeShawn. This was good. Yes, take me off orientation early. Put me on a team with one of the new guys. “It helps when you’ve got a great teacher.”
DeShawn held out a fist and Wyatt bumped it. “Tomorrow.”
“How’s Julietta doing?” Sadie asked after DeShawn left. “I’ve been thinking about her. Is she okay after what happened?”
Wyatt blinked and stared for a moment. People usually avoided talking about Jules. It was messy and painful. “Yeah,” he said. “She’s okay. I was expecting it to be like a dam breaking but she hasn’t said anything more. I called her therapist and told her what happened. She said to let Jules lead the way on when she wants to talk about her mother.”
Sadie pressed a hand over her heart. “Good. I was so afraid I said something wrong and made it worse.”
“No. The therapist said you did perfect. Didn’t make a big deal out of it. So thank you again.”
“You’re welcome, but it wasn’t anything I did. She chose the moment. I haven’t forgotten about the curls. I’ll grab something from Walmart and show you how to use it sometime this week.”
“That’d be great. Anything else I can do for you?”
The faint blush on her cheeks was interesting, but he only caught a glimpse before she turned back to the calendar.
“No. See you tomorrow.”
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_145fd3a6-64c6-58c8-ae4b-ede4b49bb131)
FOUR DAYS INTO the job and Wyatt was starting to feel really horrible about this investigation. Between the morning interactions and midday resupply runs that allowed him interaction with other teams, Wyatt was getting a better idea of how the Cleaning Crew operated. There wasn’t anything going on. Better work ethic, better gimmick, better management and leadership. That was it. Marcus was going to have to accept the facts.
He consulted his kitchen cheat sheet. Clean microwave, inside and out. He glanced around to find it. They were in a large, gorgeous home on Albemarle Point overlooking the marsh and the Ashley River. The kitchen was huge. It had two stoves and the biggest refrigerator he’d ever seen in his life. So, this was how the other half lived.
