Trading Secrets

The federal investigators had been the most frightening for her to deal with. The city police detectives had backed off on her once they’d realized only Brent had company property and how little of it there was. It had been over three weeks before the federal investigators had let her go, though, and then not until what had seemed like a dozen people had asked her the same hundred questions.

“I hadn’t known anything. Nothing,” she insisted. “But no one would believe me.” The strain clouding her expression slipped into her voice. “I obviously hadn’t even known the man I’d dated for over two years.” Which was just a few months shy of how long his little scheme had been going on.

She couldn’t believe how hurt, foolish and betrayed she felt. The emotions sat like a rock in her chest, making it hard to breathe at times, making every breath she took remind her of how easily she had been taken in. She’d been a kid from the backwoods, easy prey as far as a man like Brent Collier had been concerned. A trusting innocent armed with nothing more than a hunger to experience sophistication and excitement and no experience at all swimming with sharks. But what she felt more than anything else was anger at herself for the naiveté that had allowed her to be charmed by a man who’d wanted nothing but to use her.

“I’d even saved myself until I was twenty-three, waiting for the right man, and he’d just been using me in bed, too.”

She gave the stripped twig a toss. It was only when Greg reached over and handed her another one to peel that she realized she’d spoken her last thought aloud.

The admission brought color to her cheeks—and a look of sympathy from the man beside her.

He had to think her truly pathetic. Wanting badly to mask the depth of how very hurt, used and betrayed she felt, she tried to dismiss the emotional slaughter as inconsequential.

“Do you know what’s the real icing on this little cake?” she asked, able to mask everything but her agitation. “The investigators confiscated most of my possessions in case they’d been purchased with any of the illegal funds. They took my furniture, the great little paintings I’d collected at art fairs, and my television. They even took my clock radio,” she said, unable to imagine why they’d want something that had only cost $24.95 and would barely fetch five dollars at a flea market. “The only reason I still have my car is because I could prove I’d bought it before I’d met Brent. But you know what’s even worse than that? “I can’t get a job doing anything that requires references,” she fumed into Greg’s coaxing silence. “Even if I’d wanted my old job back,” which she hadn’t, considering how humiliating the whole scenario had been, “I couldn’t get it. I was fired. After the dust settled and I called my boss to change my status from having been fired to having quit, he informed me that the firing stood. He said that a person with access to privileged information should be a better judge of character than I was. If I was duped once, it could happen again.”