"And you think my sex will make it that much easier for me to get close to him?"

"Depends on how you wish to pursue this," the blonde said with another shrug. "I'm merely pointing out a fact. It's completely up to you in how you want to proceed. I'm certainly not implying you should try to get too close to him."

But the look in her eye said it was exactly why she was hiring a woman.

Silently telling me that if I had to hop into bed with Donner to find out what he was doing, then do it.

"You'll report directly to me. No one else." Her hand was already reaching into her handbag, pulling out an envelope which she passed across to me.

"I believe that you'll find this to be a suitable enough retainer. You'll also find copies of Donner's records from our personnel file, along with other papers that may help you."

It only took one brief glance inside the envelope to tell me the retainer was indeed more than healthy.

If only there weren't alarms going off in the back of my head!

This Addams woman was a real bitch.

A manipulator of people.

Of course there was no rule saying you had to like the people you worked for. And in this case the money would certainly make it easier to overlook certain shortcomings.

So I silenced those internal alarms.

An equally fake smile from me and a handshake were all it took to complete things.

Addams was on her feet and heading towards the door.

"I am of course very interested in this. I do hope that I'll be getting a report from you very soon," she said looking over her shoulder.

"I'll start today," I assured her.

"Good. I look forward to hearing from you," she said with a smile. This time it wasn't a phony one.

No, this was the type of smile a shark gives right before swallowing one of your legs.

One that I was still thinking about for several minutes after the door shut behind her.