uno

It started while I was in the middle of an extremely heated online battle over a pair of black leather platform boots. That’s when a chime sounded on my desktop, letting me know I’d received an e-mail.

Ordinarily I’d have ignored it, since my need for a pair of stylish yet functional boots was at an all-time high. My last ones had met with an unfortunate accident when I was mediating a particularly stubborn NCDP (Non-Compliant Deceased Person) down at the Carmel marina, and both of us had ended up in the water.

Unfortunately, I was at work, and my boss, Father Dominic, frowns on his employees ignoring e-mails at work, even at an unpaid internship like mine.

Muttering, “I’ll be back,” at the screen (in what I considered to be a pretty good imitation of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator), I clicked my in-box, keeping the screen to the auction open. With their steel-reinforced toes and chunky heels, these boots were perfect for dealing with those who needed a swift kick in the butt in order to encourage them to pass on to the afterlife, though I doubt that’s why the person who kept trying to outbid me—Maximillian28, a totally lame screen name—wanted them so badly.

But if there’s anything I’ve learned in the mediation business, it’s that you shouldn’t make assumptions.

Which is exactly what I realized when I saw the name of the e-mail’s sender. It wasn’t one of my coworkers at the Mission Academy, let alone a parent or a student. It wasn’t a family member or friend, either.

It was someone I hadn’t had any contact with in a long, long time—someone I’d hoped never to hear from again. Just seeing his name in my in-box caused my blood to boil . . . or freeze. I wasn’t sure which.

Forgetting about the boots, I clicked on the e-mail’s text.

To: suzesimonmissionacademy.edu

Fr: paulslaterslaterindustries

Re: Your House

Date: November 16 1:00:02 PM PST

Hi, Suze.

I’m sure you’ve heard by now that my new company, Slater Industries, has purchased your old house on 99 Pine Crest Road, as well as the surrounding properties.

You’ve never been a sentimental kind of girl, so I doubt you’ll have a problem with the fact that we’ll be tearing your house down in order to make way for a new Slater Properties development of moderately sized family homes (see attached plans). My numbers are below. Give me a call if you want to talk.

You know, it really bothers me that we haven’t stayed in touch over the years, especially since we were once so close.

Regards to Jesse.

Best,

Paul Slater

P.S.: Don’t tell me you’re still upset over what happened graduation night. It was only a kiss.

I stared at the screen, aware that my heart rate had sped up. Sped up? I was so angry I wanted to ram my fist into the monitor, as if by doing so I could somehow ram it into Paul Slater’s rock-hard abs. I’d hurt my knuckles doing either, but I’d release a lot of pent-up aggression.

Did I have a problem, as Paul had so blithely put it, with the fact that he’d purchased my old house—the rambling Victorian home in the Carmel Hills that my mom and stepdad had lovingly renovated nearly a decade earlier for their new blended family (myself and my stepbrothers Jake, Brad, and David)—and was now intending to tear it down in order to make way for some kind of hideous subdivision?

Yeah. Yeah, I had a problem with that, all right, and with nearly every other thing he’d written in his stupid e-mail.

And not because I’m sentimental, either.

He had the nerve to call what he’d done to me on graduation night “only a kiss”? Funny how all this time I’d been considering it something else entirely.

Fortunately for Paul, I’d never been stupid enough to mention it to my boyfriend, Jesse, because if I had, there’d have been a murder.

But since Hispanic males make up about 37 percent of the total prison population in California (and Paul evidently had enough money to buy the entire street on which I used to live), I didn’t see a real strong chance of Jesse getting off on justifiable homicide, though that’s what Paul’s murder would have been, in my opinion.

Without stopping to think—huge mistake—I pulled my cell phone from the back pocket of my jeans and angrily punched in one of the numbers Paul had listed. It rang only once before I heard his voice—deeper than I remembered—intone smoothly, “This is Paul Slater.”

“What the hell is your problem?”

“Why, Susannah Simon,” he said, sounding pleased. “How nice to hear from you. You haven’t changed a bit. Still so ladylike and refined.”

“Shut the hell up.”

I’d like to point out that I didn’t say hell either time. There’s a swear jar on my desk—Father Dominic put it there due to my tendency to curse. I’m supposed to stick a dollar in it for every four-letter word I utter, five dollars for every F-bomb I drop.

But since there was no one in the office to overhear me, I let the strongest weapons in my verbal arsenal fly freely. Part of my duties in the administrative offices of the Junípero Serra Mission Academy (grades K–12)—where I’m currently trying to earn some of the practicum credits I need to get my certification as a school counselor—are to answer the phone and check e-mails while all of my supervisors are at lunch.

What do my duties not include? Swearing. Or making personal phone calls to my enemies.

“I just wanted to find out where you are,” I said, “so I can drive to that location and then slowly dismember you, something I obviously should have done the day we met.”

“Same old Suze,” Paul said fondly. “How long has it been, anyway, six years? Almost that. I don’t think I’ve heard from you since the night of our high-school graduation, when your stepbrother Brad got so incredibly drunk on Goldschläger that he hurled all over Kelly Prescott’s Louboutins. Ah, memories.”

“He wasn’t the only one who was drunk, if I recall,” I reminded him. “And that isn’t all that happened that night. You know what I’ve been doing since then, besides getting my counseling degree? Working out, so that when we meet again, I can—”