Pros and Cons by Jenna Black Page A

ever knew. He and I didn’t exactly run in the same crowd, and he probably skipped more classes than he went to.” Her lips curled in a small smile. “But he was a treat to the eyes, and I was a teenager. I noticed the hell out of him. Sorry I can’t be more help.”
    But my gut was telling me she’d helped far more than she knew.

S IX
    I was both mentally and physically exhausted when I got back to the mansion. I don’t know how many total miles I ended up driving that day, except that it was a hell of a lot. And although I now had a good, solid lead, my next step in finding the mysterious Doug required a visit to the Georgetown library, which would have to wait until morning.
    The fact that Anderson had taped a note to my door telling me we needed to talk didn’t exactly soothe me into sleep. It was somehow more personal—and more invasive—than the voice mails he’d left me, which I’d ignored. Of course, he could just let himself into my room and wait for me there if he was really determined to corner me. The notes and messages told me he was trying to give me at least a little bit of space, but I knew it wouldn’t last. Eventually, we would have to talk about his mission to get revenge on Konstantin, and I was going to have to find the courage to refuse. I wanted to think he would take my refusal with grace and acceptance, but unlike the rest of us in this house, Anderson wasn’t a Liberi . He was an actual god, although I was the only one who knew it. Read a few mythology texts, and see how accepting the gods tend to be when a mere mortal says no to them.
    As a general rule, I’m not too much of a procrastinator, but the longer I could put off the confrontation with Anderson, the happier—and safer—I would be. As long as he was willing to let me dodge him, I was going to take advantage of the opportunity.

    I woke up at five on Friday morning, my body stubbornly programmed to get me up by dawn no matter how late I went to bed. I was still bleary-eyed and sleepy after showering and dressing, and it was way too early to head out to the library, so I hunkered down on my sofa with my laptop and my coffee to do a little research on Wayne Fowler. Maybe Fowler wasn’t as bad as Heather thought. Maybe he was really an upstanding guy who just happened to be good at putting the fear of God into people who tried to blackmail him.
    At first glance, he seemed respectable enough. A wealthy attorney with a posh Chevy Chase address, an old-money wife, and a pair of children. Photos showed a middle-aged man who was fighting off baldness and had expensive taste in clothes. The thinning hair and the slight paunch the clothes couldn’t hide gave him a look of jovial harmlessness, but it didn’t take long to see that something not so harmless lurked beneath his facade.
    Fowler was best known for working high-profile criminal cases, defending drug lords, murderers, and even professional hit men. He had a frighteningly good track record, so much so that there were rumors of jury tampering, witness intimidation, and bribery. Of course, rumors aren’t reality, but there were also two cases he’d tried in which key witnesses turned up dead before they had a chance to testify. As if that weren’t bad enough, his first wife, with whom he’d had a rocky relationship at best, had been raped and murdered during a home invasion when he was away on business. He had an airtight alibi, but the wife’s family insisted he had hired someone to kill her. The police had never been able to find enough evidence to arrest him, but it wasn’t because they didn’t believe the family. I could totally see why Heather was so scared.
    The law had to presume Fowler was innocent until proven otherwise, but that didn’t mean I had to. There might not be enough evidence to arrest him for any of the crimes he was suspected of committing, but a man doesn’t