Redemption For Two by Tobias Tanner Page B

She’d gotten laid on that couch. Lots of times, according to Davidson. And she had zero interest in letting Mickey tear off a piece in the same place. That much was obvious.
    “I have to get back to work,” she said firmly. “Now let’s get this done, please. I don’t like it here.”
    “No?”
    “No. It’s nasty.”
    “And you with no undies on.”
    “Whose fault is that?”
    Mickey got up, enjoying himself a little more than he should, and went over to the desk. He propped his butt against the edge beside Sandy and reached down between her arms to squeeze her unfettered breasts. He could see stocking tops at the hem of her skirt, and wanted to touch her thighs, too.
    “Stop it, Mickey. I mean it.” Her voice was very sharp, almost panicky.
    “Oh, hell. All right,” he said. “Look, just gather this crap up and we’ll take it home. There’s got to be a box around here somewhere.”
    “There are boxes everywhere,” she said. “He uses them for delivery.”
    “He does?” Mickey put a mildly curious look on his face. “How do you know what he does, San?”
    She colored slightly, but blustered. “Because he delivers the impressions to our office, is how I know,” she said.
    “Ah. The office.”
    Sandy looked like she was going to say something else and then didn’t. She stacked paperwork on the desk with brusque little slaps. Mickey went to find a box. When he got back, it was apparent that he’d need another one.
    “It’s almost one,” he said. “You finish piling stuff up and take off. I’ll pack everything and take it home. We can look at it tonight.”
    “Almost one?” She looked at the little ship’s wheel clock on the wall. “I didn’t realize it was this late, honey. I have to go.”
    She stood up and gave him a quick little kiss and went out the door without even a sideways glance at the leather sofa. Mickey stayed to pack. He found some tattered porn in Davidson’s bottom desk drawer and a half finished bottle of cheap bourbon. Out of curiosity, he looked through the other drawers. Found a threadbare baseball. An assortment of broken ball point pens, old bills, retirement stuff from the FBI human resources office. Then he looked in the file cabinet.
    The first thing he found was a thick stack of photographs. Nude poses. Some partly dressed. Standing. Kneeling. Bending from the waist. Sitting on the couch. Lying on it. All of Sandy. It took his breath away. In some she looked deeply unhappy. In others, cheerful, or frankly seductive. And in more than a few, she was obviously drunk.
    Mickey sat down behind Davidson’s desk and sorted slowly through the pictures, which weren’t, he couldn’t help but notice, all bad. His wife was a helluva good looking woman, lean bodied and pretty and more salacious in still photographs than he had ever seen her in real life. He thought about what Davidson had said the night he hit her. Something about she would do what he told her, or she knew what would happen next.
    The photographs explained a lot. They weren’t dated, but her glasses in one set were the old ones she was wearing again after losing the red ones in Linus’s parking lot. Those were the pictures where she was drunk, and Mickey could tell they were from last summer or maybe that was before she started wearing bangs over her forehead again.
    That meant she’d been fooling with Linus for six or eight months, at least. It hurt, knowing she’d been doing the asshole for a lot longer than he thought. Mickey had no idea what the attraction was in the first place, but it was pretty obvious that Linus had gone to great lengths to control Sandy afterwards.
    So, maybe Linus fed her a line and poured her full of tequila to get her the first time. But by the time that night was over, whenever it was, she was caught in the nasty spider web. He’d have waved those pictures under her nose and threatened her. Fuck me, or your old man gets the pictures. Or your boss. Or maybe your daughter. At