Keeping It in the Family (Linstead)

Chapter 135

The next morning, Lindsay sat in her car outside of the Illinois governor's office building. It was a huge place downtown, a workplace for more people than she dared to estimate. All of them served the governor, or more realistically served the higher-ups in the governor's staff. In less than two month's time, the person at the top of that tree was going to be Bayley Martinez. That fact really stuck in Lindsay's craw, which was one of the main reasons she was sitting there.

A black SUV pulled up outside of the building. Martinez got out of the front passenger seat, impeccably dressed in a business suit as always, along with a black scarf and matching leather gloves. A burly bodyguard got out of the rear seat behind her, also wearing a suit.

Lindsay glared through her windshield. Just seeing Martinez irritated her. She had known the incoming governor would be here on this particular morning for a meeting with the current governor regarding the transition of power. Now it was time to move in.

Needing to hustle before Martinez got inside the building, Lindsay got out of her car, slammed the door and hurried across the street. Martinez and her bodyguard had just stepped onto the sidewalk, in no particular hurry.

"Martinez!" Lindsay called out as she approached.

Martinez saw who it was and rolled her eyes. "Erin. It's Governor Martinez, thank you very much. If you want to speak to me you'll have to walk with me. I have a meeting to get to."

It struck Lindsay how masterful Martinez was at manipulating people and situations. In only a few sentences she had called her Erin while demanding that a formal title should be used in return, and she had also taken control of the conversation's circumstances by walking towards the building. Lindsay had a reply to one of those things at least.

"You're not the governor until January, so it's Governor-elect. And anyway I can promise you that you're never going to catch me calling you Governor."

Martinez tutted her like a naughty child. "That's not very professional, is it? Can I assume you're here for a reason other than to try and annoy me?"

They were now in the building, and the conversation stopped while they passed through metal detectors and security. Martinez was recognised and expected, whereas Lindsay flashed her badge.

"She's with me, you can let her in," Martinez told one of the guards unnecessarily. Lindsay well knew that it was in actual fact an attempt to try and look more important than her. She let it slide.

"I came to talk to you about Kevin."

"Let me guess, you're going to threaten to fire him?" Martinez said as they walked over to the elevators. "Well, you can save it. He's done nothing wrong, and he's been doing his job well while you've been on leave. You had no right to speak to him the way you did yesterday."

It was another barb designed to get under Lindsay's skin, and this time it worked. "Oh, I had every right," she snapped back. "By dating a dirty criminal low-life like you, he has demonstrated an almost unforgivable lack of judgement. And it's only against my better judgement that he's still part of my unit."

An elevator arrived and the doors slid open. Two men walked out, then Martinez and Lindsay stepped inside.

"Take the next one," Martinez ordered her bodyguard just before the doors slid closed. She wanted privacy for the conversation. Once the doors closed, she pressed the button for the fifth floor, which was the top one.

"So why don't you get to the point of why you're here, Erin?"

"I'm here to say that if on the off chance you do actually care about Kevin, which I doubt, you should make sure that neither him nor you give me a reason to..." Lindsay stopped speaking as the elevator jerked to a halt between the second and third floors.