Sedona Law 6 by Dave Daren (best non fiction books of all time .TXT) 📗

country. That was the link out. But the question I needed to answer was, how did they get in in the first place?

Of course, if I could answer that, I could free Kelsi.

I definitely needed to talk to Tony. But he wasn’t going to give up his sources that easily. I needed something to make him want to tell me who he was working with.

I drove back to the office with more questions than answers. This thing was getting to be a monster. I knew that it would be. Vicki and AJ were back now, and I finally got a chance to talk to AJ about the studio and the script.

“Yeah,” she said. “I wrote the script from the old blog posts about the case. I wasn’t sure if it was stupid or was going to go anywhere, so I wasn’t going to say anything until I was sure.”

“So Leila is selling me her company,” I said. “For twenty grand.”

“Wow,” she nodded. “Good for her.”

“She’s splitting it with you,” I said.

“I get ten thousand?” she looked incredulously. “Free money.”

“Pretty much,” I said. “The company includes the screenplay.”

“Well,” she said. “I mean, potentially you could make a lot of money on that, if you turn it into a movie. Would I have rights and all of that?”

I nodded. “It becomes property of the company. So if you join the company, it’s just considered work. And whatever involvement you want to have and at what royalty percentage, will be hashed out in contracts with Phoenix. Which, in reality, you’ll probably draft, because I’m his lawyer--”

“And I would do that for a client anyway,” she finished.

“Right,” I said.

“Cool,” she said. “So would I become a partner with your company, or what? How does that work?”

“That’s all Phoenix,” I said. “The three of you will have to hash out roles.”

“Did she sign anything?” AJ asked.

I shook my head. “She was waiting on you to confirm.”

“I want to talk to Phoenix first,” she said.

“I would definitely do that,” I said.

AJ turned to her laptop, clearly preoccupied with the turn of events. I turned to Vicki.

“How’d it go with the yoga instructor?” I asked.

“I clobbered the former employee and he dropped the suit,” she said.

“That’s good,” I said.

“Definitely,” she said.

“You got a sexual harrassment case dropped?” AJ asked incredulously. “That’s like against the rules of womanhood.”

Vicki laughed. “Normally I would agree with you. But, this was an entirely consensual case of a guy who wanted to screw his boss. Then, when she decided she was over it, he got mad and got vindictive.”

“In a way,” AJ said, “he’s harrassing her. If she wanted to stop, and then he created a hostile work environment.”

“It gets worse,” she said, “because he was really bad at his job. She only kept him on because they had a thing going on. And, then, when the fling played itself out, she fired him like she should have done in the first place. So, the break up and the firing happened all in the same week, and so he connected the two, and had enough of a case for like...five minutes. So, we all wasted a lot of time and money on what was basically a guy with a hurt ego because a woman told him no.”

“Well at least we get paid,” I sighed as I pulled up our invoicing software. “What do we got in billable hours?”

“I’ll get you that,” she said. “I don’t know right off.”

I spent the rest of the day writing up invoices and calculating billable hours. I just bought a film studio. We needed to up our cash flow.

I also texted Phoenix about that budget proposal and business plan. I was already wheeling and dealing, buying out the competition for him, and I was doing this all on some old clips he posted from South America. He needed to start showing me he was more than talk.

The day ended none too soon, and I wanted nothing more than to curl up with Vicki and watch Netflix and eat sushi.

“I’m ordering Fifth Street delivery,” I told Vicki as I tapped around on my phone on my out to the car.

Fifth Street Bistro was our go to sushi place downtown. Although, come to think of it, I don’t think we’d ever been inside. We only ordered delivery and had Netflix binge night.

“Fifth Street delivery,” AJ laughed as she walked with us out to the parking lot. “You guys are such a boring married-ish couple.”

We laughed.

“We’re not boring,” Vicki said.

“You gotta go out,” she said. “Be seen, out and about.”

“Ugh,” I said. “I did all that when I was younger. It’s exhausting.”

“Yeah,” Vicki said. “You gotta like put on twelve pounds of make up at ten o’clock at night, and wear some dress you can barely breathe in and then you gotta strut your stuff all night.”

“That’s half the fun,” AJ unlocked her car.

“Alright,” I said. “Maybe we are old and boring. You going out and about?”

“Maybe,” she winked and shook her hips just a little bit. Vicki and I just laughed and AJ ducked into her car.

“Well,” I turned to Vicki. “I think we’re quite interesting people.”

“Yeah,” Vicki said. “Although she has a point. We do need to expand our social circle a bit.”

I made a face and unlocked the car door.

“What?” she said as we settled into the car.

I sighed. “Sedona’s growing on me. Don’t get me wrong. I love the place. But, it’s just, most of the people I went to high school with out here, aren’t really people I’d be close friends with.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “And that’s a fancy way of saying, ‘I’m a big fat snob.’”

“Alright, fine,” I said. “You start hanging out with