Intimate Relations
Finn O’Brien Book 4
Rebecca Forster
Intimate Relations
Kindle Edition
© Copyright 2021 Rebecca Forster
Wolfpack Publishing
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Ebook ISBN 978-1-64734-998-1
Paperback ISBN 978-1-64734-656-0
Cover Design by Hadleigh O. Charles
Cover Photo by Joshua Case on Unsplash
Contents
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Acknowledgments
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
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About the Author
Also by Rebecca Forster
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Intimate Relations
It is so easy for a woman to become what the man she loves believes her to be!
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
For the loves of my life: Steve, Alex, Eric
Acknowledgments
As always, thank you to those who help me along the road from the moment I have the barest kernel of an idea for a new book to the final word. Their patience and good humor is always appreciated. My incredible editor, Jenny Jensen is simply brilliant, kind with criticism and generous with kudos. The fabulously brilliant Bruce Raterink who reads faster than a human being should be able to. The ever hilarious Glenn Gallo whose little notes make my day. Thanks to my husband who becomes chief cook and bottle washer during the process, my kids who distract me with their own adventures, and all the readers who pop me a note asking when there will be a next book. A special shout out to the strange pockets of Los Angeles that inspire the Finn O'Brien Thrillers, and to Wolfpack Publishing for giving Finn and so many other characters of mine a new home.
Intimate Relations
Preface
The night it happened, the City of Angels was quiet in the odd way a big city can be. It was a deceptive silence, an illusory calm, and no more sustainable than holding one's breath. Eventually Los Angeles would exhale and blow out the hot air of discontent, and it would not go unnoticed.
Night owls, insomniacs, creatures cloaked in human skin who lay in wait in dark corners would hear it. Their ears would prick, and their heads would cock as they tried to interpret the sound. Was it the lazy lament of a metropolis settling? Was it the sound of resignation? Had this city, the one that crowned itself with a celestial moniker, always been a hellish place? Or was that little click and whir— that sound of a worn piece of the city giving way—a precursor to something foul. Whatever it was, the sounds that disturbed the peace only mattered to half the population.
The rich half didn't have a care in the world. Those privileged folks were long gone. They had buttoned themselves up in chic Westside condos. They lounged in glass houses perched on stilts in the Hollywood Hills. The wealthy barricaded themselves in their faux villas in Bel-Air. They were safe behind guarded gates, in huge homes rooted on acres of precious land. They rested in condos on Wilshire, a doorman on watch to guard them through the long night. Each day these folks returned to the city, made their fortunes, and scurried back to safety as the sun went down.
Yes, all was right with half the world.
It was the other half who wakened to the sound of the city exhaling. It was the people in Chinatown, Koreatown, Compton, and East LA whose sleep was fitful. The sound disturbed the homeless who seeded the sidewalks, were scattered over empty lots, and took shelter in the doorways of government buildings. The illegals, day laborers, and displaced heard it. The abandoned elderly housed in crumbling apartments heard it. The sometimes creative, seldom successful, often-a-bit-mad freaks, actors, and artists; they heard it.
That night, the sound seemed to come from the frayed edges of the city. In East Los Angeles where livings were eked out in hole-in-the-wall taquerias and gangs replaced government something was stirring. In this part of town there are homes and businesses, but few of them are of any note or consequence. There is one place, however, that stands out. A strange castle of sorts. A compound. A dystopian sound stage of a place. It houses some rich folks and some poor; some on the verge of 'making it', some who never will. Still, this place is magical. To live there means that you belong, that you are acceptable, and that you deserve to be safe behind gates and walls.
In another life this place was a brewery that employed thousands of people. Then it fell victim to microbrewery fashion and California regulation. The people who owned the brewery dismissed their workers and abandoned their buildings. For a long while the compound stood empty; a looming, grey blight built on footprints of concrete poured on cheap land.
But one man's crumbling empire is another's opportunity. In this case, the opportunist was a man and
