Fidelity Files Read Online Free PDF

very careful of what I say."
    I rolled my eyes as I turned my SUV onto Wilshire. "Sorry."
    "Are you in town?" she asked.
    "Yeah, just flew in from Denver an hour ago. I'll be here until nine tomorrow morning. Why?"
    My friends had gotten used to my hectic schedule. Well, they had gotten used to Jennifer the investment banker's hectic schedule. Being in town for mere hours at a time was nothing new to any of them. And as far as they were concerned, I had just as normal a job as any other traveling businessperson. Selling consulting packages, negotiating million-dollar deals, schmoozing with hotshot clients – the usual. I'm sure the image of me dressed up like a sexy corporate bimbo in order to see if some rich woman's husband is capable of committing adultery is the last thing on their minds when they think of me "on the road."
    And although this whole thing started out as somewhat of a mini-quest, being a fidelity inspector had actually turned into quite the lucrative career. I worked on a referral basis only. But once word of my services had started to spread, there weren't enough hours in the day to take on all the requested assignments. It had never been about the money... but it certainly hadn't made things worse.
    "Can we meet up tonight?" Sophie asked. "I could seriously use a 'session.'"
    "I'm sorry, hon. I can't," I said regretfully. "I have to work tonight."
    Sophie sighed again. It was a phrase she had heard many times. "Okay. But those slave-driver bosses of yours better give you the weekend off. You've worked the last two weekends. Nobody's that important."
    I laughed. "Yes, I do have the weekend off." Which was actually something I'd been looking forward to all week. "We'll get everyone together. It'll be a group session."
    "Yeah. For sure," she said, trying to sound upbeat. But I could tell she was disappointed.
    "Don't worry," I reassured her again. "Eric's a good guy. I'm sure you're overreacting. A textbook case of long-distance relationship paranoia."
    "Okay, thanks," she relented. "I better get back to work. Love you."
    "Love you, too."
    I clicked off my headset and tugged it out of my ear.
    I felt bad that I couldn't be there for Sophie tonight. It wasn't the first time my job had stolen time away from my friends. And it broke my heart every time I had to lie to them. As if it wasn't bad enough that I couldn't be there for them when they needed me, they didn't even know the real reason why I couldn't be there.
    But I was sure we would analyze Sophie's boyfriend drama quite thoroughly this weekend, when the group was assembled for her "session."
    Sophie and I had adopted the term when we were in elementary school. Her dad was a psychologist, and while we were growing up, he saw most of his clients in his home office. He used to come upstairs to Sophie's bedroom in the afternoons and tell us to be quiet because he was "in a session." We always liked the way the phrase sounded: important and confidential. So we decided to make it our own.
    After dinner Sophie and I would sneak into her dad's office and take turns sitting in his large, brown leather chair while the other person sprawled out on the couch and came up with ridiculous-sounding problems like "I can't stop making fart noises in class. It's ruining my social life." The "psychologist" would then open up one of the heavy, leather-bound books on the nearby shelf, flip to a random page, and in their best Masterpiece Theatre voice say, "Sounds like a textbook case of 'fundamental attribution error.'" Or whatever the longest, most important-sounding term on the page was.
    As the years went on, our sessions eventually moved out of Sophie's dad's office, and evolved from silly make-believe problems to real, adolescent issues. But we still always managed to throw in a "textbook case" reference for each and every problem we encountered. It offered a comforting implication. Knowing that all of our problems were documented in some pretentious leather-bound book