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ADAM
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I SLUMPED BACK INTO my hotel room, feeling more than a little bit disappointed.
I mean yeah, the night had been a success, if you counted the fact that I’d made it out with several thumb drives in my pocket, which had once belonged to Arthur. Also a success in that I hadn’t gotten caught, and had managed to play it pretty cool for the entire night. Arthur had introduced me to his wife, Angie, and we’d had a really lovely dinner and plenty of wine.
Honestly, they were the sort of people I could have seen myself being friends with, in another life—one where Arthur wasn’t Suspect #1 on my list of People Who Might Be Stealing from My Company. Angie was really smart and incredibly artistic, her hair dyed a bright pink and her fingers literally covered in paint.
“I try to wash it off as often as I can, but then I get into another project and it just happens again. At a certain point you just give up, you know?” she’d asked with a laugh.
I’d told her that I thought she was a designer rather than an artist, and she’d said that the design company was her public front, and paid for her actual passion, which was the painting.
“Sort of like Arthur, who pays his bills with the job at Miller and then comes home and plays video games all night,” she’d noted.
I’d wanted to ask for more information right then and there. Why he’d thought he needed to pay the bills when she evidently made enough for both of them. Whether he’d felt unmanned at the thought of letting her pay for everything. Whether she thought he actually hated that she made more money than he did.
I didn’t ask any of that.
Instead, I’d waited for them to put the kids to bed—there were three of them, and each of a different age, so bedtime seemed to take about an hour, given the different times for each kid—and had gone exploring. It hadn’t been hard to find Arthur’s office. It had been hard to get through all of the gaming equipment and find anything useful. When I saw the stash of thumb drives, though, I’d thought I probably hit the jackpot. After all, if you were doing something illegal—and you were a tech guy who could, theoretically, be coming up with all new software—it made sense that you’d keep stuff on external drives.
Small ones, which you could easily take from one place to another.
I’d grabbed all of them, knowing full well that at some point he’d figure out that they were missing and probably come around to suspect me, and shoved them into my pockets. Then I’d squirmed my way through the rest of dinner, counting the seconds until I could get out of there.
And now here I was back in my safe little hotel suite, feeling...
Kind of disappointed. I’d gone on my first reconnaissance mission, and it had been...
Sort of ordinary. There were no guns, no drugs, and nothing even remotely exciting. Just a lot of wine, some truly amazing Italian food, and a woman who had three kids and still dyed her hair bright pink.
“So much for being a super spy,” I muttered.
I felt more like a total failure.
Still, I jumped when someone pounded on the door, and the first thing I thought was that Arthur had figured out that I’d taken his drives and had somehow not only figured out what hotel I was in, but also what room was mine.
I darted right to the door, my heart hammering, and peeked through the peephole to see...
Katie. It was just Katie. And though she definitely looked like she’d been through the wringer, she also wasn’t dangerous. In fact, she’d probably congratulate me for having successfully stolen those thumb drives.
I opened the door, reached out, grabbed her by the wrist, and pulled her into the room.
She looked down at her wrist and then up at me, her face registering surprise. “What on earth are you doing? You’re so anxious to get me into your room that you have to yank me like a top?”
“Like a top?” I asked, confused. “What does that even mean?”
She waved her hand dismissively. “It was the best I could come up with in the moment. I’ve had kind of a lot of wine.”
I huffed. I didn’t believe her. Or rather, I did. She’d probably had just as much wine as Rachel. But I also knew that the girl could handle her liquor like a champ—until and unless she wanted it to go to her head.
“Liar,” I said casually.
She cast me the ghost of a grin. “Okay, you’re right. I’m not that drunk. But I did get caught snooping around in Rachel’s office and got kicked out, and I think our friendship is probably finished. How did you make out?”
I held up a hand. “Hold up. Go back. You got to snoop around in her office? And you got caught? And kicked out? What the hell happened? I thought you were a professional! The best of the best!”
She flopped onto my couch and gave me a resigned look. “That’s the rumor. Do you have anything to drink? I don’t think I’ve had enough wine.”
I grabbed the bottle I’d bought earlier in the day, just in case, popped the cork, and quickly poured two glasses, congratulating myself on having bought a bottle of wine for just this sort of situation.
When I handed her the glass, I let my fingers brush hers, sending across whatever comfort I could. Because one look at her told me that she was a whole lot more upset than she was letting on.
“Wine,” I said. “Now talk.”
She started talking, and once she started, I didn’t think I’d be able to get her to shut up again. So mostly, I just listened. She’d waited for a break in the conversation, she said, and Rachel’s mom calling had given her a good excuse to get up and go to the bathroom.
“It’s right next to her office, so the layout is perfect,” she noted. “I got in and started going through things, hoping to find something that would prove her innocence.”
That part didn’t surprise me. Katie really liked Rachel and was deeply unhappy about having to think of her as a suspect. I could have guessed that she had gone there looking for something to clear her friend’s name.
“What did you think you were going to find?” I asked. “A secret stash of money?”
“Maybe,” she said, only half-joking. “Or proof that she was involved in some other job. Or that she had a secret inheritance. Or a sugar daddy.”
I grinned at that, though I let the grin go when I saw how upset she still was. “Let me guess. Nothing.”
She just shrugged. “I’d just come across the drawer where she kept her external drives—a whole lot of them, too—when she discovered me. I had an excuse ready and even had the props, but she wasn’t buying it. I’d been hoping she’d be drunk enough to just laugh it off, but no such luck. She was dead sober when she caught me. And she was furious.”
She hadn’t listened to Katie’s apologies or excuses, and had kicked her out of the house, effective immediately.
“So I really hope you did better than me,” she finished. “Because if we can prove Arthur and Joseph are doing something, it’ll clear Rachel’s name and that will be that.”
I shook my head, still shocked that she’d failed so badly.
“I can’t believe you got caught.”
“I can’t, either, but I’m not exactly on my game right now,” she muttered. “Believe me, I’m not happy with myself, either.”
I could certainly believe that. We were, after all, talking about the woman who would barely talk to me during the first few days of our case, for fear of messing up her own reputation as the best PI out there. She wasn’t a girl who took failure lightly. I couldn’t even imagine how upset she was about not only failing, but also looking like she’d betrayed someone she genuinely cared about.
The best medicine, I decided, was to distract her with the story of what I’d done that night.
I went through the details quickly, since there weren’t many of them, and finished with the thumb drives, which I pulled out of my pocket and spread out on the table.
“Look at you, stealing evidence on your first reconnaissance mission,” she said, grinning. “And so many! Though I hope you’ve got a good story cooked up for when Arthur realizes they’re missing.”
“Still working on that part,” I said. I would definitely have to come up with something to prove my innocence, if nothing else. I couldn’t afford for him to assume that I’d been the one to take them.
“Have you looked at them yet?” she asked, reaching out to finger one of them tenderly, like it was an old friend or something.
“Not even close. You knocked on the door and scared the hell out of me as soon as I got back, and I’ve had way too much to drink to be looking at anything important. For all I know, I’d see something that told me straight out what they were doing and completely miss it. I need sleep, and I need to be more sober before I look at anything.” I paused and glanced at her. “Plus, I could probably use some help. Want to come over and help me go through them tomorrow?”
She snorted. “What, as a consolation prize for not having found anything myself?”
“As the local expert,” I said firmly. “I’m good at a lot of things, but I’ve never done this, and I don’t want to screw it up. I want to make sure I catch whatever right be on those discs.”
She paused, and I could see that she was fighting her own pride on this one. She was jealous that I’d found something and she hadn’t... and she was horribly disappointed in herself for having done so badly.
Not that she’d admit any of that. She was way too strong to admit to weakness.
“Sure,” she finally said. “I’ll help. But only because you need an expert in this sort of thing. Not because I’m dying to go through evidence and don’t have any of my own.”
I laughed and kissed her softly on the cheek. “That’s a good enough reason for me,” I told her softly. “Let’s just hope there’s something on there to give us some clues. Oliver emailed me earlier and told me more money has disappeared. In bigger chunks this time. Whoever the thief is, I have a feeling they know they’re about to be caught. They’re trying to steal as much as they can before I find them. And I’ve never been good at losing money.”
