Ellie clicked her key and her car beeped open, but she didn’t reach for her door handle. Gabe leaned against the passenger door of his Jeep, hands stuffed into his pockets. They both wore black parkas, plaid mufflers and black wool watch caps, like yuppie cat burglars. Gabe’s somber expression in the WorkHere parking lot matched how her own face must look. She’d figured she could pull off the Nora deception. And she had. Until Gabe.
They stood face to face, almost toe to toe, on either side of a yellow parking space line. His battered brown Timberlands, her snow-splotched black boots.
“If only I had stayed home. Not gone to Seaboard that first night, never talked to strange men. And by strange, I mean you.” Her words puffed into the cold. “I should know that trying to have a personal life is never a good thing.”
“Well, come on, sure it is.” Gabe shifted and leaned against his car, stuffing his hands into his parka pockets. “We connected, didn’t we? That was real, to me at least. And we’re still those people. Guy and Nora. It’s just best to be honest about your identity.”
“Like you were?”
“We all have our reasons for being who we are.”
Ellie stared at her feet, past the pavement and into the future.
“What is identity, though, you know?” She looked up at him, shading her eyes as the sun glared on the snow, and thinking out loud. “We’re all only who we say we are. Everyone’s hiding something. Everyone’s undercover, struggling to be who they want to be in public, only being themselves when they’re alone.”
Ellie thought about the puzzle pieces of her life. “Gabe? What if I stayed Nora now? No one knows but you.”
“How about your researcher?”
“Meg’s never met her.” Ellie shook her head. “You’re the only one who’s ever seen me as Ellie and Nora.”
Ellie watched three dark crows soar in the clouds above the bleak parking lot, silhouetted against a stretch of spackled mackerel sky. Then, in an instant, they simultaneously changed their minds and swooped in the opposite direction.
“I needed being Nora to get me inside. Get the proof I needed,” she went on. “I just got caught too soon.”
“Way it goes.”
“But we have the Abigail interview, anyway.” Ellie held up a gloved forefinger, reminding him. One way or another, she didn’t say.
“Your phone is buzzing.” Gabe pointed to her tote bag.
“I’ll let it go to—wait.” Her Pharminex ring? She looked at Gabe, perplexed. “Hang on,” she told him. Then into the phone, “This is … Nora.”
“It’s Detta Fiddler, Nora.”
Ellie imagined the woman behind her big desk, gardenias scenting the room. Her mind raced in the silence. Had something gone wrong? They’d bought her bogus story, even signed an agreement saying so, and she’d have bet anything Detta and Allessandra—and all they represented—were gone from her life. Until, of course, she had to approach them for reaction to her TV story. But that would be as Ellie Berensen, the reporter who would make their lives miserable.
“Hello, Detta.” She repeated the woman’s name for Gabe’s benefit. No use hiding anything from him now, unless she had to, and this might also prove her honesty.
“I tried to text you, but you didn’t reply. So, Nora? I’ve thought about you ever since our meeting,” Detta said. “Worried how you’d relied on us for your livelihood. And realized it was only your false name that put us in an untenable position. In fact, other than your Hawkins mistake, you were good at the job. I’m sorry we had to let you go.”
“You’ve thought about me? Good on the job?” Ellie repeated. Gabe hadn’t taken his eyes off her, as riveted to this conversation as she was. “You’re sorry?”
“And now, I know this seems … unlikely. But we need your help, Nora. As of yet, no one but the three of us—you, Allessandra and I—know the circumstances of your departure.”
“And those security guards,” Ellie couldn’t resist adding, remembering to put a hint of a Southern accent in Nora’s voice.
“They know what we tell them to know.”
“And you’re saying—you need my help?”
As Gabe moved closer, Ellie turned the cell phone so they both could hear. They stood, parkas touching, her hat against his in the otherwise deserted parking lot, only the slim cell phone separating them. She tucked herself into the curve of Gabe’s shoulder to keep close enough. He didn’t move away.
“I’m sorry, Detta,” Ellie said. “The connection is iffy. Can you say that again?”
“We’ve heard a reporter is looking into … something,” Detta said. “Apparently she’s approaching our sales reps, so says our anonymous phone caller. She’s pretending to be a patient, hanging out in doctors’ offices searching for women to tell her who knows what. We need to find out if it’s true. And what else she’s doing. Could you come back, Nora? Be our eyes and ears? No one would notice you in doctors’ offices. The award gala’s soon, so the timing could not be worse.”
A dark sedan drove by, tires slushing through the ice-melt scattered on the pavement. Ellie glanced at the person in the driver’s seat but didn’t have time to see if she’d recognized him. Or her. Talk about paranoia. She looked at Gabe, wondering what he thought of Detta’s proposal.
Pretending to be a patient. But Ellie hadn’t done that. Then she knew: Meg.
“I was in a lot of waiting rooms too,” she said as Nora. “What does this reporter look like? What story do you think they’re working on?”
Ellie’s brain raced with possibilities, the unpredictability and the risks. Nora hadn’t been gone from Pharminex for long. Not long enough, Ellie hoped, for any of her colleagues to notice. For all they knew, Nora might be out of town. Sick. Or on a different schedule. Nora’s cleaned-out locker could be restored by the time business opened Monday.
“It’s a woman, that’s all we know,” Detta said. “And as for what story, we have no idea. We’ve done nothing wrong.”
Gabe pulled away from the call, rolled his eyes in derision, then pressed back into place beside her.
“Really? No idea? That seems unlikely.” Ellie decided to push her. “It’d be helpful if I had some inkling of what to look for. A disgruntled employee. A whistleblower, maybe. But disgruntled about what? Whistleblowing about what?”
Detta ignored Ellie’s questions. “Can you come meet with us? Maybe later today?”
“Today?”
Gabe was waving a finger at her: no.
“How about Monday?” she suggested. There was no way to get answers without having a meeting, but she’d need to reorganize into her Nora self. “And I need to bring someone. My…”
Gabe pointed to himself.
“My lawyer. I—” She could tell Gabe was calculating as fast as she was. “I want to make sure it’s legal. That our confidentiality deal holds. And maybe we need another contract.”
Gabe nodded in agreement as she continued to spin out the story.
“Including your acknowledging that I was—and am—using a pseudonym.”
“Understood,” Detta said. “Monday, my office, nine?”
“Monday, nine?” Ellie repeated. Gabe nodded okay. “Got it.”
After she hung up, the two of them stared at the phone in Ellie’s hand.
“Whoa. Did that just happen?” Gabe asked. “Does this make any sense whatsoever?”
Ellie stashed her phone into a pocket. “This is their total MO. Spying. P-X is all about slimy corporate tricks. Fraud, duplicity, lies,” she told him, deciding not to reveal her own entrapment by Dr. Hawkins. “And I still can’t get their possible connection to Kaitlyn Armistead out of my head. But this gives us more access to the company than ever. And with two of us, we’ll be…” She tried to choose a word. “I was going to say ‘safe.’ Safer, I guess. So—you’re in?”
Ellie waited for his answer, realizing her new power position.
“So funny. Now I’ll be undercover-undercover,” she said. “I’ll be investigating Pharminex with a signed contract from the company saying I can do it. That’s got to be a first.”
“We’ll know more once we talk with them. As your lawyer, I might have to say no.”
“But it’s a way to reveal what they’re doing! They’re dangerous and destructive. Criminal. They’re essentially murderers, and they know it.”
“I agree. But it’s risky, Ellie. The stakes are colossal.”
“Listen, I’m freezing.” The stakes were colossal, that was the point. “I can’t even feel my toes. And I’m starving.” She clicked open her car door. “You want to get some food? Talk about this someplace warmer?”
“Sure. But speaking of ‘some place,’” Gabe said. “I’m still wondering if whoever broke into your apartment thought they were in Nora’s place.”
“I thought of that too,” Ellie said. “If it was P-X who did it.”
“Who else would it be? And if Nora wasn’t their target, maybe they’re on to you. As Ellie. Could your researcher—Mary?—have alerted them to you, somehow, even inadvertently, without you knowing it?”
“Meg.” Ellie, scowling, kicked at one of her own tires, punctuating her anger. “You know, Meg actually offered to masquerade as a patient. She brought it up in the news director’s office.”
“Exactly as Detta Fiddler described.”
“Yup. And she’s incredibly pushy. Overeager. Warren told her in no uncertain terms that pretense was forbidden.”
“Would she have ignored that?”
“Who knows. She’s either trying to take over my story or ruin it. She’s always looking at my notes. Offering to ‘organize’ my files. Probably trying to steal my job.”
Gabe nodded. “Possibly. Or maybe she’s just on your team. Trying to help. Right? But if it’s Meg going rogue, at least you know who to look for.”