Page 37 of Edge of Secrets

I laid the thing down on her table. “Don’t touch it,” I warned. “It might have prints.” I looked around the room again, trying to imagine where I would plant spyware if I were one of them.

She had an old-fashioned phone. I grabbed the horn, unscrewed the mouthpiece. Bingo. I shook the listening device onto the table without touching it, then answered the question in her eyes.

“A drop-in bug,” I said. “They’ve been monitoring your phone conversations.”

Her eyes were huge. “I ... but I talked to Vivi just this morning?—”

“We’ll discuss it later,” I cut her off. “Not here. Let’s just get the fuck out of this place. It makes my flesh creep.”

“Ah, y-y-yes,” she stammered, flustered. She looked around wildly. “Um ... what was I?—”

“Laptop. Clothes,” I reminded her. “Fast. Oh, and that phone? Leave it. It’s probably compromised, too.”

Her eyes widened. “But … my sister’s numbers are?—”

“Write them down. I’ll get you a new one. The laptop is probably?—”

“I can’t leave that,” she said. “It has all my scholarly work on it.”

“Fine. Tomorrow I’ll go through and make sure there’s nothing planted in it.”

She gave me an eloquent glance, but was quickly distracted when I started helping her, scooping stuff out of drawers at random. That perked her right up. She shoved me away with an irritated sound and finished packing her clothes. Then came the shoes, the toiletries bag—vials, bottles, tubes, packets of this and that.

And then it was the books. Fuck a duck. She heaved eight of them into the huge suitcase. Big motherlovers, too. The suitcase wheels were probably going to collapse.

I dragged her and her bag out the door after that, scanned the stairwell landing, then stuck my head back inside her door. I made an obscene gesture, for the benefit of any hidden cameras I hadn’t found.

“You’re not getting her,” I told the bug on the table. “Fuck off and die, shithead.” I slammed the door for emphasis.

The driver stowed the suitcase in the back, and took off. I was starting to feel the effects of the adrenaline crash, and I was grateful not to be driving myself. Nell was alarmingly quiet, throat bobbing. The silence was heavy.

I reached for the first thing I could think of to break it. “Do you have a copy of that letter your sister found?” I asked. “The one you told me about yesterday?”

“I have it scanned onto my computer,” she said. “Why?”

I shrugged. “I’m just?—”

“Interested. Yes. I’ve noticed. I’ll show you anything you want to see.”

I stared out the window, wondering what my next move should be. A Korean deli was coming up on the corner, with banks of multicolored flowers on display. “Stop the car,” I told the driver.

Nell looked startled as the car braked and I flung the door open. “Don’t worry,” I assured her. “This’ll just take a second.”

I stared at the flowers, at a loss, then grabbed a bunch of the best-looking long-stemmed roses out of a bucket. I handed the boy sitting next to the flowers a handful of cash and got back into the car.

“Here.” I handed her the flowers, realizing too late that the long, thorny stems were dripping all over her lap. I hadn’t even had them tied, wrapped, trimmed. But she looked at me, wide-eyed. Cautiously charmed. She sniffed them, sighed with pleasure.

She smiled at me. It had worked. Praise God.

After a moment, she reached for my hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I appreciate the fact that you’re interested. I’m probably still alive because of it. I just don’t get it. Why is this happening? It’s senseless.”

“Money,” I said.

She looked over at me, blankly. “Huh?”

“Money is why this is happening,” I repeated. “Money is always the reason.”

She looked doubtful. “Huh. Maybe you haven’t noticed this yet, Duncan, but I don’t have very much of it. Practically none, to be honest.”

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