Page 43 of Lion & Lamb

“Such a shame. That family’s already been through a lot.”

Some sources required a team of horses to drag even basic information from their mouths. Curt was not that kind of source. He was positively gushing, and it was clear he had been dying to tell someone, anyone, about his personal connection to the murdered football legend. This segued into a story about the last time he’d seen Archie Hughes play at the Linc and what they’dcooked at the tailgate party outside the stadium, but Veena was here only for confirmation that Archie Hughes had regularly visited 10 Rittenhouse—a luxury residence well out of the financial reach of most nannies.

As Curt held forth on how to cook beer brats on a portable grill without drying them out, Veena scanned the control desk of the lobby. She finally found what she’d been looking for.

“I hate to ask you this, Curt, but would it be okay if I used the ladies’?”

Of course it was not a problem. They were friends, weren’t they?

Chapter40

THE HALLto the restrooms also led to the elevator bank. Veena knew this from a glance at the floor plan behind Curt’s desk. She rode a car down to the subterranean garage and hoped that Curt would be too entranced by the gerbera daisies to notice her in the security camera’s feed.

At least not until she confirmed something important.

The garage floor was so immaculate, you could picnic on it. Bentleys and BMWs and Audis filled about half the spaces, and carpeted walkways guided residents from their vehicles to the elevator banks. But only the rare few had access to what Veena had spotted at the lobby control desk: a private elevator leading to the penthouse.

“She can come and go as she pleases,” Veena mumbled to herself. “Any visitor she wants can go up without being seen.”

Awfully nice setup for a nanny from West Virginia, recruited straight out of Villanova. Definitely not everyone’s grad-school experience in the City of Brotherly Love.So who’s paying your bills, Ms. Rain? And what are you giving them in return?Surely it was something more than helpful parenting tips.

Physical spaces always helped Veena put herself in the minds of her quarries. She saw what they saw, felt the same ground under her shoes, took in the same smells. Janie liked to poke fun at Veena’s slightly mystical approach, but it worked. As long as you had uninterrupted time to—

“Excuse me,” an irritated voice said, breaking the spell. “What are you doing? You can’t be down here!”

“Of course I can,” Veena replied even before she turned around to see a tall security guard moving quickly toward her. He was trying to use his size to appear menacing. His hand even hovered near his belt, within reach of a pepper-spray canister. Veena knew she could easily outrun him if it came to that. The man’s bulk would slow him down.

Not that she would give him the pleasure of a pursuit.

“How did you even get down here? You can’t reach this level without an ID. Let me see yours.”

Veena evaluated the man (according to his name tag, his name was Vincent—of course it was) and instantly clocked him as an extreme law-and-order type. The usual avenues of the law were most likely closed to this clod, so he had channeled all that misplaced ambition into this job. And ooh, was he itching to use that pepper spray.

“Vincent,” she said, “let me stop you right there. I have an important message from the DA for you.”

The man blinked. “For me? Seriously?”

Veena nodded, reached slowly into her pocket, and took out a business card embossed in blue and gold—official city colors—with the name of her sometime employer. The security guard took the business card and examined it with the same reverence a woman would give her best friend’s engagement ring.

“What’s the message from DA Mostel?” Vincent asked, astonished at this turn of events.

“He said to tell you to go away.”

To Vincent’s credit, he did as he was told.

Chapter41

11:00 a.m.

IF HISjob didn’t depend on his being online, Victor Suarez would never go online.

As it was, Victor left zero traces of himself on the internet. As far as the web was concerned, he had never been born.

He could not understand people who left pieces of their lives all over the place (on Facebook, in Google searches, in countless smartphone apps) for practically anyone to pick up. Did they also leave their doors unlocked and their windows wide open? It was the same thing to Victor.

But most people went through life assuming that whatever personal information they released to their banks (or their favorite online retailers or even their local pizza shops) would be guarded by the employees of those institutions with their lives. The truth was, most organizations’ internet security wasn’t worth a damn. And the few companies that actually bothered…well, they didn’t bother to stay current. State-of-the-art cybersecurity ate into profits, after all.

Lunacy.

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