The Dangerous Edge of Things - By Tina Whittle Page 0,80

not just for Eliza Compton—”

Wow, I thought, he finally got the name right.

“—but justice for all.”

A smattering of applause. I shut it off before I got sick. Now that Bulldog was behind bars, everyone was eager to move on, case closed, let’s get some Champagne. Forget that Dylan’s body just got pulled from the Hooch, forget that Nikki was missing.

Life keeps going, Eric said. Yes, it did.

I collected all the tobacco-related trash on the terrace and took it to the kitchen. The miso soup simmered; other than that, the silence of the apartment was stunning. Combined with the stark black-and-white décor, the hard floors and empty walls, the place was downright spooky.

Gabriella. I had one brochure on her spa, four sentences from my brother, and a morning riddled with French cigarettes and tarot cards. Other than that, she was a cipher.

A cipher who was sleeping with Trey, my gut reminded me.

I shoved the butt-filled Pellegrino bottle deep into the trashcan. I had no right to feel territorial, and yet her presence nagged at me. I finished straightening the apartment, including putting the file folders I hadn’t used back in Trey’s desk. I noticed that he’d left his computer on, his Phoenix laptop. This didn’t surprise me—he’d been uncharacteristically haphazard with his things the night before—but what did surprise me was that his desktop was up.

Gabriella had been after more than cards—she’d been on his computer.

I sat at the desk too, and my conscience gave a twinge. Not snooping, I told myself. Investigating.

Thirty minutes later, I’d examined all the files that had been opened recently—nothing suspicious, just lots of premises liability reports, a couple of other Phoenix forms. Boring stuff. And none had been opened in the last hour.

His web history was a different story. An e-mail program had been pulled up during the time of Gabriella’s visit. I clicked on it and got a log-in page, password required. But there was no chance of retrieving the message, or even seeing where it had gone.

She’d trespassed on his work computer to send an e-mail? Or perhaps something more nefarious?

I fetched Rico’s portable drive from my bag. From what I’d observed, running his security program was a simple matter of turning it loose and letting it do its thing. It ran a virus scan first, then a more intensive search for more dangerous malware. The second part of the procedure—fixing what it found—was more complicated. But then, I wasn’t interested in correcting the problem. I just wanted to know if one existed.

While the program hummed along, I checked out Trey’s desk—everything looked just like I’d left it when I reassembled it that morning. His gun drawer was locked, just like it had been the night before. I checked the drawers—papers, folders, pencils. The meds and the GQ magazine.

I picked up the magazine and thumbed through it. There was a single sticky note marking an article about formal wear. I thumbed through the rest of the pages, but found nothing else of interest. I did, however, notice an ad for Trey’s watch, a Bulgari Diagono GMT. It retailed for $6,600. Right beside it were his shoes, Ferregamo classic black lace-ups: $595. I turned back to the front cover, to the model wearing Trey’s suit.

Always Armani, Garrity had said, or some other Italian crap I can’t pronounce.

I flipped rapidly through the pages. The first article featured his apartment, B& Italia with La Scala marble in the kitchen and bath. I kept going, seeing his coffee table, his trench coat. I even found shaving soap, Acqua di Gio, and I knew if I could put my nose to it, it would smell faintly of the ocean.

And then I saw it, the pièce de résistance, stretched out languorously on a two-page centerfold spread—the Ferrari F430 coupe in all its sleek glory. La Dolce Velocità, the headline read. The sweet speed.

I held him in my hands, all of him, or rather, all of who he was now. No wonder Garrity was confused—Trey had reconstructed himself as precisely as from a blueprint, obliterating the previous Trey like razing a construction site. I realized my hands were shaking.

I didn’t have time to ponder the implications, however. Rico’s program had done its job. I examined the screen—a flashing green light. No viruses, which wasn’t a surprise, since Trey had rather formidable firewall.

But then the second part of the program kicked in.

And that was a different story.

***

I’d just finished talking to Rico when I heard the bedroom door click open. Trey