the layer of dust that had settled over everything. Kit thought how nice it would have been to have Dara in the mix, too, but she was still on leave and they weren’t sure if she’d ever return.
After they’d organized the office and the housekeeper had departed, Baby opened a bag of sandwiches she’d packed and a bottle of rosé. She and Kit settled on the sofa.
“Your apartment looks great, but just say the word and you can be back at my place in a heartbeat,” Baby told her. She was dressed for spring today, in cream-colored pants and a pale pink blouse. Her nails matched the blouse perfectly.
“Thanks,” Kit said, “but I’m ready to be home. You know what’s really going to kill me, though? Sliding into my sheets tonight and remembering what yours feel like in comparison. But it’s given me something to aspire to.”
“At least now I know what to get you for your next birthday.”
“Don’t you dare think of getting me anything. I owe you so much, Baby.”
“You would have done the same for me, Kit—though, God forbid I ever get to meet some dashing male stranger with a dark secret. But in all seriousness, do you really feel safe?”
Holt had survived the fall down the stairs with only a broken arm, cracked ribs, and a mild concussion, but he’d been arrested immediately and was being held without bail.
“Yes, I think I feel safe,” Kit told Baby.
“That sounds tentative.”
“Let’s put it this way, with Holt out of the picture, I don’t feel in imminent danger. As for Ithaka, there’s enough evidence against them on the insider trading front that I’m low on their list of concerns. I’ll probably look over my shoulder sometimes just out of habit, but I’m ready to get back to my life.”
Well, not exactly, she thought. As she’d already realized, she didn’t want to return to the old way. She wanted something new. Gutsier choices.
Baby took a swig of her rosé, appeared to briefly relish the taste, and then turned pensive.
“I’m still troubled by the fact that I was such a bad judge of men. I practically had you engaged to Keith Holt.”
“I never saw anything sinister about him either,” Kit admitted. “He seemed intense at times, but I always expect surgeons to be that way.”
“And I take it he never had any intentions of redecorating?”
“No, no, that was all a big fat lie. On the same day that Healy reported to him about me taking the flash drive, he called and asked for an appointment so he could assess me and try to figure out what I was up to. The only thing he ever intended to redecorate was my neck.”
“And was the apartment hunting story all a ruse, too?”
“Yes. I’m sure when he first mentioned the idea to me he was just planting a seed in case he ever needed to lure me alone someplace.”
“I accept that you can’t tell me why he wanted you dead or how it connects to the case, but I have to say, it’s torturing me not knowing. I can’t stand the thought of how close he came to hurting you.”
“One day in the not too distant future I will be able to talk about it, and I’ll share everything.”
Baby sighed, drumming her fingers softly on the arm of the sofa.
“Well, we might have been wrong about Holt, but there’s one man you guessed right about from the start. He who carries a big spear.”
Kit laughed.
“Yeah, I made plenty of mistakes along the way, but my initial sense of Garrett Kelman was right. That he was a man worth knowing.”
Kelman had gone with her to the police precinct the night she’d been attacked, waited with her for Nat Naylor, and then dropped her off at Baby’s later. By that point her body felt like one huge, throbbing bruise—from her being knocked to the floor and dragged, from being conked by the aluminum ladder. She’d slept that night as if she was drugged.
She’d seen Kelman again the next morning. He’d come to Baby’s briefly just to check on her. A day or so later he’d taken off for Florida with his attorney to straighten matters out with Molinari and her partner, and to spend time with his sister, whom he’d given the all-clear to come home.
Since he’d left town, Kit had heard from him just twice—brief phone calls to see how she was doing. She had no idea what the future held for them. She trusted