As she accepted the slip of paper, his fingers brushed against her again.
“And just for your information,” he said. “It’s a burn phone, which means it can’t be traced.”
He tugged a black baseball cap from his jacket pocket and secured it on his head. After a final swig of the wine, he took a deep breath and pushed off from the counter, ready to make his way toward the door. He still had her phone, she realized. Was he going to keep it?
Again, he seemed to read her mind.
He wrestled the phone from his pocket and passed it to her.
“Are—are you going to be in New York for a while?” she asked. She wasn’t sure why she needed to know. And she doubted he’d tell her the truth anyway.
“Like I said, Kit, we’ve got trust issues. So why don’t I just keep that to myself. If you decide you’re willing to trust me, you know how to reach me. But I’ll know from your voice if you’ve got the cops waiting.”
She stared at him, at a loss for words.
He turned and strode toward the front door, leaving her standing by the island. Reaching for the handle, he glanced back at her. Even with the brim of the hat pulled low, his eyes found hers and held them.
“By the way,” he said. “My name is Garrett Kelman. And just for the record, I felt it, too.”
And then he was gone. She rushed toward the door and pressed her ear against it, listening. Footsteps moving away. Then nothing. Kit quickly positioned the door bolts into the floor and ceiling, and hung the alarm on the handle.
Her legs had stopped their awful trembling, and yet she could still feel a faint reverberation in them, like a guitar string plucked moments before. She moved back to the island and took two quick gulps from the glass of wine that X had poured for her. Her thoughts and feelings—fear, anger, relief, confusion—seemed flung about in a crazy mess. She wanted to accept what he’d told her, wanted to believe that he hadn’t killed Healy. But as far as she knew, he’d simply spun her a whole new set of lies because the moment had called for them.
She grabbed her phone. She needed to call O’Callaghan. But even as part of her brain was commanding her to do that, another part resisted with an almost magnetic force. What would she say to him exactly? “You know that man I told you I had dinner with in Florida? The man with the phony name who I said might have burglarized my apartment? Well, he came to see me. To get his pen. Which I took from his hotel room. Oh, and he says he didn’t break into my place.”
She’d sound like a total nut job. The Miami police would think so, too. They might even be suspicious of her, wondering what she was up to, weaving all these cloak and dagger tales together.
And what if, just what if, X had been telling the truth.
She grabbed her new laptop from the bedroom and carried it to the island. With her fingers racing, she typed Garrett Kelman, Ithaka, into the search bar. A handful of links popped up, most from within the past two years. But just because the name existed, it didn’t mean it belonged to X.
The first couple of links were to databases of business people, what a prospective client or employer might use to verify contact info. One listed a Garrett Kelman as an employee of Ithaka, though it appeared to be a dated entry. No photo. The third link was to an article in Institutional Investor. A Garrett Kelman was quoted in it. But no photo there either.
The last link was to a society website, one she’d actually checked out a few times when tracking down info on potential clients. It was always loaded with party pictures. She held her breath and clicked.
And then there he was. X. Standing with four or five other people on a wraparound terrace. Dressed in a navy blazer and gray pants. Looking relaxed and smiling broadly. So different than how he’d been today. But it was definitely him.
According to the caption, the event was a fund-raiser for a charity, with Ithaka as one of the sponsors. And then there was his name: Garrett Kelman.
Okay, he wasn’t lying this time, at least about his name and where he’d worked. But what about all the rest? If he’d been