an undertow. This whole crazy mess wasn’t going to stay contained to her personal life. It was engulfing her work, too, sabotaging her relationship with clients. She had to fix it.
“From the little I learned last night, the person or people who broke in weren’t looking for client info after all,” she told Baby. “Can you convey that to clients even if they’ve already cancelled their cards?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll put out any fires. And what do these people expect anyway? If everybody from the NSA to Sony Pictures can get hacked, we’re hardly immune.”
Dara arrived a few minutes later, dressed for spring in a lemon-yellow top, but beneath the warm hello she offered, her mood seemed subdued. She’s scared, Kit thought. And not only because the office had been broken into. Dara clearly knew there was more to the story than she was being told.
Midmorning Kit grabbed her trench coat, bid her colleagues goodbye, and headed out. She took the subway uptown and for several hours prowled the D&D building, searching for fabrics with the most intense focus she could summon. She pulled about thirty samples and planned to whittle the selection down even more once she returned to the office.
With the swatches stuffed in her tote bag, she emerged from the building just before two. She scanned the surrounding area, searching for anyone not in motion, who might be standing there appearing aimless but with a secret agenda. She couldn’t ignore the comment X had made, that someone might have followed her to Healy’s, and she couldn’t take any chances now. She darted across Third Avenue and, making sure no one seemed to be watching, flagged down a taxi. As the car headed west, eventually crossing Central Park, she glanced behind her several times, making sure the same car wasn’t always on their tail.
After alighting in front of Healy’s building, she drew a compact from her purse, along with a lipstick. She touched up her makeup and smoothed her hair into place. She also mentally reviewed what she planned to say to the concierge.
As she dropped the makeup back into her purse, her phone sounded. Glancing at the screen, she saw that the call was from Detective O’Callaghan—she’d programmed his number into her phone on Friday night. Though he was most likely returning her call, the sight of his name flustered her.
“Sorry not to be back to you sooner,” he said once she’d answered. “I was off this weekend. What can I do for you?”
“I was just checking in,” she said, trying to buy a sliver of time to think. As she’d told Baby, she wasn’t going to reveal X’s visit, but she wondered if she should at least tell O’Callaghan what she’d originally planned to, that a flash drive was missing from her desk drawer. No, she decided. It would be better to wait until she had more facts. “I wondered if you had any leads yet.”
“Unfortunately I don’t. Your two colleagues came by the precinct to be fingerprinted, and we were able to eliminate theirs as well as your own from the apartment and office. Unfortunately, it appears that the perpetrator wore gloves.”
“Well, you’ll let me know, though? I mean, if you do hear anything?”
“Of course. There is one interesting detail I wanted to discuss with you.”
Her heart skipped. Could the man possibly intuit over the phone that she was holding out on him?
“Okay.”
“Since the perp wore gloves, we found smear marks in certain areas of your apartment. But there were also a fair amount of them in your office. It seems like he spent more time in there than met the eye.”
“Oh,” she said, holding her breath. “That’s interesting.”
“Any idea what he might have been looking for?”
“Uh, petty cash maybe. I didn’t look super closely in there because, other than my laptop, very little seemed disturbed. But I’ll check again.”
“Please do. If you notice anything else is missing, it’s important to let us know,” he said.
“Oh, I will for sure,” she said, sounding too rushed, she realized. “Thanks again for calling.”
After O’Callaghan had disconnected, Kit stood on the sidewalk in a patch of muted April sunlight, wondering just how stupid it had been to withhold information from a detective. At least she’d given herself an out. Depending on what happened, she could always pretend she’d done a second search later and had made a discovery then about the flash drive.
After mentally readying herself, she entered Healy’s building and strolled decisively toward the concierge desk. There was