stood in the doorway, his dress shirt a wrinkled mess, untucked and unbuttoned.
“You were supposed to go home,” he said.
Trey’s GQ still rested in my lap. I slipped it nonchalantly into the drawer. “I was waiting to make sure you were okay.”
He didn’t move. “I’m okay. Go home.”
I stood up and got right in front of him, then put the back of my hand to his forehead. He yanked away and scowled.
“Good,” I said. “Still no fever.”
“Go home.”
“You are such a one-trick pony sometimes.”
He was getting exasperated. “This could be contagious. I don’t want you to get it. I want—”
“I know, I know, you want me to go home. But we need to talk first.” I waved toward his desk. “Did you know you have a key logger program on your computer?”
That got his attention. “What? How?”
“Good question. I’m assuming you didn’t install it.”
He frowned and moved past me, sat down in front of the computer. Sick or not, he typed like wildfire. “What did you run?”
I moved to stand behind him. “One of Rico’s programs. It’s behavior-based, looks for things that are trying to hide, which makes it more effective than the signature-based stuff. Or so Rico says. I mean, virus scans and firewalls are nice, but they don’t protect you against something that’s recording your every key stroke.”
“But this isn’t possible,” he said, studying the information I’d scrawled on a sticky note. “Rico. I know that name.”
“He came to Phoenix once—big guy, piercings everywhere. He says it was most likely a physical installation since you’re not exactly a high-risk user, and the program didn’t find any Trojan horses.”
“A physical installation isn’t possible. I mounted the locks on these doors myself. They’re grade one deadbolts.”
“So it was someone who has a key.”
I let the words fall. He shook his head.
“Only three people beside me have keys to the apartment—the concierge, Garrity—”
“And Gabriella.”
He was still staring at the computer screen. “She wouldn’t—”
“She would. She came over and dropped off some soup right before she went through your things.”
He turned around. “How do you know this?”
“I saw her do it.”
He fixed me with the look.
“Okay, not exactly.” And then I told him the story—the picnic basket, the cigarettes, the tarot cards, the e-mail, the magazine with the sticky note inside. He stopped me there.
“She looked at the magazine several days ago, when she ordered my tuxedo.”
“So? It’s not any one thing that makes her look guilty, it’s all the things.”
“There’s no evidence.”
“Screw evidence, I thought you trusted me.”
“I do.”
“Then you should believe me without evidence.”
“Belief and trust aren’t the same thing. For belief, I need evidence.” He stood up abruptly. “Go home now. I’ll deal with this.”
“You’re still—”
“Go home.”
He pushed past me toward the kitchen, where he got a bottle of Pellegrino from the refrigerator and unscrewed the cap. He took one tiny tentative sip.
“Go,” he said.
I walked over to my stuff, slung my bag over my shoulder. “You want me to go home, you have to go back to bed.”
“But—”
“That’s my offer.” I pointed toward the front door. “Home.” I pointed toward his room. “Bed.”
He turned around and went to his room without another word. I called after him, “Yes, and thank you, Tai, for saving me in my hour of need. Oh, you’re very welcome, Trey, it’s what I do. Saving people and all that.”
His voice carried from the bedroom. “Go home.”
“I’m going! Enjoy the soup your two-faced spying mistress brought you!”
I slammed the door on the way out. It felt really, really good.
***
I’d barely hit the lobby when my phone rang. I kept walking as I answered. “Now what?
“Thank you, Tai, for saving me in my hour of need.”
My pace slowed from huffy to merely annoyed. “Whatever. Are you in bed?”
“Not yet. I decided to take a shower.”
“Not a bad idea. For the first time since I’ve known you, you do not smell good.”
A pause. “I mean it. I couldn’t think of the words to say it, but I felt it. Thank you.”
His voice was soft. It melted away the last scrap of resistance. “I know, Trey. Just be careful, okay? You’re still pretty weak.”
“You are too. You couldn’t have gotten much rest.”
I stopped at the exit. The concierge watched me with disguised disinterest.
“I can rest at the shop.”
“Okay.”
“Or I could come back up. But if I come back up, we have to talk about this Gabriella thing.”
“Okay.”
I sighed. “Fine. I’m coming back up. But I’m going to get you some crackers and ginger ale first.”
Chapter 42
When I