“He’s in everything the last couple of years. I don’t totally get it. I mean, he’s cute and all.” She took a breath to stop the rambling. “But anyway, you can thank me when you get your job back.” She depressed the Stop Elevator. They rose to the second floor, and the doors opened, everything normal but them.
She marched down the hall to her mom and Sheridan’s place.
Sheridan answered the door right away in one of her mom’s shirts, with her hair piled in a messy bun. “Agent Greene, what are you doing here again?”
“I’m here for security reasons,” Gabby said. “I need to see your phone.”
“Fine,” Sheridan said, “I don’t know what you want with it, though.” Sheridan didn’t look worried at all.
When Sheridan handed it over and unlocked it upon Gabby’s request, Gabby hit redial on the cat sitter.
“What is Lainey going to tell me?” Gabby asked Sheridan, doing her best impersonation of a hard-boiled detective.
Sheridan groaned. “Ugh, I shared too much.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been a little bored. Lainey asked me to tell her about everyone here, and I blabbed my theory about Naomi and Jasmine.” She cocked her head. “Well, it’s not really a theory. They just don’t talk about it openly.”
The pieces in Gabby’s mind reshuffled to see the picture: the way Naomi and Jasmine looked at each other, the snapshots in Jasmine’s closet, and that time Naomi had finished Jasmine’s sentence (just once, but still).
They must have been the women Gabby had overheard the night she was hiding in the closet. Two women making out. One of them had mentioned iMoan…
“I was chatting about Jasmine’s affair,” Sheridan said. “Lainey has a big mouth, but I certainly didn’t sell anything.”
“Did you tell your cat sitter anything else?”
Sheridan shook her head.
“Has that story gone public?”
Gabby wasn’t sure, but it seemed like there was a good chance that Lainey had been doing a lot more than cleaning Leonard’s poopy tail.
“I’m taking your phone,” Gabby said.
Sheridan handed it over.
“If we clear you, you can have it back. At the moment, it’s evidence.”
After they shut the door on Sheridan, Gabby said, “What do you think? Did Lainey cause all the trouble?”
Markus chewed his lip. “I would have HQ look into Lainey, but that’s not an option. If Valentina finds out we’re doing EOD work, she will have the Portuguese authorities arrest us. You are not lying low, Gabby.”
“If you hadn’t been talking to Genesis behind my back for this whole mission, I’d be more inclined to trust you.”
Markus stopped in place. “What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
1300 hours, Naomi’s office
If Markus didn’t want to help, Gabby could handle this investigation on her own. She could Be More, Do More without a man. After fifteen years of marriage, she was used to that.
Maybe Markus was scared of rotting in a European jail, but Gabby was more scared of returning home without a job or benefits. What was she going to do if this didn’t work out? Work at Bloomingdale’s or as a Walmart greeter? She might have to go back to school and finish her degree and… do what? Gabby wanted to be a spy.
Her mission: Find Jasmine and get to the bottom of this affair. Sheridan’s cat sitter might be leaking some information, but Gabby had difficulty believing that was the whole story.
Gabby headed toward where she’d last seen Jasmine: Naomi’s office.
