“Thank you,” she’d said. “I needed someone to give me a straight answer. Everyone else keeps telling me to stay calm and let the professionals handle it, but no one will actually tell me what’s happening.”
That was supposed to be the end of it. One phone call. Professional courtesy.
Instead, I called her the next day with an update. Then she texted me. I texted back. Then she sent me a picture of her cat, a gray cat named Whiskers who apparently rules her one-bedroom apartment near Capitol Hill with an iron paw.
I sent her a status update on Sloane’s recovery.
She sent me a review of a book she’d just finished.
I sent her an analysis of a security vulnerability I’d found in the Library of Congress digital archives, which she found genuinely interesting, which is the moment I realized I was in trouble because no woman has ever found my security analyses interesting.
We’ve talked every day since. Multiple times a day. I know her schedule. I know she’s an early riser and she takes her coffee black, which I respect. She reads two books a week and has strong opinions about library classification systems. Her catsleeps on her pillow and she lets him even though she complains about the fur.
I call this familiarity. Professional rapport. I’ve been telling myself this for weeks. I’m running out of synonyms.
I can’t sit here anymore.
I grab my jacket. Keys. Tablet. I know her address because she texted it to me weeks ago so I could “check the security of her building.” We both knew this was an excuse. Neither of us said so.
I’ll go there and make sure she’s safe. She’ll open the door in pajamas with the cat in her arms and we’ll laugh about how her phone died and she fell asleep reading and I overreacted.
That’s the rational scenario. I’m choosing to believe it.
I reach for the door handle.
A knock stops me.
Not a tentative knock. Not a polite hotel-staff knock. A rapid, urgent rapping from someone standing right outside.
I open the door.
Lucy Rodriguez is in the hallway.
She’s shorter than I expected. I’ve only ever seen her on screens and in the photos she sends, always from the shoulders up, always smiling, always with that dark hair falling around her face. In person she barely reaches the middle of my chest.
She’s not smiling now.
Her dark hair is messy, pulled back in a lopsided ponytail. She’s wearing a sweater that’s inside out. I can see the seam running along the outside of her shoulder. Her jeans are wrinkled. Her shoes don’t match her outfit or each other. No makeup. She looks like she left her apartment running.
In her right hand is a cat carrier. Inside, a gray cat presses against the mesh window and meows at me.
“Luce.” My voice comes out rougher than I intend. “What happened? Are you?—”
“Someone broke into my apartment.” She’s shaking. Her voice is steady but her hands aren’t and the cat carrier trembles with each breath she takes. “They trashed everything. My research files for Sloane’s article — the ones I pulled from the Library of Congress archives — they took all of them. My computer is smashed. And there was a note on my kitchen counter.”
“What did the note say?”
“It said I was next.”
The cat meows again, louder. As if confirming the urgency.
“I didn’t know where else to go.” Her voice drops to a whisper and something in it cracks. “I grabbed Whiskers and I came straight here. I know it’s late and I know we’ve never actually met in person before and this is insane but you were...” She swallows. “You were the first person I thought of.”
Not Sloane, who is two floors up in this same hotel. Not the police. Not her coworkers or her family.
Me.
I should say something reassuring. Something tactical. I should take the carrier, secure the room, check the hallway for anyone who might have followed her, call Kelt, alert Jonus, start working the problem the way I always do — calm, efficient, analytical.
