His hand glided down her torso and wound around to cup her ass and kept traveling farther, and she thought:This is the man who’s going to take my kids to soccer practice, before groaning with pleasure.
20
Mallory
Sunday Afternoon
Three DaysAfterthe Outing
“Dammit,” Mallory says as a text comes in from Heidi Hoffman. Her name’s all she and Aubrey can see without being able to unlock Grayson’s phone. There’s a codependency vibe to Heidi Hoffman that makes Mallory sure the woman’s not going to wait much longer before doing something. Something that could end with Mallory in handcuffs.
“You really should have asked first,” Aubrey says. “I’m a programmer—”
“A genius one.”
“Flattery won’t help. I studied computer science at Williams College, not on the dark web.”
“But isn’t there, like—” Mallory flutters her hands “—equipment or something? In the movies they—”
“Do things that are impossible. But, yes, someone could hack his password, someone who has equipment to do so, but that someone isn’t me. Besides, even if we could get in, any email or text you send will be encoded with your location, not Barbados or Guam or wherever you’re sending him.”
“I know that. I am the CEO of a tech company.”
“Then why am I here?”
“Because part of my job is to collaborate with experts in their field.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Still, my field is computer science not organized crime.”
Mallory slumps deeper into her sloped dining chair, fiddling with the arm of the ridiculous reading glasses she can’t believe she needs. But without them, she nearly cut off her own finger trying to slice an apple. The screen of her own phone flashes with notifications from three different dating apps, and she’s gotten two reminders for dates at the end of the week and one to pay last month’s mortgage and another to cancel the trial of some streaming channel in all caps, bellowing “FINAL WARNING! DO IT THIS TIME, MAL!”
This Mallory is an embarrassment. The question is which of them is a murderer.
The past purchases on her online grocery orders for the past six months don’t show a single box of nut crackers. Either she hasn’t bought any or she has and didn’t want a paper trail.
Her hand finds the fading marks on her forearm and begins to rub, a compulsive tick she’s fully aware of doing and yet unable to stop.
“This isn’t like you,” Aubrey says, placing her hand on Mallory’s forearm. “You understand the consequences of everything. You’re a better forecaster than the National Weather Service. So tell me, what are you hoping to achieve? You do know someone other than Grayson’s secretary is going to wonder where he is soon.”
“Not if she has a reasonable explanation to give them.”
“Which would be?”
Mallory hasn’t gotten to that yet. First, the phone. She only has one more try before it locks her out permanently.
But Aubrey presses, “Which would last the rest of his life?”
“It doesn’t have to last the rest of his life. It just has to last long enough for us to get home.”
Mallory feels like she’s infested with fleas, her entire body wriggling with every second that passes. She can’t stay here in this slouchy chair, staring at that hideous sofa, every night obsessively reading about parallel universes and postmortem signs of anaphylactic shock and how to smuggle hand sanitizer into jail, trying to reconcile the existence of her police officer father, and mourning Grayson. Dammit she can’t. This has to stop. All of it. Home, that’s all she can focus on. Back to her AIM, to taking it public, to proving that what she’s spent half her life on is worthwhile. No matter what Grayson did.
The computer error was like a virus—extremely well hidden and self-perpetuating. Without provocation to investigate, it would have remained hidden—for months, probably longer. And if she hadn’t been at the penthouse at the exact right time, she’d have likely never known Grayson was responsible. Those phrases she overheard had cracked her heart as much as they’d inflamed her gut. In shock and knowing he’d only talk his way out of it, Mallory had plastered on a smile and stayed silent that night. She’d spent the next few weeks searching for concrete proof of his involvement. That she hadn’t found any didn’t mean she was wrong.
Mallory shudders and hugs her arms to her chest. Aubrey gives her a quizzical look, but Mallory can’t tell her about Grayson. Telling her means telling her everything, and Mallory can’t relive it all again—not the bad and not the bad she’d mistakenly thought was good for nearly a year. So instead, she simply smiles.
