"What about after hours?"The question came quickly, almost eagerly."I know it's an unusual request, but I'd be happy to meet you somewhere convenient.A coffee shop, maybe?I could buy you dinner, even.Whatever works for your schedule."
Sarah hesitated.After-hours meetings weren't unheard of in her line of work—plenty of clients had day jobs that made traditional office hours impossible.But there was something in the man's voice that gave her pause.Not threatening, exactly.Just...intent.Focused in a way that felt slightly too personal for a first conversation about tax problems.
Still, she reminded herself, desperate clients often sounded desperate.That was kind of the point.
"A coffee shop might work," she said slowly."There's a place called Brewster's on Third Avenue—do you know it?"
"I can find it."
"I could meet you there around five-thirty, once I'm done with my last appointment.Would that work?"
"That would be perfect."The relief in his voice was unmistakable."Thank you, Ms.Ramsey.I really appreciate you making time for me."
"Of course.Can I get your name for my records?"
A pause.Just a heartbeat too long.
"I'd rather discuss that in person, if that's all right.I'm a fairly private person, and with everything going on..."He trailed off."I hope you understand."
Sarah's pen hovered over her notepad, waiting for letters that weren't coming.The request was unusual—most clients were eager to establish their identity, to become a person rather than just a voice on the phone.But unusual wasn't the same as suspicious.Maybe he was embarrassed.Maybe he'd seen his name in the news for something and didn't want to prejudice her opinion.Maybe he was just one of those people who preferred face-to-face interaction.
"That's fine," she said, though a small voice in the back of her mind whispered that it wasn't, not really."I'll see you at Brewster's at five-thirty.I'll be the one with the laptop bag and the permanent look of tax-season exhaustion."
He laughed at that—a genuine sound, warm and almost charming."I'll keep an eye out.And Ms.Ramsey?"
"Yes?"
"Thank you again.You have no idea how much this means to me."
The line went dead before she could respond.
Sarah set the phone down and stared at it for a moment, turning the conversation over in her mind.Something about it nagged at her—the anonymity, the urgency, the way he'd latched onto the first available opportunity even though it meant meeting in the evening, away from her office.But she was probably overthinking it.The magazine feature had made her a minor local celebrity, at least in certain circles.Maybe he'd read the article and felt like he already knew her.Maybe that was why he'd called her specifically, out of all the accountants in Duluth.
Making Numbers Beautiful.The headline had been the editor's idea, not hers, but she'd grown to appreciate its cheese.It certainly brought in clients.
She turned back to the Peterson file, pushing the strange phone call to the back of her mind.The numbers waited, patient and logical, and she lost herself in them the way she always did—the familiar rhythm of debits and credits, assets and liabilities, the elegant mathematics of someone else's financial life.
Outside her window, the February afternoon wore on.Pedestrians continued their hurried parade down Superior Street, collars up, breath fogging in the cold.A few snowflakes began to drift down from the gray sky, catching the light before dissolving on the sidewalk.
Sarah didn't notice any of it.She was already deep in the next set of figures, her mind consumed by the puzzle of making numbers behave.
At five-thirty, she would go to Brewster's.She would meet a man whose name she didn't know, whose face she'd never seen, who had called her out of the blue with a story about financial anxiety and sleepless nights.
It was a public place.There would be other people around—other customers, baristas, the usual evening crowd getting their caffeine fix on the way home from work.Nothing could happen in a coffee shop.
Nothing bad ever happened in coffee shops.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The whiteboard had become a monument to futility.
Isla stood before it at six-thirty in the evening, dry-erase marker uncapped in her hand, staring at the web of connections she'd drawn over the past ten hours.The photographs of Monica Hayes and Amanda Pierce still anchored the center—two women smiling out from professional headshots, frozen in moments of ordinary life that had become unbearably poignant.Around them spread a constellation of names and places and questions, lines drawn in red and black and blue, all of them leading precisely nowhere.
Behind her, the field office hummed with the particular exhaustion of a day that had promised much and delivered nothing.Phones that had rung constantly that morning had gone quiet.The coffee pot had been refilled and emptied four times.Agents who had been bustling with purpose at eight AM now moved with the slow deliberation of people running on fumes and determination.
James sat at his desk nearby, his laptop open to what must have been the hundredth search of the day.His flannel shirt was rumpled, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and the gray at his temples seemed more pronounced in the harsh fluorescent light.He hadn't complained once—hadn't done anything but work steadily beside her, following every lead, making every call, checking every angle—but Isla could see the weariness in the set of his shoulders.
"Yoga studio members," she said, reading from the list they'd compiled."Forty-seven women matching the general victim profile have attended Serenity Yoga in the past six months.We've contacted thirty-two of them.None reported being followed, approached by strangers, or experiencing anything unusual."
