Page 40 of Over Her Dead Body

The door opens an inch, one of us sees light under it, and then the other kicks it shut.

We work together. We travel too much. We fight over client lists, catalog copy, and whether walnut is being overused by people who do not deserve furniture.

Ruining that for sex would be stupid.

I am no longer doing stupid things.

Recent evidence notwithstanding.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” he asks.

“No.”

“At all?”

“No.”

“Is this a no because it’s none of my business or a no because you’re about to make it my business and want plausible deniability?”

He keeps his eyes on the road, but his mouth does that almost-smile thing.

“That was oddly specific.”

“I know you.”

He says it lightly.

It does not land lightly.

Outside, Austin slides by in warm gold and the kind of traffic that makes a person understand crime. My apartment is twenty minutes away. My bed is twenty minutes away. My shower. My wine. My locked door. My chance to stand under scalding water and pretend geography changes anything.

Owen merges onto the highway.

“Celeste wants you in early,” he says.

This is not surprising.

“What did I do now?”

“You mean besides fleeing the country and leaving Margot alone with Bauer?”

“I didn’t flee the country. I entered another one.”

“Comforting distinction.”

“Thank you.”

“Loring is bringing in the referral. Tomorrow morning.”

My fingers go still on the phone.

“Gen?” I ask.

“Genevieve,” he says. “Apparently the rest of us lack the spiritual depth to discuss eighteenth-century silver with her.”

The city keeps moving.

My phone vibrates again. I turn it over.