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The PI. “Right.”
“Listen to this—it’s fake. Extremely professional, extremely expensive, extremely fake identities.”
I stop and turn. “Does he have proof of this?”
“He’s getting it. It’s involving bribes at a federal level. There are no photographs of the two of them online prior to seven years ago. He thinks she might be connected. The ID is mob-level good. This is a five-alarm fire.”
“Mob? No. She’s not connected. She’s not a con. I’m telling you,” I say.
“Has our guy ever been wrong on a case?” Brett asks. “Has he? No. Never. Pull your head out of your ass. She posed as a pet whisperer and bilked an old lady.”
“She’s giving the company back.”
“Oh, she told you that?”
“In so many words.”
“She’s giving back the company. But did she do it? Did she draw up papers?”
“I think there’s more to the will. I don’t know. She’s not in it for the money.”
“Are you kidding me? Wait. You’re sleeping with her.”
“No, I’m telling you what is.”
“Dude. You don’t even know her name!”
“There could be lots of reasons an ID might be false,” I say. “She could be running from somebody.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” he says, voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Screw off,” I say. “It’s under control.”
“Is this part of good cop? Is she there or something?”
“Let him keep digging,” I say. I’m thinking about the way she talked about being hated. Bullied. Was that connected to the well? Did somebody put her in a well? Or worse? Is she so frightened of somebody that she had to change her name to get away from them? “Go for it. Find out everything about her.”
There’s a silence on the line. My about-face feels off to him. More than that, he doesn’t like that I’m not telling him my thoughts. There was a time when I’d tell him everything.
“Okay,” he says finally. “And I made ressies at El Capitan for six tomorrow.”
“What?”
“Dude,” Brett says. “Scanlund fundraiser? The Jacabowskis?”
I close my eyes.
Real life had to intrude at some point.
Mike Scanlund is a city council politician we’re backing for assorted reasons. Black tie fundraiser. We’re taking the Jacabowski sisters, who are high up in that campaign. The two of them and Brett and I frequently tag team on each other’s issues at fundraisers.
“Can I sit there or are you going to hog the whole thing?”
I look up, and there she is.
“I’m going to hog the whole thing,” I say.
She puts her hands on her hips, and before I can stop myself, I’m surging up and pulling her into my lap. She screams and laughs and loops her arm around my neck, and the way we fit, it’s like she’s been sitting on my lap forever, as if our bodies know just how to mold into each other.
