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Kip quickly pulled back onto Boren, then floored it to make the next light. It was a split second from red when she went through, but there was no cross-traffic. She kept up her speed until she made the next light, then she knew from experience that a steady 41 mph would take her all the way to Ranier without stopping. Unless the sedan was willing to run a lot of red lights, they’d never catch her. Punks usually looked for easier prey than she had turned out to be.
She meandered down Ranier, then headed back to Broad Street and home. There was no sign of the sedan as the Camry glided into the parking garage under her building. She made sure the security gate closed completely behind her before she got out of the car. There was no traffic on the street outside, no idling motors or footsteps. Kip relaxed and gathered up her briefcase and laptop.
Though she was tired there was work to do. She followed her work habits, even though she was no longer sure she was on the case. She updated her log, noting the gist of her report to Tamara, the day and time again, and what they’d discussed.
She made no mention of the delectable meal, the chocolate and the resolve-melting passion that had erupted as she was leaving.
She would kick herself for that later. Paperwork completed, she decided she should look through the reports Buck had provided her one more time.
She had scarcely removed them from her briefcase when her cell phone rang. Speak of the devil.
“I have one of your reports,” Buck announced.
“You do? But I have what I asked for.”
“One of those guys was married, so I did the wife too.”
“Oh—Nadia Langhorn?”
“Yeah, her. I want to be paid for her too.”
“Fine. I’ll get it in the morning on my way to work. Was there anything unusual about it?”
“Yeah—that’s why I’m even bothering, plus, I do want to get paid. But there was something weird. Nadia Rachel Belize, now Langhorn, was adopted the day before Tamara Sterling was, 99
in a town about a hundred miles east. She has the same holes surrounding birth parents as Sterling. Also born in Germany.”
“Are they related?” The most bizarre explanations occurred to her first—they had both been kidnapped as children, white slavers, some kind of child porn ring moving kids around. Stop, think and listen, she told herself. That was when the Berlin Wall fell—refugees from behind the Iron Curtain?
“How would I know? Their adoption decrees won’t track back to any databases and Langhorn’s passport app has the same lack of verification that Sterling’s does.”
“They can’t both be in some kind of deep cover situation.”
Buck was just being paranoid. She felt a chill when she remembered that Tam had admitted the adoptive parents weren’t real.
She had fallen from one mystery that was still a familiar pattern and into another that was beyond her experience. Right now, with her nerves shattered, her heart pounding and her body acting out some kind of hormonal lust fantasy, she knew which mystery she wanted to solve more. It was the one that was none of her business.
After a poor night’s sleep, Kip woke with a start. She had barely opened her eyes when the alarm went off. She forced herself through her morning routine, with the exception of coffee.
There wasn’t enough caffeine in the world and she already had the jitters.
Though her composure was in tatters, she dressed with care.
A black suit with a mixed animal print blouse came close to stylish.
She even opted for a skirt and medium-height heels instead of trousers and more comfortable slides. It seemed important. She didn’t feel like a professional but at least she could look like one.
After last night’s business with the car on her tail, she kept track of cars behind her on her way to Buck’s, where she paused long enough to retrieve an envelope he heaved out the door in response to her knock. Proceeding to work, she saw nothing out 100
of the ordinary in her rearview mirror. It had been a bunch of punks, she assured herself. Nevertheless, she was glad to get to the secure parking garage. She felt stretched like a balloon over too many worries.
Still, it felt bizarre to sit down at her desk as if nothing had happened last night between her and Tamara. As if she had nothing else to do but work on exhibits and numbering.
She waited until it seemed like most of her colleagues had settled into their own work before she pulled the report on Nadia Langhorn out of the envelope. Buck had been accurate.
Mrs. Langhorn’s missing data weirdly matched up with Tamara Sterling’s. She’d taught Italian out of college before abandoning her teaching career in favor of marriage. In spite of the southern Italian looks, she’d also been born in Germany, popped into existence in the U.S. at the age of eleven and adopted by parents Kip had to assume didn’t exist any more than Tam’s did.
She told herself that it had nothing to do with anything that affected the case or her life or her heart or—
She shoved the papers into her briefcase. She didn’t know what to do next, and Tamara hadn’t given her any prompting, either. She prodded a pesky folder back into a stack only to have the whole pile unbalance and swirl across the only open place on her desk, knocking over knickknacks and what was fortunately an empty water bottle.
She caught sight of the picture she kept on her desk of her and her grandfather, after a day’s sailing. She pulled it from under the disarray. She wished she’d spent more time at Jen’s birthday celebration. She had missed all of the summer, again. There were blue skies, somewhere, but no sign of them here, in her crowded cubicle.
Normally, she would have said she was a calm, cool, collected type, but when her boss cleared his throat behind her she shot to her feet.
“Sorry,” Emilio said immediately. “Planning your next vacation?”
She glanced at the picture still in her hand. “More like wishing 101
I was already there.” She set the frame down where it wouldn’t get knocked over by the files again. “What can I do for you?”
“I just took a call from a new client. We haven’t worked for them before. They’re looking for a quick job. Pierce a corporate veil of a takeover threat. Shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.”
“Um...I’m not quite done with checking the exhibits. I’ve still got about four hundred.”
“Is that all? I seriously thought you wouldn’t be done until next week.”
The deadline you gave me was tomorrow, she wanted to say.
Nothing for it then. She took the note from him.
“Call for more information.”
She glanced at the note. “Well, I’ll certainly see what I can dig up.”
Emilio slapped her playfully on the shoulder. “Just do your best. You’ll have my job before too long.”
“As if I want it,” Kip retorted at Emilio’s retreating back. She leaned out of her cubicle and called after him, “All that sitting around in the Jacuzzi, sipping mimosas and pulling the strings of the poor plebes who report to you. I don’t think I could take it.”
Emilio gave her a simple but eloquent hand gesture in response just as he turned the corner. It meant he loved her right back.
She called the client, took notes on the various players in the competing companies, then spent the next two hours pulling credit and corporate filing information. It was more tedious than not, but she eventually wound her way to the top dog in the corporate chain, a vast holding company for a consortium of venture capitalists. One of them was on the board of the company facing takeover—oh, the intrigues of business. She typed up her notes and e-mailed the report to Emilio.