There were toolkits against the far wall with a sign that said Don’t Forget to Sign Your Kit Out! handwritten in black Sharpie above a clipboard with its own pen dangling from a purple piece of yarn. Carl signed Foster Aldrich on the clipboard, grabbed the toolkit, and strode toward the service elevator, practically running as he sensed the entire world coming back from its lunch break.
The entire world with the exception of Foster Aldrich, Carl knew.
Foster always had an extra martini at lunch, and he wasn’t going to stop that habit today, not after Carl had so blatantly blown him off for Ginger.
And one of the things Foster didn’t know was that Stirling had rekeyed Carl’s access card the month before because Carl had wondered if it could be done. It could. As long as nobody had changed their passcodes to get into their offices, Carl had access to any room in the building.
As he walked, he stuck his hand in the freshly washed uniform, pulled out a lanyard, and attached the keycard to it like an ID.
He kept his head down, didn’t make eye contact with the suits, and walked straight into Foster Aldrich’s office without a single person questioning his presence.
God. Insurance companies. Great that they thought nobody would steal from them, wasn’t it?
As soon as he shut all the blinds to the room, he called Stirling up on the Bluetooth.
“I’m in,” he said. And then he pulled out Foster’s middle drawer, where Foster wrote his computer and access passwords, and proceeded to break into his manager’s computer and send Stirling sensitive material about his company. And he didn’t feel a tiny bit bad about it either.
“Which files did you want?” Stirling asked.
“Mandy Jessup’s,” Carl said. “And anything related to peregrines or the houbara bustard. They might not be at this computer—”
“Do you have the email address of the person you think has them?”
Carl gave him Ginger’s address, his back prickling with sweat.
“Is that everything?” he asked, standing up and peering behind the blinds. Damn.
“Yeah. You about to get pinched?”
Foster had stopped on the way through the reception room and was trying hard to flirt with one of the receptionists.
“Yeah. I’ve got to get while I can.”
“Go,” Stirling said. “I’ll have the files ready for you when you get back.”
“Thanks, man.”
“Good work,” Stirling told him, and from Stirling, who very rarely complimented anybody, that was high praise.
“You too,” Carl said before grabbing the toolbox and slipping out the side door in Foster’s office, which led to the foyer for the private elevators.
It was a risky move. If one of the CEOs or shareholders had been going from investigative services back to their own office, he would have run into them, and he was well known to all the executives. He’d done work for pretty much everybody in the building.
But he also knew their habits, much like he knew Foster Aldrich always had an extra martini at lunch.
These assholes—and with the exception of Ginger, they really were universally male—were out banging their mistresses, or in one case, their secret mister. Carl had made it a point to know all their vices, just in case, for instance, he ever got caught sneaking out of someone in middle-management’s office dressed as a maintenance worker.
Nobody was in the elevator when he got in, and he could finally breathe. He took the car one floor down, then made his way to the service elevators. When he got to the maintenance entrance, a flood of workers were coming back from lunch.
Instead of venturing into the locker room and getting busted, he kept right on walking, leaving the toolkit at the loading dock entrance where it could be easily seen and not tripped over.
And then he just kept on walking.
He ordered a rideshare about six blocks from the building and gave a sigh of deep relief when he got into the back of the small Kia.
He scanned the rearview all the way to Georgetown, relieved—and sweaty—when he didn’t see anybody following.
Risky. God, it had been risky. But clues like the one Ginger had practically poured into his lap didn’t come that often. It would have been criminal if he hadn’t tracked that down.
THE SWEAT served him well an hour later as he played racquetball with one of the toughest, most ruthless competitors he’d ever met.
Tamara Charter was an imposing woman.
Fit, wiry, in her midfifties, with tanned skin and a fierce crop of sun-spawned freckles, she wore her ginger hair cut short and attacked the ball with a sort of pixilated glee.
Kill that ball! Destroy it! All balls were fuckers!
Carl, still riding the adrenaline high of breaking into his own building, could get into that sort of thing.
He threw his shoulder into the swing and annihilated the little rubber ball, highly gratified when Tamara missed the return for match point.
He was dripping sweat and happy for the competition by the time they were done. Even if Tamara petered out as a source, getting the chance to play with her was an honor.
He stood and guzzled water at the side of the court and felt a little bit of satisfaction that she had to do the same.
“I’ve got to admit,” Tamara said, panting slightly, “that when Ginger said she had a competitor for my afternoon match, I was pretty sure I was going to get a chubby executive who would be happier playing frisbee golf. I have to thank you for a really excellent match!”
Carl swallowed and wiped his face on his shoulder. It occurred to him belatedly that he hadn’t tried to finesse this in any way, shape, or form. He’d arrived late, out of breath, still sweaty and disheveled from stripping out of the onesie and throwing on his workout clothes before jogging to the gym, his workout bag and racket slung over his shoulder.
“It’s been a while since I played,” he admitted. “And I ended up having an errand to run after lunch. I think the rush of being late gave me a boost. That was an anomaly.”
Tamara laughed, the sound husky and genuine. “I’m quite pleased to be your anomaly. Let’s hit the showers, and then I can buy you a smoothie and ask you what’s on your mind. Ginger said something about sage grouse?”
Carl grinned. “Among other things, yes,” he said before sticking out his hand. “And it’s been a privilege. I’d be happy to have a smoothie with you.”
She laughed, and they both headed off to hit the showers. It wasn’t until he was getting dressed again that he realized that, somehow, as he’d been packing that morning, one of Michael’s shirts must have gotten mixed up with his. Carl had brought jeans and a hooded sweatshirt to wear back to his apartment, but, absurdly, it touched him to squeeze his broad XL chest into that size M T-shirt. He had to rip the neck so he could breathe and then zip the hoodie up so nobody could see that the red T-shirt underneath was practically painted on. But every touch of Michael in his life felt like… like sweetness. Like a reward just waiting for Carl to claim it.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt like he had something good coming to him. But the thought of Michael, who’d be there to pick him up at the airport like he’d promised, made his chest swell.
Somebody—somebody nice and funny and important—was waiting for him to get home.