I went home to pick up the memory card, but I was too keyed up to stay in my dungeon room, and too exhausted to hit the dojo. I ended up at my neighborhood library. It looked like a middle school, three stories of beige-brown brick with a pair of fancy glass cubes some bougie architect dreamed up later. QUEENS LIBRARY was spelled out in shiny metal letters over the entrance. It was only when you got inside that the QUEENS PUBLIC LIBRARY AT ELMHURST sign was visible. It always sounded funny to me, like Elmhurst was a destination. My working-class neighborhood was best known for its horrifically high death rate in the pandemic.

Technically, you weren’t allowed to eat, but I’d learned you could quietly scarf down a protein bar just about anywhere. I decided to work my Ben Northcutt search harder. Reading about his work on a sleepless night had made him seem like a badass. Encountering him in the flesh made it clear he was a jackass. I had questions about Caro and her taste in men. She’d teased me about my aversion to relationships, but none of my hookups had tried to kill me or called me a criminal.

All I found was more of the same. Ben was a Big Deal in journalism, and aside from his career there was nothing interesting about him. As far as I could tell, he’d never been married and had no kids. Maybe he was a cipher, but he was a boring one.

After the clock ran out on my half-hour slot, I moved to a table and put the memory card in my laptop. All 1,702 photographs came up. But I opened the card’s settings and realized it was set to only show images. I changed it to show all files, and suddenly there were 1,798.

A shiver went down my spine.

That intense feeling lasted ten seconds, until I realized all the unseen files were spreadsheets. I skimmed each one, figuring a clue would jump out at me any second. Nothing did.

There was exactly one person I knew who loved spreadsheets. I texted Reagan, asking how late she was working.

Eight, she texted back. But no dojo tonight. Want to come over for dinner?

As a matter of fact, I did.

I had no other messages, not even from Snapp. I’d sent a text to T-Rex about Aubrey pouncing on me like a jackal, but there had only been radio silence. I didn’t mind being yelled at, but the quiet was unnerving.

At twenty to eight, I headed over to Reagan’s, stopping on the way for a bodega bouquet. Reagan and her mom lived in a cozy two-story house with gingerbread trim. It looked like it had popped out of a storybook. Mrs. Chen hugged me when I came in, and I didn’t even mind. It felt like home.

“You have not been eating,” Mrs. Chen said. “I can tell. You are too skinny, Dee.”

“She’s still living on protein bars,” Reagan said, ratting me out.

“They’re full of vitamins,” I argued, aware I sounded lame.

Mrs. Chen shook her head. “You can’t beat people up if you don’t eat!”

She knew me so well.

That evening, I cared about food a lot. Mrs. Chen made a spicy pork stir-fry with carrots and peppers and peanuts. After dinner, she hurried off to video chat with her sister in Guangzhou. I pulled the memory card out. “Remember when I told you Caro gave me a zillion photos? There are spreadsheets too.”

“And you want me to explain them? Fine. But only if I get to see some snaps of mini-Dee.”

I handed the card over, and she put it into her laptop, a shiny new model that put my bashed-in one to shame. The first picture opened, and she started to heckle me mercilessly.

“I can’t believe your mom was able to wrangle you into dresses. And pink ones, at that.”

“Be careful. There are shots of you on there. That awesome haircut you gave yourself when you were twelve has been documented for the ages.”

“Aw, hell,” Reagan muttered. “That’s blackmail material.” She started opening up the spreadsheets. “How did you finish work so early today? Mom wanted to ask you over for dinner, but you don’t get home till after ten on Thursdays.”

“T-Rex sent me to Aubrey’s apartment.”

“Shit. Did that creep try anything this time?”

“He went for full molestation today. Groping and kissing.”

“Tell me you tore his limbs from his body,” Reagan said.

“Close enough. He was on the floor when I left. He wasn’t getting up anytime soon.”

“You need a different job. One that doesn’t put you in mortal danger.” Reagan’s attention shifted to the screen. “Hello, financials. My happy place.”

I gazed at the screen. It was some kind of operational budget, but unlike my best friend, I zoned out when looking at numbers.

“Okay, this spreadsheet is telling us a sad story,” Reagan said. “I know you hate math, but this is pretty simple. See this number? That’s the operating budget for the Thraxton hotels in Europe last year. That’s a big number. And see this number?” She pointed at the screen. “That’s gross income, and it needs a couple more zeroes to break even.”

“You’re saying the chain is losing money?”

“They’re hemorrhaging money,” Reagan clarified. “Maybe this is a bad year from the pandemic. If it’s not, the company won’t be in business much longer.”

Reagan opened up more files, but they were more of the same.

“Why would your sister give you this?”

I thought about what Ben had hissed at me. What Caroline was doing was illegal. You want to make that fact public and burn down your sister’s reputation? “I don’t know.”

“Your sister was the public relations director,” Reagan said. “There’s no reason for her to even . . . oh, wait. Hello there.”

“What is it?”

“Take a look.” Reagan angled the screen so I could see it better. “The operating costs are lower, which is good news, but look at the cash they’re raking in.”

I peered at it. “More zeroes.”

“Lots more! Which would be great if this spreadsheet was for a different continent or time period. But it’s not.”

“What are you saying?”

“If this is real, Thraxton International is keeping two sets of books.”

I gulped. “For what? Tax fraud?”

“Maybe.” Reagan scanned it over. “Or it could be to raise capital. No one’s lending them money with that first balance sheet, but the second one looks like a good bet.”

“I don’t understand why Caro would give this to me. Or why she’d even have it in the first place.”

“Maybe it’s leverage over Theo.”

“Maybe,” I agreed. But I knew Theo had left his family’s business. Maybe the tax fraud stretched back years and implicated him—he was the family member with the fancy degrees. But it seemed like this information would mostly hurt the in-laws Caro loved rather than the husband she loathed.

PART TWO

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.

—George Eliot

CHAPTER 21

DEIRDRE

On Friday, I woke up at five a.m. to a text from Ben Northcutt. I feel like we got off on the wrong foot, he wrote. Want to get coffee today?

I wanted to ask how he’d gotten my number—because I sure hadn’t given it to him—but I was exhausted and fell back into a fitful sleep.

When I woke up at seven, a text from T-Rex had just come in: You’re fired.

I was furious, but I wasn’t surprised. There was a numbness that had settled into my bones whenever I contemplated my job and the many things I hated about it. But seeing this two-word text highlighted its awfulness. I switched to another app and checked my bank account. It was anemic. I got paid every two weeks, but normally Aubrey danger pay went into my account within twelve hours. It wasn’t there.

I shot back, Is this a joke? even though I knew it wasn’t.

T-Rex’s response came through in a minute. You know what you did.

He could only have meant Aubrey. Nothing else had gone wrong with any of my clients.

You owe me money, I wrote back.

There was no response.

I had exactly two protein bars, and as I studied them, I considered my employment prospects. They were not good. There was always a market for able-bodied worker bees, and I figured I could snag another job like that quickly. I also knew I’d hate it just as much as I’d hated working at Snapp.

I took the subway in to Manhattan, switching at Grand Central and heading north on a 6 train to the East Fifty-First Street Station. There was a Thraxton property on Park, a landmark of blue glass and studded steel that was supposed to look stylishly intimidating but mostly resembled a goth fishbowl. Two floors were corporate HQ, and the rest was a hotel. Caro had given me an employee pass years ago, and I stopped by on a semiregular basis—sometimes to say hi to my sister but always to stock up on food in the employee pantry. I wondered if the pass would be deactivated now that Caro was gone, but it still worked. I took the stairs up to the third floor. I was steps away from the pantry when I changed my mind and took another path, following the plush red carpet to Caro’s office.

The door was closed, but it wasn’t locked. I stepped inside but couldn’t seem to take a step beyond that. Caro’s office was painted in an azure blue that made it feel suspended in the sky, even though we were barely off the ground by New York City standards. The furniture was glamorous, of course. On one wall was a silver plaque from the Diotima Civic Society, surrounded by framed photographs of Caro with international dignitaries, interspersed with images of Teddy. My sister always looked perfect, never a hair out of place, at ease with presidents and royalty. I don’t know how she did it.