Ah, but what was he selling?

Good question. Thanks, Brendan, I—

Not so hasty, Ms. Shugak, ma‘am. That was just the first unaccounted-for thing in his bank records.

Do tell.

Indeed.

No, Brendan, I mean really, do tell me.

He had another regular payment coming into his account. Same level of amounts, this payment twice a month like clockwork.

Jesus, Brendan, how much money did this guy have squirreled away? Just under three hundred thousand dollars.

Someone banged into her cart and apologized. Kate waved them off—she could barely make out their faces through suddenly blurred vision—and said, Are you kidding me?

Nope. Here‘s the best part, Kate.

What? What!

This payer wasn‘t quite as careful. We traced that sucker right back to its source. Took my guy approximately seventeen and a half minutes.

Who was it?

He told her.

Sixteen

It had been a long time since she‘d been in the RPetCo building, almost five years since she‘d been hired to find a drug dealer at their camp in the Prudhoe Bay oil fields. A lot had changed since then. For one thing, there was now a veritable bank of security guards in the lobby, dressed alike in polyester blazers with the RPetCo logo embroidered discreetly over their hearts. One of them took her name, asked to see some picture ID, and made a phone call.

Have you got a fax here? she asked another of the guards. They did. Okay if I have something sent over? Your boss is going to want to see it.

He thought this over with a gravity better befitting the weighty cares of an agent of the Secret Service, decided it would be difficult to fax a bomb, and agreed. She called Brendan and gave him the number. A moment later the fax hummed into operation.

While the fax was printing out the bank of elevators opened to disgorge hundreds of employees heading home at what Kate guessed would be a much smarter clip than they had come in that morning. She searched the faces, looking for someone she knew. No one looked familiar, no one said, Hey, Kate Shugak! She would have liked to have seen Sue Jordan, hear what diabolical new methods she had thought up to terrorize all the men in the RPetCo Hilton, but Sue was probably in Prudhoe Bay doing just that at this very moment, and Kate wouldn‘t have wished otherwise. Ms. Shugak? This way, please. Someone in the building must have remembered her, because she was escorted without further delay into an elevator that wafted them to the top floor.

Yes, someone must have remembered her, because a security guard accompanied her every step of the way.

The elevator debouched into a massive suite of offices on the penthouse floor. The guard led the way between a dozen desks, most of them abandoned by now. The boss‘s door was guarded by a gray-haired woman in expensive tweeds and sensible shoes. The guard said, Kate Shugak, Mrs. Podhoretz, and turned Kate over with the air of having successfully handed off a very hot potato.