I exhaled slowly, thinking about my immediate plans. I had been working so hard lately; I really didn’t want to jump right into another case. I had things to do. I was going to get off this plane, make my way home to my little cottage on the Chesapeake, and spend the week winding down. My plans were no more ambitious than catching up on laundry, taking out the canoe every day, and tending to my personal e-mail. I hadn’t been home for more than a few days at a time for the last month; even my poor dog, who lived with a neighbor whenever I traveled, was starting to feel like a distant memory.

“Callie,” Tom said, interrupting my thoughts, “I know you miss your little Maltese. But it’s only a one-day assignment, and the packet is already waiting for you at the apartment in the city. Spend the night there, zip up to Philly in the morning, and you’ll be home by tomorrow night. Then you can take a whole week off if you want. Paddle down those little tributaries to your heart’s content.”

I smiled, wondering how it was that a man I had never met could know me so well.

“Everything I need is in the city?” I asked, thinking of the corporate apartment the foundation kept near the Watergate. It was nice, if a little sterile, and I did keep a toothbrush and an extra change of clothes there. I supposed a quick trip to Philadelphia wouldn’t kill me. At least I knew my way around because of an internship I had done there one summer as a law student. Though I hadn’t liked the law firm enough to accept their offer once the internship was over, I had kind of liked the city. It had a certain attitude about it, a traditional yet funky dichotomy I found intriguing. Though I didn’t plan to stick around town a moment longer than necessary, it would be nice to drive through Philadelphia again. “Okay, I’ll do it,” I said finally.

We concluded our call, and I slipped the phone back into its holder. Once I got to the apartment, I would call Lindsey, the teenager who always kept my dog, and tell her she would need to keep her just a little bit longer. Then I would go through the packet of information about the agency in Philly and call it a night.

I leaned back and looked out at the sky, which was a dark purple now, the gray clouds silhouetted against the horizon. I felt at peace, satisfied with a job well done, eager to finish this one minor errand tomorrow so I could begin my little vacation.

It’s a good thing I didn’t know then how the following events would unfold, that my little trip the next day was going turn into something altogether different than either Tom or I could ever have predicted. In my years as a private investigator, I’d seen a few dead bodies, sure.