“Anything, sir. You can count on me.”

He let his fists subside, so that his hands lay flat on either side of a slim file folder. “Whatever you have planned for tonight, cancel it.”

“I was just going to have dinner, then see a movie.” Actually, Julie had planned to spend the night with Cutler, but that wasn’t going to happen now. She knew it shouldn’t happen ever again, but she felt trapped, too weak to break it off or even walk away.

“Good.” He opened the file, but didn’t glance at it.

Hemingway’s eyes shifted away from her, looking at nothing, so far as Julie could tell.

He licked his lips. His face held an expression that made her even more anxious.

“You ever hear of a place called The Doll House?”

“No,” she said truthfully. “But I can guess it’s not filled with Barbies and Kens.”

“Quite right.” Hemingway licked his lips again, then cleared his throat. “There’s a person of interest who works there. Pole dancer, occasional lap dancer. She goes by the name of Sydny.” He spelled it out for her. “Real name”—now he did consult the file—“Louise Kapok.” He closed the folder, looked up. “She’s working tonight. Starts at ten, but I want you to be there earlier to get the lay of the land, as it were.” He chuckled as if just now getting the inadvertent double entendre.

Julie was have difficulty getting over her surprise. “Let me get this straight. You want me to stake out The Doll House?”

“That’s right.”

“But I’m not a trained field agent. Surely you have any number of—”

“I do,” he said, “but I don’t want a field man. I want you to talk to Sydny woman to woman.”

“About what?”

“I’ll tell you in a moment,” he said. “I chose you because you report directly to me and this has to stay between the two of us. It’s not an official inquiry, which, as you know, we are forbidden by law to conduct on U.S. soil.” He turned, put the entire file through the shredder beside his desk. “Also I don’t want her spooked.”

“Why in the world would she be spooked?”

“Because,” Hemingway said, “one of her best clients is Greg Whitman.”

* * *

Universal Security Associates’ vetting process was even more exacting than the government’s, if that were possible. Whitman had warned Charlie of this, but he needn’t have bothered. Charlie was all over it.

She passed the so-called box—the lie detector—with flying colors. That was the least of it; any well-trained agent could beat the box as successfully as any psychopath, which maybe said something pretty nasty about agents.

As far as her background was concerned, there had been some significant deep diving to do before Cutler and his team of earthworms began their digging through her past. This was not particularly difficult, though she was not herself computer-savvy enough to make that kind of magic. For that she needed the Elf Lord. Her real name was Lorraine Few, but only two people who knew her used it.