Catherine Goldman spun her chair around and looked out the plate-glass window of the office. She could see across the dull gray Hudson all the way to the darkening Manhattan skyline. The sky was a washed-out, cold gray as it turned loose a few drab stray snowflakes. The only bit of color was the dark orange Staten Island ferry, churning downriver past Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

She gritted her teeth. Jamaica sounded very good right now, but there was something about this sudden change of assignment that didn’t seem right. Alstair McLain was not noted for great displays of concern for the well-being of his underlings. His reputation was more that of a slave driver, and one who had achieved his lofty position by climbing up the backs of his staff. She couldn’t imagine why there was this sudden concern for her state of mind.

“I didn’t even know Jamaica had a stock exchange,” she said.

“Yep. It trades for two hours most afternoons. The rest of the time, you’re on your own. Sightsee, lie around the beach, sip those little rum drinks with the big umbrellas sticking out of ’em, whatever you want to do.”

“Stan, I’ll admit that sounds inviting right now,” she said with a soft chuckle, but then she was once again all business. “Look, I’ve got a lot of work to do here. You know I’ve never abandoned an assignment and I don’t want to start now. Especially one as important and as complex as this one.”

Leaving behind this colorless cubicle and its uncomfortable steel-and-vinyl chair wouldn’t be all that difficult. The weather had been cold and miserable for weeks, too. She wouldn’t miss Ustinov’s crude advances or Andretti’s disgusting habits.

There was something wrong here, though. Something she still couldn’t quite pin down. There was no way she could walk away until she found what it was. This project was too important to the Exchange, to the whole trading system in the country.

“Damn it, Catherine, you won’t be abandoning anything. Barry Sanderson is on this afternoon’s shuttle headed your way. He’ll replace you at OptiMarx. Just give him a ‘turnover’ and then you be on the morning flight from Kennedy to Kingston.”