She wished he’d fired her on the plane so they could get it over with, but he hadn’t. Since they’d been lovers, he’d do it more carefully. He’d probably tell her she could keep the apartment for a while. He’d almost surely offer her a generous severance. The thought of his magnanimity made her want to choke.

She smacked herself in the cheek—a really bad idea, considering her jackhammer of a hangover. Until he fired her, she had a job, and she’d keep doing it right to the bitter end. She owed him that much and more.

The online smears, a mugging, a tire slashing, and a drone. It didn’t jibe. And who’d called INS—or was that even relevant? As for the cockroaches... Tony had told Spiral’s employees the club had to be closed for repairs to the cooling system, so the leak about the infestation hadn’t come from the staff. Coop had moved Karah and Jada to a hotel while the fumigation was going on. They knew the truth, but they also knew to keep it to themselves. Someone from the exterminating company could easily have blabbed, but Piper found it more likely that the same person who’d dumped the bugs had made sure the word got out.

She’d hit a dead end, and she had no idea where to go next, other than to make certain the club had a better video security system. She called Tony to talk about it. If it had been last week, she’d have talked to Coop directly, but it wasn’t last week.

The rest of Saturday and Sunday passed without word from Coop. She couldn’t go back to her apartment until the fumigation was done, so she slept on her office couch, not just because she didn’t want to impose on Jen or Amber, but also because she was too depressed to be around people.

The flyers she’d distributed netted a Monday-morning phone call from a suspicious wife, and by the next day, Piper had the unpleasant task of confirming the woman’s suspicions. Duke had been right. Once a wife got around to hiring a detective, she pretty much already knew the truth.

Helping others was supposed to be at least a partial cure for depression, so she tried to come up with someone she could help whose initials weren’t C.G. She thought of Jen’s problems with Dumb Ass and poked around the darker corners of the Internet for a few hours but didn’t come up with anything interesting.