“A few days ago, my laptop was destroyed, as you’ll recall. I had backups, but they’re not quite as secure. Someone took them and”—he stopped for another bout of coughing—“and they got the passcodes out of me. It’s only a few weeks’ worth of information, but the business we conducted is part of that.”

Her stomach finally rolled over the edge and dropped. “What?” she asked faintly.

“That’s why I want to meet in person. In my line of work, there’s a certain . . . responsibility. See, someone crossed me bad, and now a lot of my clients, yourself included, are at risk. I need your help to settle things.”

Emily felt her hand going numb so her other came up to cradle the phone close. Teddy looked a bit worried as her own hand was dropped. “I . . . okay. Where?” she asked. “Wait, no. Can . . . can we do something about it?”

“I hope so,” he said. “I really, really hope so.”

The line went dead.

Emily stood, cradling the phone for a few long minutes while screaming in her mind. Then it buzzed, and she found herself staring at the screen as an address and time appeared via text.

That very night, at a park on the opposite side of the campus as her. There was a note attached to the end of the text. “Come as your other self.”

“Boss, you okay?” Teddy asked.

Emily took a deep breath in, then let it out slowly. “I . . . I don’t know, Teddy. I really don’t know.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Midnight Meeting

Emily understood that she should be going to the meeting with Handshake in costume. Or in some sort of disguise.

The only little problem with that was she lacked anything even remotely similar to a disguise.

A long search through all the clothing she’d yet to unpack found her wearing a pair of old cargo pants she’d used for gardening back home and a thick jacket over a simple T-shirt. With the collar popped and a scarf around her lower face to ward off the cold, the Emily in the mirror was at least partially hidden.

Partially. She figured it wouldn’t take much for anyone to recognize her.

An old pair of sunglasses helped a bit, as did a tuque her mother had knit for her, but it was . . . not much of a costume.

That was okay. She didn’t want to be in costume anyway. Getting a costume, a Mask persona, would mean admitting that she was part of the greater game of Heroes and Villains, while she knew full well that participating was the last thing she wanted to do.